Family-Friendly Practices and Worker Representation in Germany

The determinants of three employer-provided family-friendly work practices are estimated for German establishments. The presence of a works council stands as a positive determinant of all three practices. When works councils exist in the presence of collective bargaining, their influence tends to reflect the demographics of the workplace. The role of the works council becomes larger when the share of women increases and the share of part-timers decreases. We suggest this is consistent with the voice role of works councils.     

The impact of strategic dissent on organizational outcomes: A meta‐analytic integration

Research summary: Strategic dissent represents divergence in ideas, preferences, and beliefs related to ideal and/or future strategic emphasis. Conventional wisdom in strategic management holds that such differences in managerial cognitions lead to higher‐quality strategic decisions, and thus to enhanced firm performance. However, 4 decades of empirical research have not provided consistent findings or clear insights into the effects of strategic dissent. Hence, we analyze the relative validity of predictions about these effects from both social psychological theories of group behavior and information processing perspectives on decision‐making. Then, we conduct a meta‐analytic path analysis (MASEM) based on current empirical evidence. Synthesizing data from 78 articles, we put to rest the notion that strategic dissent leads to positive outcomes for organizations and estimate how negative its effects actually are. Managerial summary: Top management teams (TMTs) set the tone and direction for their firms in important ways. Top managers, however, often disagree over fundamental issues related to strategy. Such strategic dissent affects how important decisions are made, and thus how the firm performs. In more specific terms and contrary to popular belief, strategic dissent creates not only dysfunctional relationships among top managers, but also disrupts the process by which these managers exchange, discuss, and integrate information and ideas in making strategic decisions. In short, firms have not yet generated value through numerous perspectives, ideas, and opinions among their top managers. We discuss interventions that could prove helpful in efforts to benefit from having diverse cognitions in a TMT.     

A systematic assessment of the empirical support for transaction cost economics

Transaction cost economics (TCE) is one of the leading perspectives in management and organizational studies, yet debate continues regarding its empirical support. In this paper, we take stock of the large body of extant research and provide a systematic assessment of empirical evidence. In all, 308 statistical tests from 63 articles, selected according to a set of clear criteria, were examined across various dimensions. We assess not only the level of empirical support for the theory, but also the degree of paradigm consensus present in the empirical literature. Our analysis shows that results are mixed: while we found support in some areas (e.g., with regard to asset specificity), we also found considerable disagreement on how to operationalize some of TCE's central constructs and propositions, and relatively low levels of empirical support in other core areas (e.g., surrounding uncertainty and performance). We conclude that a more thorough empirical grounding of the theory's foundation is crucial to its future development, and offer several strategies for doing this. Copyright © 2003 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

A systematic literature review of sustainable purchasing and supply research: Theoretical perspectives and opportunities for IMP-based research

This paper evaluates and compares the theoretical lenses that underpin sustainable purchasing and supply management research. In particular, our interest is on evaluating the extent to which the IMP Interaction Approach is used to underpin or influence the focus of existing research and exploring the opportunities for further research into sustainable purchasing and supply guided by an IMP perspective. The methodology employed is a systematic literature review (Tranfield et al., 2003). A systematic search process is used to identify 1899 papers that are gradually reduced through a filtering process to 276 papers. The theoretical perspective of each paper is identified and recorded in a database along with methodology, unit of analysis and reported findings. We find that a significant proportion of sustainable purchasing and supply management papers adopt stakeholder theory, institutional theory and resource-based perspectives, however, relatively few papers rely on an IMP Interaction Approach. We evaluate the rationale for the typical theoretical perspectives adopted and discuss the potential for the IMP Interaction Approach to underpin studies of sustainable purchasing and supply management. The paper concludes by outlining future avenues of research that specify how the IMP Interaction Approach can underpin and further advance sustainable purchasing and supply research.     

Significant Issues for the Future of Product Innovation

Product innovation management, by definition, requires that we become comfortable dealing with change. As this journal enters its eleventh year of publication, the editor-in-chief asked each member of the editorial board to reflect upon changes and opportunities that they see influencing our profession during the coming decade. In our first installment of these essays, George Day, Bela Gold and Thomas Kuczmarski discuss the value of managing ideas, embracing a longer-term view of development opportunities, and creating a senior executive position charged with developing such opportunities. Each of these short essays is designed to introduce new perspectives. It is not essential that you agree with the recommendations, but we hope that you are stimulated as you reflect on the issues they present.     

Managing tensions in coopetition

Tensions are natural in coopetitive business relationships that simultaneously involve cooperation and competition. The purpose of this study is to investigate how tensions are managed in coopetitive business relationships and examine the potential outcomes of the management of such tensions. The study will focus on various kinds of coopetitive relationships and how the management of the different tensions produces specific outcomes. The empirical study is based on comparative case study research on coopetitive business networks that features two different kinds of cases. The findings of the study contribute to coopetition research by identifying several new perspectives on tensions. Different levels of cooperation and competition in a coopetitive relationship as well as other underlying issues cannot alone determine tensions, but aspects such as the management of tensions are crucial. Most tensions are managed by using styles of competition and avoidance and result in mixed outcomes, which implies both positive and negative perceptions.     

Significant Issues for the Future of Product Innovation

In recognition of JPIM's eleventh year of publication, the editor-in-chief solicited a series of thoughtful contributions from members of the editorial board. Members were asked to reflect upon changes and opportunities that they see influencing our profession during the coming decade. In this issue, Chris Voss examines our growing recognition of the interdependence of a variety of business processes: product innovation, product development, process innovation, technology acquisition, industrial design, total quality management, and quality function deployment. He supports the need to establish tighter linkages among these important elements of a successful new products program, which he labels "total innovation management." Like earlier contributions, this short essay is designed to introduce new perspectives. It is not essential that you agree with the recommendations, but we hope that you are stimulated as you reflect on the included issues.     

Balancing Work and Family: The Role of High-Commitment Environments

Recently, researchers have begun to recognize that the nature of jobs, the workplace environment, and more generally, the culture of the workplace can have a significant impact on the ability of workers to balance their work and family lives. This article examines the effect of high-performance work practices, job characteristics, and the work environment on workers' views about whether the company helps them balance work and family. Using data from a survey of workers across three manufacturing industries, we show that a high-commitment environment—characterized by high-performance work practices, intrinsically rewarding jobs, and understanding supervisors—positively influences employees' perceptions that the company is helping them achieve this balance. This article reinforces the view that helping workers balance work and family responsibilities is not just a matter of benefits and formal family-friendly policies. Rather, it also depends on the characteristics of jobs within the business enterprise.     

The quality of food risk management in Europe: Perspectives and priorities

In this paper, we address the issue of food risk management as practised in Western Europe. We begin by considering how food risks are managed, and then go on to consider how well they are managed. There are multiple answers to the ‘how well’ question, which are related to the varied perspectives of the different key stakeholders – from the food risk managers and producers, to the general public and the media. Consequently, there is no clear answer to the question of quality. What our review does identify is two priorities relevant to our understanding of effective food risk management: first, a need for further research to determine the source and nature of the different evaluative perspectives, and second, a need for the key stakeholders to appreciate and understand the alternative perspectives in order to enhance the effectiveness of the food risk management process.     

PERSPECTIVE: An Analysis of 22 Years of Research in JPIM*

Numerous articles have been published in the Journal of Product Innovation Management (JPIM) since its inception in 1984, representing the most advanced studies dedicated to the management practice in all of the functions involved in the total process of product innovation. It is timely to draw a research profile by investigating the research patterns and development in JPIM to reflect the evolution of the field. First of all, the present study performed a text analysis of 544 research articles published from 1984 to 2005 and then developed a list of research streams. Next, each article was analyzed by coding the following information: the author's background (i.e., academic or professional), the author's country of affiliation, the research topic, the structure of theoretical framework (i.e., analog, composite, or propositional), the type of research design, the quantitative analytical technique, the types of industries, and the countries investigated in the empirical studies. The results indicated that JPIM had made substantial progress in two points. The first is the expanded collaborations of authors, which are not only within the national boundary but also across countries and continents. With such a divergence of research traditions and cultural perspectives, this cooperation offers the potential to enrich the stock of new product development and innovation management theories as well as methodologies more than single‐country arrangement. The second is a high degree of science in respect of methodology. Although JPIM has become a major journal for business research, three opportunities of knowledge advancement were suggested. The first is to reduce the domination of American and European publication and to promote article submission from developing countries. The second concerns the need of relatively broad theoretical schema and diversified research methods. The last opportunity lies in the encouragement of research on certain promising topics.     

Effizientes Engpassmanagement zur Schaffung eines europäischen Strombinnenmarktes — die Rolle von finanziellen Übertragungsrechten

This paper assesses possible market designs for cross border electricity trading. The methodical approach is to split up and evaluate cross border trading into a long term and a short term perspective in a first step and afterwards reunite the two perspectives to find an optimal market design. Two possible congestion management systems are considered for each timeframe. After establishing test criteria, efficient long and short term congestion management systems are identified. As a next step the optimal solution out of the four integrated market designs is identified. These findings are followed by an analysis of the prerequisites for the implementation of the optimal market design. The paper arrives at the conclusion that the optimal market design for cross border electricity trade depends on the development of the electricity market and needs to be adapted in accordance with the actual maturity of the electricity market.     

Refining the search for project success factors: a multivariate, typological approach

Although the causes for project success and failure have been the subject of many studies, no conclusive evidence or common agreement has been achieved so far. One criticism involves the universalistic approach used often in project management studies, according to which all projects are assumed to be similar. A second problem is the issue of subjectiveness, and sometimes weakly defined success measures; yet another concern is the limited number of managerial variables examined by previous research. In the present study we use a project-specific typological approach, a multidimensional criteria for assessing project success, and a multivariate statistical analysis method. According to our typology projects were classified according to their technological uncertainty at project initiation and their system scope which is their location on a hierarchical ladder of systems and subsystems. For each of the 127 projects in our study that were executed in Israel, we recorded 360 managerial variables and 13 success measures. The use of a very detailed data and multivariate methods such as canonical correlation and eigenvector analysis enables us to account for all the interactions between managerial and success variables and to address a handful of perspectives, often left unanalyzed by previous research. Assessing the variants of managerial variables and their impact on project success for various types of projects, serves also a step toward the establishment of a typological theory of projects. Although some success factors are common to all projects, our study identified project-specific lists of factors, indicating for example, that high-uncertainty projects must be managed differently than low-uncertainty projects, and high-scope projects differently than low-scope projects.     

Risk management, project success, and technological uncertainty

In times of increased competition and globalization, project success becomes even more critical to business performance, and yet many projects still suffer delays, overruns, and even failure. Ironically, however, risk management tools and techniques, which have been developed to improve project success, are used too little, and many still wonder how helpful they are. In this paper we present the results of an empirical study devoted to this question. Based on data collected on over 100 projects performed in Israel in a variety of industries, we examine the extent of usage of some risk management practices, such as risk identification, probabilistic risk analysis, planning for uncertainty and trade-off analysis, the difference in application across different types of projects, and their impact on various project success dimensions. Our findings suggest that risk management practices are still not widely used. Only a limited number of projects in our study have used any kind of risk management practices and many have only used some, but not all the available tools. When used, risk management practices seem to be working, and appear to be related to project success. We also found that risk management practices were more applicable to higher risk projects. The impact of risk management is mainly on better meeting time and budget goals and less on product performance and specification. In this case, we also found some differences according levels of technological uncertainty. Our conclusion is that risk management is still at its infancy and that at this time, more awareness to the application, training, tool development, and research on risk management is needed.     

A Bibliometric Review of Open Innovation: Setting a Research Agenda

Through an objective, systematic, and comprehensive review of the literature on open innovation (OI), this article identifies gaps in existing research, and provides recommendations on how hitherto unused or underused organizational, management, and marketing theories can be applied to advance the field. This study adopts a novel approach by combining two complementary bibliometric methods of co‐citation analysis and text mining of 321 journal articles on OI that enables a robust empirical analysis of the intellectual streams and key concepts underpinning OI. Results reveal that researchers do not sufficiently draw on theoretical perspectives external to the field to examine multiple facets of OI. Research also seems confined to innovation‐specific journals with its focus restricted to a select few OI issues, thereby exerting limited influence on the wider business community. This study reveals three distinct areas within OI research: (1) firm‐centric aspects of OI, (2) management of OI networks, and (3) role of users and communities in OI. Thus far, studies have predominantly investigated the firm‐centric aspects of OI, with a particular focus on the role of knowledge, technology, and R&D from the innovating firm's perspective, while the other two areas remain relatively under‐researched. Further gaps in the literature emerge that present avenues for future research, namely to: (1) develop a more comprehensive understanding of OI by including diverse perspectives (users, networks, and communities), (2) direct increased attention to OI strategy formulation and implementation, and (3) enhance focus on customer co‐creation and conceptualize “open service innovation.” Marketing (e.g., service‐dominant logic), organizational behavior (e.g., communities of practice), and management (e.g., dynamic capabilities) offer suitable theoretical lenses and/or concepts to address these gaps.     

Reinventing the wheel? A critical view of demand-chain management

Demand–supply alignment as a means for value creation in the marketplace is not a new concept either in the marketing or supply chain management literature. Recent developments in demand chain management (DCM) revamp this issue, which is particularly critical for today's firms. DCM studies, however, remain isolated from wider academic debates and are unclear on the processes required for the demand–supply alignment inside the firm, incurring the risk of becoming irrelevant. Through a systematic literature review and qualitative content analysis, we leveraged the existing knowledge on interfaces between intra-firm departments to identify the dimensions of demand–supply alignment and map the drivers, enablers and consequences of implementing such an alignment. These outcomes, together with theoretical perspectives, are used to improve the idea of DCM, ground theoretical reflections on the concept and suggest avenues for research. This study should interest researchers and practitioners willing to adopt the DCM strategy.     

Integrating Customer Requirements into Product Designs

Despite all best efforts, the design process often leads to the introduction of products that do not meet customer expectations. Although the design team typically applies customer-related information from several sources, the product design somehow fails to satisfy customer requirements. Clearly, we need to develop a better understanding of the process by which designers in large development organizations transform information about customer requirements into the final design specification. To improve our understanding of this process, Antonio J. Bailetti and Paul F. Litva examine design managers' perspectives on the sources of customer requirement information. During the evolution of a product design, the design team applies information that is endorsed by marketing and product management. Common sources of such information include commercial specifications, inferences from existing products and services, deployment studies, and external standards. When this management-endorsed information is deemed inadequate, designers supplement it by creating and sharing their own customer-related information. This local information includes the results of benchmarking function and performance, the designers' perceptions of a service provider's installed base of equipment, and validations of intermediate designs. Marketing and product management cannot easily review the local information that designers create and share in evolving a final design. This article highlights the importance of creating mechanisms for ensuring that customer requirement information from various sources is internally consistent. To meet this goal of consistency, organizations must ensure that customer requirements information produced by marketing satisfies the information processing requirements of the design community. In addition, the knowledge that designers actually apply to produce a design must incorporate customer requirement information endorsed by marketing and product management at all stages of product development.     

战略管理领域中的厂商理论评述

厂商理论不仅在经济学中占有重要地位,对战略管理领域也有深刻的影响,尤其是＂能力＂和＂契约＂观点的厂商理论,对战略管理的影响最为显著。＂契约＂观点所延伸的交易成本理论,已对管理领域——如营销管理、战略管理及组织理论造成了深远的影响,但＂契约＂观点的限制使其无法处理动态的问题,因而有＂能力＂观点的出现。＂能力＂观点的影响正在扩大,尤其是在战略管理领域,资源基础观点即是承继能力视角的观念。而资源基础观点可以说是近年来战略管理的主流观点。在此针对厂商理论做一简单的文献回顾,并特别针对＂契约＂及＂能力＂观点进行探讨,希望能厘清影响战略管理的厂商理论的概念。     

试论文物保护工程中的造价管理与实践

随着国家经济和社会的不断发展,各地开展文物保护工程的项目不断增多,对文物保护工程的造价管理提出了更高要求.笔者发现长期以来对该领域的工程造价研究还不够,实际工作中经常引起造价争议,进而给确定工程造价合理化和市场化带来困扰.文章从文物古建筑、古墓葬、古遗址等保护工程出发,并结合国家文物局发布的《文物建筑保护工程预算定额(...     

Competitive strategies of religious organizations

In recent years, sociologists and economists have given increased attention to studying religious organizations. Their writings raise unresolved issues related to topics within strategic management. This study brings theoretical perspectives from strategic management together with those of sociology and economics to understand the organizational and competitive aspects of religion. The initial portion of this article examines the nature of religious production, competition, and organization. Subsequent sections elaborate specific strategic management issues arising in religious organizations. Resource‐based and institutional perspectives provide a foundation for analyzing the sources of sustainable competitive advantage among religious organizations. The latter portion of this article shifts to the industry level of analysis and examines the roles of political strategies and strategic alliances in shaping religious competition. This theoretical discussion generates testable propositions regarding the competitive strategies of religious organizations and opens opportunities for future research. Copyright © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Ownership and Pay in Britain

Drawing on principal–agent perspectives on corporate governance, the article examines whether employees’ hourly pay is related to ownership dispersion. Using linked employee‐workplace data from the British Workplace Employment Relations Survey 2011, and using a variety of techniques including interval regression and propensity score matching, average hourly pay is found to be higher in dispersed ownership workplaces. The premium is broadly constant across most of the wage distribution, but falls at the 95th percentile to become statistically non‐significant. This contrasts with earlier papers which indicate that higher level employees are the primary beneficiaries of higher pay from dispersed ownership. The dispersed ownership pay premium is not readily explained by efficiency wage perspectives but is consistent with a managerial desire for a ‘quiet life’.