APPROACHES TO INEQUALITY OF OPPORTUNITY: PRINCIPLES,MEASURES AND EVIDENCE

We put together the different conceptual issues involved in measuring inequality of opportunity, discuss how these concepts have been translated into computable measures, and point out the problems and choices researchers face when implementing these measures. Our analysis identifies and suggests several new possibilities to measure inequality of opportunity. The relevance of the conceptual issues and modelling choices are illustrated with findings from the empirical literature on income inequality of opportunity.     

Diffusion of environmental business practices: A network approach

The purpose of this research is to build a conceptual foundation that examines network effects on the diffusion of environmental business practices (EBP) among suppliers. This research extends a network perspective to adoption of an environmental business practice across a large network of suppliers. The context of EBP is used to better understand adoption of a complex business practice, with perceived costs that are often greater than the perceived benefit. Variation in the level of structural and relationship embeddedness affect network diffusion of environmental business practices differently. Increased levels of structural and relational embeddedness are proposed to be positively associated with diffusion of EBP. From a practical standpoint, firms that leverage embeddedness may facilitate higher diffusion and adoption of environmental business practices. This facilitation may lead network actors to engage in EBP, and leverage benefits that may stem from these practices. This research introduces the concept of embeddedness to the environmental supply chain literature. Practicing managers can use the findings in this research to better position themselves within a network to diffuse EBP. This research also helps managers understand how supply chain members that are weakly connected to the primary network are important for introducing new ideas and innovations.     

Embedded knowledge and offshore software development

Offshore software development scenarios may include groups with domain specific knowledge who collaborate internationally across multiple local contexts. A key challenge in the understanding and also practice of such distributed work is concerned with the issue of knowledge, and how it can be effectively managed. In this paper, we develop a conceptual scheme based on theories associated with embedded knowledge. Drawing on evidence from a longitudinal case study of a British software company with an offshore subsidiary in India, we discuss problems associated with the embeddedness of knowledge in two geographically separated units of a firm.     

Network embeddedness in the internationalization of biotechnology entrepreneurs

This study investigates how entrepreneurs of biotech enterprises embed in domestic and international networks so as to internationalize. We advance a contextual framework of embeddedness of internationalizing entrepreneurs, providing a contribution (i) by synthesizing and applying existing conceptual insights from the networking literature to provide a more culturally sensitive view of getting embedded for international entrepreneurship in the biotech industry and (ii) by adding insights into the practices and (micro)processes of how and in what ways embeddedness integrates with the internationalization of biotech entrepreneurs. Our study involves six entrepreneurs from Canada, Finland, and New Zealand. Context-specific embeddedness was studied by exploring the (i) type, (ii) strength, (iii) locality, and (iv) importance of the international and national network ties among internationalizing entrepreneurs. We found differences in relation to the locality of universities and research institutes, role and type of financiers, and customer focus in internationalization. For instance, while customers were central to the embeddedness of Canadian and New Zealand entrepreneurs, Finnish entrepreneurs had no focus on their customers, but acted solely through sales channels and partners. The customer focus of New Zealand entrepreneurs was mainly international, whereas it was domestic in the case of Canadian entrepreneurs.     

Developing organisational embeddedness: employee personality and social networking

Abstract

While research has supported the contention that organisational embeddedness can influence voluntary turnover, little research examines how employees develop embeddedness. Understanding how employees develop embeddedness, however, is important to deal with the costly issue of voluntary turnover. This paper suggests that the personality traits of conscientiousness, emotional stability and extraversion can predict embeddedness and that social networking can also shape organisational embeddedness. Embeddedness is expected to negatively impact turnover intentions in turn. Data were collected through self-reported questionnaires (n = 401) in service sector companies in the Caribbean nation of Trinidad. A research design with three waves was used to test the proposed research model. The findings suggest that the personality dimensions of conscientiousness, emotional stability and extraversion predict organisational embeddedness, that social networking impacts embeddedness and that embeddedness predicts intent to turnover. Implications, limitations and future research directions offered by these findings are also discussed.     

Entrepreneurship and embeddedness: dynamic,processual and multi-layered perspectives

ABSTRACT

Contemporary research has demonstrated that entrepreneurship is a fundamentally contextualized phenomenon and unfolds differently in different contexts. Despite the extensive coverage of the importance of embeddedness for entrepreneurial activities, the research predominantly relies on somewhat static, single layered, and binary notions of embeddedness. We argue that there is a strong need for studies that problematize embeddedness and the relationship between entrepreneur and context. This call for papers, thus invites contributions that explore embeddedness as dynamic, processual and multi-layered, as well as elaborate on the paradoxes of embeddedness?     

Grand challenges and entrepreneurship: Emerging issues,research streams,and theoretical landscape

This study discusses how the role of entrepreneurship in addressing the so-called “grand challenges” (e.g., poverty, inequality, pollution, climate change) is evolving and could further evolve, based on the ongoing conversation in the scholarly community. To develop the discussion, we conducted the following steps: (1) a computer-aided semantic analysis; (2) an analysis of the evolution of literature streams; and (3) a network analysis of advocated theories and approaches. All three analyses were based on a selection of 358 publications retrieved via a keyword search and 27 further publications retrieved via an analysis of five recent and relevant special issues published by important scientific journals. Our results show that the call to address grand challenges, particularly after the publication of the United Nations’ Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), is radically transforming entrepreneurship research, with new issues emerging and replacing traditional issues as core to the discipline, marking a rapid and complex dynamics of research stream divergence and convergence. Similarly, the network of theories and approaches advocated by recent agenda-setting articles depicts an emerging theoretical landscape that is highly innovative. This new theoretical landscape revolves around systems thinking and Ostrom’s theory of the commons as the two key poles, with the embeddedness, stakeholder, institutional, effectuation, processual, and design-oriented approaches being the cross-fertilizing forces linking these two poles. In the final section, we present the nine articles included in the special issue titled “Grand Challenges and Entrepreneurship: Emerging Issues and Research Streams” and briefly synthesize these in the light of the ongoing evolution of the literature.

     

Examining the impacts of community and organization embeddedness on self-initiated expatriates: the moderating role of expatriate-dominated private sector

With a newly developed dimension of the job embeddedness construct and the aim to better understand turnover, this study investigates the relationships of job embeddedness with shocks and turnover intention for an important emerging group in the worldwide workforce – self-initiated expatriates (SEs). We consider three embedding factors: individuals' community embeddedness towards their home country (home country community embeddedness – HomeCCE – newly developed), embeddedness towards the organization in which they are employed in the host country (host country organization embeddedness – HostCOE) and embeddedness towards the host country community (host country community embeddedness – HostCCE). Structural equation modelling is applied to a sample of SEs from 10 three-star to five-star hotels in the Macau SAR of China. This research shows that HostCOE plays a mediating role between a SEs' HomeCCE and turnover intention and willingness to accept unsolicited job offers; and these mediated relationships are moderated by the variables: expatriate-dominated private sector and the SEs' HostCCE. These findings shed light on factors that affect the retention of SEs and have implications for management and future research.     

Managerial Behaviour Research in Private and Public Sectors: Distinctiveness, Disputes and Directions

A managerial behaviour approach is identified that has sought to understand managerial work by analysing the day‐to‐day behaviour of individual managers: what do managers do? It is argued that this approach is distinctive and that its distinctiveness is valuable and has not received adequate attention. The distinctiveness is defined by its research background, object, focus and methodology. The managerial behaviour approach has developed from research over nearly fifty years: long enough for there to have been a variety of disputes about what has, or ought to have been, achieved. The relevance of these criticisms and what later research has done to meet them is assessed. Recent research directions are identified and suggestions are made for building on the distinctiveness. It is concluded that the institutional embeddedness of managerial work should attract further scholarly attention, and that the contribution of researchers in the public sector, who come from a differentdisciplinary background, needs to be integrated with that of researchers from organizational behaviour as they can contribute new conceptual approaches, which could help to revivify this field of research.     

Measurement Bias in the HICP: What do we know and What do we need to know?

Abstract. The Harmonized Index of Consumer Prices (HICP) is the primary measure of inflation in the euro area, and plays a central role in the policy deliberations of the European Central Bank (ECB). The ECB defines its Treaty mandate of price stability as '… a year‐on‐year increase in the Harmonised Index of Consumer Prices (HICP) for the euro area of below 2%[…] to be maintained over the medium term.' Among the rationales given for defining price stability as prevailing at some positive measured inflation rate is the possibility that the HICP as published incorporates measurement errors of one sort or another that may cause it to systematically overstate the true rate of inflation in the euro area. This paper reviews what currently is known about the scope of measurement error in the HICP. We conclude that given the vague conceptual framework of the HICP, the scant research on price measurement issues in the EU and the ongoing improvements in the HICP, there is very little scientific basis at this time for a point (or even an interval) estimate of a positive bias in the HICP.     

Operationalization,a superfluous concept

This paper discusses a number of issues in the methodology of social and behavioral sciences which concern how concepts are defined and related to observations, how theories are constructed, and how we proceed in actual research. Examples are mainly taken from experimental psychology, and from social psychology, but the problems and answers apply to the whole of behavioral and social sciences. These issues are related to philosophy of science. They are, however, presented from the point of view of a researcher who asks himself how to proceed in actual research, and who is critical about the present status of social and behavioral science. The main point is a pledge for a renewed empiricism. This is close to what can be called logical empiricism but should not be identified with any particular-ism. Some issues raised by critics of logical empiricism are addressed in the final section. The first problem deals with how to clarify concepts in behavioral and social science. This will show an unresolvable circularity in operationalization of theoretical constructs. The position and role of measurement is discussed in relation to the objectives of behavioral and social research. Subsequently, it is pointed out that a clear distinction between empirical concepts and theoretical constructs solves many, if not all of the problems of defining and clarifying concepts, thereby obviating the need for a so-called operationalization. It should, however, be very clear from the beginning that we cannot do without operational definitions of theoretical concepts, and that to some extent we must return to the original spirit of operationism, although in a manner which is different from current practice. An important element of the advocated approach is the definition of the empirical domain of a theory in terms of observational categories. Guttman's facet design can be a useful tool to define domains, especially for non-experimental research.     

The institutional embeddedness of local inter-firm networks: a leverage for business creation

There is an increasing concern for the notion of ‘embeddedness’ of economic activity; yet the conceptualization of the concept and its operationalization remain underdeveloped. First, embeddedness may concern, on the one hand, the structure of relations that tie economic actors together (structural embeddedness) and, on the other hand, the social strands supplementing economic strands in each relation (substantive embeddedness). In this paper, a network framework is outlined which proposes several layers or ‘orders’ of embeddedness. Focusing on small firms, the point of departure is individual exchange relationships as personal ties combining economic and social concerns. First-order embeddedness concerns the localized business networks created by combining these dyadic relations. Second-order embeddedness is achieved when considering also the memberships of business persons in economic and social local institutions while third-order embeddedness concerns the special cases where these institutions bridge gaps between firms. The network model is operationalized and applied to a small Swedish industrial (furniture) community, its firms and economic/social institutions. The findings generally support the applicability of the model and demonstrate the supplementarity of different layers/orders of embeddedness. Further research challenges are deduced and implications for practitioners are provided.     

Understanding supplier structural embeddedness: A social network perspective

Despite a significant amount of attention, the potential of supplier structural embeddedness (i.e., the value of the structural position in an extended network) to improve the performance of a buying firm remains poorly understood. This study drew on the social network theory to empirically examine a conceptual framework specifying a relationship between the efforts of a buying firm to understand supplier structural configuration and operational and financial performance. This study also examines how the comprehension of structural embeddedness is transformed into performance for a buying firm through relational embeddedness (i.e., the strength of a dyadic relationship). Survey data collected from companies in the U.S. were analyzed using hierarchical regression analysis. The results indicate that the understanding of the structural dimension does help to enhance operational performance of a buying firm, but it does not lead to better financial performance. Empirical evidence shows that a buying firm does improve the quality of a dyadic relationship between the buying firm and a supplier by understanding how the supplier is connected to other firms and what positional values are produced. Further, relational embeddedness is found to mediate the influence of the enhanced understanding of the structural configuration on operational performance.     

Embeddedness across contexts: A two‐country study on the additive and buffering effects of job embeddedness on employee turnover

Despite the growing body of literature on the effects of job embeddedness on turnover, there are few studies on how job embeddedness operates in different countries. This study, based on the Conservation of Resources theory, addresses this research gap by investigating both the additive and the buffering effects of on‐the‐job and off‐the‐job embeddedness using employee data from China (n = 373) and Switzerland (n = 268). Results showed that on‐the‐job embeddedness reduced the likelihood of turnover more strongly in Switzerland than in China (additive effect). Additionally, in China, the unsolicited job offer–turnover relationship was stronger when employees had lower levels of off‐the‐job embeddedness (buffering effect). This research contributes to the understanding of the relative role of on‐the‐job and off‐the‐job embeddedness for turnover in different countries.     

多元工作场景中的不同“嵌入”及共同效应研究

工作嵌入是衡量个体"卡"在目前工作网络中的程度的构念,是近几年组织行为学领域的热点,围绕工作嵌入,学者相继提出了组织嵌入、社区嵌入、家庭嵌入以及职业嵌入等构念,但目前嵌入理论的研究仍以单一嵌入为主,关于多重嵌入的研究仍然是很小的一部分。本文通过对2001年以来相关文献的梳理,回顾不同嵌入的构念发展,总结过去文献中关于不同嵌入对工作结果变量的共同效应的分析,进一步提出未来需要如何进一步发展和检验包括多个嵌入的理论模型,从而对多重嵌入理论的发展做出贡献。     

A cross-national study of culture,organization and entrepreneurship in three neighbourhoods

The paper focuses upon the future development of local support for small enterprises in transition economies. It points to the rapid growth in numbers of support agencies in all of these countries. These agencies are largely based upon western models and are supported by western funds. A number of issues are raised in respect of their future. These are explored under three headings: the true relevance of the western models; strategic issues in die survival of agencies; and conceptual issues as they relate to the problems of adding value and effectiveness in networking and organization design. These issues are then examined in the context of a comparative in-depth study of a number of Hungarian and UK Local Enterprise Agencies. The results point to die value of ‘a priori’ comparative exploration of die circumstances that underpin any model that is to be used as a basis for a transfer process. They indicate that UK agencies share many strategic problems with Hungarian agencies and cannot offer many solutions. They also demonstrate the shared weaknesses of die policy and networking conceptual base. The results point to a range of needs that derive from die ‘second stage’ strategies demanded of such agencies in die transition economies if they are to survive and grow following die reduction of donor support.     

Supply chain environmental R&D cooperation and product performance: Exploring the network dynamics of positional embeddedness

Companies increasingly need to work with their partners to address sustainability issues, but benefits from environmental R&D cooperation can be limited by the complexity of its management. This paper examines how the interplay between dyadic and network relationships can contribute to increase the success of environmental R&D cooperation. Using secondary data, we examine whether the positional embeddedness in the supply network structure of partners engaged in environmental R&D cooperation amplifies the effects of cooperation on product performance. Non-monotonic effects of environmental R&D cooperation and embeddedness are also tested. The results indicate that the positional embeddedness of partners triggered by multiple sourcing strategy amplifies the effects of environmental R&D cooperation on product environmental performance. The interaction effects become however insignificant in the presence of increasing complexity and excessive environmental R&D cooperation.     

Cultural embeddedness in supply networks

Recent studies on structural and relational embeddedness suggest that favorable position and connections in supply networks benefit a firm. While fruitful, this focus misses the motivations that prompt firms to take economic action in the first place. Understanding cultural embeddedness provides insight into why individuals and firms behave as they do and how their behavior can influence network structure. Contrary to the belief that firms act solely for profit and growth, we note that cultural contents such as values, social issues and political ideologies explain firms’ motives and guide their economic activities. We explore the role of cultural embeddedness through a grounded study of Country Natural Beef, a sustainability-oriented agricultural cooperative in the western United States. This supply network demonstrates strongly competing cultural claims among its members as well as a unique institutionalized culture. Cultural interactions at the node and network levels explain the functioning of and changes to the network. Through interviews, analysis of archival information and direct observation of pivotal events over a period of 5 years, we unpack cultural embeddedness and take an incremental step toward a theory of cultural embeddedness in cooperative supply networks.     

Encouraging Best Practice in Quantitative Management Research: An Incomplete List of Opportunities*

abstract The paper identifies some common problems encountered in quantitative methodology and provides information on current best practice to resolve these problems. We first discuss issues pertaining to variable measurement and concerns regarding the underlying relationships among variables. We then highlight several advances in estimation methodology that may circumvent issues encountered in common practice. Finally, we discuss approaches that move beyond existing research designs, including the development and use of datasets that embody linkages across levels of analysis, or combine qualitative and quantitative methods.     

The Employee Engagement Scale: Initial Evidence for Construct Validity and Implications for Theory and Practice

Interest in the employee engagement construct has gained increasing attention in recent years. Measurement tools focused on nuanced areas of engagement (i.e., job engagement and organizational engagement) have been offered; however, no measure of employee engagement has been advanced despite persistent calls in the research. We present the development, method, and results of a three‐dimensional employee engagement measurement tool developed for use in the human resource and management fields of study. Across four independent studies, the employee engagement scale (EES) was found to consist of three subfactors (cognitive, emotional, and behavioral) and a higher‐order factor (employee engagement). Across a series of four studies, we explored the factor structure and reliability of the EES (Study 1), then refined the scale, confirmed the factor structure, and examined reliability and both convergent and nomological validity evidence (Study 2). Next (Study 3), we completed a final reduction in scale items and examined additional evidence of reliability and nomological validity as well as evidence of discriminant validity. Finally (Study 4), we tested for evidence of incremental validity. In the implications for theory and practice section, we discuss the importance of an employee engagement measure aligned alongside an agreed‐upon definition and framework. Limitations and future directions for research—such as the need for further psychometric testing and exploring issues of measurement invariance—are discussed. © 2016 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.