A Repeatable E-Collaboration Process Based on ThinkLets for Multi-Organization Strategy Development

In recent years, multi-organizational collaboration has become more and more important in both business and research. We conducted an action research (AR) intervention with a consortium of Finnish universities that needed to revise its joint strategy. We designed and facilitated a repeatable collaboration process for this multi-organizational strategy development. The process was built using the Collaboration Engineering (CE) approach with thinkLets, which provides expert-level advice for novice facilitators, and it was powered by Group Support Systems (GSS). Our overall impression of CE’s ability to provide valuable design and facilitation support for complex processes is very affirmative. The consortium was satisfied with the intervention, as it saved huge amounts of time compared with conventional strategic work. The process was also seen as more democratic, because the GSS tools enabled equal participation during the session. Our study also provides a ready-to-apply CE process recipe to organizations for revising their strategy. Through this recipe, supplemented with knowledge on thinkLets, the strategy development process may easily be repeated by other facilitators or even practitioners.     

Facilitating Collaboration with Problem Structuring Methods: A Case Study of an Inter-Organisational Construction Partnership

Despite the potential of inter-organisational collaboration to create ‘collaborative advantage’ among participant organisations, not all collaborations realise this potential due to the complexities and challenges faced by potential collaborators. To address these difficulties and increase the likelihood of collaborative success, different forms of intervention approaches for fostering inter-organisational collaboration has been advocated by collaboration researchers and practitioners. These intervention approaches all facilitate interaction and consensus formation among the participants. However their ‘added value’ is procedural rather than substantive in nature. They do not incorporate tools which can enable participants to structure the complexity of the web of factors that are implicated in their collaboration, and thus make it more manageable. This paper argues that problem structuring methods (PSMs), a family of model-based approaches to group decision and negotiation support, are a form of intervention which can provide a balanced attention to both the process and the content of inter-organisational collaboration, and reports the experience of applying a particular PSM to an inter-organisational collaborative partnership in the UK construction industry. Drawing on the rich data generated from the intervention, the paper discusses the impact of the PSM in supporting the joint appreciation activities carried out by collaborators to address their problematic situation. Implications of the experience for the research and practice of PSMs within collaborative contexts are then presented.     

Constructing Good Decisions in Ethically Charged Situations: The Role of Dramatic Rehearsal

This paper develops a pragmatist approach to ethical business decision-making. It draws primarily on the work of John Dewey and applies his deliberative approach to ethics to the challenges of business practitioners. In particular the paper proposes the value of Dewey’s concept of dramatic rehearsal in emphasizing the task of “constructing the good” in ethical decision-making. The contribution of the paper is, first, to build on recent foundational work to bring American pragmatism into the mainstream business ethics literature; second, to offer a perspective that is accessible to practitioners and integrates ethics into their daily tasks; and third, to identify a number of related research imperatives – in particular the importance of focusing efforts on gaining a deeper understanding of the deliberative process itself.     

National Security as a Corporate Social Responsibility: Critical Infrastructure Resilience

This article argues for an extension to the scope of corporate social responsibility (CSR) research to include a contemporary issue of importance to national and global security, critical infrastructure resilience. Rather than extending the multiple perspectives on CSR, this study aimed to identify a method of recognising CSR-related issues, before applying it to two dissimilar case studies on critical infrastructure resilience. One case study was of an international telecommunications company based in the US while the other was of the railway network in Britain during a period of privatisation. The method used was derived from Okoye’s (J Bus Ethics 89(4):613–627, 2009) common reference core for CSR. Both case studies satisfied all the criteria sought which points to critical infrastructure resilience as being an emerging CSR issue. Because ongoing change characterises CSR, the method may have application for identifying future new CSR strands. As the findings suggest that some aspects of national and global security are CSR-related phenomena, the study demonstrates how CSR research may be significant at a societal, national and global level. Implications of the study include a broadening of the value and reach of contributions from CSR researchers and practitioners.     

Organizational Role and Environmental Uncertainty as Influences on Ethical Work Climate in Military Units

In addition to a person’s character and training, the organization’s ethical work climate (EWC) can assess how the organization influences an individual’s ethical decision-making process by examining the individuals’ perception of “what is the right thing to do” in a particular organizational environment. Relatively little research has explored which EWCs dominate military units and the impact of organizational role and environmental uncertainty on individuals in the military and their ethical decision making. In this study, we examined the predominant EWCs among military units and found that certain organizational influences are associated with the specific EWCs. Based on these discoveries, we discuss the implications of EWC studies and the influence of organizational role and environmental uncertainty for researchers, as well as military leaders.     

Researcher Interaction Biases and Business Ethics Research: Respondent Reactions to Researcher Characteristics

The potential for biased responses that occur when researchers interact with their study participants has long been of interest to both academicians and practitioners. Given the sensitive nature of the field, researcher interaction biases are of particular concern for business ethics researchers regardless of their preference for survey, experimental, or qualitative methodology. Whereas some ethics researchers may inadvertently bias data by misrecording or misinterpreting responses, other biases may occur when study participants’ responses are systematically influenced by the mere introduction of researchers into the participants’ environment. Although substantial empirical research has been conducted on the general topic of researcher interaction biases, none has focused specifically on business ethics research. In order to remedy this lack of empirical substantiation in the field, we review the related literature on researcher interaction biases, present an empirical example of how such biases can influence research results in an experiment assessing reactions to insurance fraud, and discuss the implications for business ethics research.     

The Frontiers in Service Conference: a 20-year retrospective

The history of the Frontiers in Service Conference and its impact on the service research community was examined by content analyzing each of the 20 conference programs. The results were aggregated and examined for trends regarding program participation on several characteristics, including author, institutional affiliation, country affiliation, and practitioner/academic relationship. Insights regarding the role of the Frontiers Conference in nurturing service knowledge, fostering multinational research collaboration, and bridging the practitioner–academic gap are offered. These findings show strong growth in collaboration across the first 20 years. A total of 57 countries are represented in the data with significant research collaboration across those countries. Also, many corporations are represented in the data, especially International Business Machines (IBM). The value of the Frontiers in Service Conference as a vehicle for encouraging collaboration between service scholars and practitioners globally and for bridging the practitioner–academic gap is established.     

A Training Approach for the Transition of Repeatable Collaboration Processes to Practitioners

This paper presents a training approach to support the deployment of collaboration process support according to the Collaboration Engineering approach. In Collaboration Engineering, practitioners in an organization are trained to facilitate a specific collaborative work practice on a recurring basis. To transfer the complex skill set of a facilitator to support the practitioner in guiding a specific collaboration process design, we propose a detailed training approach based on the logic of Cognitive Load Theory. The training approach focuses on transferring knowledge and skills in the form of thinkLets, i.e. repeatable facilitation techniques. Furthermore, the training contains a process simulation to practice challenges in collaboration support. The training approach was positively evaluated using a questionnaire instrument in a case study.     

The Effect of Ethical Orientation and Professional Commitment on Earnings Management Behavior

The purpose of this study is twofold. The first objective is to examine the impact of an individual’s ethical ideology and level of professional commitment on the earnings management decision. The second objective is to observe whether the presence of a personal benefit affects an individual’s ethical orientation or professional commitment within the context of an opportunity to manage earnings. Using a sample of 375 undergraduate business majors, our results suggest a significant relationship between an individual’s ethical orientation and decision-making. Further, participants with higher levels of professional commitment seem to be less likely to engage in earnings management behavior and less likely to behave opportunistically. These results have the potential to add to our understanding of certain behaviors in entry-level personnel and should be of interest to managers, practitioners, academicians, and researchers.     

The academician–practitioner gap in advertising

The existence of the academician–practitioner gap is readily acknowledged and widely discussed in the marketing/advertising literature. This paper analyses key writings on the nature of the academician–practitioner rift and proposes a new approach complementing the literature. The review identifies five prevailing explanations why miscommunication between academicians and practitioners exists: (1) the failure of academic knowledge dissemination systems; (2) problems with the knowledge content and knowledge form academicians produce; (3) counterproductive academic organisational systems; (4) questions of philosophy of science; and (5) practitioners’ inability and unwillingness to process academic information. The study concludes that one potential explanation is entirely missed in these accounts: the possibility that practitioners’ knowledge about how advertising works is an autonomous construct, which has its own rules and deep structure, and resists simple assimilation attempted by academicians. The study also complements the existing literature by basing the review on firm theoretical grounds: the authors apply the influential sociological theory of professionalisation. Finally, future directions for research investigation are suggested, which moves the predominantly normative discourse into the empirical world.     

Preserving Knowledge on IS Business Value

The economic relevance of information systems has been studied for many years and has attracted an abundance of research papers. However, the “productivity paradoxon” of the 1990s, Carr’s widely recognized paper “IT doesn’t matter”, and several studies that do not find a positive correlation between IS investments and economic performance reveal long-lasting difficulties for IS researchers to explain “IS business value”. Business executives and researchers also continue to question the value of IS investments. This raises the question of whether literature reviews have tapped their potential to address the concerns by covering key research areas of IS business value and preserving their key findings. In order to address this question, this paper identifies and describes 12 key research areas, and synthesizes what literature reviews published in pertinent academic outlets have done to preserve knowledge. The analysis of 22 literature reviews shows that some crucial areas have not been (sufficiently) covered. They provide fertile areas for future literature reviews. As this work is based on the results of more than 200 research papers, it is capable of drawing a comprehensive picture of the current state-of-the-art in IS business value research.     

A Preliminary Study of Fintech Industry: A Two-Stage Clustering Analysis for Customer Segmentation in the B2B Setting

ABSTRACT

This practitioner note proposes a new approach considering two-stage clustering and LRFMP model (Length, Recency, Frequency, Monetary and Periodicity) simultaneously for customer segmentation and behavior analysis and applies it among the Iranian Fintech companies. In this practitioner note, the K-means clustering algorithm and LRFMP model are combined in the customer segmentation process. After initial clustering, for a better understanding of valuable customers, additional clustering is implemented in segments that needed further investigation. This approach contributes to a better interpretation of different customer segments. Customer segments, consisting of 23524 business customers are analysed based on their characteristics and appropriate strategies are recommended accordingly. The first stage clustering result shows that customers are best segmented into four groups. The first and fourth segments are clustered again and the final 11 groups of customers are determined. This note provides a systematic and practical approach for researchers and practitioners for segmentation, interpretation, and targeting of customers especially in the B2B setting and the Fintech industry and helps managers to make effective marketing strategies and enhance customer relationship and marketing intelligence.     

The State of Research on Information Systems Success

Measuring information systems (IS) success is of great interest to both researchers and practitioners. This article examines multidimensional approaches to measuring IS success and explores the current state of IS success research through a literature review and by classifying articles published between 2003 and 2007. Based on a total of 41 academic journal and conference publications, the relevant research carried out is identified, while the research results are categorized, consolidated, and discussed. The results show that the dominant empirical research analyzes the individual impact of a certain type of information system by ascertaining users’ evaluation of it by means of surveys and then applying structural equation modeling. The DeLone and McLean information systems success model is the main theoretical basis of the reviewed empirical studies. This article provides researchers with a comprehensive review and structuring of IS success research. Furthermore, opportunities for additional development are identified and future research directions suggested.     

Innovation management in service firms: a research agenda

This article suggests an agenda for further research on innovation management in service firms. It investigates differences and similarities between issues identified by previous academic research and issues brought up by practitioners within the area of innovation management in service firms. The results show that there are some major differences; for instance, researchers stress a need for formalized processes for development work, while practitioners focus on facilitating innovation in everyday operations. The main conclusion is that in order to bridge the gap between research and practice we would encourage further research on innovation in service firms to (1) conduct micro studies of innovation work, (2) view innovation in the context of everyday operations and (3) focus on co-workers’ innovative potential.     

A Framework for Assessing Immorally Manipulative Marketing Tactics

A longstanding debate exists in both academic literature and popular culture about whether non-informative marketing tactics are manipulative. However, given that we tend to believe that some marketing tactics are manipulative and some are not, the question that marketers, their critics, and consumers need to ask themselves is that of how to actually determine whether any particular marketing tactic is manipulative and whether a given manipulative tactic is, in fact, immoral. This article proposes to operationalize criteria that can be used by marketers for making such determinations and attempts to provide some clarification toward our under- standing of the concept of manipulation and the conditions for the moral acceptability of manipulative marketing practices. It argues that a marketing tactic is manipulative if it is intended to motivate by undermining what the marketer believes is his/her audience’s normal decision-making process either by deception or by playing on a vulnerability that the marketer believes exists in his/her audience’s normal decision-making process. Such a tactic is morally objectionable on several grounds, which make it morally impermissible unless outweighed by sufficient “redemptive” moral considerations.     

Determinants of R&D collaboration of service firms

This article examines the determinants of R&D collaboration of service firms. Different from manufacturing firms, we expect that types of innovation, public financing, innovation protection, purchase of external R&D, firm’s absorptive capacity, spillovers, and certain innovation barriers determine the firm’s decision to collaborate in R&D. Results indicate that firms that undertake R&D collaboration tend to undertake process innovation, receive public funding, can protect their innovations, and typically subcontract the development of their technologies. The article provides implications for theory and practice.     

Stakeholder Salience Revisited: Refining,Redefining, and Refueling an Underdeveloped Conceptual Tool

This article revisits and further develops Mitchell et al.’s (Acad Manag Rev 22(4):853–886, 1997) theory of stakeholder identification and salience. Stakeholder salience holds considerable unrealized potential for understanding how organizations may best manage multiple stakeholder relationships. While the salience framework has been cited numerous times, attempts to develop it further have been relatively limited. We begin by reviewing the key contributions of other researchers. We then identify and seek to resolve three residual weaknesses in Mitchell et al.’s (1997) framework, thereby strengthening its foundations for further development. We argue, first, that urgency is not relevant for identifying stakeholders; second, that it is primarily the moral legitimacy of the stakeholder’s claim that applies to stakeholder salience; and last, that the salience of stakeholders will vary as the degrees of the attributes vary. These insights inform revised definitions of stakeholder salience and legitimacy, and necessitate a new theoretical underpinning for the role of legitimacy. Finally, we present an extensive agenda for future research with the objective of refueling research in stakeholder salience.     

A Multidimensional Approach to the Influence of Environmental Marketing and Orientation on the Firm’s Organizational Performance

Since it implies a reduction in the quality and the quantity of the natural resources, environmental degradation is a present day problem that requires immediate solutions. This situation is driving firms to undertake an environmental transformation process with the purpose of reducing the negative externalities that come from their economic activities. Within this context, environmental marketing is an emerging business philosophy by which organizations can address sustainability issues. Moreover, environmental marketing and orientation are seen as valuable strategies to improve a firm’s competitiveness. However, the literature that has analyzed the link between environmental strategies and firms’ results has been inconclusive and contradictory. In this study, we propose and test a model that analyses how the implementation of ecological issues within a firm’s marketing strategy and orientation influences organizational results. Data were obtained through a survey sent to Spanish manufacturing firms. The results show that environmental marketing positively affects firms’ operational and commercial performance and this improvement will influence their economic results. Moreover, environmental marketing is revealed as an excellent strategy to obtain competitive advantages in costs and in product differentiation. Thus, this study agrees with the researchers who affirm that environmental strategies positively affect firm’s competitiveness while reducing environmental impact.     

Between Profit-Seeking and Prosociality: Corporate Social Responsibility as Derridean Supplement

This article revolves around the debate surrounding the lack of a coherent definition for corporate social responsibility (CSR). I make use of Jacques Derrida’s theorizing on contested meaning to argue that CSR’s ambiguity is actually necessary in light of its functional role as a “supplement” to corporate profit-seeking. As a discourse that refuses to conclusively resolve the tension between profit-seeking and prosociality, CSR expresses an important critical perspective which demands that firms act responsibly, while retaining the overall corporate frame of shareholder supremacy. CSR does this by ambivalently affirming both profit-seeking and prosociality, a necessary contradiction. Attempts to reduce CSR’s ambiguity can thus only succeed by undermining its viability as a normative discourse that captures how certain elements of society understand how firms should act. The analysis suggests that greater scholarly attention is needed with regard to the material discursive environments within which discourses such as CSR are deployed. A discursive approach to research could thus benefit future practitioners, who have to act according to fluid standards of responsibility that cannot be authoritatively defined, but which can be better understood than they are at present.