Analysing change in an Accident and Emergency Department: organisational routines as ongoing and emergent sociomaterial accomplishments

Bringing together insights from Organisation Studies and Science and Technology Studies this paper provides a multilevel analysis of a planned change initiative. Focusing on different layers of this change the emergent ambiguities, multiplicities and tensions are explored serving to highlight the ‘back stage complexities’ often hidden by the ‘front stage slickness’ (Moser and Law) of organisational routines.     

Boards of Directors and the Adoption of a CEO Performance Evaluation Process: Agency — and Institutional — Theory Perspectives

Using both agency and institutional theories, we examined factors associated with the board's adoption of a formal process for evaluating the performance of the corporation's chief executive officer (CEO). Our sample was drawn from the hospital industry. Results show that an independent board chairperson, the level of market competition and the degree of managed care penetration were significant predictors of whether or not the board had adopted a formal CEO evaluation process. These findings imply that initiatives to improve governance effectiveness based on agency theory should take into account the institutional environment of corporate boards.     

Entrepreneurial failure and discrimination: lessons for small service firms

This paper draws lessons from a case decided by the USA Supreme Court, wherein the firm failure was perceived by the minority entrepreneur as an outcome of racial discrimination. Implications of this case are significant because the failure rate of minority-owned US businesses has been consistently higher than the average failure rate of US business. We argue that the impact of discrimination by a customer is greater for small service firms. Through the Domino's Pizza case, we assert that issues relating to equal employment, inter-company contracting and choice of business organisation must be managed by the owner of a service firm.     

Social indicators and comparisons of living standards

Construction of an international index of standards of living, incorporating social indicators and economic output, typically involves scaling and weighting procedures that lack welfare-economic foundations. Revealed preference axioms can be used to make quality-of-life comparisons if we can estimate the representative household's production technology for the social indicators. This method is applied to comparisons of gross domestic product (GDP) and life expectancy for 58 countries. Neither GDP rankings, nor the rankings of the Human Development Index (HDI), are consistent with the partial ordering of revealed preference. A method of constructing a utility-consistent index incorporating both consumption and life expectancy is suggested.     

Emotional intelligence,job satisfaction,well‐being and engagement: explaining organisational commitment and turnover intentions in policing

This study examines the effect of emotional intelligence upon the job satisfaction, well‐being and engagement of police officers in explaining their organisational commitment and turnover intentions. Survey responses from 193 police officers in Australia were analysed using partial least squares path modelling. As predicted, emotional intelligence leads to job satisfaction and well‐being, with positive path relationships leading to employee engagement and organisational commitment, thereby affecting turnover intentions. Organisational commitment was found to partially mediate the causal relationship between employee engagement and turnover intentions. The findings of this research have important theoretical and practical implications for police officer retention.     

The effect of World Bank trade adjustment assistance on trade and growth, 1987–2004: Is the glass half full or half empty?

This paper studies the association between trade reform, growth, and trade adjustment assistance in a sample of developing countries that underwent trade reforms during 1987–2004. Our analysis explicitly differentiates between a group of countries that received trade adjustment loans from the World Bank and a non-recipient group. The results suggest that trade adjustment assistance is positively associated with economic growth after trade reform in the medium to long run. In comparison to a pre-reform period and to the non-recipient group, the recipient countries registered 0.2 percent higher growth of real GDP per capita, 5.0 percent higher import growth, and 2.5 percent higher export growth over a period of three to five years after trade reform.     

Pride,prejudice and performance: relations between HRM,diversity and performance

Today, managing diversity is considered one of the main challenges for HRM in modern organizations. In this article, a framework is developed to suggest that the design and implementation of HRM activities should be influenced by strategic choices on the management of diversity which are themselves shaped by environmental factors. The HRM activities lead to four types of outcomes (affective, cognitive, symbolic and communicative) that affect individual, group and organizational performance. This framework is used to explore the effects of workforce diversity in two cases and to provide answers to three central questions: how does diversity influence the interactions in and the performance of diverse groups, and what is the relation between management diversity and other HRM policies in the two companies? The findings indicate that an organization's strategy for managing diversity influences both the process of meaning formation regarding diversity and the perception of performance effects. The availability of an organizational vocabulary and of instruments to interpret interactions in terms of diversity make a crucial difference. The stories and incidents from the two cases show how diversity affects both the daily interactions and the functioning of diverse groups.     

The direct employment effects of new businesses in Germany revisited: an empirical investigation for 1976–2004

Based on an improved and extended database, the Establishment History Panel, we extend the analysis of Fritsch and Weyh [Small Business Economics 27(2), 245–260 (2006)] by investigating the development of employment in German start-up cohorts for the period 1976 to 2004. We confirm the typical pattern found in start-up cohorts: an initial increasing number of employees that is soon followed by a decreasing number. We also provide some of the first evidence for the “liability of aging” phenomena in Germany. Older firms face a relatively high risk of exit. We find that most entries with relatively large initial employment grow substantially in the first two decades. However, these businesses suffer from a considerable employment decline after 25 years.