Resilience of sustainability‐oriented and financially‐driven organizations

To answer key questions concerning how negative and positive financial performance gaps motivate organizations to build more resilient systems, we develop a conceptual process model to reveal the process by which financially and sustainability‐driven organizations can translate these negative and positive financial performance gaps into organizational resilience. We specify the different modes of search behaviors that these organizations pursue when encountering negative and positive financial performance gaps. We then expand on group engagement model to theorize that vicarious search is likely to encourage limiting behaviors, whereas internal search is likely to foster promotion behaviors. Finally, we explain how both promoting and limiting behaviors can be helpful in improving organizational resilience. In this way, we hope to advance research that connects and integrates relatively disparate realms and, more specifically, to contribute to the sustainability, resilience, and performance feedback literatures.     

The impact of advertising content on movie revenues

We analyze the contents of print ads in the motion picture industry (e.g., number of reviews quoted in the ad, the presence of a top reviewer, size of the ad, star, director, etc.). We find that external validation (a recommendation by a top reviewer) is more important to revenues than the informative content of the ad.     

Guanxi,political connections and resource acquisition in Chinese publicly listed private sector firms

In this study, we examined the role of guanxi as entrepreneurs’ resource-obtaining mechanism in private sector firms, using a data-set of 184 publicly listed firms in China. We found that guanxi indeed played a positive role that helped private sector firms gain easier access to resources. We also found that guanxi exerted even a greater positive effect on private sector firms’ resource obtaining compared to entrepreneurs’ political participation, due to being the lifeblood of business conduct and social interaction in Chinese culture.     

Architectural Redesign, Interpersonal Communication, and Learning in R&D

An effective R&D organization needs information from a complex web of sources, including customers, suppliers, sales and marketing, and company management. Within the R&D organization, information must flow into and among numerous teams. This network of interpersonal communications can go a long way toward determining the success of a company's innovation efforts. In an exploratory study of a Belgian company operating in the telecommunications industry, Rudy K. Moenaert and Filip Caeldries examine the effects of interpersonal communication on market and technological learning in R&D. Trying to improve the flow of information into and within its R&D organization, this company designed its new R&D facility with an eye toward improving both market and technological learning throughout the organization. By locating R&D personnel in closer proximity to one another, management hoped to provide them with improved access to market and technological information, and thus increase their innovativeness. Contrary to expectations, placing R&D professionals in closer proximity to one another did not increase technological learning in this organization. In fact, technological learning actually decreased slightly during the period studied, though the change is not statistically significant. On the other hand, market learning and product innovativeness improved significantly during the period studied. For an R&D professional in this company, members of other R&D teams seem to be more important as sources of market information than as sources of technological information. Surprisingly, the relocation of R&D personnel also did not increase the amount of communication that takes place, either within a project team, between members of different teams, or between R&D professionals and the management steering committee. However, the architectural redesign does appear to have improved the quality of communication. R&D team leaders report that since the relocation, the information flowing into R&D has been more customer focused. This is attributed to the company's ongoing efforts to provide the tools and structures necessary for supporting the objectives of the architectural redesign. For example, implementation of quality function deployment (QFD) has helped innovation team members to focus more clearly on relevant information. The success of the architectural design required approaching this effort as a complex, ongoing process, rather than a quick-fix solution.     

Leadership,Creative Problem‐Solving Capacity,and Creative Performance: The Importance of Knowledge Sharing

This article presents two studies that examine whether leader supportive behaviors facilitate knowledge sharing and employee creative problem‐solving capacity, thereby enhancing creative performance. The findings from both studies indicate that leader supportive behaviors are directly and indirectly related, through both internal and external knowledge sharing, to employee creative problem‐solving capacity. In addition, creative problem solving was related to the two dimensions of creative performance—fluency and originality. However, a test of the mediation model indicated that creative problem solving only mediated the relationship between internal knowledge sharing creative performance and originality. These findings highlight the complex process by which leaders facilitate both internal and external knowledge sharing and employee creative problem‐solving capacity, thereby improving employee creative performance.     

The Notching Rule for Subordinated Debt and the Information Content of Debt Rating

This paper provides new evidence regarding the information content of debt ratings. We show that noninvestment grade subordinated issues are consistently priced too high (the yield is too low), and the reverse is true for some investment grade bonds. We relate this empirical bias to a notching rule of thumb that is used in order to rate subordinated debt without expending additional resources for information production. We propose an explanation for these findings based upon a balance between an attempt to please the companies that pay the raters versus a concern for lawsuits and regulatory investigations should ratings be too optimistic.     

Ethno‐cultural considerations in negotiation: pretense,deception and lies in the Greek workplace

A retrospect into ethos, this study examines the impact of individualism, collectivism, ethical idealism and interpersonal trust on negotiators' attitudes toward questionable negotiation tactics in Greece. A thousand survey questionnaires were administered to Greek employees, of which 327 usable responses were collected. Our findings empirically corroborated a classification of three groups of negotiation tactics, namely, pretense, deception and lies. Individualism–collectivism and ethical idealism were found to be related, and interpersonal trust was found to be unrelated, to attitudes toward questionable negotiation tactics. Emphasizing the non‐US and non‐Western European nature of the empirical data collected, the originality of this research further stems from the development of a comprehensive research framework about questionable negotiation tactics in Greece.     

Values as determinants of motivation: Tourism and other career choices

Neuman, Yoram, Abraham Pizam and Arie Reichel, Values as Determinants of Motivation: Tourism and Other Career Choices. Annals of Tourism Research 1980, VII (3): 428–442. This study examined the predictive validity of work values in explaining motivational patterns of three groups of career preparation differing in their occupational specificity: Tourism/Hospitality, Management, and Liberal Arts. It was found that the higher the occupational specificity of a career preparation the higher is the predictive validity of work values in explaining work motivations. As predicted, the best relationships between values and motivation was found in the maximally specified occupation, namely: tourism/hospitality students, followed by management students with the liberal arts students — the most flexible occupational group — having the lowest relationship between values and motivation. The implications of the findings for employee selection and motivation prediction in the tourism/hospitality industry are discussed.