Senior Team Attributes and Organizational Ambidexterity: The Moderating Role of Transformational Leadership

abstract    Organizations capable of pursuing exploration and exploitation simultaneously have been suggested to obtain superior performance. Combining both types of activities and achieving organizational ambidexterity, however, leads to the presence of multiple and often conflicting goals, and poses considerable challenges to senior teams in ambidextrous organizations. This study explores the role of senior team attributes and leadership behaviour in reconciling conflicting interests among senior team members and achieving organizational ambidexterity. Findings indicate that a senior team shared vision and contingency rewards are associated with a firm's ability to combine high levels of exploratory and exploitative innovations. In addition, our study shows that an executive director's transformational leadership increases the effectiveness of senior team attributes in ambidextrous organizations and moderates the effectiveness of senior team social integration and contingency rewards. Hence, our study clarifies how senior executives reconcile conflicting demands and facilitate the balancing of seemingly contradictory forces in ambidextrous organizations. Implications for literatures on senior team attributes, transformational leadership and organizational ambidexterity are discussed.     

How to leverage the impact of R&D on product innovation? The moderating effect of management innovation

Although research and development (R&D) is a key indicator of (technological) innovation, scholars have found mixed results regarding its effect on product innovation and firm performance. In this paper, we claim that variations in R&D effectiveness can be explained by changes in a firm’s social system, in particular in its management innovation. It is still unclear how management innovation influences R&D effectiveness in terms of product innovation. In this study, we address this theoretical and empirical gap in the innovation literature. Our theoretical arguments and findings from a large-scale survey among Dutch firms show that R&D has a decreasingly positive relationship with product innovation, particularly for firms with low levels of management innovation. However, in firms with high levels of management innovation, this relationship becomes more J-shaped, especially in small and medium-sized firms. Our findings also appear to indicate that management innovation may be more important for competitive advantage than just R&D. Overall, our insights reveal that management innovation is a key moderator in explaining firms’ effectiveness in transforming R&D into successful product innovation.     

Deprivation of Women and Men Living in a Couple: Sharing or Unequal Division?

In standard poverty analyses, all household members are assumed to share equal living conditions. Though a few national studies exist, this paper is the first to present empirical evidence on this issue for the EU, using the 2015 wave of the EU Statistics on Income and Living Conditions. We map the extent of intra-couple inequality in deprivation, and analyze its determinants. We find that for most items, the gender difference in lack between partners, though generally small, is significant and at the disadvantage of women. When aggregating the individual items into a deprivation scale, couples where the number of enforced lacks is higher for the woman (9.2 percent) are (significantly) more numerous than couples where the man is disadvantaged (6.5 percent), at the EU level. Econometric analysis shows that the work status of the partners and their relative contribution to the joint income are important determinants of the intra-couple gender deprivation gap.     

The Incidence of Pension Contributions: A Panel Based Analysis of the Impact of Pension Contributions on Labor Cost,Wages and Labor Supply

De Economist - One of the key elements in the planned pension reform in the Netherlands is to abolish the implicit subsidy from younger to older workers inherent in pension schemes with age...     

Fachkräftemangel: Scheinproblem oder Wachstumshemmnis?

Vor allem die Arbeitgeberseite beklagt schon l?nger, dass offene Stellen für Fachkr?fte h?ufi g nicht besetzt werden k?nnen. Tats?chlich war die Versorgung mit gut ausgebildeten Arbeitskr?ften bislang ein deutscher Standortvorteil. Fraglich ist jedoch, ob bei einer genauen Abgrenzung des Begriffs und bei einer Beobachtung m?glicher Signale für einen Mangel kurzfristig wirklich ein Problem konstatiert werden kann. Langfristig wird der demographische Wandel aber auf jeden Fall zu einem Rückgang der Fachkr?fte führen.     

Management Innovation and Leadership: The Moderating Role of Organizational Size

Recent research on management innovation, i.e. new managerial processes, practices, or structures that change the nature of managerial work, suggests it can be an important source of competitive advantage. In this study, we focus on management innovation at the organization level and investigate the role of leadership behaviour as a key antecedent. Due to its prominent role within organizations, top management has the ability to greatly influence management innovation. In particular, we focus on leadership behaviour and examine transformational and transactional leadership. Additionally, as contextual variables like organizational size may influence the impact of leadership, we investigate its moderating role. Findings show that both leadership behaviours contribute to management innovation. Interestingly, our study indicates that smaller, less complex, organizations benefit more from transactional leadership in realizing management innovation. On the other hand, larger organizations need to draw on transformational leaders to compensate for their complexity and allow management innovation to flourish.     

Transnational labour markets and national wage setting systems in the EU

The article analyses the impact of European regulations of posting on different national wage systems. The article shows that the impact varied across the countries and has been filtered by the national institutions regulating the labour market. In the voluntarist wage setting systems of Germany and even Sweden, they have been a major factor bringing wages back into competition. The ability of national actors to act has been considerably curtailed by the European Court of Justice (EUJ), which has placed free competition above the basic rights of autonomous collective bargaining. Because of the divergent interests of Member States, this weakening of national actors cannot be compensated for by transnational agreements. This ‘negative integration’ brings with it a serious risk that the inclusiveness of European wage systems will be eroded by a series of cumulative effects.     

Posting of workers in the single market: attempts to prevent social dumping and regime competition in the EU

The so‐called ‘Posting of Workers Directive’ was an integral part of the European Commission (EC) Action programme linked to the Community Charter of Fundamental Rights of Workers and was meant to establish a legal frame for labour conditions of workers posted for a temporary period to another Member State. Its content is about equal treatment, a guarantee of minimum protection, fair competition and respect for the regulatory frame in the host country. In the cases included in this article, increased divergence can be observed with respect to the role of the state versus the social partners with regards to regulation and control. The over‐riding challenge nowadays is to develop effective mechanisms of enforcement compatible with the constraints of European Union principles and regulations. In the EC documents, any reference to the Community Charter of Basic Rights of Workers has disappeared and the weight of power has shifted in favour of the free market hardliners, who seem to regard the Directive as an oddity in breach with the logic of the four freedoms.