How Leadership Characteristics Affect Organizational Decline and Downsizing

While studies have investigated the moral issue associated with downsizing, little research attention has been directed to leaders’ behaviors that result in organizational decline and eventually lead them to make a downsizing decision. This study tests a sequence-based model to assess (1) the impact of leaders’ risk-aversion and self-centeredness on organizational decline and downsizing and (2) the impact of organizational and industry decline on organizational downsizing. We address a gap in the decline literature that has only implicitly alluded to leadership characteristics as forerunners of decline. Data collected from 85 firms indicate that both leadership risk-aversion and self-centeredness are significantly related to organizational decline. This results in intensified organizational downsizing. However, industry decline affects downsizing more significantly.     

Interactive Web-Based Map: Applications to Large Data Sets in the Geosciences

Current advances in computer hardware, information technology and data collection techniques have produced very large data sets in a wide variety of scientific and engineering disciplines. We must harness this opportunity to visualize and extract useful information from geophysical and geological data. We have taken the task of data mining by implementing a map-like approach over a web server for interrogating the data, using a client-server paradigm. The spatial-data is mapped onto a two-dimensional grid from which the user (client) can quiz the data with the map-interface as a user extension. The data is stored on the server, while the computational gateway separating the client and the server can be the front-end of an electronic publication, electronic classroom, a survey, or an e-business. We have used a combination of Java, Java3D, and Perl for processing the data and communicating between the client and the server. The user can interrogate the geospatial data over any particular region with arbitrary dimensions and then receive back relevant statistical analysis, such as the histogram plots and local statistics. We have applied this method for the following data sets: (1.) distribution of prime numbers (2.) two-dimensional mantle convection (3.) three-dimensional mantle convection (4.) high-resolution satellite reflectance data over multiple wavelengths (5.) molecular dynamics describing the flow of blood in narrow vessels. Using the map-interface, one can actually interrogate this data over the Internet.     

Assessing ocean temperature’s role in fishery production

Journal of Bioeconomics - Ocean temperatures are increasing. Little work has been done to examine the effects that these changes will have on fishery production. The study at hand seeks to...     

Understanding Managers’ Reactions to Blockchain Technologies in the Supply Chain: The Reliable and Unbiased Software Agent

Organizations investing in supply chain information systems struggle to ensure successful adoption and implementation. Projects fail because of technical caveats, inability to meet business needs, and poor management of implementation. Implementation of blockchain technologies across a network of supply chain partners is more complex than internally focused technologies. It is necessary for partner firms to implement, contribute, and share information, and employees to actively use the capabilities of the technology to realize potential. Blockchain technologies can substitute for traditional interfirm intermediaries acting as an unbiased software agent embedded in the supply chain network. Understanding managers’ perceptions of and willingness to use blockchain technologies is crucial for successful implementation. Integrating design theory with classic diffusion processes, we conducted a scenario‐based role‐playing experiment with industry professionals to examine managers’ perceptions of blockchain technologies and willingness to use. We find that trustworthiness with regard to competence and perceived distributive justice is the focal drivers of managers’ willingness to use the technology. Additionally, both risk and interactional justice are not drivers of willingness to use blockchain technology despite significant claims to that effect. We provide implications for how managers can leverage these drivers to influence supply chain partners’ willingness to use the technology.     

“Such elements do not belong in an ordered society”: Managing rural–urban resettlement in democratic South Africa

In South Africa, the scale of rural–urban resettlement after apartheid continues to overwhelm the capacity of the government to house city dwellers in need of shelter. But the legitimacy of the postapartheid government rests on its ability to secure the rights of citizens who enjoy constitutional guarantees, including the right to housing. Because the government cannot simply repress this unhoused surplus population, it seeks instead to delegitimize some portion of it. It does so by developing a number of moralizing discourses, the subject of this paper, which distinguish between patient, deserving citizens, and unruly queue jumpers perceived to threaten the democratic project itself. Housing officials misrecognize squatters as a cause, rather than a consequence, of the state's failure to deliver, policing new land occupations with a draconian severity. They justify such repression in the name of protecting the democratic order, which is assumed to require waiting instead of improvisation.     

Franchise branding: an organizational identity perspective

Despite the call for increased theoretical diversity in franchising research, the incorporation of organizational theory into this literature has been minimal. In response, we examine how aspects of organizational identity are represented in franchisee recruitment Web sites. We develop the concept of franchise branding to understand how franchisors position franchise opportunities to attract potential franchisees. We find that firms in the Franchise 500 use more language associated with market orientation, entrepreneurial orientation, and charismatic rhetoric when compared to a sample of lower-performing franchises. We also examine the impact of franchisor size and age to examine how liabilities of size and newness impact language use. We find that larger firms tend to use more rhetoric but detect no significant differences based on age. We conclude by discussing future possibilities for incorporating additional theoretical perspectives into the franchising literature.     

Web-based service of a visualization package “Amira” for the geosciences

Amira is a powerful three-dimensional visualization package that has been employed recently by the science and engineering communities to gain insight into their data. We discuss a new paradigm for the use of Amira in the Earth sciences that relies on the client-server paradigm. We have developed a module called WEB-IS2, which provides web-based access to Amira. This tool allows Earth scientists to manipulate Amira controls remotely and to analyze, render and view large datasets through the Internet without regard for time or location. This could have important ramifications for GRID computing.     

Interactive Statistical Analysis of Complex Mantle Flows with the Web

Up to now, all of the figures in mantle convection literature have been presented in a static manner, where the fields at one scale are shown on a printed page . This is no longer possible with the spatial resolution increasing at an ever rising clip and the appearance of the issue of multi-scale structures. Because of the onslaught of data-flooding and the growing complexity of strongly time-varying physical fields from compressible mantle convection, such as the adiabaticity, and other thermo dynamical heating functions, we can no longer afford to display and look at the results in the same static way as in a book. We have developed a new approach for interrogating data coming out from numerical simulations. This is based on an interactive two-dimensional map which is used over the WEB with a client-server paradigm. We have applied this to investigate mantle convection flows in both two-and three-dimensional situations. The distributions of thermal anomalies found are no longer Gaussian but sometimes have long tails, especially near the edges of plume heads. The same is also found for the distribution of mechanical heating, which can be quite skewed. Our experiences with this new interactive mode of data-query have shown both the educational and scientific importance of using the world wide web media to quiz handily the data taken from large-scale numerical simulations.