Re-Engineering the Sense of Self: the Manager and the Management Guru*

Conventional explanations of the enormous popularity of management gurus have centred on the need for managers to find relatively quick and simple solutions to their organizations' complex problems and the gurus' adeptness with marketing technology to promote these solutions. A few writers have also recognized the role that management gurus play in responding to managers' needs to make sense of themselves. Management gurus appeal to the manager's social or externally directed esteem needs by legitimating and celebrating the manager's role in society. the spiritual and charismatic quality of the gurus' work resonates with the manager's personal or internally driven needs by providing a sense of hope and purpose. The relationship between the management guru and manager is further explored with an analysis of the rhetorical techniques employed by the two leaders of the re-engineering movement, Michael Hammer and James Champy. Adopting a dramatistic or dramaturgical perspective, I describe how these writers skilfully manipulate the managers'sense of themselves to provide a compelling rationale for launching or supporting a re-engineering initiative within their organizations. the inherent dramatic appeal of the re-engineering process is an important reason for the movement's phenomenal popularity and, paradoxically, its lack of universal success.     

Telling Tales: Management Gurus' Narratives and the Construction of Managerial Identity

This paper examines the reasons for the apparently powerful impact of management gurus' ideas (i.e. guru theory) on senior managers. An examination of the limited literature on management gurus and other related literatures suggests three explanations for the appeal of guru theory for senior managers. The first set of explanations relates to various features of management work which may heighten managers' receptivity to guru ideas. The second set focuses on the gurus themselves and emphasizes the form in which they are presented (i.e. public performances). The final set of explanations highlights the importance of the socioeconomic and cultural context within which guru theories emerge and become widely adopted. A number of criticisms of these explanations are offered: that they define the manager as passive, that the flow of ideas is one way (guru to manager), that they rely on an academic conception of knowledge. An alternative explanation of their success is outlined which suggests that their work – their analyses, presentations and theories – offer attractive conceptions of the role of managers which constitute the identity of the modern senior manager as an heroic, transformative leader. Gurus therefore not only constitute the organizational realities but also managers themselves     

Contributions of HRM throughout the stages of environmental management: methodological triangulation applied to companies in Brazil

The purpose of this research is to analyze the contribution of human resources management throughout the evolutionary stages of environmental management in Brazilian companies. A theoretical framework concerning environmental management and its evolution and the ‘greening’ of the functional and competitive dimensions of human resource management were developed. A methodological triangulation was developed in two complimentary phases. In the first phase, data were collected from 94 Brazilian companies with ISO 14001 certification. The data collected were analyzed and processed using statistical techniques. The conclusions of the first phase supported the second phase of this empirical research. The second phase consisted of a study of multiple cases in four Brazilian companies. The results show evidence of the first known empirical study of contributions of human resource dimensions throughout the stages of environmental management in Brazilian manufacturing companies.     

CITIES AND THEIR GURUS: The Role of Superstar Consultants in Post-political Urban Governance

While consultants have crept into various aspects of municipal governance, a selected few have transcended the others reaching the status of urban gurus. Although consultants are often perceived as depoliticizing urban affairs, research shows that the urban guru often instigates politicization. Research on urban gurus does thus highlight distinctions between gurus and ‘lay’ consultants, but it has paid insufficient attention to describing how, through their interaction with cities, politicization occurs. Moreover, the literature often portrays this interaction as an authority relationship in which the guru is superior, while in fact cities play an important role in bestowing ‘guru’ status. Using fieldwork, I examine the long-term interaction between Richard Florida and the City of Toronto, explaining how Florida's elevation to guru status by being brought to Toronto ended with him self-describing as ‘persona non-grata’. To explain the anomaly of this interaction and the way in which gurus instigate politicization, I differentiate between consultants’ ‘substance’ and ‘process’ roles in policy formulation processes. I show that, regarding substance, the guru offers a policy paradigm rather than policy instruments and, regarding process, their strength is in performing ideas rather than pulling strings behind the scenes—in both respects making the policy process more public and contested.     

Psychic distance and the challenges of expatriation from Brazil

The aim of this paper is to explore the extent to which the psychic distance between countries poses challenges to the expatriation process of young multinational companies from emerging countries, such as Brazil. While the concept of psychic distance has been extensively explored in the literature for the analysis of the paths to internationalization of multinational companies, researchers have only recently begun to analyse its influence on expatriation processes. To this end, we reviewed studies of psychic distance and of two fields of expatriation processes that are directly influenced by the challenge of expatriates' cultural integration posed by psychic distance, namely selection and training. We also developed a multidimensional instrument to measure psychic distance and then classified the expats' countries of destination as ‘close’ or ‘distant’ in relation to Brazil. Our results show no predominance of countries that are psychically close to Brazil for the expatriations of professionals from the Brazilian companies studied. When analysing the expats' perceptions of the expatriation process, cultural integration emerged as a great challenge for expats from both ‘close’ and ‘distant’ countries. In spite of this, those companies don't seem to take this into consideration in the management of the selection and training phases of the expatriation process. In addition, we identified some differences between the expatriates and the HR managers' perceptions of the management of expatriation processes that can partially explain the high incidence of problems concerning cultural adaptation that Brazilian companies face as a result of the challenge posed by the psychic distance.     

Management consultants as improvising agents of stability

Relatively few studies have paid theoretical as well as empirical attention to what use organizations have of management consultants and their services. By studying how buyers and sellers of management consulting services describe what management consulting is and represents, this study questions common understandings in the literature, i.e., that management consultants act as agents of change or as standardizers of organizational practice around the world. It is argued that consultants can be understood as playing the role of improvisers because there is considerable uncertainty among both buyers and sellers as to what use organizations really have of them. Playing a recognizable, yet indefinite role based on an institutionalized foundation, in both discourse and practice, of what actors such as consultants are supposed to do in certain situations, helps client organizations to reduce the uncertainty experienced. The conclusion is that management consultants can therefore be understood as agents of stability rather than agents of change.     

Knowledge flow in Technological Business Incubators: Evidence from Australia and Israel

The study of the contribution of incubators to economic growth started to gain momentum in the 1980s, following the growth of the incubation phenomenon. While acknowledging the challenge of evaluating incubators׳ outcomes, we shift the focus from incubators׳ performance to their internal processes, in particular, the interrelationships through which the incubator stakeholders share knowledge. The literature suggests that small new ventures tend to fail because they lack managerial experience and ability to raise capital in an early stage. Incubators are expected to overcome these obstacles by offering experienced monitoring skills and by enhancing access to capital at a firm׳s early stage. However, empirical results of incubators׳ ability to perform their role are often contradictory, making policy makers question their effectiveness. We provide evidence from Australian and Israeli incubators. Our findings suggest that collaborations between incubatees, graduated incubatees, and incubator management increase the incubatees׳ knowledge of technology and market in both countries. Collaboration between incubatees and incubator management also increase incubatees׳ financial knowledge and their likelihood of raising capital. We also found that universities played a modest role as a source of new ideas for incubatees, but a more important role in later stages of incubatees׳ new product development processes.     

The Brazilian national quality award: sharing some best practices of the winner in 1993

The Brazilian National Quality Award, a local version of the Malcolm Baldrige Award, was created as part of Brazil's efforts to step up the competitiveness of its industry. When it was first launched, in 1992, there was only one winner: IBM Brasil, Sumaré Plant. Nevertheless, its positive impact is being increasingly felt by companies in Brazil, mainly as a stimulus for implementing total quality. The finalists have an important role to play in this respect. This paper discusses some of the most relevant best-practices of the sole winner of the 1993 Brazilian Quality Award, Xerox Brazil. By the same token, it hopes to provide fresh insights about successfully managing total quality strategies in Brazil.     

Global Standardization of Organizational Forms and Management Practices? What New Institutionalism and the Business‐Systems Approach Can Learn from Each Other*

abstract The debate as to the effects of globalization on organizational forms and management practices is well known. Our paper focuses on two institutionalist traditions in organization theory which make a significant contribution to this discussion: new institutionalism and the business‐systems approach. Both emphasize the adaptation of organizations to their institutional environments but come to very different conclusions as to the global standardization of organizational forms and management practices. Our paper aims to move them beyond the convergence‐divergence dichotomy to account for signs of both global standardization and continued persistence of national differences. We do so by systematically comparing the two traditions, suggesting how they can be cross‐fertilized and developing an agenda for future empirical research. We also highlight that they cannot learn from each other on the issue of agency and point to structuration theory as a way in which they can integrate agency into their accounts of the global standardization debate.     

Searching for managerial discretion: how public managers engage managerialism as a rationalization for increased latitude of action

ABSTRACT

This article focuses on the managerial discretion that public managers experience. More specifically, it discusses how managerialism is an embedded ideological stance that influences understandings of public sector governance. I argue that managers’ perceptions of discretion are affected by these understandings. The analysis draws on empirical data from a longitudinal study, demonstrating how public managers engage discourses emanating from managerialism in order to rationalize increased discretion. The findings suggest that customer perspectives functions as a rationalizing factor for engaging public managers’ transition towards increased discretion. As such, this article contributes to knowledge about managerial discretion as well as managerialism.     

企业社会责任行为的测量——基于高层管理者的视角

由于企业高层管理者所处的组织结构地位,决定了他们对于企业行为实施具有重要作用。在对待影响到企业中长期利益的企业社会责任问题上,企业高层管理者负有不可推诿的责任,企业社会责任行为本质反映了高层管理者对于该问题的认识和处理意见。本文将从高层管理者视角出发,构建企业社会责任行为的理论测量模型,并进一步加以验证。     

The negative influence of the entrepreneur’s level of higher education on the attractiveness of European SMEs as alliance partners in Brazil: the role of practical experience and international entrepreneurial orientation

Notwithstanding the contemporary relevance of alliance strategies for SME internationalisation, especially in the case of uncertain business environments, few studies have investigated human resource issues in the context of SMEs prior to alliance formation. Even more scarce are studies looking at the impact of a manager/entrepreneur’s characteristics on pre-alliance formation, despite recognition of the expected crucial role of the entrepreneur in this context and of the strong connection between an entrepreneur and their SME. Drawing on international entrepreneurship theory and empirical observations from an exploratory study, we propose a post hoc conceptual model. The exploratory empirical part of our study employs a sample of entrepreneurs from biotechnology SMEs in the United Kingdom and Germany intending to ally in a large emerging market (i.e. Brazil). Our empirical observations suggest an anomalous (at first glance) negative association between the entrepreneur’s level of higher education (a construct at the individual level) and the attractiveness of the SME as a partner firm vis-à-vis alliance formation (a construct at the firm level). Our post hoc model emphasises the role of practical experience and the corresponding levels of international entrepreneurial orientation as theorised variables mediating the observed empirical relationship. We develop theoretical propositions, and suggest practical implications and future research directions.     

An empirical analysis: Did green supply chain management alleviate the effects of COVID-19?

Supply chain management played a central role during the COVID-19 crisis, as the outbreak of the pandemic disrupted the majority of all global supply chains. This paper tests whether companies that use green supply chain management (GSCM) practices benefited from a buffer effect in the context of COVID-19. Our empirical analysis, conducted on a sample of U.S. companies, shows that GSCM companies experienced less negative abnormal stock returns during the crisis. This result contributes to the literature on financial impact of GSCM, finding that GSCM is perceived as an effective risk management tool and can serve as an effective drug against COVID-19 crisis. Our paper also contributes to the business debate on the role of green supply chains in the post-COVID19 world.     

浅谈我国企业在巴西承揽工程项目的税务风险管理

随着世界杯足球赛和里约奥运会的先后举行,巴西经济将有一个大的飞跃,越来越多的我国企业已经开始关注并涉足巴西这一市场。但巴西税种多、税赋高、税收法律体系复杂,对项目经济效益有重大影响。本文从税务风险管理的角度,对巴西税收制度和税务风险进行简要介绍,并从税务筹划、资金管理和付款模式等方面提出一些建议,供我国工程承包企业参考。     

Management Control as an Employee Resource: The Case of Front‐line Service Workers

ABSTRACT This paper argues that the conception of management control as an employee resource can enhance critical understandings of front‐line service work. The argument is developed first through a critique of the contemporary control literature and its prominent worker images of smiling docility and haggard exhaustion. Seeking to encourage accounts more sensitive to the subjectivity and agency of service workers, the paper calls for more research attention to the question of how these employees experience and evaluate management control in relation to their self‐defined interests. Analysis of the nature of contemporary service work suggests that one such perceived interest is likely to be interactive control, or the capacity of workers to control and influence those parties with whom they directly interact. Based on a close reading of the emerging empirical literature on services, the article explores various ways in which the bureaucratic, technical and normative regulation designed by management to control service workers is used in turn by workers to further their own control and influence over managers and customers.     

A fresh look at the contribution of project management to organizational performance

A better understanding of organizational performance and the contribution that project management can make is the aim. The article adopts the “Competing Values Framework,” a rich framework that is well established both theoretically and empirically but is not well known in the field of project management. The framework is summarized and applied in an empirical investigation of the contribution of project management in general and project management offices (PMOs) in particular to organizational performance. The examination of 11 case studies revealed multiple concurrent and sometimes paradoxical perspectives. The criteria proposed by the framework have been further developed through the identification of a preliminary set of empirically grounded performance indicators. The empirical results contribute to a better understanding of the role of project management generally and PMOs specifically. They also demonstrate the usefulness of this framework for the study of project management's contribution to organizational performance.     

Institutional barriers to firm entry and exit: Case-study evidence from the Brazilian textiles and electronics industries

What are the main barriers to firm entry and exit in developing countries and how do they differ from barriers to firm operation and growth? How important is the institutional and regulatory framework in this respect? This paper examines such questions using case-study evidence from the Brazilian textiles and electronics industries. We find that not only these institutional barriers are high in Brazil but also that they seem to have risen since the early 1990s, and that their effects vary across sectors. We also provide evidence from a survey we carried out in 2005 suggesting that institutions are more important as barriers to entry than as barriers to firm operation and growth.     

Top and bottom line relevance of purchasing and supply management

Getting a substantial value addition out of investments in purchasing and supply management (PSM) is of central importance to senior management. However, the empirical evidence of a financial value contribution is fragmented. The current study addresses this fragmentation by using a comprehensive performance measurement model to validate empirically (a) whether PSM contributes to the company's financial success and (b) whether the financial value contribution is mediated by benefits of three operational performances (cost, quality, and innovation performance). Our findings from an international survey of 306 major companies from eight industry sectors suggest that an advanced, comprehensive implementation of PSM activities contributes to an improvement in PSM outcomes, which in turn mediates company success.     

Mispricing in the odd lots market in Brazil

We study the case of mispricing in the odd lots equity market in Brazil. Contrary to expectation, odd lot investors are paying higher prices than round lot investors. The pricing difference between markets is affected by market returns, volatility and spreads. Our main hypothesis is that; once the assets traded in the odd lot market are more illiquid than their counterparts, the mispricing is driven by liquidity factors. Additionally, we show that the mispricing yields an arbitrage opportunity that is not being traded away in the Brazilian market. Therefore, we propose regulators to review the market design for odd lots in Brazil. We argue that reducing the minimal trading unit in the round lots market would benefit investors.