The role of organizational justice and social interaction in mitigating the negative effects of high-performance member retailers on strategic integration

Drawing on resource-based view, social exchange theory, and organizational justice theory, this study tests the link between high-performance member retailers (HPMRs) and strategic integration to retail buying groups, and the mediation and moderation of social integration and organizational justice, respectively. Using structural equation modeling, we analyze data from 241 independent retailers participating in retail buying groups in Japan. Results reveal that although HPMRs are negatively associated with strategic integration, they also increase strategic integration via enhanced social interaction with other member retailers. Additionally, organizational justice by buying group headquarters weakens the negative link between HPMRs and strategic integration. The study newly shows how member retailers’ past performance characteristics, the role of buying group headquarters, and member retailers’ interactions affect strategic integration to retail buying groups. The findings contribute to resource-based view, social exchange theory, and organizational justice theory by examining how retail buying groups can encourage HPMRs’ strategic integration using social interaction and organizational justice as boundary conditions. Practical and theoretical implications are described.     

Practice creation in multinational corporations: Improvisation and the emergence of lateral knowledge

Lateral collaboration across subsidiaries is beneficial for innovation in multinational corporations (MNCs), such as the creation of new organizational practices, because it helps working towards shared, rather than subsidiary-centric, objectives and creates new knowledge. To instill lateral collaboration, prior research has mainly focused on coordination mechanisms that rely on interpersonal exchanges among dispersed individuals across subsidiaries. However, due to rising concerns over coordination cost and sustainability of international travel, MNCs are increasingly challenged to search for other approaches that require less direct interpersonal interaction across subsidiaries. We, therefore, ask: How can MNCs elicit lateral collaboration during practice creation in a less space-time sensitive way? Drawing on a longitudinal case study, we develop a model of practice creation in MNCs. Our model offers two main insights. First, it details a novel approach for unleashing the benefits of lateral collaboration in globally-linked innovation processes in MNCs. In contrast to emphasizing coordination mechanisms that focus on interpersonal interactions across subsidiaries, our study contributes by detailing the emergence of lateral knowledge through a shared technological artefact as key enabler. Second, our model illuminates how MNCs can innovate new organizational practices that reflect both MNC and local subsidiary needs by adopting an improvisational approach.     

Socially Sustainable Supply Chain Management and Suppliers’ Social Performance: The Role of Social Capital

The implementation of socially sustainable supply chain management (SSCM) practices (i.e. assessment and collaboration) to tackle suppliers’ social deficiencies (e.g. the use of child labour) often requires a level of cooperation that can be difficult to establish. Despite this daunting challenge, scant scholarly attention has been paid to explore how the implementation of socially SSCM practices can be effectively facilitated and enhanced. Drawing on social capital theory, this study examines the individual impact of assessment and collaboration practices on suppliers’ social performance and explores whether and how these effects can be moderated (strengthened) by the level of social capital (i.e. relational, cognitive, and structural) embedded in the buyer–supplier relationship. Based on a survey of 119 manufacturing companies in the UK, we found that assessment practices are less likely to influence suppliers to improve social performance compared to collaboration practices. However, when relational and structural capital are manifested in the relationship, assessment practices become significant in driving suppliers’ social performance. We also found that the positive impact of collaboration practices is more pronounced when relational and cognitive capital are established in the relationship. This paper contributes to the growing socially SSCM literature by disentangling the vital and relative importance of social capital dimensions on the implementation of socially SSCM practices.

     

How much lateral collaboration is optimal? Insights from computer simulations of MNEs as complex adaptive systems

The paper models the MNE as a complex adaptive system and investigates the effects of lateral collaboration on performance at both the MNE and subsidiary level. Applying the NKC and rugged landscapes methodology, computer simulations are conducted to explore the boundary conditions governing lateral collaboration in MNEs. At the MNE level, the results show that the success of lateral collaboration across subsidiaries is related to the level of within-subsidiaries collaboration, which is a measure of internal complexity. More specifically, increasing the level of lateral collaboration above the level of internal complexity results in inferior performance and hence internal complexity represents an upper limit on productive lateral collaboration. At the subsidiary level, the results indicate that flatter structures generally outperform hierarchical ones. They also point to the advantage of concentrating the responsibilities for lateral collaboration within the subsidiary in the hands of one or few boundary spanners.     

Integration by Emerging Economy Multinationals: Perspectives from Chinese Mergers and Acquisitions

The integration process of international mergers and acquisitions by emerging economy multinationals is fraught with challenges of liabilities of foreignness and country of origin. We use insights from institutional theory and draw on the experience of Chinese international mergers and acquisitions to explore these challenges faced by emerging economy multinationals during postmerger integration. We find that these challenges, which are primarily caused by informal institutional differences, can be overcome by developing organizational capabilities for integration and employing mechanisms for appropriate control and justice during the integration process. The study contributes to the ongoing discussions about the relevance of sociocultural influences in the successful integration of international mergers and acquisitions. Our framework proposes initiatives that managers from emerging economies can take to overcome postmerger integration challenges. © 2016 Wiley Periodicals, Inc.     

Ethics, alterity, and organizational justice

This paper articulates a conception of organizational justice based on the promise of a mode of organizing that does not violate the particularity of each and every other person. It argues that the decisive condition for such a form of justice resides in the realities of the cultural practices of an organization as they are apparent in the conduct of people in relation to multiple others. These are practices that can only seek justification in the primary right of each person to be regarded with absolute alterity. It also argues that a degree of violence is unavoidable within any practical ordering of justice and that any consideration of ethics and justice in organizations must account for such violence and seek to negotiate its existence on ethical terms. The organizational justice that is referred to is one sensitive to the exercise of its own power and authority in the context of its unavoidable violation of its basis in ethics. This is a justice that is ethically necessary, but is never sure of itself.     

Is the more always better? A comparative study of internal and external integration practices in new product and new service development

This study investigates the relationship between internal and external integration practices and innovation success of new products and new services. Building on the idea that key success drivers in new product and new service development may have implementing costs besides their obvious benefits, this article examines the possibility that a nonlinear relationship in the shape of an inverted U exists between innovation success and the antecedents examined in this research. The present study also addresses scholars' call for research to investigate differences in the drivers of new product and new service success. The findings suggest that differences exist in the nature of the relationship—that is, linear versus nonlinear—between cross-functional integration, customer integration, and interfirm collaboration and innovation success in a new product versus new service setting.     

A multidimensional analysis of supply chain integration in canadian manufacturing

Supply chain management is a key element in companies' competitiveness. We surveyed 512 Canadian manufacturers, most of which were small or medium‐sized enterprises (SMEs). Our survey was structured around four dimensions of supply change integration, namely: nesting, collaboration, financial incorporation, and distancing. In this paper we describe the use of supply chain management practices and show that their use is dependent on the nature of the business partners (i.e., upstream or downstream positioning of partnership in chain logistics of businesses studied), business field (i.e., sector of activities in which the business operates), and organizational size. Our findings suggest that supply chain practices were used more intensively with clients than with suppliers. They also show that practitioners and scholars need to qualify the concept of integration which is often used in a one‐dimensional perspective. Copyright © 2010 ASAC. Published by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

French multinational companies' HRM in China: strategic orientation and integration approaches

The purpose of this qualitative study is to identify strategic orientation and integration approaches of French companies in implementing the headquarters-based human resource management (HRM) practices in their Chinese subsidiaries. Through a study of 16 French multinationals’ HRM, our findings reveal that a majority of sample companies tend to standardize the HRM practices in their Chinese subsidiaries to a great extent. This strategic orientation is supported by a combination of specific integration approaches at the subsidiary level. The results add knowledge to international management theory and allow us to develop implications in managing employees in China.     

Environmental Leadership and Consciousness Development: A Case Study Among Canadian SMEs

The objective of this paper is to explore how the various stages of consciousness development of top managers can influence, in practical terms, their abilities in and commitment to environmental leadership in different types of SMEs. A case study based on 63 interviews carried out in 15 industrial SMEs showed that the organizations that displayed the most environmental management practices were mostly run by managers at a post-conventional stage of consciousness development. Conversely, the SMEs that displayed less sustainable environmental management practices were all run by managers at conventional stages of development. Drawing upon diverse examples of environmental leadership, this paper analyzes the reasons why the stages of post-conventional consciousness development of top managers seem to foster corporate greening in SMEs. The study also sheds light on the key values and abilities associated with both environmental leadership and the upper-stages of consciousness development, which include a broader and systemic perspective, long-range focus, integration of conflicting goals, collaboration with stakeholders, complexity management, collaborative learning, among others.     

Ethics in Global Business and in a Plural Society

The contemporary confluence of globalization and ethical pluralism is at the origin of many ethical challenges that confront business nowadays, both in practice and in theory. One of the challenges arising from the development of globalization has to do with respect for cultural diversity. It is often said that the success of economic globalization tends towards social and cultural homogeneity. To the extent that cultural diversity is usually seen as a valuable reality, that global trend seems to contradict our efforts to respect ethical pluralism, both personal and cultural, within society. In this paper I argue that (a) ethical minimalism, despite its emphasis on tolerance and justice, does not take pluralism seriously into account in present-day society, and (b) ethical minimalism is not suited to balancing the homogenizing trend of globalization. Certainly ethical norms are necessary, but by no means are they sufficient in themselves to encourage either justice or tolerance; nor are they sufficient to inspire and encourage good practices and sound regulations. Instead, virtue-based ethics has the capacity of inspiring and encouraging good practices. Particularly, virtue-based ethics is able to inspire a serious dialogue about ethical and legal issues both in the public arena and within organizations.     

Boundary-spanning coordination: Insights into lateral collaboration and lateral alignment in multinational enterprises

Interorganizational boundary spanning between multinational enterprises requires substantive internal “lateral collaboration” and “lateral alignment.” However, how actors coordinate laterally between multiple nodes and across multiple boundaries for interorganizational boundary spanning is unclear. This qualitative study of a large multinational demonstrates how actors collectively build and maintain interorganizational relationships through collective boundary spanning. To coordinate this activity, actors strategize and map contributors for collective action and then synchronize their communication and problem-solving to ensure lateral collaboration and alignment. This article contributes to the extant literature by a providing a framework depicting how boundary-spanning coordination leads to lateral collaboration and lateral alignment.     

Collaboration ‘Engineerability’

Collaboration Engineering is an approach to create sustained collaboration support by designing collaborative work practices for high-value recurring tasks, and transferring those designs to practitioners to execute for themselves without ongoing support from collaboration professionals. A key assumption in this approach is that we can predictably design collaboration processes. In this paper we explore this assumption to understand whether collaboration can, in fact, be designed, and elaborate on the role of thinkLets in the engineering of collaborative work practices. ThinkLets are design patterns for collaborative interactions.     

A New Framework for Understanding Inequalities Between Expatriates and Host Country Nationals

An interdisciplinary theoretical framework is proposed for analysing justice in global working conditions. In addition to gender and race as popular criteria to identify disadvantaged groups in organizations, in multinational corporations (MNCs) local employees (i.e. host country nationals (HCNs) working in foreign subsidiaries) deserve special attention. Their working conditions are often substantially worse than those of expatriates (i.e. parent country nationals temporarily assigned to a foreign subsidiary). Although a number of reasons have been put forward to justify such inequalities—usually with efficiency goals in mind—recent studies have used equity theory to question the extent to which they are perceived as fair by HCNs. However, since perceptual equity theory has limitations, this study develops an alternative and non-perceptual framework for analysing such inequalities. Employment discrimination theory and elements of Rawls’s ‘Theory of Justice’ are the theoretical pillars of this framework. This article discusses the advantages of this approach for MNCs and identifies some expatriation practices that are fair according to our non-perceptual justice standards, whilst also reasonably (if not highly) efficient.     

A Model of Collaborative Entrepreneurship for a More Humanistic Management

Inter-organizational models are both a well-documented phenomena and a well-established domain in management and business ethics. Those models rest on collaborative capabilities. However, mainstream theories and practices aimed at developing these capabilities are based on a narrow set of assumptions and ethical principles about human nature and relationships, which constrain the very development of capabilities sought by them. This article presents an Aristotelic–Thomistic approach to collaborative entrepreneurship within and across communities of firms operating in complementary markets. Adopting a scholarship of integration approach and evaluating the six studies of communities of organizations, we contribute an inter-organizational network model based on the assumptions about human motives and choice offered by Aristotle. We argue that the sustainability of inter-organizational communities depends on how rich is the set of assumptions about human nature upon which they are based. In order to develop and sustain collaborative capabilities in inter-organizational communities, a set of assumptions that takes both self-regarding and others’-regarding preferences as ends is required to avoid any kind of instrumentalization of collaboration, which is an end in itself. Implications for theory and practice are discussed.     

线上线下与物流协同的逻辑推演、影响因素与构建策略

线上线下与物流协同是"新零售"发展的核心。总体看来,我国"新零售"发展已跨越初级阶段向中高级阶段进化,也对线上线下与物流协同提出了新的要求。基于"新零售"发展现实,围绕线上线下与物流协同发展的四个阶段对协同发展进行逻辑推演,结合零售系统、物流支撑、技术应用等多要素探讨协同的影响因素。研究发现,从动态视角来看,电商与物流协同和线上线下融合为线上线下与物流协同奠定基础,而线上线下与物流协同要经历由线状协同向网状(立体)协同进化过程,也预示由初级协同向中高级协同的迈进;线上线下与物流协同主要受底层逻辑(线上线下协同融合程度、零售业网状协同水平)、核心支撑(物流网络建设、物流运营管理水平、物流生态体系协同)、升级保障(数智化技术协同应用、供应链整合与创新)三个方面共七类因素的影响,而不同因素又具有不同的作用方向。基于此,线上线下与物流协同要秉承"四化"理念,即以规模化运营为基础,以创新化模式为引领,以数智化技术为依托,以生态化体系为关键,提升协同服务水平和效率,构筑协同系统。     

我国金融服务外包发展分析:基于人力资源的视角

本文从金融服务外包的实质切入,分析了国内外金融服务外包产业发展的新态势,针对金融服务外包产业的知识特点和对人才的要求,探讨了我国金融服务外包人力资源的现状及瓶颈问题;通过深入分析传统人才培养模式的缺陷与不足,结合部分高校与企业在金融服务外包人才培养模式方面的创新实践,提出"校企联合,专业融合,分类培养"的金融服务外包人才培养的新模式,提出了解决金融服务外包人才瓶颈的对策与建议。     

Supply Chain Collaboration,Integration, and Relational Technology: How Complex Operant Resources Increase Performance Outcomes

How firms coordinate efforts to collectively compete as supply chains is a key concern of supply chain management scholars and practitioners. One avenue, the development of collaborative relational capabilities that support supply chain integration, offers promise. However, the effectiveness of collaboration as a supply chain resource has been questioned due to concerns associated with collaborative technologies, and thus prior research has called for a deeper examination of the role that technologies play in facilitating integration. Employing a Service‐Dominant Logic view of hierarchical resources, grounded in Resource Advantage Theory, this research tests a model subsuming relationships between collaboration, integration, and interfirm coordination technologies, and their associated performance outcomes. A sample of 282 supply chain managers from a variety of industries were surveyed, with proposed relationships examined employing structural equation modeling. Test results indicate that collaboration and integration interact to form higher order resources that collectively influence firm performance outcomes through interfirm coordination technologies.     

Understanding the link between communication satisfaction,perceived justice and organizational citizenship behavior

This study broadens the application of the justice and OCB concepts beyond pay and job satisfaction to capture previously uninvestigated effects by examining the link between communication satisfaction (CS), perceived justice, and organizational citizenship behaviors (OCB) among Chinese employees. We predict perceived justice will mediate the relationship between CS and OCB. We also predict CS will mediate the relationship between perceived justice and OCB. Quantitative analyses were used to analyze the relationships. FsQCA was used as an additional technique to test the mediating effect. Results show that OCB were influenced by CS and perceived justice. CS is a mediator between perceived justice and OCB. Perceived justice is not a mediator between CS and OCB. The finding points to the need for enhancing communication practices and creating a fair working environment in order to encourage discretionary behaviors. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed along with the limitations.     

Hypocrisies of Fairness: Towards a More Reflexive Ethical Base in Organizational Justice Research and Practice

Despite becoming one of the most active research areas in organizational behavior, the field of organizational justice has stayed at a safe distance from moral questions of values, as well as from critical questions regarding the implications of fairness considerations on the status quo of power relations in today’s organizations. We argue that both organizational justice research and the managerial practices it informs lack reflexivity. This manifests itself in two possible hypocrisies of fairness. Managers may apply organizational justice knowledge but fail to increase the actual levels of fairness in employment relations. Researchers, on the other hand, may claim to promote fairness through their work while actually providing managers with tools that enable or even encourage them to feed the hypocrisy of fairness identified above. As␣part of our argument, we identify three types of mechanisms managers may use to influence and manage the formation of fairness perceptions. We consider how the exercise of power is related to the potential application of organizational justice knowledge across individual, interpersonal and social levels. Our approach makes power dynamics and moral implications salient, and questions the purely subjectivist view of justice researchers that deliberately discards normative aspects. The questions opened up by considering alternative mechanisms for creating fairness perceptions have led us to formulate a research agenda for organizational justice research that takes multiple stakeholder interests, power dynamics and ethical implications into account. We believe that the fields of organizational justice and normative justice can benefit from combined research. Marion Fortin (Ph.D., Trinity College Dublin) is Lecturer in Organisational Behaviour at the Durham Business School, Durham University. Marion previously worked in the financial industry and also was a visiting scholar at the Stern School, NYU. Marion’s main research interest lies in the role of justice judgments in the workplace. Her current and past research projects also involve issues of organizational change, power mechanisms, and the role of emotions in organizations. Martin R. Fellenz (Ph.D., The University of North Carolina at Chapel Hill) is Lecturer in Organisational Behaviour at the School of Business, University of Dublin, Trinity College. His research interests include organizational justice, organizational transformation and change, teaching and learning, and the development of theory and theory schools. He regularly contributes to executive education programs in a variety of countries and consults with leading international public, private and not-for-profit organizations on matters of leadership, management development, and organizational transformation. A previous version of this paper was originally presented at the IESE Business School, University of Navarra, for the 14th International Symposium on Ethics, Business and Society: “Towards a Comprehensive Integration of Ethics Into Management: Problems and Prospects”. May 18–19, 2006).