Managing Institutional Complexity: A Longitudinal Study of Legitimacy Strategies at a Sportswear Brand Company

Multinational corporations are operating in complex business environments. They are confronted with contradictory institutional demands that often represent mutually incompatible expectations of various audiences. Managing these demands poses new organizational challenges for the corporation. Conducting an empirical case study at the sportswear manufacturer Puma, we explore how multinational corporations respond to institutional complexity and what legitimacy strategies they employ to maintain their license to operate. We draw on the literature on institutional theory, contingency theory, and organizational paradoxes. The results of our qualitative longitudinal study show that managing corporate legitimacy is a dynamic process in which corporations adapt organizational capacities, structures, and procedures.     

Who are Those Misclassified As ‘Others’? A Note on Indonesian Labour Force Statistics 1

This paper examines possible kinds of misclassification of those placed in the large ‘others’ group in Indonesian labour force statistics, i.e. people registered as outside the labour force and neither attending school nor homemaking. It argues that a large proportion of those classified as ‘others’ are unemployed, unpaid workers and people attending informal education, as well as those in transition between two educational institutions. The paper discusses possible reasons for the remarkable differences between Census and labour force surveys in the reported size of the ‘others’ group, and considers the consequences for statements on trends in open unemployment if adjustment is made for the high ‘others’ share.     

Multiple objectives in the theory of the firm

An objective function with measures for two objectives is maximized to determine production decisions. These are shown to be analogous to production decisions under pure profit maximization, but using prices which include internally determined prices, different from market prices. The standard case of pure profit maximization results as a special case—as a testable hypothesis—by particular restrictions on parameters.A first draft of this paper was presented at the Philadelphia ORSA/TIMS Conference in 1990. The first draft was coauthored by Wolfgang Schwander, who contributed the empirical part to it, which has been deleted. Matthew S. Goldberg of the Institute for Defense Analyses and Götz Uebe of Universität der Bundeswehr, Hamburg, provided helpful comments on the first draft. The revised versions benefitted substantially from the very constructive comments by three referees. The refereeing process of this paper was handled through Knox Lovell.     

Einzelbesprechungen

Ohne Zusammenfassung     

National protectionism and common trade policy

The EC recently created a new instrument of trade policy to deter illicit trade practices. A major part of its purpose is to strengthen the Community’s authority in the area of trade policy and counter the spread of international protectionism within the Community. The following article demonstrates, among other things, that protectionism in the Community cannot offer a workable alternative to this course.     

Mapping sexual orientation research in management: A review and research agenda

Attitudes, norms, and laws regarding sexual orientation are undergoing a worldwide revolution. Managers and HR professionals play a key role in responding to these changes, and managing issues related to sexual orientation diversity in organizations. As such, the amount of management scholarship on sexual orientation has been rapidly growing to help inform practice. However, at present, the literature is fragmented across management specialty areas. This makes it difficult to have an overview of what has been learned to date, and detect research opportunities. Thus, this article aims to provide the first integrative review of sexual orientation research across the management field over 23 years. We use bibliometric techniques to (a) systematically identify and map 111 topics in this literature (map downloads from: https://bit.ly/SOTopicMap ), (b) identify topic trends and topic citation rates, and (c) derive an inductive taxonomy of major topic clusters. We then identify key theories and relationships in the literature, review key findings for scholars and practitioners, and identify future research directions. Among these, we highlight the need to incorporate sexual orientation as a standard demographic question in management research, and highlight best practices for doing so from other scientific fields.     

Market Size, Technology Choice, and Market Structure

We introduce technology choice into a model of monopolistic competition and analyze the structural effects of changes in market size. A larger market leads to the adoption of a large-scale technology. If a technology switch occurs, the number of firms decreases, and a rationalizing effect arises: individual and aggregate output increases; prices fall. This need not benefit consumers since a technology switch is associated with a decrease in product variety.