The new challenges of organizing intellectual property in complex industries: A discussion based on the case of Thales

The defense industries in France and elsewhere have, in recent years, undergone important technological, organizational and institutional changes that have profoundly altered their architectures. These changes have introduced a new division of labor bringing new opportunities for interaction leading to the creation of additional assets. In this context, the issue of protecting innovations and their exploitation has become central. Managing intellectual property rights (IPR) requires industrial groups to draw on additional capabilities. This article analyzes these evolutions and focuses in particular on the new organizational arrangements that have accompanied them. Using the case of Thales, which in 2005 outsourced its Intellectual Property (IP), we answer questions such as: why should IP be outsourced; how should the outsourcing of IP activities be organized; and, how should capabilities involved in this new organizational arrangement be managed. These issues lie at the center of this research and illustrate new challenges inherent to in-house and outsourced IPR management strategies.     

历代亭台楼阁界画的山水美学思想与现代园林设计

亭台楼阁界画山水美学思想为现代园林设计提供了丰富的思想基础,多元的表现形式,成熟的艺术手法,丰富的审美意境,深厚的文化底蕴。研究历史上界画的艺术演变过程及其深刻的美学思想,作为现代园林设计的借鉴和创新的思想之源,达到两者完美融合。研究亭台楼阁界画的美学思想对现代园林设计的影响具有重大的理论价值和现实意义。     

论诗歌意境范畴的审美特征

意境是我国古典美学及文论的重要范畴。文学意境具有强烈的空间美、动态美、传神美,情景交融的表现特征、虚实相生的结构特征和韵味无穷的审美特征,集中体现了华夏民族的审美理想。     

Searching for a balance: work–family practices,work–team design,and organizational performance

The crucial impact of work–family issues on employee's well-being has been recognized and responded with a variety of research in field of organizational behavior. However, few studies examine the impact of how work–family practices affect productivity at firm-level. Following the research stream of strategic human resource management, we proposed that work–family may form the norm of reciprocity, which is a more sophisticated and more critical, internal social-structure component to enable organizational performance. We also examine the contingent effect, work–team structure – on the extent to which the work–family practices are appreciated by employees – and then create complementarities. We conduct a longitudinal study and utilize a data set of 204 Taiwanese public-traded firms to test our hypotheses. The results show that, contrary to our prediction, utilizing work–family practices does not have a significant positive impact on organizational productivity. However, the most important finding of this study is that there are synergies between work–family practices and work–team design on organizational productivity. Work–team design is an important situation in which the returns of work–family practices can be enhanced.     

Emergenz organisationaler Fähigkeiten

The capabilities based view of the firm is a major approach in current strategic management research. It focuses on organizational capabilities as the fundamental unit of analysis and states that firms evolve through evolutionary processes. What organizational capabilities are and how they emerge and evolve are central research questions. Existing research focuses only on partial aspects of the emergence of organizational capabilities. Hence, an integrative framework to address these issues is missing. This contribution aims at developing such an integrative framework by a critical review of existing research. Different perspectives are combined to explain the emergence and evolution of organizational capabilities while focusing on a lifecycle model. This contribution starts with an explanation and a taxonomy of pivotal terms of the capabilities based view. Different ways of the emergence and the development of organizational competencies and their relationships will be systematically explained by examining theoretical backgrounds of evolutionary economics and path dependency theory. This contribution ends with a summary and discusses future research streams.     

主体间性的研究视域

目前国内对主体间性主要围绕它的理论内涵及其运用展开,并在实践美学与后实践美学的论争中走向成熟。其实质在于对主体性问题的重新理解和在新的条件下对于文学研究的反思和进一步发展。作为新的理论形态的研究,它能否在美的本质和范畴上取得突破,也正是我们今后研究价值的理论空间。     

Managing Dispersed Knowledge: Organizational Problems,Managerial Strategies,and Their Effectiveness

While there has been much progress in understanding organizational knowledge and knowledge management practices, some questions still remain unresolved. This paper argues that at least one important driver of knowledge‐related organizational problems has been rather neglected so far: that is, the dispersed nature of organizational knowledge. The paper analyses the organizational problems and managerial responses arising from dispersed knowledge. It identifies three drivers by which the dispersedness of knowledge leads to management problems: namely, it creates large numbers, asymmetries, and uncertainty. A number of managerial strategies for dealing with the different components of the problems created by the dispersedness of knowledge are identified and their effectiveness analysed, thereby informing managers as to how best to deal with dispersed knowledge. The analysis of uncertainty‐related implications of dispersed knowledge uncovers an overlooked distinction that is helpful for understanding dispersed knowledge and its managerial implications. This is the distinction between uncertainty and ambiguity, i.e. a strong form of uncertainty that cannot be remedied by the standard strategy of increasing the information available.     

Entrepreneurial action and the Euro-American social science tradition: pragmatism,realism and looking beyond ‘the entrepreneur’

Entrepreneurship studies are dominated by the disciplines of economics and psychology and work within a limiting methodological frame of reference; a ‘scientistic’ and individualistic framework that dominates the US-led mainstream of research. To achieve a more balanced scholarship, it is helpful to look at an alternative style of research and analysis which has deep and intertwined European and American roots. This looks to other social sciences such as sociology, as well as to history and the philosophy of science. Its adoption would encourage to shift the focus away from ‘entrepreneurs’ and onto the much broader phenomenon of entrepreneurial action or ‘entrepreneuring’ in its societal and institutional contexts. Such a shift would open up a greatly expanded range of research questions and enable a better balance to be achieved between attention to individual entrepreneurial actors and their organizational, societal and institutional contexts. A pragmatist and realist frame of reference, which recognizes both the importance of processes of social construction and the existence of a ‘real world’, has considerable potential to enrich and expand the scope of entrepreneurship scholarship.     

人-组织匹配度与工作绩效之间的相关性研究

人-组织匹配(P-O Fit)已成为当今国内外企业管理者和学者研究的热点领域,也是人力资源管理与组织行为学研究的热点问题。主要是因为二者的匹配度能很好地预测个人的工作态度和行为结果,从而影响组织绩效。本文以深圳一民营高科技企业为调查对象,分析研究了个人、组织价值观及其匹配与工作满意度、工作绩效的关系与影响。     

Core issues in sustainable supply chain management – a Delphi study

Sustainable supply chain management has emerged as a growing topic, receiving increasing interest in the sustainability and supply chain management area. So far, the field is dominated by either case or survey based research. Few attempts have been made to take a broader look at the overarching issues, which form core topics of sustainable supply chain management. This paper presents the findings from a Delphi study where experts were asked to contribute their opinion. The Delphi study allows an aggregation of these opinions and extracts underlying topics in a structured manner. Four major topics were identified, which are (1) pressures and incentives for sustainable supply chain management, (2) identifying and measuring impacts on sustainable supply chain management, (3) supplier management (particularly addressing issues at the supplier–buyer interface) and (4) supply chain management (dealing with issues across all companies involved in the supply chain). The research presented contributes to substantiating and consolidating the field of sustainable supply chain management. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment.     

Theoretical foundations of Swedish entrepreneurship and small-business research

Our main purpose is to test the proposition that Swedish entrepreneurship and small-business research has established a theoretical platform of its own over the last quarter of a century. In order to cope with that challenge we have to provide answers to some basic questions, for example: (i) What theoretical basic elements can be identified in Swedish entrepreneurship and small-business research? (ii) Can we detect shifts in the theoretical basis over time? (iii) To what extent does the research accumulate to form a unified body of knowledge? References used in doctoral theses within this field of research between 1970 and 1995 constitute the basis for the analysis. The results of the study show that the research field is deeply rooted in the sphere of business administration, primarily in organisation and decision theory, and in a strong qualitative research tradition. The field is still very fragmented — it is difficult to identify any “core literature” and the number of different journals used in the research is large. However, during the last decade some interesting changes have taken place: (i) interest has grown among researchers in the field to seek the roots of the subject, which means that more references are made to the “classical works” in the research field, (ii) the academisation of the field has increased, as manifested in the growing use of scientific journals, as against official publications and “grey research literature”, and (iii) theoretical linkages to other fields of research (apart from business administration) have grown stronger. The results indicate greater specialisation and more attention paid to nuances in the research due to clearer definitions of important concepts and the generation of a vocabulary and models specific to the field. Also, the field is in the process of distancing itself from a purely technical approach to knowledge. However, we will still reject the initial proposition that the research field has developed a robust theoretical platform. The citation analysis provides an emergent pattern in the development of entrepreneurship and small-business research. In the seventies the research was empirically orientated, with a view to describing the phenomenon and making it visible in different contexts. The eighties were characterised by the positioning of entrepreneurship and small-business research within business administration, whereas the nineties have been marked by an attempt to create a separate identity as a distinct academic field of study. This is reflected in a growing interest in the origins of this field of research and a broadening of the research beyond the frame set by business administration. We believe that a favourable platform for a future specialisation of research challenges and integration of lines of thought is thereby created, which in turn will help the research field to mature and to develop its own theories and methodologies.     

Rhetorical History as Institutional Work

Rhetorical history has emerged as a useful theoretical construct that bridges the long recognized gap between historical and organizational scholarship. Despite its growing popularity, the precise nature of rhetorical history as a construct, its scope conditions, and its utility in resolving critical issues in historical organizational analysis remains unclear. This paper addresses these issues. We define rhetorical history and contextualize the construct by elaborating its relationship to associated concepts like collective memory, rhetoric, and narrative. We ground the construct by reviewing literature that has applied rhetorical history in both theory and empirical research. Our inductive review identifies four recurring themes in which rhetorical history is used to construct perceptions of; (a) continuity and discontinuity, (b) similarity and difference, (c) winners and losers, and (d) morality and immorality. We conclude with a discussion of how rhetorical history is an essential mechanism of institutional work.     

REDISCOVERING HEGEL: THE 'NEW HISTORICISM' IN ORGANIZATION AND MANAGEMENT STUDIES

This paper advances the argument that a particular form of culturally, rather than materialistically, based historicism dominated organization and management studies in the 1980s. the 1970s were dominated by a materialistically based form of historicism in which economic, technological and organizational imperatives were deemed to drive the evolutionary dynamics, trajectories and outcomes of institutional and organizational transformation. In sharp contrast, the 1980s witnessed the rise of culturally or ideationally based forms of historicist thought and analysis in which the explanatory and political significance of factors located in a society's or organization's 'material base' were substantially downgraded in favour of variables embedded in their 'ideological superstructures'. the paper traces the emergence, progress and implications of this cultural historicism in relation to four distinct, but interrelated discourses - enterprise, flexibility, quality and human resource management. It also suggests that this analysis raises a number of fundamental theoretical and methodological issues concerned with three different approaches to the study of the interconnections between intellectual and institutional change in 'late' or 'post'-modern societies - that is, the history of ideas, the sociology of knowledge, and technologies of government. the paper concludes with the argument that each of these broad approaches needs to be brought into clearer theoretical and methodological alignment in order to develop a more subtle and sophisticated understanding of the dynamics of, and elective affinity between, intellectual and institutional change. It also suggests that this need for a clearer theoretical alignment between these three approaches will become particularly pressing in the 1990s as an alternative discourse of citizenship emerges to challenge the ideological hegemony of the discourse of enterprise with its roots in cultural historicism.     

IT商业价值实现范式研究及其延伸探析

IT商业价值是信息系统管理领域最为热门的研究课题之一，然而现有文献囿于一种固有的研究范式，即从IT投资、经过一些中间因素到IT影响，再到企业绩效。通过对此研究范式的研究，发现其中存在的一些不足之处。在此基础上，从供应链、流程和信息价值等方面提出一个新的研究范式，作为对现有研究的一个延伸和补充。     

Intellectual Capital Profiles: An Examination of Investments and Returns*

ABSTRACT Using data collected from executives in 208 organizations, this study takes a configurational approach to examine how human, social, and organizational capital coexist to form distinct intellectual capital profiles across organizations. We then examine how investments in human resource management (HRM), information technology (IT), and research and development (R&D) differ across these intellectual capital profiles and investigate differences in financial returns and Tobin's q between the profiles. Results indicate that a relatively small group of superior performing organizations exhibit high levels of human, social, and organizational capital. Most firms, however, tend to focus primarily on only one form of intellectual capital, and a small group of underperforming organizations have very low levels of all three types of intellectual capital. At a general level, HRM and IT investments appear to influence intellectual capital development more than R&D investments. More specifically, HRM investments tend to be higher in firms with profiles high in human and social capital, while IT investments are stronger in firms with profiles high in social capital. Further, HRM, IT, and R&D investments are all very high in the group of superior performing organizations that have high levels of human, social, and organizational capital.     

Does Project Management Affect Business Productivity? Evidence From Australian Small to Medium Enterprises

A fundamental assumption of project management practice and research is that using project management to achieve organizational objectives improves organizational performance. However, there is little published research that directly questions this assumption. This paper tests the hypothesis that using project management increases the productivity of small to medium enterprises, using data from two longitudinal surveys of Australian businesses with less than 200 staff members. These data were used to create models of the relationship between productivity and business skills using binary logistic regression. The models demonstrate that project management has a significant impact on small to medium enterprise productivity.     

A journey of social sustainability in organization during MDG & SDG period: A bibliometric analysis

Organizational sustainability is a multi-facet paradigm widely used to address perennial business challenges such as climate change, industrial waste, the economies of scale and social well-being, etc. In the last three decades, extensive research has been performed on ecological or economic sustainability, ignoring the third pillar of sustainability. Given the importance of humans and society-a center-stage of inclusive development-this paper aims to conduct a bibliometric analysis to examine the growth of organizational social sustainability (OSS) from 2000 to 2021 during MDG & SDG periods. A total of 1566 publications are analyzed using Scopus and the Web of Science (WoS) database. Citation networks, bibliographic coupling, and thematic mapping have explored influential work, intellectual structure, and research gaps. The study findings demonstrated that most publications are during the SDG period, with Sustainability as the most productive journal and the USA as the most contributing country. The top 10 active institutions are from Australia, France, and Spain. The top contributing authors are from France, but the USA is at the top in citations. Contributions are lacking from large portions of Africa. Keyword analysis showed that “social sustainability,” “sustainable development,” “environmental sustainability,” “sustainable supply change management,” “circular economy,” and “social life cycle assessment” are the main topics. Keyword analysis and thematic mapping show that despite increased publications in the field of organizational social sustainability, OSS research is still far from focusing on the stakeholders' benefits, satisfaction, and subjective well-being. Moreover, quantitative assessment of OSS based on sustainability standards such as Global Reporting Initiatives (GRI) and Value Reporting Foundation (VRF) standards was found scant in the given field. The present research concluded with scope and opportunity for future research in the area of OSS.     

Materiality in integrated and sustainability reporting: A paradigm shift?

This paper investigates the implementation of integrated reporting (IR) by Generali, one of the most important listed companies in Italy. The research questions we aim at answering are the following: Is the IR approach to materiality inherently different from the sustainability reporting (SR) approach? Does IR lead to the identification of different material topics than does SR? On the one hand, institutional theory suggests that IR and SR material topics are going to be significantly different because IR is mainly driven by a market logic, whereas SR is inspired by a stakeholder logic. On the other hand, organizational change theory predicts there will be some resistance to change by the organization, therefore leading to IR and SR topics being similar. In order to answer our research questions, we implement two empirical analyses. First, we propose and develop an innovative methodological approach on the basis of content analysis, which allows measuring the materiality of different issues under the IR approach. Second, we rely on evidence obtained through interviews, which suggests that IR and SR approaches to materiality are inherently different.     

Challenges for regional science research: past and present

With regional science now into its seventh decade, it is timely to step back and look at what regional science is about, the past challenges it has faced, particularly its relevance, and to identify some of the challenges it has confronted in the past and at present. The paper demonstrates regional science research has had, and continues to have, policy relevance, as well as being relevant for business, and has addressed important issues. It provides an overview of recent commentaries on issues regional scientists might now be addressing.