A Multilevel Perspective of Tensions Between Knowledge Management and Social Media

In this article, we discuss the tensions that are perceived in organizations as the use of social media platforms such as Facebook and Twitter challenge past approaches to knowledge management initiatives in organizations. We address these perceived tensions using a three-level conceptual framework: the macro- (organizational) level, the meso- (group) level, and the micro- (individual) level. In our discussion, we posit that perceived tensions arise when managers seek to maintain their traditional roles at the macro- (organization) level, yet social media affordances enable these roles to be performed at the micro- (individual level) and mesolevels. Shifts in the extent of the meso-level connections beyond the immediate organizational boundaries enable a wider community of practice than before. As a consequence, traditional management roles may give way to more flexible roles, with greater individual responsibilities for control and more sense-making and knowledge access taking place at the mesolevel. Our contribution is three-fold. In our article, we examine four key organizational factors (roles, ownership, control, and value) using a three-level conceptual model; associate the perceived tensions that arise in organizations with implicit shifts in these variables that accompany the use of social media; and suggest that shifts in emphasis in roles and control at each level can be instrumental in resolving perceived tensions as knowledge management efforts encompass social media.     

Value Orientations as Determinants of Preference for External and Anonymous Whistleblowing

Incidences of organizational wrongdoing have become wide spread throughout the whole business world. The management of organizational wrongdoings is of growing concern in organizations globally, since these types of acts can be detrimental to financial well being. Wrongdoing occurs within organizational settings and organizational members commonly have knowledge of and thus the opportunity to report the wrongdoing. An employee’s decision to report individual or organizational misconduct, i.e. blow the whistle, is a complex phenomenon that is based upon organizational, situational and personal factors. The purpose of this study is to examine the relationship between value orientations of individuals and choices for particular whistleblowing modes. Our results show that there are significant relationships between these variables. We contribute to the extant literature by choosing Turkey as context as most studies have been conducted in the US and Europe, and little has been reported about the actions taken by employees in non-Western cultures when they observe wrongdoing in their organizations.     

Involving mind, body, and friends: Management that engenders creativity

Based on the careful observation and interviews of employees at three companies, and supplemented by cases from the popular business press, a discovery approach is used to derive four management principles that engender creativity and innovation in organizations: (1) manage organizations so that their knowledge base is more diverse than what would occur naturally; (2) encourage employees to embrace a collaborative and non-complacent attitude towards work and the organization; (3) make it possible for organization members to engage in the quick testing of ideas and solutions as they emerge; (4) reward employee and supervisor behaviors that support these principles and punish resistance to their implementation. The principles work in companies even if creativity and innovation are not stated organizational objectives, and do not require large investments or disruptions to work processes to yield valuable results.     

Social Capital Initiatives: Employees and Communication Managers Leading the Way?

Organizations’ development of social capital and their decision to give back to society are becoming increasingly important to the business of managing organizations as much more than profit-driven entities. This article focuses on the rationale for an Australian–Canadian study on employees’ involvement in social capital initiatives and the communication management of these initiatives. As employees are key stakeholders, they play a vital part in achieving organizational goals. This study, a work in progress, highlights an in-depth, qualitative analysis of two organizations—one in Canada and one in Australia—committed to funding community projects as part of their corporate social responsibility development and commitment. The importance of a qualitative study that focuses on subjective components of social capital is that it develops understanding of employees’ attitudes, feelings, and viewpoints. It also begins to investigate why employees might/might not be committed, to organizations’ social capital initiatives. Using an interpretative analysis lens, an understanding of the moral, relational, and communication dynamics is explored. Questions surrounding concepts such as the moral fiber of social capital are highlighted and critiqued in the context of community engagement and what organizations’ social capital investments mean as part of their responsibility to society.     

Organizational Moral Learning: What,If Anything,Do Corporations Learn from NGO Critique?

While organizational learning literature has generated significant insight into the effective and efficient achievement of organizational goals as well as to the modus of learning, it is currently unable to describe moral learning processes in organizations consistently. Corporations need to learn morally if they want to deal effectively with stakeholders criticizing their conduct. Nongovernmental organizations do not ask corporations to be more effective or efficient in what they do, but to become more responsible or to learn morally. Current research on the moral aspect of organizational learning has been primarily of a theoretical nature and is in need of empirical verification. Results of a longitudinal case study as Citigroup’s conflict with the Rainforest Action Network show that current organizational moral learning theories do not fit the moral learning path observed at Citigroup. More empirical research is needed to describe organizational moral learning.     

Using Web Services for Collaborative,Inter-Organizational Computing: A Framework and Implementation

ABSTRACT

Collaborative computing is a powerful approach to facilitate service delivery across organizational boundaries. The major drawback of many of the current approaches of dealing with this issue is the dependence on proprietary solutions that are not based on open standards. Such solutions hinder the smooth exchange among the participating organizations due to their complexity and lack of interoperability. Web Services (WS) offer the promise of streamlining the delivery of e-services across organizational boundaries. What is currently missing is (1) a clear understanding of the important issues in deploying these technologies and (2) a compelling implementation framework for the deployment of these technologies in organizations. In this research we propose a conceptual framework for building systems that utilize Web Services technologies to enable networked organizations to automate collaborative processes. We propose an e-Business Service Chain grid that provides an impetus for addressing some of the gaps that exist in current e-services business and delivery models.     

Exploring the determinants of organizational emergence: A legitimacy perspective

In an attempt to explain why some nascent organizations become new organizations while others do not, we contend that the process of organizational emergence can be understood and predicted by viewing it as a quest for legitimacy. We subsequently find empirical evidence to suggest that the actions a nascent organization takes (or strategic legitimacy) may be more important than its characteristics (or conforming legitimacy) in explaining organizational emergence. Such a conclusion is important in that it provides a theoretical framework with which to understand organizational emergence and in so doing advances our knowledge of this important process.     

Transformational leadership and R&D workers' multiple commitments: Do justice and span of control matter?

This study examines how transformational leaders influence research and development (R&D) workers' commitment to their organizations and leaders. The study investigates the mediating role of organizational justice (i.e., procedural and interactional) based on social exchange theory and the moderating role of span of control in this relationship. In a sample of 445 Turkish R&D personnel, the study finds that transformational leadership significantly influences followers' organizational commitment partially through procedural justice and their supervisory commitment partially through interactional justice. Second, the findings reveal that transformational leaders boost perceptions of procedural justice and organizational commitment when the span of control is relatively narrow. Interestingly, when the span of control is large, transformational leadership has significant positive effects on supervisory commitment, but no significant effects on organizational commitment among R&D workers.     

Improving marketing success: The role of tacit knowledge exchange between sales and marketing

Successful organizations adapt their marketing strategies to marketplace changes. Boundary spanners, such as salespeople, because they are able to embed themselves in social networks outside the organization, play a key role in developing marketplace knowledge. However, if this knowledge remains solely with the boundary spanners, it cannot be used effectively to improve firm performance. This study investigates tacit knowledge exchange between sales and marketing and its ability to enhance marketing success (i.e., marketing program innovativeness, relative efficiency, and relative effectiveness). In addition, by examining five antecedents hypothesized to influence tacit knowledge exchange, it provides guidance to sales and marketing managers, who desire to improve tacit knowledge exchange, and, in turn, marketing success.     

Broadening the concept of marketing

Marketing in business is the task of finding and stimulating buyers for a firms's output. Product development, pricing, distribution, and communication are the mainstays of marketing, while progressive firms also develop new products and chart the trends and changes in people's needs and desires. Marketing can either apply its knowledge to social problems and organizations or remain in a narrowly defined business activity. Every organization has basically the same functions: personnel management, production, income, and promotion, which are using modern marketing skills in commercial sectors. Suppliers and consumers are needed by all organizations. In Canada a group wished to promote an antismoking campaign but they had little money compared to the tobacco companies. This group used modern marketing techniques to combat their lack of funds and found many ways, e.g., books, articles. A business firm uses a multitude of marketing tools to sell its product. Nonbusiness organizations frequently do not integrate their programs the way the businesses place all activities under one marketing vice president and department. Astute marketing depends on continuous feedback from consumers and suppliers. They are dependent upon up-to-the-minute research that tells them about changes in the environment and moves of competitors. Nonbusiness organizations are often casual about the research upon which they base their vital decisions.     

Corporate Fraud and Managers’ Behavior: Evidence from the Press

Government-sponsored enterprises (GSEs) and quasi-autonomous non-governmental organizations (quangos) comprise a powerful organizational sector that has been criticized for its lack of accountability to governments and their citizens. These organizations are established to serve the public as a whole by targeting the needs of particular groups or fulfilling specific functions. Often they use practices adopted from the business sector, and sometimes they enter the marketplace as profit-making enterprises. In light of the contribution of GSE Fannie Mae to the 2008 world economic crisis, the impact of this sector on effective democratic government bears further examination. In this article, I present a systems model that suggests how researchers might comprehensively assess the accountability of organizations in this sector, here termed the “gray sector,” with respect to their government missions. I focus on four systems dimensions: mission, organizational design, organizational outcomes, and the information feedback process. Organizational design and the nature of the sector population are cited as emerging issues of particular importance.     

A measurement model of the dimensions and types of informal organizational control: An empirical test in a B2B sales context

Sales organizations are replete with informal forms of organizational control. Despite this, marketing and management literature has primarily focused on the theoretical development and empirical testing of formal, managerial forms of control. One reason research on informal controls has lagged is a lack of comprehensive measurement scales. Specifically, existing measures of the three principal types of informal controls—self, social, and cultural—do not capture the full dimensionality of the constructs (i.e., information, reward, and punishment aspects of informal controls). The authors take steps to remedy this situation by (1) outlining nine distinct dimensional types of informal control based on organizational control theory, (2) developing scales to measure the nine informal control constructs in a qualitative field study with 28 B2B salespeople, and (3) empirically validating the scales by establishing their psychometric properties and nomological validity using data collected from a diverse panel of 750 B2B salespeople.     

Implementing Ethics in Business Organizations

In view of the scope and scale of the latest scandals, e.g. Enron's maximum breaking bankruptcy, the re-discovery of ethics in business has received an impressive boost. By now even car salesmen have written ethics, “a Code of Conduct”, e.g. in the USA or Poland. But there is no clear aim of the role ethics obtains in organizational settings as we may show in some small cases of practical approaches to deal with ethics in organizations. We discuss how ethics is the prerequisite to conduct any business and what advantages may be realized if a clear set of ethics is followed. We will discuss three practical examples. In cases of ethics-based values-added management of Siemens (Germany), Boeing (U.S.) and SAP (Germany) we explain the mechanisms of ethics in management to strengthen organizational success. We emphasize the importance of clear ethics-related communication processes in organizations. We explain the use of communication theories inside organizational processes to clarify communication about such an abstract topic as ethics. Finally, we point out how a management of ethical ideas and cultural values should be designed in business enterprises.     

Labor process control in modern organizations: Subtle effects of structure

Labor process control in today's work organizations is more subtle and sophisticated than in previous eras. Mechanisms such as personnel selection, training and socialization, organizational technology, organizational architecture, organizational structure, and organizational ideology and languages produce strong compliance pressures, often without appearing part of an intricate control network. Studies of organizational control intellectually grounded in systems theory have focused on processes designed to correct the occasional “deviant” action, leaving unfocused mechanisms which tend to ensure routinely compliant behavior. This article identifies subtle controlling influences resulting from the structuring of organizations. Three major dimensions of organizational structure—specialization, hierarchy of authority, and formalization—are analyzed to determine their effects on patterns of employee compliance. Although modern organizational control processes such as structural design subtly produce powerful compliance pressures on employees, conflict in organizations between capital and labor is not suppressed. Workplace struggles are an inevitable aspect of modern organization and emerge even within the confines of sophisticated controls.     

Ethical Duties of Organizational Citizens: Obligations Owed by Highly Committed Employees

Individuals who demonstrate organizational citizenship behavior (OCB) contribute to their organization??s ability to create wealth, but they also owe their organizations a complex set of ethical duties. Although, the academic literature has begun to address the ethical duties owed by organizational leaders to organizational citizens, very little has been written about the duties owed by those who practice OCB to their organizations. In this article, we identify an array of ethical duties owed by those who engage in extra-role behavior and describe those duties in context with personality theory. We suggest that employees who understand the complex nature of OCB and the associated duties they owe to others are more likely to reach their potential and make greater contributions within their organizations.     

Morality, Ethics, and Values Outside and Inside Organizations: An Example of the Discourse on Climate Change

The public debate on climate change is filled with moral claims. However, scientific knowledge about the role that morality, ethics, and values play in this issue is still scarce. Starting from this research gap, we focus on corporations as central decision makers in modern society and analyze how they respond to societal demands to take responsibility for climate change. While relevant literature on business ethics and climate change either places a high premium on morality or presents a strong skeptical bias, our sociological model depicts morality as an indeterminate force: it can lead to both workable solutions or merely reinforce the status quo, depending on what different corporations make of it. We describe, on the one side, the diffusion of moral values in the media discourse on climate change and, on the other side, the specific responses of corporations. While the media discourse generates a pressure on corporations to act responsibly, their moral claims do not provide clear advice for action. As a result, morality becomes available to organizations as a medium that can be re-specified according to their internal dynamics. Corporations transform moral values into something compatible with their own structures through a variety of different responses: introducing formal ethical structures (e.g., codes of conduct), initiating value-oriented projects, or developing informal moral norms, and so on. In some occurrences, morality becomes a mere façade, while in others it serves as a decision-making criterion and deeply influences core activities in firms.     

Standing by Your Organization: The Impact of Organizational Identification and Abusive Supervision on Followers’ Perceived Cohesion and Tendency to Gossip

Abusive supervision has been shown to have significant negative consequences for employees’ well-being, attitudes, and behavior. However, despite the devastating impact, it might well be that employees do not always react negatively toward a leader’s abusive behavior. In the present study, we show that employees’ organizational identification and abusive supervision interact for employees’ perceived cohesion with their work group and their tendency to gossip about their leader. Employees confronted with a highly abusive supervisor had a stronger perceived cohesion and engaged in less gossiping behavior when they identified more strongly with their organization. Our findings illustrate that organizational identification functions as a buffer for those confronted with an abusive supervisor.     

Intrapreneurship: Construct refinement and cross-cultural validation

Intrapreneurship (entrepreneurship within existing organizations) has been of interest to scholars and practitioners for the past two decades. Intrapreneurship is viewed as being beneficial for revitalization and performance of corporations, as well as for small and medium-sized enterprises. The concept has four distinct dimensions. First, the new-business–venturing dimension refers to pursuing and entering new businesses related to the firm's current products or markets. Second, the innovativeness dimension refers to the creation of new products, services, and technologies. Third, the self-renewal dimension emphasizes the strategy reformulation, reorganization, and organizational change. Finally, the proactiveness dimension reflects top management orientation in pursuing enhanced competitiveness and includes initiative and risk-taking, and competitive aggressiveness, and boldness. While differing somewhat in their emphasis, activities and orientations, the four dimensions pertain to the same concept of intrapreneurship because they are factors of Schumpeterian innovation, the building block of entrepreneurship. The pursuit of creative or new solutions to challenges confronting the firm, including the development or enhancement of old and new products and services, markets, administrative techniques, and technologies for performing organizational functions (e.g., production, marketing, sales, and distribution), as well as changes in strategy, organizing, and dealings with competitors are innovations in the broadest sense.Intrapreneurship theory and measures have an American basis. While being considered universal, their generalizability has been limited because their cross-cultural testing has been extremely limited. Two main measures of intrapreneurship (the ENTRESCALE and the corporate entrepreneurship scale) were developed independently but lack validity for cross-national comparisons and do not tap all four dimensions of intrapreneurship when used independently.In order to fill the gaps in previous research, these two scales are integrated into a four-dimensional measure of intrapreneurship. Refinement and validation was done by using two samples from two distinct economies: Slovenia (a small transition economy from Central and Eastern Europe with a short entrepreneurship tradition) and the United States (a large, developed, and advanced economy that is a leader in entrepreneurship research and practice). The refined multidimensional measure of intrapreneurship was developed to be cross-culturally generalizable because its refined dimensions' scales include only cross-culturally comparable items. The refined intrapreneurship construct measure showed reasonably good convergent and discriminant validity as well as good nomological validity in terms of expected positive relationships to its antecedents (organizational and environmental characteristics) and consequences (growth and profitability) across the two samples that included large, medium-sized, and smaller firms from a variety of different industries (manufacturing consumer and industrial goods, consumer and business services, trade, and construction).In addition to the generalizability of the refined intrapreneurship construct measure, the results of this study support the notion that intrapreneurship is an important predictor of firm growth in terms of absolute growth (growth in number of employees and in total sales) and relative growth (growth in market share in comparison to competition). Firms that nurture organizational structures and values conducive to intrapreneurial activities are more likely to grow than organizations that are low in such characteristics. Open and quality communication, existence of formal controls, intensive environmental scanning, management support, organizational support, and values all help an organization become more intrapreneurial. Intrapreneurial organizations are those that engage in new business venturing, are innovative, continuously renew themselves, and are proactive. In transition economies, which are adapting their economies to more developed economies' standards of doing business, and where growth may not yet be the primary goal, intrapreneurship may be even more important for the growth and profitability of existing organizations.     

Selbstorganisation von Verbrauchern-theoretische Überlegungen und empirische Befunde

Zusammenfassung Der Beitrag referiert die Ergebnisse zweier in den Jahren 1977/78 durchgeführten Befragungen von Vorständen und Mitgliedern von Verbrauchervereinen in der BRD und bringt sie in Zusammenhang mit weiterführenden Argumentationen, die im Rahmen laufender Forschungsvorhaben der AGVP erarbeitet wurden.Ausgehend von einer Analyse der Handlungen von fremd- und selbstorganisierten Verbrauchervereinen wird der Frage nachgegangen, ob die derzeit bestehenden selbstorganisierten Verbrauchervereine eine formale und inhaltliche Alternative zu bestehenden Verbraucherfremdorganisationen bilden.

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The paper reports on a study of local consumer organizations in the Federal Republic of Germany with and without individual membership. The study is part of a theoretical and empirical evaluation of present consumer policy aiming at the discovery of ways to activate consumer organizations. Above all, the project explores whether organizations with individual membership would be an organizationally feasible and qualitatively preferable alternative.To do this, it was necessary, as a first research step, to evaluate the existing local consumer organizations by considering various aspects of organizational and individual behaviour within them. Questionnaires were constructed for both officials and members of the organizations. The study shows that local consumer organizations with and without individual membership do not differ much in their activities. Distributing information about prices and qualities of goods becomes the main task. The direct membership of consumers in consumer organizations does not automatically lead to a qualitatively different situation.Member consumer organizations—that receive their legitimization because of a connection to the rank-and-file — need active consumers. Therefore, in the second step in this research phase, an attempt was made to explain the extent of individual activity in consumer organizations. It was shown that preference for collective strategies and participative organizational structure were relatively strong predictors. The study shows further that organizations without individual membership tend to resemble member organizations; as the organizational structure becomes rigid, individual activity ceases.

     

The community dynamics of entrepreneurship: The birth of the american film industry, 1895–1929

This paper provides insight for practitioners by exploring the collective process of entrepreneurship in the context of the formation of new industries. In contrast to the popular notions of entrepreneurship, with their emphasis on individual traits, we argue that successful entrepreneurship is often not solely the result of solitary individuals acting in isolation. In many respects, entrepreneurs exist as part of larger collectives. First and foremost, there is the population of organizations engaging in activities similar to those of the entrepreneurial firm, which constitute a social system that can affect entrepreneurial success. In addition, there is also a community of populations of organizations characterized by interdependence of outcomes. Individual entrepreneurs may be more successful in the venturing process if they recognize some of the ways in which their success may depend on the actions of entrepreneurs throughout this community. Thus, we urge practitioners and theorists alike to include a community perspective in their approach to entrepreneurship. We also suggest that one way of conceptualizing the community of relevance might be in terms of populations of organizations that constitute the value chain. For example, in the early film industry a simple value chain with three functions—production, distribution, and exhibition—is a convenient heuristic for considering what populations of organizations might be relevant. As we show in our case study of that industry, a community model offers insights into the collective nature of entrepreneurship and the emergence of new industries.Our basic thesis is that the role of entrepreneurship in the creation of new industries can be conceptualized in terms of the dynamics of a community of organizational populations. At least three implications of this view may be important for practitioners. First, the kind of widespread and fundamental economic and social change that has often been linked with entrepreneurship requires a variety of behaviors. While most definitions of entrepreneurship have recognized that entrepreneurship requires the introduction of innovation, they have tended to ignore the importance of behaviors that subsequently support that innovation. To encompass these important behaviors, we believe that a broad definition of entrepreneurial behaviors is justified. To capture this, the framework of entrepreneurial behaviors that we develop includes the variety of behaviors that are important to the success of a collective process of entrepreneurship. We believe that recognition of a variety of different behaviors that are important to the success of the entrepreneurial process can help practicing entrepreneurs to understand more fully the complex dynamics of new industry creation. In terms of our framework, the range of behaviors of potential importance to entrepreneurship includes all of the following: creating a firm that innovates, creating a new business that imitates the practices of others, innovating within an existing business, and imitating by creating change in an existing business. In addition, we recognize that the kinds of innovative change that support entrepreneurship in the context of new industry creation are not narrowly technological; other kinds of product and service changes as well as administrative innovations may also be relevant.Second, entrepreneurship in one part of the community often creates the opportunity for entrepreneurial activity elsewhere in the community. For example, the founding of movie palaces did not begin until feature length films appeared. The challenge for entrepreneurs is to recognize these opportunities and act on them. Third, and related, the long-term success of entrepreneurial behaviors in one population of the community frequently requires that supportive entrepreneurial behaviors occur in other populations in the community. For example, the success of feature length films was hastened by the development of distribution organizations to replace traveling shows and localized markets. Their success was also hastened by the movement away from nickelodeons towards larger, more comfortable exhibition outlets, such as theaters and show palaces. When the interdependence among populations in the community is stated this way, another challenge to entrepreneurs becomes clear: the facilitation and encouragement of supportive behaviors in other populations.We are not the first to propose that the community is important, but we contribute to this idea by showing in a specific context how various types of behaviors interact and ultimately promote entrepreneurship throughout the community. Our contribution for practitioners is twofold. We would urge practitioners to consider the variety of behaviors necessary to create, reinforce, and maintain fundamental and widespread change. Further, we would suggest that practitioners consider how activities in a broad community of organizations can set the stage for entrepreneurship and have a high impact on its ultimate success or failure. Thus, we would suggest that practitioners who seek to innovate should search broadly for opportunities and understand the importance of relations with businesses elsewhere in the community. The success of their entrepreneurial efforts may depend on the occurrence of supportive entrepreneurial changes in those businesses as well. Their ability to do this will be enhanced by a broad understanding of entrepreneurial behaviors and sensitivity to the opportunities that their entrepreneurial behaviors may create for others.