The Influence of a Structurationist View on Strategic Management Research*

ABSTRACT In this article, strategic management research using structuration theory from 1995 to 2000 is reviewed. I describe and analyse the theoretical articulations adopted to make sense of strategy using a structurationist view. I found that, instead of being applied as the sole theoretical foundation, Giddens’ propositions have been incorporated into other perspectives, the effects of which should be known by researchers looking for theoretical frameworks that avoid dichotomist thinking. The paper draws on the effects that structurationist arguments may produce regarding classical oppositions such as micro/macro and voluntarist/determinist. Its main contribution is to show how theoretical complementarities using structuration theory are promising avenues of research in the strategic management field. It also suggests that, although other alternatives of avoiding dichotomist logic exist, making a choice among them is more a question of ontological affinity than of making the ‘better choice’ among competing accounts. There are several routes to advance the understanding of the possibilities of human choice.     

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.     

Family and Lone Founder Ownership and Strategic Behaviour: Social Context,Identity, and Institutional Logics

There is controversy in the literature about the effects of ownership on strategy and performance. Some scholars have taken agency explanations as definitive, arguing that closely held firms outperform. Empirical studies, however, show conflicting findings for firms with concentrated ownership: lone founder firms outperform, family firms do not. Such conflicts may be due to the failure of agency theory to distinguish between the social contexts of these different types of owners. We argue that explanations of performance must take into account not simply ownership, but who are the owners or executives and how their social contexts may influence their strategic priorities. Family owners and CEOs, influenced by family stakeholders in the business, are argued to assume the role identities and logics of family nurturers and thus strategies of conservation. By contrast, lone founders, influenced by a wider set of market‐oriented stakeholders, are argued to embrace the identities and logics of entrepreneurs and strategies of growth. Family founders and founder‐executives are held to blend both orientations. These notions are supported in a study of Fortune 1000 companies.     

Agency costs and audit quality: evidence from France

The IFRS mandatory adoption in European countries is an excellent context from which to assess the validity of accounting choice theory, which postulates that information asymmetry, contractual efficiency (agency costs) and managerial opportunism reasons could drive the choice. With this aim, we test the impact of these factors to explain the adoption of fair value for investment properties (IAS 40) in the real estate industry, taking into account the ‘revaluation’ option offered by IFRS1 and using historical cost without revaluations as a baseline category for comparison purposes. We select a sample of European real estate companies from Finland, France, Germany, Greece, Italy, Spain and Sweden, all first-time adopters of the IFRS. Using a multinomial logistic model, we show that information asymmetry, contractual efficiency and managerial opportunism could account for the fair value choice. Particularly, the most significant findings are that size as a proxy of political costs reduces the likelihood of using fair value while market-to-book ratio is negatively associated with the fair value choice. On the other hand, leverage, another typical proxy of contracting costs, seems not to influence the choice. This evidence confirms the current validity of traditional accounting choice theory even if it reveals, in such a context, the irrelevance of the usual relations between accounting choice and leverage.     

The contours of employee voice in SMEs: the importance of context

This article develops a context‐sensitive approach to analyse how and why voice operates in small‐ to medium‐sized enterprises (SMEs), an area that remains under‐theorised and under‐researched. By building on a priori frameworks with proven ability to unpack complexity and take account of the wider context of SMEs, this article explores how resources (human and social capital) and constraints (product market, labour market and strategic orientation) interact to shape voice practices. The article finds significant differences between ‘reported’ compared with ‘actual’ practices in situ, and identifies different types of firms (‘strategic market regulation’, ‘strategic market‐led’ and ‘non‐strategic market‐led’) along with the factors that influence the form and practice of voice. Overall, the article argues that researchers should further pursue research that appreciates the layered nature of ontology and the role played by firm context to explain complex organisational phenomena, if we are to advance our understanding of voice practices in SMEs and beyond.     

高管持股、会计稳健性与并购绩效——来自沪深A股上市公司的经验证据

选取2007—2010年发生并购交易事件的上市公司为样本,检验了并购方高管持股与并购绩效之间的关系,发现高管持股与短期并购绩效之间没有显著关系,而与长期并购绩效之间呈非线性关系。进一步验证会计稳健性确实能够缓解高管与股东之间的代理冲突。与会计稳健性程度高的并购方相比,会计稳健性程度低的并购方高管持股对并购绩效的影响更大。这些发现意味着,高管持股不会在并购后短期内对绩效有显著影响,而是需要一段时间之后才能得以显现,且其影响程度因公司间会计稳健性不同而存有一定的差异。     

The ‘Human’ Touch

Abstract

This article critically discusses the almost mythical conception of voluntary and ‘grass-roots’ organizations as problem solvers in current welfare policy – a myth, which over the last twenty years has become increasingly dominant in social policy programmes in advanced liberal welfare states. In particular, the article examines the assumption that voluntary and local organizations are permeated by a different rationality that enables human beings to act as ‘real humans’ rather than as professionals and clients – a rationality which is, however, permanently at risk of being contaminated by bureaucratic influence. It is demonstrated that among the conditions of possibility for this discourse are explanatory models and concepts in modern organizational theory and in voluntary sector studies. The article argues that the conceptualizations of power, rationality and social change dominant in these studies are unsatisfactory. Instead, it applies a Foucauldian approach to the domain of drug addiction treatment, analysing a social work ‘regime’ that transgresses the traditional boundaries between state and voluntary sector.     

上市公司股权激励机制与政策思考

高级管理层股权激励是西方企业缓解代理冲突的重要的风险激励机制,但我国对管理层股权激励的作用还缺乏清晰的认识。本文对中外管理层股权激励的理论和经验进行比较分析后发现,我国上市公司管理层持股已从单纯的福利制度安排向激励制度安排过渡。基于此,公司应尊重内生性,以长效考核机制为基础推行适度的股权激励计划,但要注意降低股权激励过程中新的代理成本和防止股权激励后的“内部人交易“。     

Governance and the Policy Process In Contemporary Europe

Diverse recent literatures on ‘the hollow state’. ‘deliberative democracy’ and ‘governing without government’ are largely concerned with the workings of politics and public management under socio-political conditions of indeterminancy and fragmentation that are variously described as characteristics of high or late modernity (Giddens 1991) or, as some prefer to put it, of post-modernity (Fox and Miller 1995). This article, which reflects the author's interest in interdisciplinary forms of post-postmodern analysis that draw upon political science and sociology and social theory as well as administrative studies, examines a number of conceptual and empirical topics that, it is argued, are relevant to exploration of the thesis that postnational social milieux are steered via new forms of societal-cum-political governance that have largely replaced governmental institutions and processes of the kind associated with classical notions of the state, public administration and liberal democracy.     

Regional engagement of locally anchored firms and its influence on socio-economic development in two peripheral regions over time

Abstract

This article sets out to explore the ways locally anchored firms in peripheral regions influence regional social capital through regional engagement and how this contributes to socio-economic development. Through regional engagement firms shape regional contexts by generating concrete outcomes, such as setting up schools (structural aspect) and by possibly influencing regional bonding and bridging social capital (social aspect). To examine the effects of regional engagement and its possible influence on bonding and bridging social capital of regional firms, an analytical framework is developed distinguishing between inclusive/exclusive agency for inclusive/exclusive benefit. This article focuses on regional engagement in two Swiss peripheral regions, which have followed different development paths in spite of their common institutional framework and geographical proximity. This study aims to gain insight into the ‘how’ of regional engagement and its influence on regional social capital and to examine the assumption of higher levels of regional social capital in a dynamic region from a long-term perspective (ca. 1850–2015). The findings of the qualitative research show that the dynamic Rhine Valley indeed disposes of higher levels of regional social capital than the less dynamic Toggenburg, which is related to the willingness of firms and other actors to collaborate for regional interests.     

Solving the “Lachmann Problem”: Orientation,Individualism, and the Causal Explanation of Socioeconomic Order

This article examines the question of whether social institutions should be treated as possessing the sui generis causal power to influence people's actions. It does so by means of a case study of the work of the Austrian economist Ludwig Lachmann. Lachmann's account of how social institutions facilitate intentional human agency in the face of uncertainty contains significant ambiguities and tensions, stemming from his reluctance to acknowledge the causal efficacy of social institutions. The conceptual resources required to overcome these problems are to be found in realist social philosophy and social theory. The proposed resolution comes at a price, however, for it calls into question Lachmann's self‐avowed commitment to methodological individualism.     

Public Management and Network Specificity: Effects of colleges’ ties with professional organizations on graduates’ labour market success and satisfaction

Abstract

Research on managerial networking in the public sector reports positive effects of network activity on performance. However, little is known about which network relations influence different aspects of performance. We argue that for specific organizational goals, organizations should direct their networking activities towards specific types of organizations. We explore how different types of network relations of Dutch colleges for nursing studies affect the performance of these colleges. We analyse the effect of ties with professional organizations on: (1) graduates’ program satisfaction, (2) graduates’ wages and (3) graduates’ employment (n = 1,484 graduates). Multilevel analyses show that colleges’ ties with professional organizations positively affect graduates’ wages and employment.     

Explaining variations in absence rates: temporary and agency workers in the food manufacturing sector

This article responds to a recent call in a provocation article in the Human Resource Management Journal by Thompson to use workplace studies to investigate employees' experiences of HR practices. Examining the particular case of absence management, the article investigates the experiences of short‐term workers in the food manufacturing industry in the UK. Variations in absence rates between directly employed temporary workers and agency workers are shown to be the result of differing levels of managerial control over absence, which affects workers' ability to use absence as a form of industrial conflict to escape a low‐skilled and monotonous work process.     

Sustainable entrepreneurship,innovation, and business models: Integrative framework and propositions for future research

This article introduces the business models for sustainability innovation (BMfSI) framework to study how business models mediate between sustainability innovations and business cases for sustainability. The BMfSI framework integrates two major perspectives (implicitly) found in the sustainable business model literature. The first is the agency perspective. It takes into consideration that some form of agency is needed, that is, “someone” who takes decisions and acts. Sustainable entrepreneurs are discussed as those agents who align their new or existing business models with sustainability innovations in order to be successful in business and to create value with and for stakeholders. The second perspective is the systems perspective, which acknowledges that business models are always embedded within sociotechnical contexts through which, for example, public policies, private financing, or stakeholder interests influence whether and how business models can be developed. The agency and systems perspectives are integrated in the so‐called business model mediation space. This theoretical notion embraces the decisions and activities pursued by sustainable entrepreneurs as they align their business models with sustainability innovations on the one hand and the influence of environmental contingencies, barriers, and stakeholders from the sociotechnical context on the other hand. The paper concludes with propositions for future research derived from the BMfSI framework.     

Hybridization: striking a balance between adoption and adaptation of human resource management practices in French multinational corporations and their Tunisian subsidiaries

International management research has tended to approach the transfer of human resource management (HRM) practices by examining the one-way transfer from parent companies to their subsidiaries, their adaptation to the subsidiaries’ local context and, more recently, the reverse transfer of HRM practices from subsidiaries to their headquarters. This article aims to analyse the transfer of HRM practices from headquarters to their foreign subsidiaries through the process of hybridization. Although numerous studies focus on the transfer of HRM practices between economically developed countries or from these countries to transitional economies, few have considered French multinational corporations (MNCs) operating in ex-colonized countries. This paper addresses the ways in which the HRM hybridization process is implemented in two French subsidiaries operating in Tunisia. It focuses on the dual perspectives of managerial staff at headquarters and subsidiaries as well as shop floor employees in the subsidiaries. A range of HRM practices (recruitment and selection, compensation, performance appraisal and career management) is analysed from their transfer to their reinterpretation. The results show the importance of the concept of hybridization on HRM practice transfer through a multi-level analysis of the strategies used by various stakeholders during the hybridization process. The paper also provides useful insights into the factors of hybridization that may foster or inhibit the transfer and adoption of HRM practices by foreign subsidiaries. These include the relational context, the type of practices transferred, the interests of different professional categories and their social interactions. Based on these factors, several hybridizations are identified. The study points out the specificity of the Tunisian context and shows that institutional factors have less influence on the transfer of HRM practices in ex-colonized countries than cultural factors that have a transversal influence on different HRM practices. Key cultural factors constraining the transfer include emotional relationships and interpersonal trust. Moreover, the international transfer of HRM practices from MNCs to ex-colonized transitional countries requires taking into account the post-colonialism and fascination effects.     

The influence of managerial satisfaction on corporate environmental performance and reputation

Organizational studies have widely debated the relationship between job satisfaction and job performance. Some papers have dealt with managerial satisfaction and businesses' performance adopting agency theory to interpret the results. However, no studies have yet considered the relationship between the satisfaction levels of an environmental manager and corporate environmental performance. This paper thus analyses the role played by the environmental manager's satisfaction in enhancing corporate environmental performance and reputation. The paper uses data from a survey of 412 Eco Management and Audit Scheme registered organizations. The results show a positive relationship between managerial satisfaction and environmental performance, whereas no such positive relationship was found when considering eco‐innovation performance. In addition, the environmental manager's satisfaction has a positive and indirect influence on the corporate environmental reputation. These results contribute to the literature on agency theory and aim to extend the debate between job satisfaction and job performance to the sustainable business field.     

The rise of the ‘network organisation’ and the decline of discretion

This article explores the implications of ‘networked’ and ‘flexible’ organisations for the work and skills of professionals/ Drawing on material from four different case studies, it reviews work that is outsourced (involving IT professionals and housing benefit caseworkers), work that is done by teachers contracted to a temporary employment agency and work organised through an inter‐firm network (chemical production workers). In each case work that was outsourced was managed very differently to that undertaken in‐house, with managerial monitoring replacing and reducing employees' discretion. New staff in these networks had fewer skills when hired and were given access to a narrower range of skills than their predecessors. By contrast, the production staff directly employed on permanent contracts in the inter‐firm network were given (and took) significant amounts of responsibility, with positive results for both their skills and the work processed. Yet, despite the negative impact they have on skills, outsourcing and subcontracting are a far more common means of securing flexibility than organisational collaboration.     

Actions speak louder than words: how employees mind the implementation gap

Abstract

Integral to employees’ working lives are the HR policies and more importantly, the practices that follow those and their implementation, which employees experience directly. To date, research on HR implementation considers how HRM is ‘done to’ employees by management and therefore ignores the agency of individuals to shape how HRM is ‘done to them’. Taking the perspective of employees, in a qualitative study of female lawyers, this paper examines employees’ roles in shaping HR implementation, addressing a lack of understanding about the role of ‘others’ in the process. Drawing on the concept of social power, the article focuses on the implementation of agile working practices within UK-based law firms. It finds that despite lacking legitimate position power to influence processes, employees draw on a variety of other power sources (e.g. referent, information, coercive) and tactics (e.g. leveraging membership of professional networks) in order to influence their working environment with respect to HR policy and practice, particularly in response to perceived implementation gaps. The current study underlines that employees may be integral to bridging the gap between policy and practice and therefore to ensuring the link between HRM and organisational performance. It also proposes that behavioural responses to HR practices should be considered in future theorising of the HRM-performance relationship.     

The relationship between the firm's social media strategy and the consumers' engagement behavior in aviation

Social media platforms constitute a new frontline for brands to build relationships with their customers. Nevertheless, the literature on social media engagement behavior is unidimensional, as it focuses on customer engagement while neglecting the customer's influence on managerial decisions. The current paper goes a step further by applying the theory of the marketing firm (TMF). We investigated consumer-firm bilateral contingencies through three studies. The first study captures up to 60% of the variance in consumer responses given on Icelandair's Facebook page. The second study shows how customers engage with Icelandair's social media platforms. The third study illustrates the firm's social media strategy from a managerial perspective.