Liability of smallness in SMEs – Using co-creation as a method for the ‘fuzzy front end’ of HRM practices in the forest industry

This study explores the co-creation part in the early stage of need analysis and the formation of work towards formal HRM practices in the forest industry. While SMEs are shown to be of great importance for the development in society they often suffer from Liability of Smallness (LoS) especially in the area of HRM. In smaller firms, HRM practices are characterized by ad hoc and idiosyncratic solutions and less formality. In this paper, we show how co-creation can be used to develop HR practices in an SME. The overall methodological approach in this study is action-oriented research. The empirical data is collected with a mixed-method approach including documents, interviews, focus groups, observations, pulse meetings and feedback on the process and results. The co-creation process benefits from using co-creation activities to drive the process forward as well as consolidate the results during the process. Dialog, access, risk, transparency, and openness have been valuable in this process.     

From boundary line to boundary space: The creation of hybrid organizations as a Triple Helix micro-foundation

In a Triple Helix framework, independent hybrid organizations can be created at the intersection of overlapping yet separate institutional spheres to address innovation blockages. However, the formation process of these organizations, which incorporate and combine elements from the Triple Helix spheres, has seldom been investigated. We address this gap by proposing a model that conceptualizes the creation process of these organizations. We argue that their creation opens up a “boundary space” that differs from a boundary line. By comparing empirical results of three cases, we identify a three-step creation process (recognizing a gap; bringing Triple Helix representatives together and creating a consensus; and designing an ad hoc contingent solution). We highlight the individual role of a boundary spanner in these dynamics. The results provide new insights on the micro-foundations of the Triple Helix. They also suggest an extension of the “boundary spanner” concept.     

Tightening the Fiscal and Monetary Controls

The Medium-Term Financial Strategy (MTFS) is a new departure in post-war policy-making. As David Smith's Briefing Paper shows the ideas behind it are well rooted in historical experience, but nevertheless it was inevitable that there would be a major element of trial and error in the early years of its use. The experience of 1980-81 however has produced some alarming results. The monetary limits have been drastically exceeded and the PSBR is likely to be far above the original target. There are two possible explanations. Either the control system is gravely defective or the government has deliberately followed the kind of short-term discretionary policies (and has indulged in the kind of ad hoc interventionism) which the strategy was expressly designed to avoid. We believe that both explanations are true. It is also probable that they reinforced each other. The first year of the strategy was likely to be the year of greatest strain. It involved a highly ambitious attempt to reduce inflation at a time when cost pressures from wages and higher energy prices were particularly strong. The strains rapidly revealed the defects in the control system. Since the government was alarmed at the short-term consequences of its policies, it chose to make a virtue of necessity and in effect suspended its commitment to the control of sterling M3. It is possible to look back at 1980 and to say that, in the event, the government's loss of control over its policies was justified as statesmanlike flexibility. But there always appear to be good reasons for sacrificing long-term objectives for short-term expediency. The MTFS was intended to avoid the chronic tendency to accept the easy option. It is essential that in 1981 the commitment to the MTFS should be re-established and that it should be reinforced, as appears to be necessary, by a system of indicators and controls to ensure that the errors of 1980 are not repeated. Otherwise there is a serious risk that the hard-won gains in the fight against inflation will be lost in the economic upturn. In the first part of this Viewpoint we examine what happened to fiscal and monetary policy in 1980 and discuss the general lines that policy should follow in 1981-82. We conclude that in order to get fiscal policy back on course the authorities should aim for a PSBR of £10 bn in 1981-82. In the second part we discuss in more detail the reasons why monetary policy went so badly astray in 1980, focusing particularly on the role of the Bank of England. We argue that just as ‘dirty floating’ (i.e. the pursuit of exchange rate objectives) may threaten the monetary targets, so ‘dirty monetarism’ (i.e. the pursuit of interest rate objectives) may prove an even greater threat. We conclude that the discretionary activities of the Bank of England contributed to the excessive monetary growth in 1980, and that it is necessary to ensure that in future the Bank should conduct its policy on a non-discretionary basis.     

Organisationales Commitment und seine Einflussfaktoren: Eine qualitative Metaanalyse

It is a result from increasing individualism and the ongoing deregulation of formal and psychological work contracts that organizational commitment has become one of the key concepts in management research and practice. There is growing empirical research not only on the effects of commitment on organizational performance, but also on its personal, organizational and contextual antecedents. In this literature review the state of the art in commitment-related research is presented and discussed. We refer to the grounding work of Meyer and Allen (1991) and their distinction between affective, normative, and continuance commitment. The paper is based on three meta-analyses and an additional systematic review of 61 empirical studies. They provide evidence for the fact that there is a shift from demographic to differential personality factors in research. Affective commitment and normative commitment can be explained by individual differences (e.g., self-efficacy and trustfulness), work environment (e.g., transformational leadership and controllability), and organisational characteristics (e.g., supporting human resources policy and interpersonal, distributive, and procedural justice). Continuance commitment has been found negatively correlated with affective and normative commitment. Significant antecedents are the same work-related factors as for the two other forms of commitment, but the coefficients are inverse. Contrary to former results, national culture has no effect neither on the link between other antecedents and commitment, nor on commitment itself.     

A Primer on Financial Contagion

Abstract.  This paper presents a theoretical framework to highlight possible channels for the international transmission of financial shocks. We first review the different definitions and measures of contagion adopted by the literature. We then use a simple multi-country asset pricing model to classify the main elements of the current debate on contagion and provide a stylized account of how a crisis in one country can spread to the world economy. In particular, the model shows how crises can be transmitted across countries, without assuming ad hoc portfolio management rules or market imperfections. Finally, tracking our classification, we survey the results of the empirical literature on contagion.     

COMMUNICATION ABOUT FUTURE POLICY RATES IN THEORY AND PRACTICE: A SURVEY

We discuss the theoretical rationale for central bank communication about future policy rates, either as part of inflation targeting or in the form of forward guidance. We also summarize both actual central bank communication about future policy rates and empirical evidence on the effectiveness of these types of communication. We argue that there is a disconnect between the theory and practice of forward guidance, as theory assumes commitment on the part of the central bank, while in practice central banks generally do not commit. Future theoretical research on forward guidance should therefore take the absence of commitment by central banks into account.     

Commitment to company and labour union: empirical evidence from South Korea

Commitment is an important part of business and a vocal part of the lexicon of many commentators and actors in the employment relations arena, including management, trade unions and policy makers. This is partly in the context of the interest in many countries in human resource management, in which commitment is seen as a key part, and the more recent ideas of ‘employee engagement’. Commitment, and the related topic of dual commitment, has also generated academic interest. However, much of the work has come from the US. This paper applies such ideas via a set of hypotheses in a different context – South Korea – with commonly viewed widespread high commitment, both to (and from) companies (e.g., strong internal labour markets) and unions (e.g., militancy). Is there a paradox in this duality, or can workers be committed to both companies and unions? What are the antecedents of this? This paper finds that workers can have dual commitment and that different factors affect the commitment to company and labour union, although labour–management relations climate, job satisfaction, as well as company tenure, are common predictors     

Practical Reason and Performance Appraisal

This paper examines responses of chairs of university departments to the news that they would be required to conduct a formal performance appraisal system. It is suggested that in order to understand resistance to appraisal we need to reject explanations invoking polarized antinomies – formal/informal, rational/political – and interrogate the concept of rationality. Drawing on MacIntyre's work, the paper examines the concept of practical reason to make sense of the chairs' responses and considers its relevance for understanding management and change in universities.     

Factors of internal corporate social responsibility and the effect on organizational commitment

Internal corporate social responsibility (CSR) has become an essential part of organizations' social responsibility. Yet, to date, CSR's internal dimension has been widely neglected in the literature. This paper empirically explores the concept of internal CSR and its relationship to employees' affective and normative organizational commitment. For conceptualizing internal CSR, seven factors are theoretically derived based on social exchange theory. The research model is initially tested through a pre-test consisting of 386 respondents from a German company active in the renewable energy sector. The main survey is carried out in an international pharmaceutical company, resulting in 2081 employee responses. The results reveal that the relevant factors constituting internal CSR are present and that the latter has a strong effect on employees' affective organizational commitment and a comparatively low effect on normative organizational commitment. Furthermore, a mediating role of affective on normative organizational commitment is detected.     

Antecedents of employee's preference for knowledge-sharing tools

This study examines individual antecedents of employees' preference for formal or informal knowledge-sharing tools. We propose that the preference for different tools is determined by the combined effects of willingness to share knowledge, trust and role breadth self-efficacy (RBSE). The findings of the empirical study, which was conducted at a medium-sized Chinese company (N = 860), revealed that willingness to seek knowledge was related to the usage of both formal and informal tools. Furthermore, the willingness to give knowledge was significantly related to the usage of formal tools. RBSE had a significantly positive impact on both formal and informal knowledge-sharing tools' usage, while its effects on formal tools' usage were stronger than those on informal tools. Affect-based trust had a significantly positive impact on the usage of informal knowledge sharing, which was also stronger than its impact on formal tools' usage. Cognition-based trust positively moderated the relationship between willingness to seek knowledge and the usage of formal tools, and the relationship between willingness to share knowledge and informal tools' usage.     

积极心理学在人力资源开发中的应用

文章分析了积极心理学的概念及其主要思想,探讨了运用积极心理学原理进行人力资源开发的理论基础,并建立了相应的数学模型,然后从实用的角度,讨论在人力资源开发中如何具体应用积极心理学的原理。研究成果对积极心理学的普及应用具有一定的参考作用,对企事业单位的人力资源开发具有较好的指导意义和实用价值。     

Strategic Activism and Nonmarket Strategy

Activist NGOs have increasingly foregone public politics and turned to private politics to change the practices of firms and industries. This paper focuses on private politics, activist strategies, and nonmarket strategies of targets. A formal theory of an encounter between an activist organization and a target is presented to examine strategies for lessening the chance of being a target and for addressing an activist challenge once it has occurred. The encounter between the activist and the target is viewed as competition. At the heart of that competition is an activist campaign, which is represented by a demand, a promised reward if the target meets the demand, and a threat of harm if the target rejects the demand. The model incorporates target selection by the activist, proactive measures and reputation building by a potential target to reduce the likelihood of being selected as a target, fighting a campaign, and credible commitment.     

Mechanisms for sharing knowledge in project-based organizations

Organizations need to effectively combine and utilize knowledge resources that are distributed amongst the employees and groups in the firm. This paper examines the use of knowledge-sharing mechanisms to leverage the learning, experience and expertise of employees accumulated across projects. I specify a framework that classifies the knowledge-sharing mechanisms used by project-based organizations. Prior research tends to examine only one dimension of knowledge-sharing mechanisms – personalization versus codification. Personalization mechanisms are often assumed to be more ad hoc and informal, and codification mechanisms are assumed to be formal and involve the use of electronic databases. In this paper, personalization versus codification and individualization versus institutionalization are highlighted as two distinct dimensions of knowledge-sharing mechanisms. Individualized knowledge-sharing mechanisms are informal and unstructured, while institutionalized knowledge-sharing mechanisms are formal and embedded in organizational routines and structure. A framework is presented to show how the two dimensions interact. Based on empirical case studies in two project-based organizations, the paper examines if there are suitable configurations of knowledge-sharing mechanisms for organizations with different characteristics. The study contributes to research by providing a more nuanced classification of knowledge-sharing mechanisms, and provides guidance to managers about the types of knowledge-sharing mechanisms that should be adopted based on the size, geographical dispersion and task nature of organizations.     

What Determines the Sacrifice Ratio? A Bayesian Model Averaging Approach

Existing empirical studies on the sacrifice ratio (measuring the output cost of disinflation) consider a large number of potential explanatory variables including the length of disinflation, various institutional settings, economic conditions, and the political climate. Some results are robust across different studies, while others are not. We address the presence of model uncertainty by using the Bayesian model averaging method to identify the important determinants of the sacrifice ratio, without relying on ad hoc model selection. Our results show that the length of disinflation is the most important variable. This supports the ‘cold turkey’ argument for faster disinflation.     

Revisiting the influence of institutional forces on the written business plan: a replication study

The present paper re-analyzes and extends a study on institutional forces and the written business plan (Honig and Karlsson in J Manag 30(1):29–48, 2004). We attempt to examine to what extent critical decision making is evident in model and variable choice, and whether the implications provided by systematic replication efforts may serve to provide additional and perhaps unrecognized theoretical and/or empirical observations. We find that the key result—formal business planning does not affect performance, does not hold. In fact, we find evidence that formal business planning affects survival but not profitability. The re-analysis also reveals, that institutional antecedents to formal planning appear to be fragile and prone to researcher biases due to different coding and assumptions. Our study underscores the consequences of access to original data and coding material, and to rely upon current methodological explanations for subsequent analyses.     

Heterogeneous expectations in the gold market: Specification and estimation

The increase in the price of gold between 2002 and 2011 appears to be a candidate for a potential asset price ‘bubble’, suggesting that chartists (feedback traders) were highly active in the gold market during this period. Hence, this paper develops and tests empirically several models incorporating heterogeneous expectations of agents, specifically fundamentalists and chartists, for the gold market. The empirical results show that both agent types are important in explaining historical gold prices but that the 10-year bull run of gold in the early 2000s is consistent with the presence of agents extrapolating long-term trends. Technically this paper is a further step toward providing an empirical foundation for certain assumptions used in the heterogeneous agents literature. For example, the empirical results presented in this paper compare the economical and statistical significance of numerous switching variable specifications that are generally only introduced ad hoc.     

Employability and the psychological contract in European ICT sector SMEs

This article explores the employability of information and communication technology (ICT) professionals from the perspective of small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs). The first stage of analysis, based on over 100 interviews with managers of ICT supplier companies in seven European countries (Germany, Greece, Italy, the Netherlands, Norway, Poland and the UK), showed most SMEs to have a generally ad hoc approach to managing the employability of their ICT professionals. Assessment and development plans were used primarily to keep skills current to business needs; however, the more developed northern European markets showed greater awareness of the ‘high commitment’ benefits of a more sophisticated approach towards career management (e.g. through mentoring or career planning). A second stage of analysis based only on UK interviews builds on this to propose a model of positive employer influence on psychological contracts through career and employability management practices.     

Refashioning Organizational Boundaries: Outsourcing Customer Service Work*

abstract In recent years there has been a discernible trend towards the outsourcing and subcontracting of work. However, there has been very little empirical research on employees' attitudes to work in outsourced firms. This study is conducted in the area of call centre services where there has been a substantial growth in the provision of external market suppliers. It examines employees' perceptions of their work and employment arrangements in both an in‐house producer and an external service provider and identifies and compares the factors that shape their organizational commitment and intentions to quit. The research found that the character of the internal labour market and the nature of the work regime were more important explanations of organizational commitment and intentions to quit in the external market supplier than in the in‐house producer. The paper discusses the implications of these findings for the quality of customer service provided under subcontracting arrangements.     

Emotional intelligence and career-related outcomes: A meta-analysis

The concept of emotional intelligence has spanned researchers' interest to a considerable extent over the last decades and is now considered as a critical resource that helps individuals to deal with career challenges. However, no empirical effort to integrate these studies has been carried out yet. The current research addresses this gap by proposing an integrated theoretical model and conducting a systematic review and meta-analysis of emotional intelligence and its associations with career-related outcomes. Out of a total of 150 independent samples from published and unpublished studies representing N = 50,894 participants, our random-effects meta-analysis showed that emotional intelligence was significantly related to career adaptability, career decision-making self-efficacy, entrepreneurial self-efficacy, salary, career commitment, career decision-making difficulties, career satisfaction, entrepreneurial intentions, and turnover intentions. However, no significant correlations were found with job search self-efficacy and self-perceived employability. Overall, our work conveys important theoretical contributions but also provides recommendations and an agenda for future research.     

Talent management activities of disability training and placement agencies in India

This study seeks to outline activities of training and placement agencies in India aimed at employment of persons with a disability. We contend that persons with a disability are an underutilized human resource and that utilizing their abilities should be a key part of an inclusive approach to talent management. As there is little empirical research on this subject, our approach is exploratory and we seek to create a platform for further studies. A key finding of the study is the preference of agencies to engage in non-traditional and ad hoc approaches to build and showcase underutilized talent of those with a disability. Based on present findings and the contextual approach to talent management, a more comprehensive agenda for future research areas in inclusive talent management is outlined.