Stakeholder communication in service implementation networks: expanding relationship management theory to the nonprofit sector through organizational network analysis

• Nonprofits increasingly participate in government-funded service implementation networks (SINs). However, extant research does not explore how organizations might strategically tailor communication to different stakeholder groups or use different communication tools for management. Stakeholders are not a monolithic group, and communicating with stakeholders within SINs is hypothesized to involve different forms of communication than communicating with stakeholders outside of the network. In this paper, relationship management theory is used to examine strategic communication with stakeholder groups within and outside of SINs. Both traditional and emergent (e.g., social media) forms of communication are examined. Survey and interview data on communication within and outside communication networks are analyzed using organizational network analysis techniques. The findings indicate strategic communication in the network differs from strategic communication with stakeholders outside the network. Within the network, organizations place varying emphasis on the use of traditional and emergent forms of communication for management, implying nonprofit managers funded under government grants continue to rely on face-to-face and phone communication and have yet to adopt emerging communication strategies to assist in the management of their programs with their partner organizations.

Copyright © 2014 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Innovation, Identities and Resistance: The Social Construction of An Innovation Network

This paper explores the process of diffusion of a socio-technical innovation among workers of a large microelectronics firm. Actor–network theory (ANT), which draws on the sociology of science and technology, is applied to the analysis of socio-technical innovation in order to understand the actions of creating and putting the actors' arguments into action. Actors constructed and organized these arguments with the aim of diffusing innovation among workers whose support was essential to the project's success. The authors of the innovation project wanted to change the state of relations between different actors. In the present study, the aligment of identities was established according to the criteria defined by the managers and engineers but the expected benefits of the innovation, in this case, technology and teamwork, were not automatically accepted. Network analysis reveals how persuasive arguments that repudiate the old reality and justify steps to create the new reality are constructed. This article will reveal how innovation is constituted and the form it takes by following the chain of arguments and the responses of the actors involved.     

组织模式变迁的一个新研究框架——基于信息技术革命与高素质组织参与者对组织与环境关系的介入

组织与环境的关系，是组织动态性、开放性和能动性的综合体现。组织与环境关系的发展促使了组织模式的转变。信息技术革命和高素质组织参与者对组织与环境的关系具有重要的影响，弄清楚它们对组织与环境关系的具体影响过程，是了解组织模式演变的基础。因此，一个基于信息技术革命和高素质组织参与者的行为给组织与环境之间的动态性、开放性和能动性带来的影响的全面分析框架，是研究组织模式变化与组织与环境关系之间联系的合适选择。     

Fragmentation in Urban Movements: The Role of Urban Planning Processes

Urban plans and projects that aim to initiate the redevelopment and gentrification of urban areas create social and ecological pressures on urban environments and thereby stimulate urban movements. These movements have a lifespan, which evolves in interaction with planning authorities under local or central governments and may be marked by institutionalization and co‐optation, as well as fragmentation among the people involved in them. Fragmentations are usually based on conflicting individual and collective interests, but may also be the result of different political perspectives in groups. This article is based on a case study conducted in two adjacent gecekondu neighbourhoods of Istanbul, Gülsuyu and Gülensu, where urban politics have played an important role in efforts to resist plans for urban transformation. It shows that fragmentations are very likely to occur in urban movements during planning processes in a neoliberal era, owing to the different perspectives in the movement on what the just city is.     

Team trust over time: Modeling reciprocal and contextual influences in action teams

Team trust is increasingly being recognized as important for team performance, but little is currently understood about how it develops and evolves over the course of a team's lifespan. Because trust and related team constructs are inherently dynamic, this represents a critical gap in the literature that needs to be addressed before team trust can be fully understood and effectively facilitated in practice. Of particular relevance to these gaps are action teams – those that come together to perform under time-constrained, yet often high-stakes conditions. While scholars have begun to explore how trust develops in these contexts, little is understood about how it evolves over time. As such, we propose a theoretical model of team trust in action teams that incorporates its dynamic nature, models the reciprocal relationship between team trust and team performance, delineates unique mediating pathways based on the team's progression in the multiphasic performance cycle, and considers the role of moderating influences that may strengthen or attenuate the impact of performance feedback on subsequent team trust. Specific research implications are discussed, providing a rich foundation for future empirical studies, and ultimately, the generation of evidence-based interventions for facilitating trust as teams cycle through multiple performance episodes over time.     

In search of rationality: the purposes behind the use of formal analysis in organizations.

This paper describes the results of a study that examines how formal analysis is actually used in practice in three different organizations. Four main groups of purposes for formal analysis--information, communication, direction and control, and symbolic purposes--are identified and related to the nature of the social and hierarchical relationships between those who initiate analysis, those who do it, and those who receive it. It is concluded that, far from being antithetical as often assumed, formal analysis and social interaction are inextricably linked in organizational decision making and that different structural configurations may generate different patterns of use of analysis.     

Organizational Surveillance of Computer-Mediated Workplace Communication: Employee Privacy Concerns and Responses

Email, social media, and other types of computer-mediated workplace communication tools can enhance flexibility in how employees perform their jobs, expand networking opportunities, increase profits, cut costs, and enable collaboration among diverse groups across the globe. Despite their advantages, these technology tools can also cause security breaches, financial loss, employee distraction, and lawsuits. To prevent such damaging consequences, many companies monitor their employees’ computer-mediated workplace communication. However, this surveillance is often met with resistance from employees as it taps into concerns over workers’ privacy rights, due process, and fairness. We examine these employee concerns through an empirical study of full-time working adults’ beliefs about their computer-mediated workplace communication privacy and their evaluations of organizational justice, trust in upper management, and commitment to the organization. Our results suggest that employees who perceive less computer-mediated workplace communication privacy tend to view their organization’s policies as less fair, trust upper management less, and demonstrate less commitment to their organizations. Furthermore, results indicate that procedural justice mediated the relationship between privacy and organizational commitment and moderated the relationship between privacy and organizational trust.     

INTEGRATED SYSTEM, AUTONOMOUS DEPARTMENTS: ORGANIZATIONAL INVALIDITY AND SYSTEM CHANGE IN A UNIVERSITY*

Research on the relationship between computers and organization structure has mainly focused on the probable impact of technology on features of structure, while the effects of structure on technology have been relatively little considered apart from the way ‘organizationally invalid’ systems cause conflict and resistance. In recent processual perspectives, the relationship between technology and organization is seen not as deterministic but as one of mutual influence, with the outcome both for the organization and the technology emerging from interaction among various stakeholders during system development and implementation. This article, using a longitudinal case study, shows how organization structures can impact on the development process so as to alter computer-based systems to a design which is unintended but more consistent with existing organizational arrangements. It also discusses how systems specialists and managers can assess organizational invalidity, and offers a contingent framework for the courses of action to be taken if invalidity occurs.     

基于企业不同发展阶段的组织结构状态演化规律研究

本文以揭示中国制造企业不同发展阶段的组织结构状态演化规律为研究主题,采用多案例比较分析方法,从组织结构的专门化、规范化、集权化三个状态维度,探索企业在从小到大的发展过程中,组织结构状态的具体变化。根据研究发现,在企业从单一企业初创、拓展到集团化发展、集团资本运营的过程中,企业的组织结构将从由生产经营类部门组成逐步发展到由战略规划、投资管理、人力财务、监督管理类部门组成,各类职能的规范化次序遵循由业务类到职能类到文化与战略投资类的规律,而在权力关系上,则遵循从高度集权到部分分权、以分权为主的规律。     

The sociology of a market analysis tool: How industry analysts sort vendors and organize markets

The information technology (IT) marketplace appears to be shaped by new kinds of specialist industry analysts that link technology supply and use through offering a commodified form of knowledge and advice. We focus on the work of one such organisation, the Gartner Group, and with how it produces a market analysis tool called the ‘Magic Quadrant’. Widely circulated amongst the IT community, the device compares and sorts vendors according to a number of more or less intangible properties (such as vendor ‘competence’ and ‘vision’). Given that potential adopters of IT systems are drawn to assess the reputation and likely behaviour of vendors, these tools play an important role in mediating choice during procurement. Our interest is in understanding how such objects are constructed as well as how they wield influence. We draw on the recent ‘performativity’ debate in Economic Sociology and the Sociology of Finance to show how Magic Quadrants are not simply describing but reshaping aspects of the IT arena. Importantly, in sketching this sociology of a market analysis tool, we also attend to the contested nature of the Magic Quadrant. Whilst Gartner attempt to establish this device as an ‘impartial’ and ‘legitimate’ arbiter of vendor performance, it is often viewed sceptically on the grounds that industry analysts are not always independent of the vendors they are assessing. Paradoxically these devices remain influential despite these sceptical assessments.     

The impact of project managers' communication competencies: Validation and extension of a research model for virtuality,satisfaction, and productivity on project teams

Current research continues to establish the importance of communication in the management of projects. However, little is known about the behavioral aspects of project managers' communication competency especially as they relate to crucial outcomes in virtual environments. This article reports on a survey‐based research study of 564 respondents from the Chief Project Officer Web site that validates and extends a research model of project managers' competencies in decoding and encoding communication, the satisfaction and productivity of their team members, and the degree of virtuality present in the project. The findings indicate that project managers' competencies in decoding and encoding communication significantly contribute to team member satisfaction and productivity. In addition, geographic dispersion plays an unexpected and significant role in how project managers' competency in decoding and encoding communication impacts team member satisfaction and productivity.     

信息时代辅导员在移动虚拟社区工作途径及方法

随着3G的日臻成熟、4G通讯技术初步普及发展。各类移动设备平板电脑、智能手机等便携式移动网络终端设备的广泛使用,随之带来的各类移动通讯客户端交流平台迅速发展,QQ、微信、微博、SNS虚拟社区类交流工具,基于移动客户通讯的发展,形成了新型的移动虚拟社区交流方式。这些交流方式已经深入到各个群体,深受大学生及青少年喜爱,同时也为传统辅导员工作方式带来新的问题。     

Interorganisationale Routinen – Entstehung, Implikationen sowie Möglichkeiten und Grenzen einer zielorientierten Gestaltung

The article reviews how inter-organizational routines emerge, how they are refined by agents, and how this influences the trajectories of inter-organizational patterns of action, which are also relevant for emergent activities in dynamic environments. Motivated by empirical results in the “New Media Services” area, an understanding of routines and their precise modeling potential is reflected and conceptually grounded in the context of the (co-)evolutionary competence-based theory of the firm. First implications for a necessary, but also possible routine management are deduced. The self-strengthening effects that occur during the emergence of routines must be recognized and the (limited) possibilities of purposeful control applied, to prevent the danger of unreflecting persistency and narrowed decision capabilities.     

Investments in flexible production capacity

We examine the technology and capacity choice problem of a multi-output firm facing stochastic demands in a continuous-time framework. The firm can install output-specific capital, or, at greater cost, flexible capital that can be used to produce different outputs. Investment is irreversible. The firm must choose a technology and decide how much capital to install, knowing it can add more later as demand evolves. We formulate the capacity choice problem as a singular stochastic control problem, show that the value of the firm equals the value of its installed capital plus the value of its options to add capacity in the future, and derive an optimal investment rule that maximizes the firm's market value. We also address the analogous problem for a multi-input firm that faces stochastically evolving factor costs, and can install input-specific or flexible capital.     

The Wicked Character of Sustainable Supply Chain Management: Evidence from Sustainability Reports

Supply chains are changing their business paradigm as they strive for sustainability and not just for increasing profits. Sustainability, however, is a concept that is open to interpretation since it is based on societal and organizational values. Little is known about what companies actually mean when referring to sustainability, and how this contrasts with the understanding at different echelons of the supply chain. Diverging interpretations and translations of sustainability among stakeholders, termed wicked problems, affect the progress of sustainable supply chain management. This paper aims to contribute to closing the gap between our common sense expectations and the actual evidence from sustainability reports of how sustainability evolves from abstract ideas to operational practices across the supply chain. To this end, this study employs a computer‐aided content analysis of 142 corporate sustainability reports across 12 industries. Building on the findings, and using the lens of wicked problems, this paper provides guidance to practitioners on how to develop strategies that are effective across the whole supply chain. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment     

Participation and communication in virtual teams using representational avatars

The study examined how quantitative formative assessment tools may be applied to virtual team communication and provide quality and progress metrics to virtual team leaders. Representational avatars benefit virtual team communication and productivity. Organizational leaders need measurement tools to assess avatar innovation and monitor progress in virtual teams. A goal of this research was to supply a suite of tools to evaluate the potential for avatars to improve as well as monitor and measure virtual team participation and communication. The virtual teams were composed of students (N= 97) at the Auckland University of Technology (AUT) in New Zealand and Uppsala University in Sweden. Students enrolled in the Intelligent Business Systems (IBS) course formed teams by country and were randomly assigned to a text‐only or avatar‐enriched communication format. Survey results indicated that text‐based teams were perceived as efficient but lacking in inspired participation. Avatar‐enriched teams noted frustration with software but rated their experience as enjoyable. No significant difference in communication quality between teams was indicated, but avatar‐enriched teams posted significantly more words on weekly logbooks than text‐based teams. Recommendations include a model for data disaggregation that may be of value to improve assessment, productivity, and administrative costs of technology‐enhanced virtual teams.     

An Empirical Identification of Project Management Toolsets and a Comparison Among Project Types

This article presents the results of an empirical investigation of project management practice. Practice is investigated through the study of the extent of use of a large number of practices, tools, and techniques specific to project management. A sample of 2,339 practitioners participating in a large‐scale international survey is used for this article. The sample size and the diversity of contexts in which the respondents are working render the analysis feasible and the results reliable. The data is analyzed to identify patterns of practice. More specifically, using principal component analysis, the research identifies patterns that demonstrate that practitioners use project management tools and techniques in groups or “toolsets.” A brief attempt is made to compare results with A Guide to the Project Management Body of Knowledge (PMBOK® Guide) (PMI, 2008 ) Knowledge Areas and Process Groups. The article also shows how practice varies with the management of different types of projects: engineering and construction; business and financial services; information technology (IT) and telecommunications; and software development projects. The identification of these variations has important consequences for practice and for the study of practice.     

金融危机背景下美联储的非常规货币政策操作

面对金融危机，关联储不仅非常规地使用传统货币政策工具，而且还采取大量激进的非常规措施，通过购买各种证券向市场注入流动性以及运用信息沟通引导市场预期降低长期借贷成本的方式缓解金融市场紧缩局面。非常规货币政策是应对非常时期的非常措施，随着经济的复苏，各国经济刺激政策如何寻找安全退出路径是这一时期全球央行的主要任务。