Developing organisational embeddedness: employee personality and social networking

Abstract

While research has supported the contention that organisational embeddedness can influence voluntary turnover, little research examines how employees develop embeddedness. Understanding how employees develop embeddedness, however, is important to deal with the costly issue of voluntary turnover. This paper suggests that the personality traits of conscientiousness, emotional stability and extraversion can predict embeddedness and that social networking can also shape organisational embeddedness. Embeddedness is expected to negatively impact turnover intentions in turn. Data were collected through self-reported questionnaires (n = 401) in service sector companies in the Caribbean nation of Trinidad. A research design with three waves was used to test the proposed research model. The findings suggest that the personality dimensions of conscientiousness, emotional stability and extraversion predict organisational embeddedness, that social networking impacts embeddedness and that embeddedness predicts intent to turnover. Implications, limitations and future research directions offered by these findings are also discussed.     

Employee embeddedness as a moderator of the relationship between work and family conflict and leaving intention

Abstract

This paper examines whether on-the-job embeddedness moderates the impact of work and family conflict on leaving intention. Drawing on conservation of resources theory, the paper investigates the buffering effect of the three on-the-job embeddedness components (fit, links and sacrifice). Contrary to predictions, in this sample of white-collar manufacturing employees on-the-job fit embeddedness had no effect on the relationship between work and family conflict and leaving intention. As predicted, on-the-job link embeddedness weakened the effect and on-the-job sacrifice embeddedness strengthened the effect of work and life conflict on leaving intention. The results suggest that organisations can reduce turnover intention during times of work and life conflict by developing employee on-the-job link embeddedness.     

Embeddedness in context: understanding gender in a female entrepreneurship network

ABSTRACT

In this paper I argue that through a process of embeddedness in context, a female entrepreneurship network is able to challenge gender structures. I investigate how a female entrepreneurship network is constructed and how they reinforce and possibly challenge existing gender structures. From an ethnographic study, three processes in the female entrepreneurship network were identified: making proper entrepreneurs, building relationships and engaging in change. In the different processes the women involved in the network reinforced gender structures through compliance with a masculine discourse of entrepreneurship, but also challenged gender structures through questioning this discourse. Through becoming embedded in their local community, the women entrepreneurs were able to take charge of the development of the network and challenge gender structures as a result of questioning the masculine discourse of entrepreneurship. This implies an interplay between embeddedness and gender as two separate but dependent processes. Linking together gender and embeddedness elicits a new take on the way female entrepreneurship networks are constructed and how they could advance gender equality within entrepreneurship. Consequently, this paper emphasises a need for further examination of embeddedness within gender and entrepreneurship research.     

Structural embeddedness and organizational social outcomes in a centrally governed mental health services network

Abstract

This article is an examination of the effects of network involvement, or structural embeddedness, on three organizationally based social outcomes. Specifically, we argue that in centralized, publicly funded networks an organization's structural embeddedness will be related to its trustworthiness, reputation and influence, as rated by other network members. Results from a network survey of a publicly funded health and human service network generally confirm our hypotheses and suggest additional work on the topic.     

Gender and voice in aged care: embeddedness and institutional forces

Abstract

Little is known about the role of gender in employee voice which is a particular research gap in feminised industries such as residential aged care. This article employs a multiple case study method to examine employee voice in residential aged care in New Zealand. It investigates the role of ‘embedded’ voice mechanisms, with a focus on informal voice and managerial agency as well as the impact of the external environment on organisational voice. This article questions the role of voice in maintaining low wages in residential aged care; and what role gender has in the embeddedness of voice. It finds that managerial agency is important at an organisational level, but that gender regimes influence institutional forces that have a greater influence on employee voice.     

Effects of school team embeddedness on team trust and potency

This research surveyed a total of 323 local and foreign university students in Taiwan to examine the relationships of on- and off-the-team embeddedness with team behaviors by using the job embeddedness scale (JES) developed and validated by Lee et al. (Acad Manag J 47(5):711–722, 2004) and Mitchell et al. (Acad Manag J 44(6):1102–1121, 2001). The two composites of team embeddedness were measured with a total of 28 items, which asked students the extent to which they valued the attachment to their class team and school. For both local and foreign students, this research found that on-the-team embeddedness would affect team trust and team potency significantly while team trust would cause a positive direct effect on team potency. For foreign students, however, off-the-team embeddedness would not affect team potency significantly until team trust was introduced as a mediator. Moreover, significant differences were found in the relationships of nationality and years in university with off-the-team embeddedness. This study provides original evidence for the application of JES to school team relationships, and the link between school embeddedness and team effectiveness.     

Embeddedness across contexts: A two‐country study on the additive and buffering effects of job embeddedness on employee turnover

Despite the growing body of literature on the effects of job embeddedness on turnover, there are few studies on how job embeddedness operates in different countries. This study, based on the Conservation of Resources theory, addresses this research gap by investigating both the additive and the buffering effects of on‐the‐job and off‐the‐job embeddedness using employee data from China (n = 373) and Switzerland (n = 268). Results showed that on‐the‐job embeddedness reduced the likelihood of turnover more strongly in Switzerland than in China (additive effect). Additionally, in China, the unsolicited job offer–turnover relationship was stronger when employees had lower levels of off‐the‐job embeddedness (buffering effect). This research contributes to the understanding of the relative role of on‐the‐job and off‐the‐job embeddedness for turnover in different countries.     

Family embeddedness and entrepreneurship experience: a study of Indian migrant women entrepreneurs in Australia

India has emerged as a major source of migrants for developed countries including Australia; yet, there is a dearth of research on Indian migrant entrepreneurs, particularly women. Using qualitative methods of enquiry, we explore the perceptions of Indian migrant women entrepreneurs (MWEs) and their partners in Melbourne, Australia, about their entrepreneurship experiences from a family embeddedness perspective. More specifically, we explore how family embeddedness of Indian MWEs is influenced by certain factors which in turn influence their entrepreneurship experience. Our findings suggest that entrepreneurship among Indian MWEs is a complex phenomenon influenced by their being an Indian, a woman and a new Australian, all of which interact and influence their family dynamics and entrepreneurial experience. Our findings shed light on the duality of Indian culture which exerts both an enabling and a constraining influence on the family dynamics of MWEs, the constraining role of gender and the positive impact of their integration into the host country’s sociocultural context which all influence their family embeddedness and entrepreneurship. Contributing to the discussion on ‘ethnic’ and ‘women entrepreneurship’ from a family embeddedness perspective, we offer policy implications for facilitating entrepreneurship in the growing but under-researched cohort of Indian MWEs.     

Defying contextual embeddedness: evidence from displaced women entrepreneurs in Jordan

ABSTRACT

Although entrepreneurial practices and processes are evolving and changing globally, models of entrepreneurship remain masculinized, embedded in advanced economies and associated with notions of individual agency, heroism and control. Rarely is defiance considered. In this paper, we explore the defiance practices of displaced women operating in the Jordanian patriarchal economy and society and consider how this enabled their nurturing of entrepreneurship. Indeed, we argue that socially excluded women actually defy their contextual embeddedness through their entrepreneurial activities. In so doing, we respond to calls for research that explores the contextual embeddedness of women’s entrepreneurship, and contribute to shifting the focus towards the more silent feminine end of the entrepreneurial process. We consider the defiance of invisible displaced women entrepreneurs operating in the under-researched context of Jordan. Longitudinal, ethnographic investigation revealed the creation of a secret production network led by, and for, displaced women. This paper focuses on the five founders of this network, which they established to mobilize and manage the production of traditional crafts and, by so doing, to defy the stifling limitations imposed by their restrictive contractors, community and family members.     

Placing entrepreneurship and firming small town economies: manufacturing firms,adaptive embeddedness,survival and linked enterprise structures

ABSTRACT

SMEs make a major contribution to the economy of cities and places. The relationship between firms and place is increasingly explained through the application of city-based externality models. Such explanations have limited validity in a number of contexts. One of these is in the economies of small- and medium-sized towns and communities (SMST). Whilst convention has sought to apply core-periphery explanations to the functioning of firms within SMSTs, the economies of SMSTs and entrepreneurial processes of SME embedding, adaptation and survival in such places are more complex. This paper explores these entrepreneurial processes in the context of manufacturing firms in five SMSTs in the West Midlands, UK. The paper uses interview data to understand the relationships between SMEs and place through the development of successive and evolving linked enterprise structures. Through these linked enterprise structures, SMEs engage in a process of adaptive embeddedness, resulting in new resource configurations through fluid iterations of structural, emotional, and circumstantial embeddedness. This paper is the first to identify and explore these different forms of embeddedness.     

Examining the impacts of community and organization embeddedness on self-initiated expatriates: the moderating role of expatriate-dominated private sector

With a newly developed dimension of the job embeddedness construct and the aim to better understand turnover, this study investigates the relationships of job embeddedness with shocks and turnover intention for an important emerging group in the worldwide workforce – self-initiated expatriates (SEs). We consider three embedding factors: individuals' community embeddedness towards their home country (home country community embeddedness – HomeCCE – newly developed), embeddedness towards the organization in which they are employed in the host country (host country organization embeddedness – HostCOE) and embeddedness towards the host country community (host country community embeddedness – HostCCE). Structural equation modelling is applied to a sample of SEs from 10 three-star to five-star hotels in the Macau SAR of China. This research shows that HostCOE plays a mediating role between a SEs' HomeCCE and turnover intention and willingness to accept unsolicited job offers; and these mediated relationships are moderated by the variables: expatriate-dominated private sector and the SEs' HostCCE. These findings shed light on factors that affect the retention of SEs and have implications for management and future research.     

The importance of ‘fitting in’: collaboration and social value creation in response to community norms and expectations

Abstract

This article explores the effects of embeddedness in communities upon entrepreneurial practices. Based on the lived experiences of 10 craft entrepreneurs, this study reveals that within certain contexts, such as craft communities, entrepreneurs are expected to exhibit high levels of camaraderie and generosity, which leads them to create social value by supporting their peers and freely sharing their resources. Entrepreneurs achieve ‘fitting in’ not only by learning accepted norms, but also by performing strategic actions which allow them to temporarily adapt their conduct to meet the expectations of community members. Thus, this study exposes a largely concealed element of social entrepreneurial practice. This article also reveals that embeddedness in communities can lead entrepreneurs to collaborate with potential competitors. Craft entrepreneurs share their economic, cultural, social and symbolic capital in order to support and help revitalise their communities, to perpetuate their respective industries and to sustain a genuine interest in hand-crafted products. They consider such supportive behaviour a social responsibility that is shared among community members and a task that is passed from one generation to the next. Thus, this article reveals that collaboration and social value creation can be embraced in response to community norms and expectations.     

The effect of local and global linkages on the innovativeness in ICT SMEs: does location-specific context matter?

Abstract

Countries differ significantly with regard to the location-specific contexts in which they are embedded. The aim of this paper is to extend the discussion on the effects of local and global innovation collaborations on the degree of novelty of innovation by considering this context. Our main question is: Does embeddedness in the developed or emerging country context affect the likelihood of benefiting from local or global linkages for innovations with higher novelty?

The paper is based on data gathered through a survey of firms in the ICT sector in an emerging economy (India) context and from two Scandinavian countries (Sweden and Norway). The findings of this study show that global linkages do indeed impact the degree of novelty of innovation. However, country context does have a moderating effect. While the effect of global linkages is highly positive on the innovativeness of Scandinavian firms, for the Indian SMEs, the linkages that give novel innovations are the regional ones.     

The institutional embeddedness of local inter-firm networks: a leverage for business creation

There is an increasing concern for the notion of ‘embeddedness’ of economic activity; yet the conceptualization of the concept and its operationalization remain underdeveloped. First, embeddedness may concern, on the one hand, the structure of relations that tie economic actors together (structural embeddedness) and, on the other hand, the social strands supplementing economic strands in each relation (substantive embeddedness). In this paper, a network framework is outlined which proposes several layers or ‘orders’ of embeddedness. Focusing on small firms, the point of departure is individual exchange relationships as personal ties combining economic and social concerns. First-order embeddedness concerns the localized business networks created by combining these dyadic relations. Second-order embeddedness is achieved when considering also the memberships of business persons in economic and social local institutions while third-order embeddedness concerns the special cases where these institutions bridge gaps between firms. The network model is operationalized and applied to a small Swedish industrial (furniture) community, its firms and economic/social institutions. The findings generally support the applicability of the model and demonstrate the supplementarity of different layers/orders of embeddedness. Further research challenges are deduced and implications for practitioners are provided.     

兰州中小工业企业社会与地域根植研究

新经济社会学认为,经济活动根植于社会关系和结构中,经济过程也是社会过程,经济地理学家在区域经济发展研究中则把社会根植扩展为地域根植。我国有关中小企业地域根植的实践研究集中在产业集群和高技术开发区,而对大企业占优地区中小企业的根植很少论及。本文基于企业问卷调查和访谈,探讨了兰州中小工业企业的社会和地域根植。研究表明,由于地理背景不同,兰州中小企业网络的特征和功能较我国原发性传统产业集群有很大不同。作者认为,用根植理论分析区域发展时必须充分考虑区域情景,同时也要考虑更为宏观的要素如国家制度、区间网络和更大范围内的劳动分工等。     

On boundary spanners and interfirm embeddedness: The role of guanxi institution in China

Based on social embeddedness theory and institutional theory, we construct a research model that depicts how boundary spanners’ personal relationships affect dyadic embeddedness at the organizational level, under the varying influence of guanxi institution across different regions in China. We empirically test our model by analyzing data collected from 225 retail gas stations within the distribution network of a major Chinese petroleum company. Our analysis shows that boundary spanners need to first establish relational ties, which, in turn, influence interfirm dyadic embeddedness. Additionally, the results indicate that the informal institutions, such as guanxi in China, exert an indirect effect on personal trust through personal closeness. The informal institutions also moderate the effects of personal level trust on organizational level trust, which is a key linkage between personal relationship and interfirm embeddedness.     

Intangible assets as drivers of innovation: Empirical evidence on multinational enterprises in German and UK regional systems of innovation

The sources of value creation are increasingly relying on intangible assets (IAs). IAs are the lifeblood of knowledge-intensive industries where the new value added is disproportionally based on specialized, non-repetitious activities. However, while the role of IAs is recognised as central to sustain the competitiveness of firms and innovation systems, the understanding of the mechanisms through which IAs display their effects has not yet been fully grasped.By focussing on the processes through which investments in IAs occur, this paper aims to explore the key dimensions through which two specific IAs - organisational and network capital - are enhanced and contribute to the innovativeness and embeddedness of Multinational Enterprises (MNEs) in regional innovation systems. On the basis of over forty in-depth interviews to leading staff of German and UK flagship MNEs operating in the automotive, life science and ICT sectors, the paper shows that MNEs adopt rather distinctive strategies to develop IAs; that MNE degree of local embeddedness is strictly related to both the kind of IA strategy and the local environment; and that causation mechanisms are at work between MNE embeddedness and regional creation of IAs.     

When expatriates explore other options: Retaining talent through greater job embeddedness and repatriation adjustment

This paper introduces the concept of job embeddedness to research on international assignments to help explain how the processes of expatriation and repatriation might lead to such outcomes as strengthened personorganization fit or career exploration. It develops a model with a related set of theoretical propositions, based on a comprehensive literature review covering international assignments, adult development and career theories, job embeddedness, and career exploration. The paper also presents implications for future research, as well as practical implications for assignment practices and career interventions for organizations trying to retain their valued repatriate talents and, thus, secure a greater return on their investments in talent development. © 2009 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

工作嵌入对知识型员工离职创业过程的影响研究

知识型员工离职创业已成为高新技术产业发展的新特点,其工作经历在离职创业过程中发挥重要作用。工作嵌入描述个体与工作或工作外的环境产生各种联系,并影响个体的行为和决策过程。以工作嵌入为研究视角,深入揭示工作经历、社会资本的"嵌入性"对知识型员工离职创业过程的影响机理。创业者通过工作经历"嵌入"能够积聚知识和资源,同时要注意工作嵌入给创业过程带来的局限。     

Diffusion of environmental business practices: A network approach

The purpose of this research is to build a conceptual foundation that examines network effects on the diffusion of environmental business practices (EBP) among suppliers. This research extends a network perspective to adoption of an environmental business practice across a large network of suppliers. The context of EBP is used to better understand adoption of a complex business practice, with perceived costs that are often greater than the perceived benefit. Variation in the level of structural and relationship embeddedness affect network diffusion of environmental business practices differently. Increased levels of structural and relational embeddedness are proposed to be positively associated with diffusion of EBP. From a practical standpoint, firms that leverage embeddedness may facilitate higher diffusion and adoption of environmental business practices. This facilitation may lead network actors to engage in EBP, and leverage benefits that may stem from these practices. This research introduces the concept of embeddedness to the environmental supply chain literature. Practicing managers can use the findings in this research to better position themselves within a network to diffuse EBP. This research also helps managers understand how supply chain members that are weakly connected to the primary network are important for introducing new ideas and innovations.