Managing in conflict: How actors distribute conflict in an industrial network

IMP researchers have examined conflict as a threat to established business relationships and commercial exchanges, drawing on theories and concepts developed in organization studies. We examine cases of conflict in relationships from the oil and gas industry's service sector, focusing on conflicts of interest and resources, and conflict as experienced by actors. Through a comparative case study design, we propose an explanation of how actors manage conflict and manage in conflict given that they tend to value and maintain relationships beyond episodes of exchange. We consider conflicts in relationships from a network perspective, showing that actors experienced these while adapting to changes in their business setting, modifying their roles in that network. By identifying conflict with the organizing forms of relationship and network, we show how actors formulate conflict through pursuing and combining a number of strategies, distributing the conflict across an enlarged network.     

Media Effects on the Formation of Negotiator Satisfaction: The Example of Face-to-Face and Text Based Electronically Mediated Negotiations

Recently, scholars have highlighted the importance of subjective negotiation outcomes such as negotiator satisfaction for future negotiations and the relationship between negotiators. This study considers the major antecedents of satisfaction formation in negotiation and analyses how the communication medium, i.e. the face-to-face (FTF) and the text based electronically mediated (TBEM) mode, influence satisfaction formation. Drawing on grounding in communication (Clark and Brennan in Perspectives on socially shared cognition. American Psychological Asociation, Washington DC, pp 127–149, 1991), hypotheses are developed and tested in an experimental gaming simulation in which graduate students negotiated in n = 52 dyads. The empirical analysis supports the notion that the communication medium has a mediated and a moderating effect on negotiator satisfaction. Aspirations, individual profit and positive relational messages mediate the medium’s effect on satisfaction. Furthermore, the impact of contentious behaviour and positive relational messages on negotiator satisfaction is stronger in TBEM than in FTF negotiations. This study also contributes to the wider negotiation literature by employing a context-rich gaming simulation for experimental purposes.     

The hiring of accounting and finance officers from audit firms: how did the market react?

This study investigates the market’s reaction to companies hiring accounting and finance officers directly from their external audit firms—the auditor-to-client hiring practice referred to as the “revolving door.” The Sarbanes-Oxley Act (SOX) eliminated this hiring practice, reflecting concerns that such appointments may impair audit and financial reporting quality. However, it was also argued that companies may have benefited from hiring individuals already familiar with their systems, organization and personnel. To determine the prevalence of this hiring practice and how shareholders viewed these appointments, we examine 3-day cumulative abnormal returns around the announcements of newly appointed accounting and finance officers over the period 1985–2002. We find that the proportion of revolving door hires is relatively low (only 6.1% of all hires in our sample), but that when they did occur the market valued the revolving door appointments more positively than other appointments. Further tests reveal that the positive market reaction to revolving door appointments is driven mainly by smaller companies, and that these appointments are not associated with lower financial reporting quality when assessing subsequent discretionary accruals or the receipt of an Accounting and Auditing Enforcement Release (AAER). Overall, the low frequency of occurrence, investors’ positive perceptions, and the lack of association with deteriorated reporting quality indicate that the SOX restriction on revolving door appointments may have been unnecessary and will do little to protect shareholders.

Industrial sales people as market actors

We develop the concept of boundaries in the context of sales personnel and their counterparts encountering and negotiating these while they undertake work to shape markets and build relationships. Drawing on a case study from production chemistry, we show that market shaping implies a mutual development of relationships, goods and services exchanged, and boundaries. In particular, we show that while relationships can submerge and obscure parts or dimensions of boundaries to other market actors, normal business activities such as testing new products and adapting products to changes in environmental legislation make visible some material dimensions of the exchange object, which can attract attention from other sellers. Visibility finds an expression as those market objects are exchanged, such that objects can be devices by which other actors join in and position themselves and their objects within markets.     

The bonding effects of relationship value and switching costs in industrial buyer–seller relationships: An investigation into role differences

Despite the established importance of buyer–seller relationships in B-to-B markets, research to determine the differential effects that keep suppliers and customers in a relationship has been scarce. Referring to transaction cost analysis, this study investigates how switching costs and relationship value as perceived by each side unfold their bonding forces in such a relationship. Based on a large scale survey administered in Germany, Korea, New Zealand, and Argentina among marketing/sales and purchasing managers the study shows that relationship value has a stronger impact on intentions for relationship enhancement, search for alternatives and switch intention than switching costs for both buyers and sellers. Only with regard to relational tolerance and only for buyers do switching costs play a greater role than relationship value. Furthermore, buyers base their future relationship intentions more on the current state of the relationship than suppliers. Our results suggest that role differences must be taken into account when studying institutional arrangements in B-to-B markets.     

Constructing and contesting markets through the market object

This paper focuses on the work that market actors undertake in order to stabilize and de-stabilize market objects. We briefly revisit Igor Ansoff's classic product–market strategy matrix to show how marketing management literature typically equates stability in markets with commodification and inertia. To escape this inertia, marketers often ‘warm up’ or destabilize existing market objects by changing the material bases of the object, for instance in incremental product development. But this ‘warming up’ invites other market actors to also question or destabilize the networks that are supposed to hold the market object in its new (market) space. We utilize archival research to trace one case each of market and product development within the pharmaceutical realm, demonstrating: first, the effort market actors put into ‘cooling down’ and ‘warming up’ market objects; second, how contested such efforts can be; and third, how the object's material attachments may limit its symbolic malleability.     

Insider trading around auto recalls: Does investor attention matter?

Review of Quantitative Finance and Accounting - Using a comprehensive sample of customer complaints filed with the National Highway Traffic Safety Administration, we examine the...     

Rhetoric versus Reality: Exploring Consumer Empowerment in a Maternity Setting

This study explores consumer empowerment in a maternity setting in the Republic of Ireland. Our results indicate that empowerment is a complex phenomenon influenced by many variables. While the current health services literature is focusing on active consumers of health services, our study shows that not all pregnant women have the same needs for and attitudes toward empowerment: some women do indeed seek to be overtly empowered in the maternity setting and equate empowerment with a high level of control over the service provision; others pursue a more passive role but may still experience such a role as empowering. A theoretical discussion focusing on the complexities of empowerment and issues of power and authoritative knowledge in cultural systems concludes this paper.     

Artifacts that organize: Delegation in the distributed organization

A great deal of research on geographically distributed organizing focuses on communication among members; however, in the face of increasingly large, complex and interdependent infrastructure, scholars must also examine instances of technology-supported coordination that function by replacing rather than enhancing human communication among organizational members. Central to this are complex processes of delegation — in which organizational work and agency are passed back and forth across the shifting line between “social” and “technical” elements. Building on work in the sociology of science, this paper extends the concept of delegation and applies it to thorny questions around the work of sustaining organization over time. We explore two examples from the Open Science Grid (OSG), an initiative that distributes computational resources to geographically dispersed and otherwise loosely coordinated research teams. Our first case is one of successful delegation, as automated access to resources is extended to a new group of distributed scientists. We then turn our attention to a case where the process of delegation breaks down, revealing the usually invisible work needed to sustain “seamless” integration. As these cases show, delegation is complex, fragile, and central to the nature of contemporary organizing. Specifically, delegation: 1) reconfigures the organization of work; 2) transforms how outcomes are accomplished; 3) redistributes responsibility for organizational decision-making; and 4) shifts the visibility and invisibility of both actors and their work.