Struggling with New Media and Old Expertise: Reconstructing the Professional Role of Communication Consultancy

This study investigates how communication consultants struggle to reconstruct their professional role in the digital media landscape. The extant literature on professional roles in public relations has a tendency to render roles as static pregivens. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to contribute conceptually and empirically to role research by focusing on the process of “role-making” and how role actors purposefully engage in role construction in order to maintain legitimacy. The qualitative study of Scandinavian communication consultants reveals how these actors effectively refashion their role as expert advisors by describing the client and her problems, the competitors, their own knowledge and values. The role construct is supported by a narrative strategy and an epic storyline, where social media serves as a vehicle for self-definition and the consultancy role is framed and reinforced by social media. However, the jurisdictional claims of professional expertise and values that constitute the core of a consultant’s role construct are becoming increasingly difficult to sustain in a digital society. A critical reading of the consultants’ narrative thus implies that social media may in fact constitute a professional identity crisis rather than a consolidation of the expert role.     

Organizational and environmental factors related to HRM practices in Hong Kong: a cross-cultural expanded replication

Data were collected from 151 Hong Kong organizations to determine the relationship between culture, firm size, level of unionization and presence of an HRM department, and human resource management (HR) practices. Culture was a relatively weak predictor of HR practices. Existence of an HRM department and level of unionization were moderate predictors while firm size and the existence of a specialized training unit within the HRM department were the strongest predictors of HR practices.     

‘Don't Waste a Crisis’: Opening up the City Yet Again for Neoliberal Experimentation

This essay calls for a systematic investigation of the financial‐economic crisis as a source of new urban governance rationalities across Europe. We propose combining an understanding of neoliberalization as a variegated social phenomenon with a cultural political economy approach sensitive to the discursive dimension of variegation and the evolutionary mechanisms through which discursive variation is translated into geo‐institutional differentiation. We illustrate how this theoretical framework may help to analyse the impact of the crisis on urban governmental rationalities. Rather than offering a complete cultural political economy account of the responses of European cities to the financial‐economic crisis, we analyse how the crisis and the responses to it have been represented in discourses on urban policies and development by focusing on two discursive sites that are of strategic importance, namely OECD LEED and URBACT. Our preliminary findings suggest a re‐assemblage of existing discourses rather than the emergence of a new post‐neoliberal urban government rationality.     

A meta-analysis of satisfaction with complaint handling in services

Academics as well as managers have long been interested in the role of satisfaction with complaint handling (SATCOM) in shaping customers’ attitudes and repurchasing decisions. This interest has generated a widespread belief that SATCOM is driven by the perception that the complaint handling process is just. To test how SATCOM is modulated by distributive, interactional, or procedural justice, we performed a meta-analysis of 60 independent studies of the antecedents and consequences of SATCOM. Results indicate that SATCOM is affected most by distributive justice, then by interactional justice, and only weakly by procedural justice. We also find that SATCOM mediates the effects of justice dimensions on word-of-mouth. However, contrary to common belief, SATCOM does not mediate the effects of justice dimensions on overall satisfaction and return intent. We draw on our results to suggest several avenues for further research.     

Biofuels as Sustainable Technologies: Perspectives for Less Developed Countries

The future outlook of biofuels is beset by uncertainty. Key factors for the adoption of biofuels as alternative technologies are policy decisions by governments in terms of regulations, such as government procurement schemes and fuel specifications, along with financial and economic instruments, such as subsidies and preferential taxation. In this framework, the present analysis is a prospective as to the future development of a biofuel program in the European Union and the hypothetical role of developing countries as suppliers in this new market. The focus of this article is, exclusively, on liquid fuels.     

Minimum wage effects in a developing country

The available empirical minimum wage literature, which is mostly based on US evidence, is not very useful for analyzing developing countries, where the minimum wage affects many more workers and labour institutions and law enforcement differ in important ways. The main contribution of this paper is to present new empirical evidence on minimum wage effects for a large developing country, Brazil. Using a monthly household survey panel from 1982 to 2004 I find evidence of a wage compression effect for both the formal and informal sectors. Furthermore, I find no evidence of employment effects in either sector.     

How Do Diversity of Opinion and Information Asymmetry Affect Acquirer Returns?

We examine the theoretical predictions that link acquirer returnsto diversity of opinion and information asymmetry. Theory suggeststhat acquirer abnormal returns should be negatively relatedto information asymmetry and diversity-of-opinion proxies forequity offers but not cash offers. We find that this is thecase and that, more strikingly, there is no difference in abnormalreturns between cash offers for public firms, equity offersfor public firms, and equity offers for private firms aftercontrolling for one of these proxies, idiosyncratic volatility.     

Constructing an entrepreneurial life: liminality and emotional reflexivity in identity work

ABSTRACT

This paper examines the identity work of a budding entrepreneur through a longitudinal case study based on his ongoing personal reflections as he tries to construct an entrepreneurial life. In particular, we investigate the role of emotional reflexivity and liminality, concepts that give us analytical purchase in exploring the complex dynamics of this identity work. The liminal condition of multiple identity positions enables our informant to experiment with and integrate several parallel identity narratives as he tries on socio-political constructions of ‘the entrepreneur’ for size; and it is the permanence of the liminal condition that makes emotional reflexivity necessary so he can handle the constant lack he experiences. The contribution of our work lies in exploring how the operation of the discourse of enterprise never closes on the centre of subjectivity that is imputed in that discourse, and how our subject, through emotional reflexivity, deals with this fundamental lack.     

The ineffectiveness of entrepreneurship policy: is policy formulation to blame?

Entrepreneurship policy has been criticised for its lack of effectiveness. Some scholars, such as Scott Shane in this journal, have argued that it is ‘bad’ public policy. But this simply begs the question why the legislative process should generate bad policy? To answer this question this study examines the UK’s enterprise policy process in the 2009–2010 period. It suggests that a key factor for the ineffectiveness of policy is how it is formulated. This stage in the policy process is seldom visible to those outside of government departments and has been largely ignored by prior research. The application of institutional theory provides a detailed theoretical understanding of the actors and the process by which enterprise policy is formulated. We find that by opening up the ‘black box’ of enterprise policy formulation, the process is dominated by powerful actors who govern the process with their interests.     

How Individuals Engage in the Absorption of New External Knowledge: A Process Model of Absorptive Capacity

This paper offers a process model of how individuals engage in the absorption of new external knowledge. Data collection is centered on the experiences of knowledge workers in recognizing, assimilating, and applying external knowledge. The process model delineates how individuals engage in the absorptive capacity (AC) process through: (1) valuing knowledge potential by assessing the motivation to assimilate knowledge and by evaluating technological feasibility, which together constitute the recognition of value; (2) corroborating knowledge value by ensuring legitimacy and demonstrating a shared understanding of the business value in achieving knowledge assimilation; and (3) championing knowledge integration by lobbying for support and securing resources in order to integrate and apply the knowledge within the organization, ultimately ensuring that knowledge is exploited. The process model clarifies how an individual’s proficiency in external knowledge absorption activities can result in three possible outcomes: knowledge is exploited, knowledge is terminated, or knowledge gets “stuck” in limbo. These findings contribute to the AC literature by underscoring the pivotal role of individual engagements in recognition, assimilation, and application of external knowledge and add new elements and a process perspective to the understanding of the path from potential to realized AC. The paper also provides insights into how individuals and firms can better manage knowledge absorption in practice.