Changing consumer behaviour through eco-efficient services: an empirical study of car sharing in the Netherlands

In this paper ‘innovation’ is discussed as a strategy to change consumer behaviour to reduce the environmental impact of consumption. Innovation aims to improve the ‘production process’ of certain end results or ‘units of service’ for the consumer, which is defined as the ‘consumption technology’. This concept includes the entire organization of how these units of service are produced. ‘Eco-efficient services’ are introduced as an innovation strategy, based on theoretical considerations through which more eco-efficient consumption technologies and less environmentally damaging consumption behaviour could be realized. This strategy is explored through an empirical consumer behaviour study on commercial car sharing services in the Netherlands. Based on an inventory of the environmental effects of this approach, as exemplified by the car sharing schemes, it can tentatively be concluded that the eco-efficient services concept offers an interesting framework for reconsidering the current consumption practice and for generating innovative activities in industry. © 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment.     

Strategic Practice Drift: How Open Strategy Infiltrates the Strategy Process

This paper builds theory on the process of open-strategy infiltration through an ethnographic study investigating how open strategy entered a financial services firm's strategy process behind the backs of top managers. Based on our analysis, we show how open strategy infiltrates the strategy process through a ‘strategic practice drift’, i.e., a gradual and partly unnoticed shift towards open strategy that occurs through ‘accommodating’ and ‘legitimizing’ the performance of transparency and inclusion in the strategy process. We show how the ‘goal-based ambiguity’ and ‘procedural certainty’ of initiatives that latently imply the performance of transparency and inclusion in the strategy process enable open-strategy infiltration. Furthermore, we show how top managers' ‘goal-based rationalization’ and ‘procedural renegotiation’ of practising transparency and inclusion contribute to the eventual reproduction of open strategy in the strategy process. Our model generates an understanding of how and why open strategy can enter the strategy process behind the backs of top managers and adds nuance to extant understandings of the role of top managers in this process. In addition, our findings contribute to research on strategy as practice by theorizing ‘strategic practice drifts’ and extending our understanding of the role of ambiguity therein.     

The dynamics of job separation: The case of federal employees

In this paper we develop a model of workers' quit decisions. Using panel data on a sample of US Federal government employees we use maximum-likelihood techniques to determine how much of the observed decline in quits with job tenure is a result of declining individual quit propensities (‘state dependence’) rather than dynamic sample self-selection (‘heterogeneity’). The latter is found to be much more important than the former. The effects of relative Federal government wages and other variables on quits are also estimated. The results are useful for analysing Federal compensation policies.     

Free collective bargaining and incomes policy: learning from Barbara Wootton and Hugh Clegg on post‐war British Industrial Relations and wage inequality

Growing income inequality has returned as a major political issue in affluent, advanced economies, often associated directly with the decline of trade unions and collective bargaining. In policy terms, this has been reflected in the British campaign for a ‘Living Wage’ and the new German minimum wage. Yet on the broader front, Industrial Relations (IR) struggles to find a credible regulatory strategy to address inequality—one that combines state and civil society initiatives and can be legitimised in political philosophy. This History and Policy article argues that there is much to learn from the IR past, before neo‐liberalism. My focus is the writing of Barbara Wootton and Hugh Clegg on ‘Incomes Policy’, from the 1950s to the early 1980s, when this was a central intellectual and policy issue in British IR. I explore the differing justifications for Incomes Policy, from corporatist macro‐economic management to social equality, comparing and contrasting the democratic socialist political principles of Wootton with Clegg's social democratic pluralism. The conclusion relates this historical debate between state pattern and civil society process to current concerns about how social democratic ideas and IR policy can address the problem of labour market inequality.     

City Children and Genderfied Neighbourhoods: The New Generation as Urban Regeneration Strategy

Former industrial cities in the West are employing gentrification as urban policy. In these policies, women and families currently play an important role as gentrification pioneers. In my analysis of Rotterdam in the Netherlands, I propose the term genderfication to understand the gender dimensions of this process. Genderfication refers to the production of space for different gender relations. I analyse Rotterdam's urban planning program for becoming a ‘child‐friendly city’, which entails replacing existing urban dwellings with new, larger and more expensive ‘family‐friendly homes’ as a strategy for urban re‐generation. Urban re‐generation supplements regeneration in the form of material and economic restructuring, and refers to the replacement of part of the current population by a new and better suited generation. The ‘child‐friendly city program’ is considered in tandem with punitive ‘youth policies’.     

Reinventing auditing,redefining consulting and independence

This paper deals with recent developments in auditing, taking KPMG's ‘business measurement process’ as its example. From this example it is discussed how and why auditing is currently being ‘reinvented’. The ‘reinvention’ of auditing, it is argued, represents a fundamental break with the established epistemological dualism between auditing and management advisory services,¹ that is central to most literature on auditor independence, including the European Commission's Green Paper. Consequently, it is not only auditing that is being reinvented, it is also consulting and independence, and the consequences of this rupture are finally discussed. The paper concludes that the auditor cannot be independent because auditing is no longer independent.     

Employee perceptions of HR practices: A critical review and future directions

Abstract

Scholars are directing more attention to employee perceptions of human resources (HR) practices and have explored issues such as whether and how employees’ idiosyncratic or collective perceptions of HR practices shape employee outcomes. To further this area of research, we seek to determine what authors mean when they refer to “employee perceptions of HR practices”. We review 105 articles from leading human resource management journals and find that employee perceptions of HR practices is not a monolithic concept. Rather, following previous scholars, we identify three distinct components of employee perceptions of HR practices: the ‘what’, ‘how’, and ‘why’. We critically summarize extant literature on these three components of employee HR perception and propose future research directions, including enriching the theoretical foundations of HR communication, embracing cross-national contexts, and enhancing practical relevance.     

Urban Political Ecology Beyond Methodological Cityism

The concept of planetary urbanization has emerged in recent years amongst neo‐Lefebvrian urban scholars who see urbanization as a process taking place at all spatial scales. This article analyses recent critiques of the urban political ecology (UPE) literature which argue that much of the work in the field has been guilty of focusing exclusively on the traditional bounded city unit rather than urbanization as a process. In response, the article reviews various strands of the UPE literature which have (always) moved beyond ‘the city’ to consider the various metabolisms and circulations of humans and non‐humans connecting cities with places outside of their borders at a variety of scales. Furthermore, it suggests how these approaches can productively work with the insights of the planetary urbanization literature, in considering both the changing nature of urbanization and also the socio‐ecological and political implications of these changes. Finally, the article suggests how the methodological approach of the ‘site multiple’ and its focus on everyday practices and lived experiences can be useful for researching diverse urban phenomena and their more‐than‐urban connections.     

NPM Can Work: An optimistic review of the impact of New Public Management reforms in central and eastern Europe

Abstract

This article reviews the New Public Management (NPM) literature in central and eastern Europe (CEE) with the aim of assessing whether reforms have ‘worked’. Increasingly, academics have tended to argue against the suitability of NPM instruments in this region. To understand the impact of this much-debated policy, we first propose a classification of the impacts of NPM geared to the realities of central and eastern European states. Then, we use this classification to carefully review empirical studies across the region over the past 10 years. Unlike much of the recent academic literature, we suggest that NPM can work. NPM policy has not always been successful to the extent expected and promoted, but there is enough evidence to show that some of the central ideas in NPM have led to improvements in public service organization or provision across different organizational settings. An adequate degree of administrative capacity, sustained reform over time and a ‘fitting context’ are the main factors that can tip the scale for the success of these management instruments. The article provides a fresh and transparent assessment of a major administrative development in a growing region with implications for other parts of the world that experience similar challenges and opportunities.     

Managed activism: two union organising campaigns in the not‐for‐profit sector

Two union recognition campaigns are contrasted: one focusing on developing workplace activism but with little sectoral focus (a ‘bottom‐up’ campaign), and the other with a sectoral strategy and less emphasis on workplace campaigning (a ‘top‐down’ campaign). The outcomes indicate the need for approaches, which allow both a strong workplace activism and a clear sectoral strategy as both the ‘top‐down’ and ‘bottom‐up’ strategies present difficulties. Although there are positive outcomes in both campaigns, the cases show that unions seeking to represent the interests of previously unorganised groups of workers need influence at both the sectoral and workplace levels if they are to demonstrate their effectiveness.     

‘I Like How You Think’: Similarity as an Interaction Bias in the Investor–Entrepreneur Dyad

Investigating the factors that influence venture capital decision‐making has a long tradition in the management and entrepreneurship literatures. However, few studies have considered the factors that might bias an investment decision in a way that is idiosyncratic to a given investor–entrepreneur dyad. We do so in this study. Specifically, we build from the literature on the ‘similarity effect’ to investigate the extent to which decision‐making process similarity (shared between the investor and the entrepreneur) might bias or otherwise impact the investor's evaluation of a new venture investment opportunity. Our findings suggest venture capitalists evaluate more favourably opportunities represented by entrepreneurs who ‘think’ in ways similar to their own. Moreover, in the presence of decision‐making process similarity, the impacts of other factors that inform the investment decision actually change in counter‐intuitive ways.     

Cooperation strategies in port-oriented bulk supply chains: aligning concept and practice

It seems intuitively obvious that firms in supply chains may have more to gain than to lose from learning to cooperate; but it is now more than two decades since Poirier [1999. Advanced Supply Chain Management. San Francisco, CA: Barrett-Koehler] and others called for cooperation in order to capture mutual gains in supply networks and even now ‘cooperation is neither common nor easy’. The simple fact is that not only are supply chains exceptionally complex but so too is the ‘process of cooperating’ – often in the context of antitrust legislation and competition policy. This paper argues that there is a critical need to rethink the principles and processes of cooperation within the broader framework of the competitive behaviour of firms and business strategy. Particularly, it suggests that the relatively recent thinking of Greenwald and Kahn [2005 Greenwald, B., and J. Kahn. 2005. Competition Demystified A Radically Simplified Approach to Business Strategy. New York, NY: Portfolio, The Penguin Group. [Google Scholar]. Competition Demystified A Radically Simplified Approach to Business Strategy. New York, NY: Portfolio, The Penguin Group] in their ‘radically simplified approach to business strategy’ offers sound conceptual insights into cooperation and cooperative strategies for firms not only in markets but also in chains. Furthermore, it notes that the analytical framework for cooperation and cooperative strategies which the authors develop is far removed from the notion of cooperation as ‘commitment and trust and shared thinking’ and from ‘buyer/seller reciprocity’ and ‘collaborative attitudes’ which tend to underwrite much contemporary thinking and research. The paper also argues that the Greenwald and Kahn framework – its single intelligence model of cooperation and cooperative strategies – resonates with real-world relevance, at least for particular supply chains. The paper focuses attention on research into globally significant export coal chains from major east coast Australian ports and in brief case studies finds substantial alignment between concept and practice.     

Cracks in the Creative City: The Contradictions of Community Arts Practice

The recent flurry of research about arts‐led regeneration initiatives illuminates how contemporary arts festivals can become complicit in the production of urban inequality. But researchers rarely engage with detailed empirical examples that shed light on the contradictory role that artists sometimes play within these spectacularized events. Similar research in performance studies connects the political limits and potential of social practice arts — interventions that encourage artists and non‐artists to co‐produce work — as civic boosters strive to stage cities in order to attract investment. In this article, I explore the case study of Streetscape: Living Space at Regent Park, a participatory artistic intervention programmed in a public housing neighbourhood that is undergoing redevelopment in Toronto, Canada. Streetscape was part of the Luminato festival, an elite booster coalition‐led festival of ‘creativity’. I refer to these arts interventions to demonstrate how artists engaging in social practice arts can become complicit in naturalizing colonial gentrification processes at multiple scales. But I also reveal how artists can leverage heterogeneous arts‐led regeneration strategies to make space for ‘radical social praxis’ (Kwon, 2004), interventions that challenge hegemonic regimes. I conclude by interrogating the effectiveness of place‐based efforts in unsettling the ‘creative city’.     

Who does what in enabling ambidexterity? Individual Actions and HRM practices

Abstract

In this paper, we explain how ambidexterity, the simultaneous pursuit of exploration and exploitation, is enabled at the individual level of analysis. Research on ambidexterity has been dominated by theoretical approaches focusing on the organisational level; however, we know little about how ambidexterity is enacted by employees. There is also limited work on the multilevel aspects of individual employee actions, for example, particular roles and specifically the level of seniority of the role. We address these gaps by asking: Which individual actions are undertaken by employees at particular levels of seniority in the organization to enable ambidexterity? In order to answer this question we draw on previous research to construct reliable measures of the individual actions that enable ambidexterity. The hypothesized mediation effect of these individual actions is confirmed on the basis of survey data from 212 employees from a UK-based Professional Service Firm. The findings indicate that senior employees are more likely to use ‘integration’, ‘role expansion’ and ‘tone setting’, whilst employees with specialist knowledge about their clients use ‘gap filling’ to enable ambidexterity. Finally, we draw together these findings with 35 interviews conducted to present the HRM practices which support ambidexterity.     

Work values preferences of Generation Y: performance relationship insights in the Australian Public Service

Empirical research to date has provided few insights into the values and performance norms of Generation Y in the workplace. Our exploratory qualitative study treats work values preferences as inferred performance behavior in an attempt to shed light on the Generation Y performance relationship in the Australian Public Service (APS). Adopting a person–organization values fit framework, our study draws attention to how Generation Y employees (N = 60) and older managers (N = 20) shape key aspects of performance around their own different values judgments of APS operational procedures (i.e. ‘unnecessary bureaucracy’ vs. ‘legitimate governance’) and merit-based promotion (i.e. ‘it’s just wasting people’s time’ vs. ‘younger employees expect too much, too soon’). Findings suggest areas of work supportive of an efficient Generation Y performance relationship (i.e. Generation Ys’ work ethic), as well as inefficient areas of performance where managers and Generation Y hold different work values preferences (i.e. unrealistic expectations; underperforming colleagues; decision-making processes). Performance implications associated with how managers may respond to the work values preferences of Generation Y are discussed.     

ANALYSING MANAGEMENT DECISION-MAKING: FURTHER THOUGHTS AFTER THE BRADFORD STUDIES

Despite the vast range of contributions, the study of decision-making has remained highly fragmented. Early writers adopted a psychological perspective, viewing the individual as an information processing system, and this detracted from a consideration of political aspects such as conflict and power. The subsequent move towards an approach that saw decision-making more as a political process was to be welcomed, and this article argues that this owed much to the work of Thompson and Tuden (1964). Their matrix model was extended further by Astley et al. (1982) and Hickson et al. (1986) in what became known as the Bradford Studies, and the author believes that this lineage in theoretical development can be taken further by focusing upon the ‘flow’ of management decisionmaking. Two explanatory case studies are used to show how, in the specific case of computer installations, different decision-making processes can move along alternative routes through the matrix. The hypothesis put forward is that a particular process flow depends primarily on the nature of organizational power (i. e. whether it is specialist or structural), and consequently upon the level of management involved, and the stage at which they become involved.     

How do respondents process stated choice experiments? Attribute consideration under varying information load

The popularity of stated choice (SC) experiments has produced many design strategies in which researchers use increasingly more ‘complex’ choice settings to study choice behaviour. When the amount of information to assess increases, we wonder how an individual handles such information in making a choice. Defining the amount of information as the number of attributes associated with each choice set, we investigate how this information is processed as we vary its ‘complexity’. Four ordered heterogeneous logit models are developed, each for an SC design based on a fixed number of attributes, in which the dependent variable defines the number of attributes that are ignored. We find that the degree to which individuals ignore attributes is influenced by the dimensionality of the SC experiment, the deviation of attribute levels from an experienced reference alternative, the use of ‘adding up’ attributes where feasible, the number of choice sets evaluated, and the personal income of the respondent. The empirical evidence supports the view that individuals appear to adopt a range of ‘coping’ strategies that are consistent with how they process information in real markets, and that aligning ‘choice complexity’ with the amount of information to process is potentially misleading. Relevancy is what matters. Copyright © 2006 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.