STEM selves: Women’s identity projects and their assessment of future employers in technical fields

In this paper, we take an identity project perspective on careers to explore how job seekers assess potential employers. Identity projects are individuals’ self-definitions in the light of their career development and personal aspirations and have the potential to further our understanding of careers. Drawing on focus group discussions of women seeking employment in STEM, we find four identity positioning strategies through which the women assess future employers. Our analysis illustrates the role of organizational images for shaping and realizing individuals’ identity projects. We contribute to research on identity projects by extending the concept’s focus to include job seekers as external organizational stakeholders and provide insight into their identity positioning. Furthermore, our study enhances the understanding of organizational image in the context of employee recruitment by outlining how individuals position themselves in relation to the organizational images they construct when reflecting on their identity projects and on the institutional context. Overall, we develop a more nuanced approach to understanding women’s interpretations of organizational identity claims (e.g., gender diversity claims) and thus extend current theorizing on recruiting women to STEM.     

Action research for innovation management: three benefits,three challenges,and three spaces

Given that the innovation landscape is changing, and new forms of organization and management are emerging, this study discusses the potential benefits of action research for innovation management (IM) as it provides closeness to living emergent systems, generates rich insights as well as knowledge for both rigorous theory development and change in practice. Drawing from a large-scale action research study involving a complex collaborative organizational construct, we outline three challenges from employing action research: the process is both reflexive and progressive, the researcher is both an outsider and an insider, and the outcome is both general and specific. A model of three social spaces (the action research space, the academic space, and the practitioner space) is proposed to address the challenges and assist in navigating the multitude of processes, roles, and outcomes associated with action research. The study argues that action research for IM is well suited to exploring tacit aspects of practices and processes in the emergent or shifting study contexts to transform practices through interventions. Thus, if implemented carefully by experienced researchers, it can provide valuable data that are indispensable for theory development in the field of IM.     

An organizational culture for all seasons? How cultural type dominance and strength influence different performance goals

Organizational culture might influence results, especially in public healthcare organizations characterized by strong professional control. This study investigates whether a specific culture type is most effective in fostering performances. We assess organizational culture through Competing Values Framework and use multivariate regression analysis to test the relationship between dominant culture and competitiveness and financial results. Based on 529 responses from senior managers of 59 organizations, we found that dominant rational and hierarchical culture types are associated, respectively, with higher competitiveness and better financial results. Enhancing a specific performance dimension might require cultural changes aimed to align values with targeted results.     

Tax-related mandatory risk factor disclosures,future profitability,and stock returns

Review of Accounting Studies - Prior research finds that mandatory risk factor disclosures are informative in that they increase investors’ assessments of the volatility of a firm’s...     

The 1987 US Stock Market Crash

Will the Crash of 1987 be followed by a deep depression like the crash of 1929?Professor Anna Schwartz, who collaborated with Professor Milton Friedman in writing‘The Monetary History of the United States’, argues that the 1987 crash will only be followed by a severe recession if the Federal Reserve allows a collapse of the money supply as it did in the early 1930s.     

Understanding Top Management and Organizational Change Through Demographic and Processual Analysis*

abstract Top management theory has been strongly influenced by demographic studies of top management teams (TMTs), but not by research into organizational adaptation to conditions of extreme institutional turbulence. This article analyses the transformation of a post‐socialist enterprise through a combination of demographic and processual methods to develop an enriched account of the micro‐processes through which top management constructed organizational change. Adding layers of narrative data and processual explanation directly addresses the well rehearsed problems in demographic TMT studies. From the findings, we propose a set of theoretical arguments that conceptualizes top management in terms of management regimes, to which TMTs are politically tied and through which they seek to realize their values and strategies in organizational outcomes.     

Industrial Relations in Transition Economies: Emergent Industrial Relations Institutions in Bulgaria

East European societies currently in transition to market economies are creating new structures for industrial relations. Transition has ambiguous effects upon the relations between industrial relations institutions and the state. On the one hand, economic pluralism implies separation between state and economy and 'depoliticization'. On the other, economic crises and threats to social order require co-operation between state and unions. The influence of the state is greater because of the embryonic form of employer organization and enterprise-level management. This paper examines the political and economic contexts of industrial relations in Bulgaria, as an example of one type of 'constrained' collective bargaining system. The paper emphasizes continuities between the communist and post-communist period, and the central role of trade unions in the transition process.     

Book Reviews

Michael T. Skully, Merchant Banking in ASEAN: A Regional Examination of its Development and Operations. Kuala Lumpur: Oxford University Press, 1983, pp. x + 200.

Anwar Nasution, Financial Institutions and Policies in Indonesia, Singapore: Institute of Southeast Asian Studies, 1983, pp. xvi + 182.

R. M. Bautista and S. Naya (eds), Energy and Structural Change in the Asia-Pacific Region. Manila: Philippine Institute for Development Studies and Asian Development Bank, 1984, pp. xxii + 532.

Charles A. Coppel, Indonesian Chinese in Crisis, Asian Studies of Australia, Southeast Asian Publications Series No. 8, Kuala Lumpur: Oxford University Press, 1983. pp. xvii + 236. $24.95 (cloth). $13.95 (paper).

Avé, J., V. King and J. de Wit, West Kalimantan: a bibliography, Leiden: Koninklijke Instituut voor Taal-, Land- en Volkenkunde, 1983. Dfl. 30.     

Risk Shifts Following Sarbanes‐Oxley: Influences of Disclosure and Governance

The Sarbanes‐Oxley Act of 2002 (SOX) aimed to improve financial reporting by enhancing corporate disclosure and governance. We find statistically significant increases, from before to after the passage of SOX, in total return variance, market risk and idiosyncratic risk. The risk increases are consistent with predictions that the legislation would cause firms to disclose more negative information, resulting in increased investment risk. However, in cross‐sectional tests, post‐SOX improvements in information certainty, board independence and monitoring are associated with smaller increases or greater decreases in risk. If SOX is responsible for these improvements, its effects are consistent with its purpose.     

Dynamic patterns in similarity-based cooperation: an agent-based investigation

Understanding what motivates and fosters collective actions has major implications in the governance and management of organizations, in the regulation and design of public policies, and has long attracted the interests of scholars and practitioners in business and economics. This paper deals with how groups of agents emerge in a dynamic contest characterized by lack of formal structure and uncertainty regarding the possible individual outcomes, focusing on the features of the cooperators and on the dynamics emerging among them. Through the development of a stylized agent-based model we start by showing how similarity in values can be a successful driver for cooperation but are also able to highlight the limits of such process, by looking at how and how much agents cooperate with similar others. A second-version of the model, where memory of past interactions has a role, introduces further dynamics and is able to create successful and relatively stable groups.