The Paradox and Constraints of Legitimacy

This article contributes to the literature on legitimacy by highlighting its paradox and constraints. While an optimal level of legitimacy-seeking behaviours may be necessary for organizational effectiveness, an excessive focus on legitimacy may lead to stakeholder mismanagement and have the opposite effect. These insights emerged from a longitudinal qualitative study of large-scale changes in public-sector health care in a Canadian province (1994–2002). In 1994, subordinate health care organizations underwent government-driven reforms to promote market-based logics of efficiency and cost reduction. Initial years post reforms were characterized by a singular focus on government-driven priorities and inattention to other stakeholders. However, instead of giving benefits of legitimacy, these behaviours led to anger and activism from non-institutional stakeholders such as staff and community due to a decline in quality and patient satisfaction. Eventually, greater attention to stakeholder concerns ended the stand-off. These findings also elaborate Suchman’s (Academy of Management Review 20(3), 571–610, 1995) framework on legitimacy and explain that legitimacy may occur for reasons other than institutionalization of values and be temporary in nature.     

Exploring professionals' motivation to lead: a cross-level study in the healthcare sector

The extant leadership research has paid increasing attention to the concept of motivation to lead (MTL) as an individual construct that strongly affects leadership processes and behaviors. However, despite its importance, scant knowledge is available about how individual characteristics and organizational structural features interact in influencing MTL in professional-based organizations. This article contributes to this line of research by adopting a multilevel perspective to study the MTL among individual professionals in the healthcare sector. We collected data from a sample of 791 physicians nested in 44 departments belonging to 27 hospitals. Using the hierarchical linear model, we tested the impact of individual and organizational variables on the motivation of physicians to engage in managerial positions. Our findings demonstrate that the physicians' MTL was positively associated with their individual self-efficacy. Departmental decentralization interacted with this self-efficacy, such that the effect of self-efficacy on the MTL was significantly lower when decentralization was high. We discuss the implications of these findings for human resource management and organizational (re)design within professional organizations.     

Pitfalls in estimating β-convergence by means of panel data: an empirical test

This article aims to test the conjecture advanced in a recent work by Bianchi and Menegatti (Appl Econ Lett 14:963–967, 2007) that usual β-convergence panel regressions may produce biased evidence, due to their inability to distinguish between actual catching-up across countries and decreasing growth rates over time within countries. The test considers different sub-groups in a dataset of 72 countries for the period 1970–2000 and introduces both human capital and proxies for technological differences into the analysis. The results confirm the conjecture that traditional evidence about β-convergence may be misleading; they also show that catching-up across countries is weaker than usually claimed and that this process occurred only in some sub-groups of countries.     

I Resent that I Have Helped you! A Qualitative Study of Sources and Consequences of Resentment of Helping

Employee Responsibilities and Rights Journal - Drawing upon conservation of resources (COR) theory, prior research has shown how helping behavior leads to a depleted condition experienced by the...     

Unpacking the effect of exploration during environmental uncertainty: Evidence from the information technology sector

Environmental uncertainty can render managerial decision‐making about resource deployment particularly difficult. Integrating the knowledge‐based view of the firm and the organizational learning literature, we make a case for deploying specific knowledge‐based resources to cope with specific types of environmental uncertainty. We unbundle knowledge‐based resources into technology‐based and social‐network‐based resources and, using Milliken's (1987) typology of environmental uncertainty, we hypothesize that (a) technological exploration will be more effective during state uncertainty and (b) while being generally beneficial, social exploration will prove more effective during response uncertainty. An analysis of the financial performance of information technology (IT) firms in the United States over the period 1995–2004 generally supports our hypotheses. Copyright © 2015 ASAC. Published by John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Citizens,technology and the NPM movement

ABSTRACT

In the modernization of the state, NPM ideas are presumed to offer governments certainty in the face of major unknowns. The reliance of NPM on information technologies is presented by governments as underlining this potential for certainty. However, this presumption of certainty is elusive in practice. Government pursuit of NPM transformational policies aims to make efficiency savings and cost reductions, but this may create new uncertainties for citizens, particularly because of the unintended consequences of the implementation of new forms of technology.     

Flexible pay,firm performance and the role of unions. New evidence from Italy

This paper focuses on the effects of a shift in the firm pay strategy from a fixed wage to a flexible pay scheme on the performance of the “treated” firms. Theory predicts that the introduction of performance-related pay (PRP) may produce both incentive and sorting effects, making the incumbent workers more productive and attracting the most able workers from outside. Furthermore, productivity gains may be shared with the workers through higher wages and heterogeneous effects may be expected by union density. Matching estimates based on panel data for a representative sample of Italian metalworking firms in the 1990s show positive effects on labour productivity (around 7–11%) and to some extent on wages (around 2–3%), while worker sorting is negligible. Estimates by union density suggest that incentive effects are more present in low unionized firms, while wage effects are more significant in highly unionized ones. Extended sensitivity analysis shows that these results are overall robust with respect to the existence of unobserved confounding factors.     

Intellectual property marketplaces and how they work: Evidence from German pharmaceutical firms

This article examines a sample of German pharmaceutical firms to highlight the strategic reasons why firms participate in various intellectual property (IP) marketplaces, both proprietary (patents and copyrights) and non-proprietary (open source and non-patented technology). The obstacles that prevent these marketplaces from functioning efficiently are also investigated. The analysis suggests that IP policy must embrace all IP forms and must recognise that IP marketplaces do not work “automatically” but suffer many institutional failures.     

What’s behind organic certification of extra-virgin olive oil? A response from Italian consumers

Organic certification represents a growing business in international food market. In this article, an analysis of the factors influencing the purchase of organic extra-virgin olive oil is done for Italian consumers. A k-means cluster analysis was used to identify market segments. Results showed that it is possible to classify the Italian market into three clusters, respectively, indicating high, intermediate, and low willingness to pay a premium price (WTP) for organic certification of extra-virgin olive oil. Safety, nutritional, and health aspects appear to influence WTP. Factors concerning environmental sustainability and the supports to Italian food system are considered important, but do not play a fundamental role in increasing the consumer’s WTP.