The Role of Dialectical Interrogation in Review Studies: Theorizing from What We See Rather Than What We Have Already Seen

Review-centric works receive increasing attention for generating insightful contributions to management and organization studies. Despite this, the literature on theory building has taken little note of their place in the theorizing process. This deserves attention, however, given the challenges reviews face in theorizing in the absence of new empirical observations. Accordingly, these works run the risk of merely summarizing ‘what we have already seen’, instead of ‘maximizing what we see’. Drawing on the strategies of theorizing from similarities and theorizing from anomalies, we propose dialectical interrogation as a critical step in theorizing through which review scholars imaginatively engage in a back and forth inquiry between the phenomenal world of a given field and existing theory. By analysing selected review studies from top management journals, we reveal that theorizing outcomes occur through two ways of dialectical interrogation (consolidative and disruptive). We contribute by demonstrating that review scholars can enter into powerful theorizing through the consolidative or disruptive interrogation of the review data with extant theory to detect emergence and novelty alongside puzzles, conflicts and paradoxes. Dialectical interrogation can address the shortcomings of current theorizing in review-centric works and bears potential for advancing theories of management and organization studies.     

THE 'BROKEN WINDOWS' THEORY AND THE NEW YORK EXPERIENCE RECONSIDERED

The undeniable success of order-maintenance policing (also community policing or broken windows policing) is despite the deficiency in the theory which propelled the practice into policy: Wilson and Kelling's broken windows theory. We discuss what is wrong with the theory and why it nevertheless works when put into practice.     

The effectiveness of European active labor market programs

Active Labor Market Programs are widely used in European countries, but despite many econometric evaluation studies analyzing particular programs no conclusive cross-country evidence exists regarding “what program works for what target group under what (economic and institutional) circumstances?”. This paper aims at answering this question using a meta-analysis based on a data set that comprises 137 program evaluations from 19 countries. The empirical results of the meta-analysis are surprisingly clear-cut: Rather than contextual factors such as labor market institutions or the business cycle, it is almost exclusively the program type that seems to matter for program effectiveness. While direct employment programs in the public sector frequently appear detrimental, wage subsidies and “Services and Sanctions” can be effective in increasing participants' employment probability. Training programs – the most commonly used type of active policy – show modestly positive effects.     

钻孔灌注桩施工安全控制要点分析

钻孔灌注桩由于对各种地质条件的适应性、施工简单易操作且设备投入一般不是很大,在软土地区高层建筑及桥梁和水工作业中建筑中都得到了广泛的应用,但无论是哪一种建筑环境的应用,钻孔灌注桩的施工安全都取决于施工过程中的不可缺少的主要环节的操作上。本文就施工过程中的重要环节,浅谈安全控制要点。     

基于UCC3802的开关电源设计

本文主要讲的是电流型控制PWM芯片UCC3802,在此基础上,研制出了单端反激式开关辅助电源。本文具体讲解了该电源是如何工作的、它都具有哪些功能以及一些相关参数。该辅助电源的好处是结构上不那么复杂,用起来比较方便,输出稳定等,能在只有直流电压供电的情况下使用。     

某型水雷水下爆炸作用下舰船结构动态响应研究

运用通用有限元分析软件ABAQUS分析某型水雷水下爆炸作用下的舰船结构动态响应,并得出以下重要结论:某型水雷水下爆炸产生的压力包括冲击波和多次气泡脉动压力,冲击波的能量主要作用在中高频,气泡膨胀产生的气泡脉动压力的能量以低频为主。水雷载荷作用下舰船结构响应具有局部性,舰船底部是冲击波载荷的主要承受者,其应力要比上层建筑大,而舰船底部最大应力则集中在中部迎爆面处。由于冲击波作用的区域比较大,舰船的艏部和艉部也受到了一定的冲击影响,但相对中部迎爆面处来说要小得多。     

单调作业中人因失误模式分析

文章结合脑力负荷理论和人因工程理论,设计模拟单调作业的人机交互实验,采用统计控制图分析持续单调作业过程中被试的脑力负荷变化,研究人因失误过程中被试的操作状态和失误模式。结果显示：（1）单调作业过程中不同作业时间段对被试的任务反应速率和正确率有显著影响。（2）当被试出现脑力超负荷时,通常采用延长反应时间的策略,来改善脑力负荷;（3）通过延长反应时间的策略,对于改善脑力负荷状态和避免人因失误有明显作用;（4）惯性操作是单调作业的人机系统出现人因失误的主要原因。     

Competitive Mixed Bundling and Consumer Surplus

Mixed bundling in imperfectly competitive industries causes some prices to rise and others to fall. This paper studies under what conditions mixed bundling works for or against the consumer interest. We find that if buyers incur firm-specific costs or have shop-specific tastes then competitive mixed bundling lowers consumer surplus overall and raises profits—the same is true of competitive volume discounts. Competition without these volume discounts causes all prices to be kept low as larger customers are targeted; with volume discounts the prices for heavy users drop, but more is extracted from small users. The consumer surplus result is reversed if the differentiation between components as opposed to firms is key.     

Best practices in developing,conducting, and evaluating inductive research

This editors' introductory article to the Human Resources Management Review special issue on inductive research methods aims not only to provide an overview of the four main articles, but to provide guidance to researchers and gatekeepers about how best to conduct such research. We address four specific goals in the current article. First, we present a brief overview of each of the four papers. Second, we provide a general background on deduction, induction, and abduction: what they are, how they are distinguished from one another and should be used in a complementary manner, and how our field has moved away from inductive toward deductive paradigms over the last five decades. Third, we shed further light on the current representations of deductive versus inductive approaches in our collective published works, and what can/should be done to achieve a better balance between them as we move forward. Fourth, we offer several “best-practice” recommendations for how best to conduct and evaluate research that does not conform to the prevailing hypothetico-deductive model.     

Relationship marketing: Two case studies

Relationship fundraising is an important ethos for many charities. But what does it mean in practice, how does it work and is it effective? The author details two case studies: the Business Group and the British Social Services Media Awards. Jewish Care was formed in 1990, following the merger of the Jewish Blind Society and The Jewish Welfare Board. It is the largest social services organisation in the Jewish community, helping elderly, mentally ill, physically disabled, blind and unemployed people. Jewish Care helps more than 5,000 people every day, employs over 1,000 staff, works in partnership with over 2,500 volunteers and runs on a turnover of £32m.     

Works council and trade unions: complementary or competitive? The case of SAGCo.

This longitudinal case study in a Japanese owned manufacturing company examines the relationship between union‐based representation and organisation and other forms of employee voice. The study covers the period before and after the passage of the Employment Relations Act 1999. During that period the Company voluntarily agreed to the recognition of an independent trade union at the same time as abandoning a pre‐existing employee works council and its replacement by a Japanese‐style company advisory board. The study investigates, inter alia, how far, and to what extent the inpending EU directive establishing mechanisms for employee information and consultation could influence existing trade union representation and organisation.     

Does Turkey have a special trade relation with the EU?: A gravity model approach

We apply the gravity model to Turkey's trade flows over 1967–2001. First, we check whether this model fits Turkey's geographical pattern of trade in goods. Second, provided that the model works, we assess whether Turkey already has a “special” trade relation with the EU, namely whether merchandise exchanges between the two parties exceed what the gravity approach predicts. The main findings are: (i) the gravity model provides a good fit of Turkey's trade patterns, and (ii) despite the 1963 Association agreement and the customs union launched in 1996, there is no evidence of additional trade between Turkey and the EU.     

State Theory from the Street Altar: The Muscles,the Saint and the Amparo

This article identifies traces of the state in three urban neighborhoods of Mexico City. Instead of asking what is the state, where is it located or what does it do, the question posed here is: what are the effects of state practices at the street level? By ethnographically and visually describing how protection is performed, the article argues that the state is not only ‘somewhere’ in specific functions, actors or institutions; it also manifests materialized effects produced by a web of conflict‐ridden relations. Discussion about the state in the global South generally revolves around its failures and informality. The proposal here is that, by analyzing the state from the standpoint of urban space, the focus is on how protection is performed and by means of which operations, relations, objects and actors—not whether the state works or not, or whether actors are formal or informal. Based on ongoing ethnographic work and a collaboration with two visual artists in Mexico City, the article analyzes three protective processes: the ‘muscles’ (involving actors including police officers, gang leaders, fathers and husbands), the ‘saint’ (involving caring for representations of various saints and participation in other clientelistic chains of fidelity) and the ‘amparo’ (a form of application of the rule of law in a personalized manner for the redress of interpersonal conflicts). These are three sets of practices that have been embedded in Mexico's history of state formation since the days of colonization.     

The cultural significance of accounting in Japan

We have had a spate of works on “Japanese Management” in the world, but very few on “Japanese Accounting”. In this article it is made clear that the functioning of accounting is contingent on the culture in which the accounting systems are incorporated, and that in order to discuss this intermingling of accounting and culture a perspective elaborated in Scandinavia can be relevant despite the uniqueness of Japanese culture. For only non-rationalistic or “naturalistic” perspectives can provide a basis for understanding the cultural dynamics of Japanese organizations and Japanese society. Thus the roles of accounting in Japan go far beyond what has been discussed in accounting textbooks.     

Knowledge interests in corporate environmental management

We know from earlier studies that corporate environmental management is a young discipline, not yet integrated in general management and organization studies, but that researchers take an increasing part in the ongoing scientific conversation. However, the underlying knowledge interests characterizing the field of corporate environmental management is yet empirically unsubstantiated. One way to find out what elements make up the field is to analyse the contents of the most influential writings in the field. The present article identifies the 10 most cited works in Business Strategy and the Environment in 1992–2000 and explores the content of these texts. We conceptualise a typology for analysing corporate environmental management theory and formulate a characterization of the dominating knowledge interests. Our findings show that the theoretical fundament of corporate environmental management lacks a hermeneutic knowledge interest. Copyright © 2001 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd and ERP Environment     

Using narrative evidence synthesis in HRM research: An overview of the method,its application,and the lessons learned

The use of systematic approaches to evidence review and synthesis has recently become more common in the field of organizational research, yet their value remains unclear and largely untested. First used in medical research, evidence review is a technique for identifying, evaluating, and synthesizing existing empirical evidence. With greater demand for the best evidence about “what works” in organizational settings, nuanced approaches to evidence synthesis have evolved to address more complex research questions. Narrative synthesis is perceived to be particularly suited to evaluating diverse evidence types spanning multiple disciplinary fields, characteristic of the HRM domain. This article evaluates the narrative evidence synthesis approach, explains how it differs from other techniques, and describes a worked example in relation to employee engagement. We consider its strengths, the challenges of using it, and its value in HRM research.     

Structural social capital and knowledge acquisition: implications of cluster membership

This paper analyzes the implications of belonging to a cluster through the relationship between structural social capital and knowledge acquisition. The findings suggest structural social capital only indirectly affects knowledge acquisition through the relational and cognitive dimensions of firms’ membership of a cluster. However, the structural dimension also has a direct impact on knowledge for external firms outside a cluster. This paper contributes to the cluster literature with a better contextualization and understanding of the relationship between structural social capital and knowledge acquisition. In addition, the paper also consolidates the inter-organizational approach to social capital theory by helping to understand how and in what context social capital dimensions are interrelated. The study analyzes how firms can acquire valuable knowledge from their networks, filling the gap in the literature on how this process occurs inside and outside clusters. This works also proposes recommendations for companies and institutions, and new complementary lines of research.     

Reinventing the rattling tin: How UK charities use Facebook in fundraising

Using a multicase study approach, this paper explores how the three biggest UK cancer charities by donations use Facebook in their fundraising campaigns, in order to facilitate understanding of the dynamics of philanthropic asking in a social networking site‐mediated environment. The analysis reveals that Facebook is primarily used to strengthen relationships with supporters, mainly via humanising the brand, fostering obligations, and encouraging social interaction. The mobilization of these relationships in fundraising is facilitated by persuasive strategies, including public recognition, authority, and the fostering of a sense of efficacy among fans, and the most common outcome of this mobilization is public endorsement of charities' fundraising campaigns via sharing. At a time when harsh public spending cuts have left gaps in charity funding that need to be filled by philanthropy, this study aims to make a practical contribution to knowledge by examining what works and how in Facebook fundraising.     

Quantifying uncertainty in applying importance-performance analysis

In a traditional importance-performance analysis (IPA), the information of uncertainty for importance and performance does not normally take into account from the survey but does commonly exist in practice. To further consider the uncertainty for each item from the survey results, the IPA under uncertainty method is proposed in this study. The traditional IPA possesses the ease of calculation and can be further viewed as a special case of the proposed IPA under uncertainty method, which is more complicated for computation but provides much more information for a decision maker to judge the strengths and weaknesses effectively by considering sampling, instrument effects, measurement conditions, sample effects, computational effects, random effects, etc. Finally, a brief case is illustrated to show how the proposed IPA under uncertainty method works and what the differences are between the traditional IPA and proposed methods.     

On Successful Research

This paper discusses what I believe a researcher ought to keep in mind when he/she tries to find a research topic and assesses the probability of success. In this context I think of success as a paper that becomes known over time and, generally, extensively cited. My discussion will lay out some useful ‘pointers’. I will also try to provide something resembling a ‘proof in the pudding’ by listing a number of specific research topics, each of which can be spelled out in a few sentences. My aim is to persuade the reader that research topics can rely on straightforward ideas as opposed to a specific set of antecedent papers. In this respect, I argue that the best research questions derive from an acute sense of how the world works as opposed to more or less stylized ‘theories’ originating in academia.