Who promotes a value‐in‐diversity perspective? A fuzzy set analysis of executives’ individual and organizational characteristics

Diversity perspectives are philosophies of or approaches to diversity held by organizations, groups, or executives. They are important for organizations because they can determine the success or failure of diversity in the workforce. However, little is known about the predictors of diversity perspectives among executives. Using fuzzy set qualitative comparative analysis, we analyzed 50 interviews with top executives in Germany to identify individual and organizational characteristics that predict executives' adoption of a diversity perspective, in particular of a value‐in‐diversity perspective. Specifically, we analyzed gender, age, education level, vocational background, and tenure (individual characteristics), as well as size, sector of organization, and competitive environment (organizational characteristics), as potential predictors. We found single characteristics did not predict adoption, but configurations of characteristics did. Drawing on the person‐situation‐interactionist perspective, we developed specific profiles of executives likely to foster a value‐in‐diversity perspective and identified characteristics of their work environments that support such an approach. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.     

Innovation for Inclusive Business: Intrapreneurial Bricolage in Multinational Corporations

It is often argued that multinational corporations (MNCs) are in a unique position to innovate business models that can help to alleviate poverty. This empirical study into intra‐organizational aspects of pro‐poor business innovation in two MNCs suggests, however, that certain elements of their management frameworks – such as short‐term profit interests, business unit based incentive structures, and uncertainty avoidance – may turn into obstacles that prevent MNCs from reaching their full potential in this respect. We introduce the concept of intrapreneurial bricolage to show how middle manager innovators may promote pro‐poor business models despite these obstacles. We define intrapreneurial bricolage as entrepreneurial activity within a large organization characterized by creative bundling of scarce resources, and illustrate empirically how it helps innovators to overcome organizational constraints and to mobilize internal and external resources. Our findings imply that intrapreneurial bricolage may be of fundamental importance in MNC innovation for inclusive business. In addition to the field of inclusive business, this study has implications for the study of bricolage in large organizations and social intrapreneurship, as well for managerial practice around innovation for inclusive business.     

Categories,Identities, and Cultural Classification: Moving Beyond a Model of Categorical Constraint

Categorization processes have gained currency in organizational theory. Categories are endemic to organizations and markets, serving as touchstones for organizational identity claims and for audience attention, legitimation, and valuation. Durand and Paolella argue for an expansion of current perspectives on categories, particularly that of prototype theory. Although we agree in spirit, we advocate an expansion of their perspective, which seems to focus primarily on the cognitive aspects of categorization and the force of their constraint, particularly at the individual level of analysis. We suggest three revisions to Durand and Paolella's arguments in order to extend the conversation. First, we advocate that categorization processes might usefully be understood by socio‐cultural perspectives that explicitly consider the role of audiences and the embeddedness of categories in wider classification systems. Second, we connect categorization processes to identity formation and maintenance at the levels of both the organization and the market. Third, we move beyond the constraining power of categories to consider their generative capabilities in processes of emergence and change. Overall, we discuss these in the context of organizational identities and cultural classification systems.     

Information Communication Technology Utilization for Effective Emergency Management Networks

Effective communication and coordination are crucial aspects of emergency management. This study examines how organizational representatives perceive information communication technologies (ICTs) in communication and coordination with other organizations. Furthermore, it investigates whether the centrality of organizations in emergency management networks relates to ICT utilization. We found that although many central organizations in emergency preparedness networks have high levels of ICT utilization, ICTs are underused by central organizations in friendship networks and emergency response networks. An organization’s level of ICT utilization needs to match its organizational goal, mission, structure, ICT capacity, and the role that it plays within emergency management networks.     

Analysing the Influence of Institutional,Organizational and Interpersonal Forces in Shaping Inter‐Organizational Relations*

abstract Much of the literature on inter‐organizational relations assumes that firms operate as relatively autonomous and cohesive units that are (1) unimpeded by wider institutional norms governing the industry as a whole, and (2) allow little or no role for the boundary spanning agents who oversee and monitor ‘contracts’ on a daily basis. This perspective is not surprising given that so many studies rely solely on questionnaires completed by a single respondent within one or more of the organizations. Nor has there been much recognition of the dynamic interplay between forces at the institutional, organizational and interpersonal levels. In order to address these issues, we propose a framework that explicitly focuses on forces at these three levels, as well as the interplay between them, in order to analyse how and why inter‐organizational relations take the forms they do. We argue that trusting, OCR‐type relations are more likely to be produced and reproduced when there are strong institutional forces promoting common obligations on both parties, and there is a relative mutuality of power relations between the organizations. However, because the contract is maintained by boundary spanning agents, agreed norms at the institutional and organizational levels are a necessary but not sufficient factor for OCR to develop. Conversely, in the absence of these forces, there is less incentive for either organization to establish and maintain close interpersonal relations, and indeed ACR‐type, distant relations may be beneficial for organizations and individuals that wish to dispense with existing contracts.     

Integration and Task Allocation: Evidence from Patient Care

Using the universe of patient transitions from inpatient hospital care to skilled nursing facilities and home health care in 2005, we show how integration eliminates task misallocation problems between organizations. We find that vertical integration allows hospitals to shift patient recovery tasks downstream to lower‐cost organizations by discharging patients earlier (and in poorer health) and increasing post‐hospitalization service intensity. Although integration facilitates a shift in the allocation of tasks and resources, health outcomes either improved or were unaffected by integration on average. The evidence suggests that integration solves coordination problems that arise in market exchange through improvements in the allocation of tasks across care settings.     

The Configuration of Organizational Images Among Firms in the Canadian Beer Brewing Industry*

abstract We integrate the literature on organizational image management and neo‐institutional theory to arrive at a better understanding of how organizations routinely represent themselves positively in their external environment. Drawing on a cross‐sectional exploratory study of the website communications of 36 firms in the Canadian brewing industry, we investigate how these organizations construct essential and distinctive organizational images in reference to a map of identity attributes and image categories at the organizational field level. We conclude that organizational self‐categorizations explain the field‐level configuration of images we discovered by establishing legitimacy claims targeted at relevant stakeholders.     

A Holistic View on Learning in Project‐Based Organizations

Although researchers have over the years highlighted the importance of managing and supporting learning in project‐based settings, it still seems to be problematic. New project management capabilities are needed, such as systems thinking, which will allow project‐based organizations to better cope with learning in the organizations. This article explores how Swedish project‐based organizations within an engineering and construction context manage and support learning activities today and discusses, with the support of process management literature, how an “organizational‐wide project learning process” could improve the prerequisites for learning in project‐based organizations. Our findings from three project‐based organizations indicate a lack of a holistic perspective on project learning. A conceptual model is proposed, with the aim of validating and promoting process thinking by introducing, for example, new roles responsible for intra‐ and inter‐project learning, respectively.     

Human Resource Management and the Permeable Organization: The Case of the Multi‐Client Call Centre*

ABSTRACT Despite the interest over recent years in the fragmentation of organizations and the development of contracting, little attention has been paid to the impact of the associated inter‐organizational relationships on the internal organization of employment. Inter‐organizational relations have been introduced primarily as a means of externalizing – and potentially rendering invisible – employment issues and employment relations. In a context where inter‐organizational relationships appear to be growing in volume and diversity, this constitutes a significant gap in the literature that this paper in part aims to fill. The purpose of the paper is two‐fold: to develop a framework for considering the internal and external organizational influences on employment and to apply this framework within a case study of a multi‐client outsourcing call centre. We explore the interactions between internal objectives, client demands and the use of external contracting in relation to three dimensions of employment policy: managing the wage‐effort bargain, managing flexibility and managing commitment and performance. It is the interplay between these factors in a dynamic context that provides, we suggest, the basis for a more general framework for considering human resource policy in permeable organizations.     

Achieving Sustainable Development by Collaborating in Green Product Innovation

Collaboration in green product innovation (GPI) is becoming increasingly important, and research on such innovation has grown in recent years. This study reviews literature on external collaborations in GPI to investigate drivers, inter‐organizational factors and intra‐organizational factors for such collaborations. The review includes a total of 67 papers. Survey studies and case studies are the methodologies applied most in the reviewed papers. The most common collaborators are suppliers and customers. Drivers include economic factors, regulations, customer demand, competitiveness and firm performance. Numerous inter‐organizational collaboration factors are presented and summarized in terms of partner selection, relationship management, knowledge access and agreements. Intra‐organizational factors mainly concern cross‐functional collaboration, capabilities and internal practices. Implications for policy and practitioners are presented. Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment     

Organizational Controls and Performance Outcomes: A Meta‐Analytic Assessment and Extension

Managing employees and external partners effectively has been a primary concern for organizations and their managers. Many studies have investigated the effectiveness of organizational controls in a wide variety of contexts. Using organizational controls literature that discriminates among outcome, behaviour, and clan control, this study synthesizes the research on the effectiveness of these controls. In particular, the study examines 23,839 organizational controls–performance relationships from 120 independent samples, and tests several new hypotheses using advanced meta‐analytic methods. The results indicate that outcome, behaviour, and clan controls generally enhance performance, with each control having a distinct performance effect. Our analysis also demonstrates that controls function as complements to one another. This finding indicates that one form of control increases the effectiveness of other forms of control. We also examine the organizational controls–performance relationships across various contexts, and our results show that they vary according to the type of task. The paper concludes with a discussion on the theoretical and managerial implications of these findings.     

Sources of Selection in Strategy Making

This paper elaborates theory inductively by following the evolution of 14 strategic initiatives from an exploratory case study. The study examines the context and character of such initiatives over an 8‐year period. Based on these initiatives, the paper proposes a two‐stage selection mechanism for the intra‐evolutionary strategy process that explains the long‐term mutation of organizations. The mechanism operates by selecting according to both fit with the strategic intent and feasibility of the initiative. These two elements combine into an organizational principle that is perceived as permanent in character but mutates through constructive confrontation. This principle contributes to the organizational identity but, being a low‐level element of such identity, it can be modified through learning while retaining an attribute of endurance as perceived by organizational members.     

Systems for Sustainable Organizations: Emergent Strategies,Interactive Controls and Semi-formal Information

New-form organizations are likely to organize more explicitly around processes than traditional-form organizations that emphasize functional hierarchy. Developing process-based strategic responses quickly using diffuse sets of resources is likely to play an increasingly important role in sustaining new organizational forms. Three ideas introduce alternative perspectives on strategy formulation, management control and information systems design that may be useful in understanding organizational performance in this area. They focus on: (1) emergent strategies, (2) interactive management controls, and (3) semi-formal systems. In combination these three perspectives describe relationships between strategy, organizational design and systems support that suggest mechanisms for improving the sustainability of new organizational forms. To some degree distributed organizational structures such as networked organizations and quasi-organizational forms such as alliances, partnerships and joint ventures represent attempts to solve a paradox of competitive agility. This paradox suggests that in the context of rapidly changing, increasingly global markets, organizations need to be flexible (so they can respond quickly to competitive threats) yet remain stable (so they can learn and grow based on their strengths). If this is the case, what systems and tools are available that encourage a productive balance between flexibility and stability? This paper uses the experience of regional management teams at a large consumer goods company to suggest how interactive controls and semi-formal information systems combine to increase the agility of a distributed organization that can employ emergent strategies. Evidence illustrates some of the mechanisms by which (a) faster response times deliver organizational flexibility while (b) semi-formal analytics add the stability of knowledge and guidance shared across organizational sites. Examples discuss the use of information within management teams, discussion behaviour within management meetings, and organizational performance in response to crisis events. In this context the paper analyses the characteristics of new-form systems that could be used to sustain new-form organizations While the development of process-oriented semi-formal systems is just beginning, the potential for linking such technology with newly developed approaches to management control appears to have important implications for the practice and performance of management in new-form organizations. In particular, interactive controls and semi-formal information appear to offer leverage as mechanisms for organizational adjustment during times when organizations must exploit emergent strategies     

The Hierarchical Erosion Effect: A New Perspective on Perceptual Differences and Business Performance

Organizations are coalitions of individuals with heterogeneous interests and perceptions (March and Simon, 1958/1993). We examine an important source of heterogeneity, namely the different perceptions individuals hold across hierarchical levels. We introduce the notion of a hierarchical erosion effect whereby individual perceptions about specific practices become less favourable the lower one goes in the hierarchy. Using data from 4,243 employees across four levels in 38 business units, we provide evidence that this effect exists, controlling for other factors, including the overall favourability of the business unit culture across eight practices. We show how the size of this hierarchical erosion effect varies depending on the nature of the organizational practice being evaluated and the extent to which executives share strategic information widely, and we also show that a lower hierarchical erosion effect is correlated with higher business unit growth. In doing so, we enrich understanding of two aspects of March and Simon's work, their notion of intra‐organizational heterogeneity and their distinctive view of the nature of hierarchy.     

Business is Show Business: Management Presentations as Performance

While there is continual scholarly interest in the ‘organization as theatre’ metaphor, extant dramaturgical perspectives limit the ability to account for aesthetic experiences in theatrical situations. This study provides a different methodological lens for looking at ‘theatre’ in organizations and illustrates that an inclusion of performance theory can be particularly valuable for understanding aesthetic techniques which are increasingly employed in organizations. Responding to calls for aesthetic studies, this article analyses large‐scale management presentations such as annual general meetings, press conferences, and analyst meetings ‘as performance’ instead of re‐labelling them as if they were drama. Drawing on the latest theatre theory and introducing a tool for performance analysis, the study accounts for the aesthetic experience and describes the complex interplay of scenography, lighting, clothing, managers' performance style, rhetoric, and audience interaction, showing that these organizational events are co‐created and contested theatrical performances with a potential for resistance and possible change as well as for persuasion.     

Organizational Routines as Sources of Connections and Understandings

Organizational routines are increasingly identified as an aspect of organizations that allows them to achieve the balance between adaptability and stability. We contribute to this discussion by showing that the connections that organizational routines make between people contribute to both stability and the ability to adapt. We argue that the connections between people that are formed as they engage together in organizational routines are important for developing understandings about both what needs to be done in a specific instance of performing a routine and about the goals of the organization that routines presumably help accomplish. Together the two sets of understandings influence organizational performance by affecting the ability of organizations to adapt to changing circumstances. These arguments lead to a general recognition of the importance to organizations of connections and the suggestion that the connections, themselves, may be an important outcome of organizational routines.     

Failure to Mobilize in Reliability‐Seeking Organizations: Two Cases from the UK Railway*

abstract There is a considerable line of research on organizations dealing with large scale, intrinsic hazards. We know a good deal, as a result, about both the causation of catastrophic failure and its avoidance. Past work has explained failure in terms of (for example) structural vulnerabilities and organizational degradation – and reliability in terms of collective mindfulness, rigorous enculturation and high levels of social redundancy. This paper presents a study, based on a qualitative analysis of two disastrous collisions on the UK railway, of organizations that are strongly reliability seeking yet ultimately experience catastrophic failure. It argues that these cases implicated an organizational incapacity to mobilize systemic reform. The possibility of the two failures had been well‐known in the organizations before their occurrence, but this knowledge could not be converted into modification. A model is presented to explain how processes of systemic reform co‐exist with a set of phenomena that tend to undermine them. It is these that need to be the principal focus of efforts at managing catastrophic failure risks.     

The e-integration dilemma: The linkages between Internet technology application, trading partner relationships and structural change

The evidence from an empirical study involving 281 Australian organizations suggests that the availability, open nature, and (comparative) ease of implementation of Internet technologies for integration with trading partners, whilst on the one hand providing the means by which organizations can integrate processes and systems in a cost effective way, can amplify the need for both structural change and closer collaboration with trading partners. The relationships proposed and tested in the model are justified and explained based on a number of theoretical perspectives. These include Transaction Cost Economics, Socio-technical Systems, Resource Dependency, Knowledge Based View, Stakeholder Theory and Organizational Learning. The implications of the findings for Transaction Cost Theory are noteworthy firstly because they support the appropriateness of the inter-organizational governance structure in the context of this study, and secondly because although application of these technologies may reduce information search and related costs, whether this necessarily leads to reduced coordination costs is problematic. The potential benefits from improved coordination may be constrained by the perceived costs, and risks, of transition to new structural forms. The implication for practice is that increased use of Internet technologies creates substantial pressure to invest in organizational change. The attractiveness of investing in technologies that place managers in a position where they need to promote organizational change in order to extract adequate returns creates a significant dilemma. On the one hand Internet technologies enable extensive sharing and integration of data among trading partners, but at the same time they create conditions requiring managers to embrace fundamental organizational change in order to leverage the potential of such integration.     

Leading for Long‐Term Performance: Matching the Behavior to the Situation

Is there one right way to lead, or does it all “depend?” The right answer will inform the right leadership development strategy. A recent study by McKinsey & Co. using survey data collected from 165 organizations and over 365,000 respondents globally suggests that the answer is both. Two types of behavior sets emerged from organizations that enjoyed higher member perceptions of leadership effectiveness and attained higher levels of organizational health (the latter predicts long‐term financial and operational performance). We combined these into a model that prescribes a set of “baseline” behaviors that should always be evident, complemented by another set of behaviors (“situational behaviors”) that should be differentially emphasized depending on the level of organizational health. Both the content of the behavior and its relative emphasis are critical to either set. The current paper combines these into a model of organization‐wide leadership and concludes with action implications for organizations’ leadership development strategy.     

Sustainable Development in Supply Chain Management: The Role of Organizational Learning for Policy Implementation

Implementing sustainable policies in supply chains is a significant challenge for businesses. Recent evidence has shown that failure to manage supply chains responsibly can have significant impacts on firms' reputation and financial performance. In this paper, we develop a conceptual framework, which focuses on organizational learning, and outline specific channels through which firms can generate learning processes and build appropriate capabilities to successfully implement social and environmental supply chain policies. Drawing on 57 in‐depth interviews from a cross‐sectional sample of seven UK and nine German companies, we empirically assess our conceptual framework in accordance with a grounded, in‐depth case study analysis approach. We find compelling evidence to suggest that organizational learning is an important factor for a successful implementation of sustainable supply chain management. Organizational learning is often established as a result of training, knowledge acquisition, stakeholder engagement and collaboration between intra‐organizational and inter‐organizational partners, including suppliers and NGOs. Nonetheless, our results also emphasize that firms often have few systematic processes through which organizational learning is developed, and that such learning processes are often ad hoc at best, which in turn has significant implications for the responsible supply chain practices. Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment