STRATEGY UNDER THE MICROSCOPE: STRATEGIC MANAGEMENT AND IT IN FINANCIAL SERVICES*

This article subjects the organizational theory literature on corporate strategy to critical scrutiny, arguing that both the ‘rational’and ‘processual’approaches to strategy generate analyses that are ahistorical and theoretically undeveloped. In their place, but focusing specifically on the financial services, we offer an alternative genealogically informed analysis. This indicates how the historical development of strategy discourses and practices are discontinuous and uneven across countries, sectors, companies and specialist spheres. In addition it suggests that corporate strategy has considerable impact on inter-organizational relations and both ‘internal’(i.e. management and employees) and ‘external’(i.e. consumers) members of the organization. the article seeks to illustrate its arguments both at the sectoral level by examining the development of strategic discourse in banks and insurance companies and at the organizational level by providing some case study material on IT strategy in a life insurance company.     

MANAGEMENT, MASCULINITY AND MANIPULATION: FROM PATERNALISM TO CORPORATE STRATEGY IN FINANCIAL SERVICES IN BRITAIN*

This article is concerned to demonstrate that paternalism and strategic management as forms, styles or ‘techniques’of managing people and organizations, are both constitutive of and embedded in what we term a ‘discourse of masculinism’. Within the context of the UK financial services industry, we examine how this discourse reflects and reproduces management practices, and reconstitutes individuals in accordance with masculinist priorities. This has the effect of privileging men vis-a-vis women, serves to rank some men above others, and maintains as dominant certain forms and practices of masculinity. We identify two of these as ‘paternalistic masculinity’and ‘competitive masculinity’respectively, regarding them as concrete manifestations of the interplay between historically shifting forms of management and masculinities in operation.     

基金管理公司子公司内部控制体系构建——基于COSO内部控制整体框架的案例分析

以上海W基金管理公司子公司为例,基于COSO内部控制整体框架,系统分析W基金管理公司子公司的五大内部控制要素和控制目标,探索构建了有效的专户子公司内部控制体系。完善的基金管理公司子公司内部控制体系有助于减少特定客户资产管理业务各个环节的运行风险,保障投资者权益,促进资产管理行业健康、稳步发展,并为行业的内控立法及内控标准提供实践参考,同时检验COSO内部控制整体框架理论的普遍性。     

MANAGING FOR AUTONOMY IN JOINT VENTURES: A LONGITUDINAL STUDY OF UPWARD INFLUENCE*

This article explores the relationships among influence, autonomy and control in a joint venture setting. It addresses the mechanisms available to joint venture (JV) managers to influence and gain compliance from parent firms. Control categories derived primarily from research on unified structures are explored in a new domain, an international joint venture. the beginning of new theory specific to relationships in joint ventures is developed based on causal maps of managerial perceptions. the results suggest that the use of upward influence to gain autonomy in a joint venture is different and more complex than in unified structures or among independent organizations.     

A PROCESS STUDY OF NEW TECHNOLOGY ADOPTION IN SMALLER MANUFACTURING FIRMS*

Based on longitudinal case studies of new technology adoption in five smaller Canadian manufacturing firms, this article develops an inductive process model that views the technology adoption process as a partially nested set of three parallel and interacting sub-processes that are different in nature: the strategic commitment process, the technology choice process and the financial justification process. These processes are themselves intertwined with other strategic decision processes in the firm, and influenced by a dynamic set of contextual elements that interact with one another over time. the study underlines the problems associated with a narrow conception of technology adoption as a ‘decision’while showing how various process models from the literature are useful in understanding different parts of the overall process of adoption     

CONFLICT APPROACHES OF EFFECTIVE AND INEFFECTIVE PROJECT MANAGERS: A FIELD STUDY IN A MATRIX ORGANIZATION[1]

The conflict approaches used by project managers in a matrix organization were described by 135 project team engineers. In project teams where the managers used a combination of co-operative and confirming approaches to conflict, conflicts were judged to have a constructive impact and management was judged to be effective. Conflicts were seen as counterproductive and management was seen as ineffective when the project manager relied upon a combination of competitive and avoiding approaches to conflict. These results provided field data support for a theory of conflict management which has been tested and refined through extensive laboratory research.     

基于核心竞争力提升的人力资源管理外包决策及其评价体系

随着市场环境的不断变化,低效的传统人力资源管理模式已经不能满足企业日益增长的追求核心竞争力提升的需求。为了提高管理效率、降低管理成本、提升人力资源管理的战略价值,越来越多的企业选择进行人力资源管理外包。人力资源管理是一个包括多个职能、多个管理项目的复杂系统。面对众多的管理项目,如何选择应该进行人力资源管理外包的项目并确定外包项目的优先顺序,这是保证人力资源管理外包决策成功的重要问题。本文在对人力资源管理外包的基础理论进行回顾和总结后,探讨了如何运用熵值组合赋权模型和灰色关联度分析判别模型相结合的方法进行人力资源管理外包项目的选择和排序,并结合某A公司的人力资源管理外包决策进行了应用分析。     

FINANCIAL EDUCATION AND BEHAVIORAL FINANCE: NEW INSIGHTS INTO THE ROLE OF INFORMATION IN FINANCIAL DECISIONS

Recent empirical evidence based on surveys and experimental activities within the fields of behavioral finance and financial education has offered economists new empirically based insights into how individuals use information in making financial decisions. Specifically, the importance of information in financial decisions may be reduced or eliminated by psychological aspects of the individual, such as a state of overconfidence that is individual or shared with a group, or by the individual's limited ability to process complex and abundant information. This paper aims to complement this emerging body of literature by studying how individuals perceive and process information when making financial decisions. We review these contributions and suggest a number of broad guidelines that can provide a framework for future discussion of this topic within financial decision theory.     

DE-ESCALATION IN DECISION MAKING: A CASE OF A DISASTROUS PARTNERSHIP*

Decisions to persist with losing courses of action known as escalation have been widely studied, albeit mainly in an experimental context. Comparatively little is known about the conditions under which de-escalation occurs. Utilizing a model of de-escalation derived from the literature the present study examines, by means of a case study, a decision to withdraw from a losing predicament. It is concluded that while de-escalation is likely to occur where the opposite conditions thought to be conducive to persistence apply, existing models under-emphasize the importance of power. Accordingly a modified version of Bowen's two-factor model is proposed.