Organizational Performance Consequences of Age Diversity: Inspecting the Role of Diversity‐Friendly HR Policies and Top Managers’ Negative Age Stereotypes

This paper seeks to advance the diversity literature by investigating organizational performance consequences of age diversity. Drawing from social‐identity and social‐categorization theory, we theoretically argue that, in age‐diverse companies, age‐based subgrouping processes occur, favouring a shared perception of a negative age‐discrimination climate. This perceived negative age‐discrimination climate in turn negatively relates to organizational performance. As the main contribution, top managers’ negative age‐related stereotypes and diversity‐friendly HR policies are introduced as organizational‐level moderators that increase and attenuate, respectively, the social categorization processes affecting performance in age‐diverse companies. We utilized structural equation modelling (SEM) to test the proposed hypotheses using a multisource dataset comprising 147 companies. The results supported all hypotheses, indicating that low negative top managers’ age stereotypes as well as high diversity‐friendly HR policies are potential organizational factors that can prevent the negative relation of age diversity with organizational performance transmitted through the negative age‐discrimination climate. These results are discussed in light of their contribution to the diversity literature and social‐categorization theory as well as their implication for practitioners.     

Career Change and the Iron Cage: Organizations and the Early Labour Market Experience of Professional Managers

Although it is often acknowledged that organizational structure and career outcomes are related, developed theory on how formal features of the design affect inter‐firm job mobility is incomplete. I focus on organizational size and structural differentiation and relate them to ideas about internal labour markets, organizational senescence, bureaucratic complexity, and resource endowments. Analysing data on the early career histories of professional managers, I find that the negative effect of organizational size on quits weakens with organizational age while a firm's elaborate hierarchy monotonically increases quits in all but very large firms. I interpret these effects as potential mechanisms for linking demographic processes between and within organizations and as a basis for integrating research in corporate demography and career mobility.     

The Effects of Leadership Style,Organizational Outcome,and Gender on Attributional Bias Toward Leaders

The current study examined the effects of leadership style (charismatic or autocratic) on followers' internal and external attributions for their organization's success or failure. In addition, role incongruence between the leadership style and gender was examined within the context of attributional error. Confirming the hypotheses, the results showed a three‐way interaction between leadership style, gender and organizational outcome. Supporting the role incongruity theory, when there was role incongruence between the leadership style and gender (i.e., the female autocratic leader), the attributions for failure were more unfavorable toward the leader. The effect of leadership style on internal attributions for failure was mediated by likeability of the leader. Overall, the current study was the first experimental investigation of the effects of leadership style, organizational outcomes, and gender on attributional biases within a single design.     

Positive effects of conflict: A cognitive perspective

Managers rated the extent to which conflict produces both positive and negative effects. Results indicated that they rated several negative effects significantly higher than any positive effects. However, virtually all managers reported personal experiences in which conflict yielded beneficial outcomes. These and other findings suggest that practicing managers perceive conflict as having the potential to yield positive as well as negative effects. A review of recent literature on human cognition identified several factors that may play a role in determining whether conflict yields predominantly positive or negative effects. These factors include the impact of strong negative emotions on cognition, stereotype-driven thinking, and attributional processes. Techniques for modifying conflict situations so that they are more likely to result in positive effects are suggested.     

The Importance of Attributional Complexity for Transformational Leadership Studies

Attributional complexity refers to the capability of discriminating and integrating dimensions related to social judgment in order to understand social behaviour. While previous leadership research has examined the role of leader attributions, it has neglected the role of attributional complexity. We theorize and find support for a relationship between higher attributional complexity and transformational leadership behaviours, based on a sample of 100 leaders and their direct reports. Leaders who were more complex in their social judgments, attributing complex external and internal causes to others' behaviours and actions, were seen as more transformational by their direct reports. Our findings suggest that attributional complexity is a construct that warrants consideration in future research on both transformational leadership and leadership attributions.     

NATURAL LEARNING AND MANAGERIAL ACTION: A PHENOMENOLOGICAL STUDY IN THE FIELD SETTING

An approach to collecting data about managers’ experience of their work is described, involving having them ‘think aloud’ while doing their work, and ‘re-live’ episodes soon afterwards. Some of the epistemological and methodological issues relating to this research approach are discussed. Examples of data are given, and 37 episodes of managerial work are analyzed for evidence relating to the question of how managers learn naturally from everyday experience. The analysis suggests that the concept of levels of learning proposed by Bateson (1973) is useful. An initial categorization of processes of learning, arising from the data, are presented. Some evidence that the profounder forms of learning are incremental rather than sudden is presented, and the issue of the functionality of profounder versus more superficial forms of learning in relation to everyday managerial work is raised.     

Career attitudes and success of managers: the impact of chance event,protean, and traditional careers

We propose a career model that focuses on the antecedents of career success for managers and professionals within organizations. The model includes constructs rarely represented in the literature, and is based on conservation of resources theory. Testing our model with a sample of 545 managers, we found significant effect of positive and negative social capital, perception of organizational politics, professional vitality, and protean career attitude on internal and external career success, mediated by organizational commitment and met expectations, and moderated by chance event effect. This original contribution includes incorporating new constructs and concentrates upon factors enabling support for successful careers.     

Leadership for Collaboration

Abstract

‘Leadership’ and ‘collaboration’ are integral to twenty-first century governance and management but, despite a growing literature, understanding about leadership for collaboration is hampered by a lack of specificity and nuance in theory and empirical research. This article responds to these limitations by working within an interpretive framework and employing Q-method to uncover different interpretations of leadership for collaboration operant among public managers in Wales. The article uses the concept of situated agency to explain why public managers offer diverse interpretations of leadership for collaboration despite working within the same governance framework, and to identify challenges to public managers in determining appropriate leadership for collaboration.     

Global,national and local practices in multinational corporations: towards a sociopolitical framework

This paper intends to shed some light on strategies and power resources of subsidiary managers and employee representatives involved in ‘charter changes’ and the implementation of ‘best practices’ developed elsewhere. Research shows that local managers face a dilemma in that they need both internal legitimacy (within the MNC itself) and external legitimacy (within the local context). It is argued that the power resources key actors draw on in the (internal) decision-making processes of ‘charter changes’ are intertwined with certain (external) national business system (NBS) characteristics, an aspect often neglected in North American research about MNCs. The authors identify three key influences, which restrain or empower local management and employees in their ability to make strategic choices and gain power within the MNC. They are (1) the overall strategic approach of the multinational group, (2) the strategic position and the economic performance of the subsidiary itself and (3) the degree of institutional embeddedness of the subsidiary in the host country. Comparative mini-case studies are used to illustrate the effect of local management and employee representatives' empowerment on their ability to retain skills and work practices supportive of a diversified quality production process in the face of MNC pressure to adopt global ‘best practices’ based on more standardized production processes.     

What drives managers to insource production? Evidence from a behavioural experiment

Insourcing to countermand previous outsourcing decisions is becoming a widespread practice among firms. While the underlying performance drivers for firms (e.g., lead times, responsiveness, or security of supply) are well understood, the behavioural aspects underlying managerial decision-making processes regarding insourcing remain overlooked in empirical research. We study the effects of managers' attitudes toward insourcing, their perceived behavioural control (PBC) over the respective insourcing decision, and the effect of mimetic pressure on insourcing decision intentions and behaviour, while grounding our model in the Theory of Planned Behaviour (TPB). We test hypotheses with data gathered in a vignette-based experiment among 145 managers and apply stepwise regression analysis to find support for the positive effects of attitude and mimetic pressure on intentions to insource. Our results found no support for the effect of managers’ PBC. We find moderation effects among the internal drivers (attitude and PBC) and between internal and external drivers (attitude and mimetic pressure) on insourcing behaviour. With these findings, we provide evidence of a unique boundary condition to the TPB in the insourcing context by explaining supply chain design choices with neo-classical and behavioural theory. We emphasize important behavioural aspects in insourcing decision-making and caution supply managers in this regard.     

High performance work practice implementation and employee impressions of line manager leadership

Human resource management (HRM) research has documented the importance of high performance work practices (HPWPs) to organizations, and recent efforts have argued for increasing attention to the role of line manager implementation of HPWPs. To date, research in this area has focused largely on the organizational or employee implications of HPWP implementation, ignoring the process through which implementation affects outcomes. In this article, we use theory on impression formation to describe the perceptual process through which line manager implementation of HPWPs facilitates the formation of different employee impressions of manager leadership styles. We argue that this process is contingent upon employee attributions of implementation intent, which are influenced by the interaction of employee affective and attributional tendencies with line manager implementation style (i.e., political skill). Our conceptualization of this process contributes to HRM research by demonstrating the benefits of integrating it with leadership theory, as well as identifying the role of interpersonal perceptual processes in the effects of HPWPs.     

Worlds colliding: the translation of modern management practices within a UK based subsidiary of a Korean-owned MNC

This paper explores the factors that served to dislodge an espoused strategy of quality management with ‘soft’ HRM within a British subsidiary of a Korean owned multinational company. Accounts from British and Korean managers revealed competing sets of tensions at three levels: external organizational, intra-organizational, and internal workplace. The case is important for a number of reasons. First, research on UK based subsidiaries tends to have focused upon American and Japanese owned companies, with less evidence from MNCs from later industrialized economies. Second, evidence suggests that MNCs from Korea, Taiwan, and Singapore have been experimenting with Western influenced high-performance work systems – but there is less evidence about how these are actually translated into the workplace. Third, there is a growing literature that suggests that the transfer of management practices in MNCs can be partly understood as a ‘negotiated process’, and disagreements may emerge between organisational actors in respect of the meaning and function of such practices. This article offers further support for this contention and offers insights into how these processes affected day-to-day management of the workplace and undermined the espoused strategy.     

Antecedents and consequences of performance management enactment by front-line managers. Evidence from Belgium

Although researchers have extensively stressed the critical role of line managers in the effective implementation of HR practices, little is known about what exactly causes managers to enact these practices. In this paper, we draw from signaling theory, theory of planned behavior and social exchange theory to investigate both the antecedents and the outcomes of front-line management’s enactment of performance management (PM) activities. Results from two Belgian samples of 731 front-line managers and 425 employees show that line management’s beliefs regarding the usefulness of PM activities mediate the relationship between HR support and line management’s implicit person theory, on the one hand, and PM enactment, on the other. This relationship is moderated by the manager’ span of control. Furthermore, line management enactment shows to be positively related to employee engagement and job satisfaction.     

The pathogen construct in risk analysis

Project risk analysis has traditionally emphasized the analysis of external threats. Here we argue that internal decisions and structures are more fundamental, because they determine which external events pose risks to project management. A “pathogen” metaphor is used to understand these internal sources of risk, in an analysis of failure in two sets of projects that lie on the border between the private and public sectors. This analysis goes beyond earlier work on organizational pathogens by treating them as subjective interpretations, not objective conditions. The study suggests that the more insidious risks to which a project is exposed involve different project members holding contradictory beliefs about what is pathogenic and what is protective     

‘Totally Un‐Australian!’: Discursive and Institutional Interplay in the Melbourne Port Dispute of 1997–98*

ABSTRACT We examine how discourses are mobilized and deployed by actors in an inter‐organizational domain during a critical industrial relations event. We identify the ways that business interests and union interests in the Melbourne Port industrial dispute of 1997–98 related to each other. We weave concepts from domain theory and organizational discourse theory in deriving the concept of the discursively ordered domain. This suggests that the main processes that occur in a domain are actors’‘mapping’ texts onto discourses and discourses onto interpretive schemes which make certain courses of action rational and sensible. Methodologically, we join an institutional‐historical analysis and a text‐based discourse analysis to gain a well‐rounded understanding of the situation. We extract several discursive frameworks which the major actors mobilized to make sense of the situation, and draw linkages to the actions that those positions made possible. The main findings are that actors in the two networks performed complex mapping in different ways, the material and symbolic outcomes of the dispute are products of those mapping processes, and the material and discursive aspects of the domain interweave. We discuss the value of the concept of discursively ordered domain for mutually enriching domain theory and discourse analysis and for understanding critical events such as major industrial disputes in new ways.     

Accountability – are We Better off Without It?

Abstract

Public managers increasingly lament about negative effects of accountability. Despite these reports and the importance of accountability in public organizations, it is yet unknown when it has positive or negative effects on managers. Overcoming two major obstacles in accountability research, this study therefore investigates ‘how accountability affects public manager's work behaviour’. Firstly, this study applies a cognitive theory offering a promising way out of the current theoretical dead-end. Secondly, the quasi-experimental research design makes the complex concept of accountability more tangible and findings transferable to practice. Moreover, individual level characteristics such as motivation are used to investigate a potential interaction between contingency and individual level characteristics. Results indicate both positive and negative effects of accountability on work behaviour and hence strongly challenge the positive normative connotation of accountability.     

The nature,consequences, and management of emotions in interfirm paradoxical relationships—A conceptual framework

We develop a theory of emotions in interfirm paradoxical relationships with a focus on coopetition and emotional ambivalence. We suggest that appraisals of paradoxical coopetition situations lead to the arousal of multiple, oppositely valenced emotions of various intensities, combinations of which correspond to different states of emotional ambivalence. We explicate how emotional ambivalence, through managers’ appraisal and emotional contagion processes becomes collective and how it impacts coopetition performance. We further theorize how the negative effect of ambivalence on performance could be minimized and the positive effect could be amplified through emotional capability. Our theory provides a nuanced understanding of the complex nature of emotions, and how they arise, manifest, and impact outcomes in interfirm paradoxical relationships.     

The HR function in purchaser–provider relationships: insights from the UK voluntary sector

This article explores how inter-organisational relations with the state impact on the status of human resource (HR) professionals in voluntary organisations. It reveals a constrained and under-resourced HR function in voluntary organisations, implementing few strategic interventions. Explanations centre on the dynamics of power relations, institutional forces, the exercise of strategic choice and management of risk between purchasers and providers and their interaction with competencies among individual actors, attitudes of senior managers and the focus by voluntary sector managers on organisational mission. It warns that these external and internal factors will produce similar outcomes in sectors and economies characterised by arm's-length contractual relations.     

Co-alignment of supplier quality management practices and cognitive maps – A neo-configurational perspective

Much of the previous research on the ‘purchasing practice–performance link’ rests on the notion of “net effects,” which assumes that specific practices independently of each other impact outcomes. This study challenges this core tenet by adopting a neo-configurational perspective, exploring how different combinations of factors (called “configurations”) affect outcomes. Another limitation of extant studies on the ‘purchasing practice–performance link’ is the narrow focus on practices; more recent behavioral supply management research finds the behavior of managers to be critically influenced by cognitive maps—the lenses through which managers perceive, simplify, and interpret the world. Focusing on supplier quality as a core aspect of the broader ‘purchasing practice–performance link’, this study explores how configurations of different supplier quality management (SQM) practices and SQM-related cognitive maps help firms to manage supplier quality. It uses fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA) to identify SQM configurations and a cognitive-linguistic approach for the computerized text analysis of purchasing managers’ cognitive maps in the context of Western companies sourcing from Chinese suppliers. The configurational fsQCA analysis identifies four different configurations associated with overcoming barriers to SQM in emerging markets. SQM-related cognitive maps prove to be a critical component in these four configurations.     

Developing an entrepreneurial typology: the roles of entrepreneurial alertness and attributional style

This study develops an entrepreneurial typology employing two dimensions, high versus low entrepreneurial alertness and internal versus external attributional styles that helps illustrate why entrepreneurs start new businesses. The resulting 2 × 2 typology of entrepreneurs identifies four entrepreneur types based on these two dimensions: the true believer, clueless, practical, and reluctant. Using a representative sample of 315 nascent entrepreneurs from the Panel Study of Entrepreneurial Dynamics, we found that some types differed across three key entrepreneurial characteristics, need for achievement, risk-taking propensity, and commitment, thereby providing some preliminary empirical support for the typology’s validity. We conclude by discussing future research avenues.