bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Parents' perceptions and attributions of infant vocal behaviour and development
Authors: Miller Cynthia L.
Published: March 2007

In the present study, parents of 3- to 12-month-old infants completed 3 questionnaires that assessed the nature and developmental course of parents' beliefs about their infants' vocal behaviour and development. Although all groups of parents considered their infants' vocal behaviour to be generally communicative, meaningful, and related to the development of 'real' language, these attributions varied with the age of the infant, the gender of the parent, as well as other parental measures, such as general knowledge of infant behaviour and develop ment. These results suggest that parents (especially mothers) ascribe communicative function to infants' early vocalizations. The role of these parental belief systems should be considered in future research investigating the evolution of parent-infant communication.
Maternal attributions to a handicapped and a non-handicapped twin: a longitudinal study
Authors: Feagans Lynne , Robinson Julie Ann , Anderson Robert
Published: March 2007

This study was designed to explore a mother's attributions toward her twins from 11 to 32 months. One twin was developing normally while the other was extremely handicapped. Results suggest that the mother fine-tuned her attributions in response to the children's developmental level of communicative development but not in other areas. Several hypotheses are explored for this lack of reflection of the children's developmental level. One possible explanation is the possibility that the mother needed to feel that she was interacting with a competent infant and thus overinterpreted the handicapped infant's behaviour in order to interact effectively.
Forms and functions of vocal matching in interactions between mothers and their precanonical infants
Authors: Papoušek Mechthild , PapouŠek Hanuš
Published: March 2007

Seventeen mothers were recorded monthly in the laboratory during spontaneous dialogues with their 2-, 3-, and 5-month-old infants. The occurrence of vocal matching was analysed on the basis of perceptual similarity between adjacent maternal and infant utterances in relation to six sound features. Reciprocal vocal matching occurred in an aver age of 41% to 57% of infant non-cry vocalizations. With age, matches became more complex in number and types of included features. The high incidence of vocal matching primarily depended on mothers' propensities to model appropriately and match the infant's precanoni cal sounds. Various didactic strategies which were observed in mothers are discussed as a species-specific social support to the infants' early development of imitative abilities, vocal production, and communica tion.
Babbling and early speech: continuity and individual differences
Authors: Locke John L.
Published: March 2007

One of the recognized precursors to speaking is babbling. The related- ness of these activities is suggested, in the typical case, by the develop mentally continuous manner in which babbling flows into and coexists with speaking, the shared morphology of babble and speech, and the socially similar ways that children display (and presumably use) babbling and speaking. Nevertheless, the developmental significance of babbling is unknown. In this paper, I sample findings on normally developing children as well as special populations, including hearing- impaired, retarded, and tracheostomized children, and experimental work on song birds. Attention is given to the question of whether individual differences in babbling are carried over into speaking. I also ask whether it is or should be possible to anticipate deviant or delayed speech from analyses of prelinguistic vocalization and, if so, what that would tell us about the theoretical significance of babbling.
A natural logic of speech and speech-like acts with developmental implications
Authors: Oller D.K. , Eilers Rebecca E.
Published: March 2007

This paper presents the beginnings of a unified categorization system for speech and speech like acts. Hierarchical relationships among categories are taken into account in the context of a model specifying the components of speech and speech-like acts. A metric whereby hierarchically related speech acts can be judged for relative complexity is provided. Since more complex acts are predicted to occur later in development than less complex ones, the framework may provide the basis for predictions about the order of appearance of different speech acts in language acquisition. Preliminary evidence of the sensitivity of the system to differences in levels of language skill is provided from a study comparing language use styles in a group of young normal and older retarded children. Results show that in spite of overall similarities in MLU and syntactico-semantic category usage, the nor mal children used relatively more complex categories of speech acts.
A review of the state-process and punctual-nonpunctual distinctions in children's acquisitions of verbs
Authors: Cziko Gary A.
Published: March 2007

A secondary analysis of empirical studies of children's acquisition of verbs was undertaken to examine evidence for the state-process and punctual-nonpunctual distinctions in children's early use and under standing of verbs as postulated by Bickerton's language bioprogram hypothesis. Approximately 60 empirical studies were initially reviewed with 13 reporting findings relevant to the state-process and/or punctual- nonpunctual distinctions involving the languages of English, French, Greek, Hebrew, Italian, Japanese, Polish, Serbo-Croatian, and Turkish. It was found that these studies in general provide considerable empirical support for the hypotheses that children universally distinguish stative from process verbs and punctual from nonpunctual verbs in the early stages of language acquisition.
Eliminating Disability
Authors: Hegarty Seamus
Published: March 2007

'If disabled persons are to live lives which are as fulfilled and productive as possible, then society will have to focus on what they can do, not on what they cannot do.'
Training Psychologists for Changing Schools
Authors: Bennett Virginia C.
Published: March 2007

Consideration of how psychologists can be trained to meet the needs of today's schools must include at least brief reference to how and why schools are changing. Changing schools reflect a changing society. This paper presents, selectively, societal changes that seem to be impinging upon Education; then, how these changes affect psychologists' practice in an Educational setting. Next, implicatons of these changes upon the training of professionals are discussed. Last, a training program that is attempting to act upon these implica tions is described.
A Model and Heuristic For Solving Very Large Item Selection Problems
Authors: Swanson Len , Stocking Martha L.
Published: March 2007

A model for solving very large item selection problems is presented. The model builds on previous work in binary programming applied to test con struction. Expert test construction practices are applied to situations in which all specifications for item selection cannot necessarily be met. A heuristic for selecting items that satisfy the constraints in the model also is presented. The heuristic is particu larly useful for situations in which the size of the test construction problem exceeds the limits of current implementations of linear programming algorithms. A variety of test construction problems involving real test specifications and item data from actual test assemblies were investigated using the model and the heuristic.
A Numerical Approach for Computing Standard Errors of Linear Equating
Authors: Zeng Lingjia
Published: March 2007

A numerical approach for computing standard errors (SES) of a linear equating is described. In the proposed approach, the first partial derivatives of the equating function needed to compute the SES are derived numerically. Thus, the difficulty of deriving the analytical formulas of the partial derivatives for a complicated equating method is avoided. The numerical and analytical approaches were compared using the Tucker equating method. The SES derived numerically were found to be indistinguishable from the SES derived analytically. In a computer simulation of the numerical approach using the Levine equating method, the SES based on the normality assumption were found to be less accurate than those derived without the normality assumption when the score distributions were skewed.
Research Note: Cultural Gaps in Cross-national Cooperation: the Legacy of Empires in Macedonia
Authors: Camina Margaret M.
Published: March 2007

This article draws on the author's experience as a UK aid worker operating in a business support agency in former Yugoslavia and, through empirical work at employee level, seeks to understand the ways in which national cultural differences impinge on development work in economies undergoing transformation. Yugoslavia was the only Eastern block country included in Hofstede's major analysis of national cultural differences. A small-scale replication of his study, based on four comparable business support organizations, two in the United Kingdom and two in the Former Yugoslav Republic of Macedonia, first examines the extent to which the fundamental differences which he identified still hold true and then looks at the ways in which the Macedonian findings can be interpreted as a legacy of empires. The implications of the cultural gap in the sphere of cross-national development assistance are then explored through a management log.
Putting People in the Picture: Art and Aesthetics in Photography and in Understanding Organizational Life
Authors: Strati Antonio
Published: March 2007

This article considers both the common ground and the diversity between the aesthetic approach to the study of organizational life and conceptual art photography. Based on a personal account, it emphasizes the empathic-aesthetic understanding of action in interactive organizational contexts. The issues addressed are the social construction of organizational memory, the importance of time in organizational life, the interweaving between the reality and non reality of organizational artefacts, the pervasiveness of organizational reproduction, the relation between the `I' and the `eye' in the investigation of organizational processes, the improper use of organizational production, and the relationships between the collective and social construction of creativity niches.
Managerial Strategies of Domination. Power in Soft Bureaucracies
Authors: Courpasson David
Published: March 2007

This paper discusses the emergence and reinforcement of organizational political regimes based on domination and centralization in French organizations. Domination and power are old concepts in organizational sociology, but the confrontation of two well-known approaches to politics in organizations, that of Weber and that of Crozier, suggests that an `archaic' notion such as domination is still very useful for understanding how business leaders `govern' organizations today.

Based on empirical studies, the paper proposes that organizations should be seen as `soft bureaucracies', in which centralization and entrepreneurial forms of governance are combined. Thus, choosing a Weberian point of view, this paper simultaneously describes organizations as `structures of domination' and as `structures of legitimacy'. It defends the idea that, in spite of the success of the network form utopia, the re-emergence of bureaucracies is a sign that organizations are more and more politically centralized and governed.
Comment: Gender Blindness or Gender Suppression? A Comment on Fiona Wilson's Research Note
Authors: Linstead Stephen
Published: March 2007

This comment takes one term which Fiona Wilson in her excellent and useful review of the research on gender in organization studies makes central to her thesis. Whilst this term may be meaningfully applied to more recent studies of organizational behaviour with a largely technical emphasis, it cannot be applied accurately to the classical and human relations theorists — Taylor, Weber, Mayo and Maslow. Here they are very much aware of gender, and because of the nature of their particular knowledge projects, they actively suppress it. Contemporary reflexivity has again made blindness no longer an option — organization theory has to either embrace gender or suppress it, and acknowledge the motivations behind and the consequences of that suppression.
Density Dependence and Spatial Duality in Organizational Founding Rates: Danish Commercial Banks, 1846-1989
Authors: Lomi Alessandro
Published: March 2007

This paper examines founding rates of commercial banking organizations in Denmark between 1846 and 1989 with two main analytical objectives. The first is to provide an empirical test of the claim that density-dependent legitimation operates more broadly than density-dependent competition in the context of processes of organizational founding. The second objective strictly connected to the first is to learn more about the implications of using alternative analytical strategies to capture the effects of legitimation on organizational founding rates in the context of a specific empirical study. Predictions of the standard model of density dependence in organizational founding rates are found to be strongly supported at more aggregate levels of analysis. Because founding rates of banks located in Copenhagen are negatively affected by national density, only partial support is found for the multilevel density-dependence model. Finally, the paper documents the effects of asymmetric patterns of community-like interdependence between organizational sub-populations defined on a spatial basis. The results of the study help to clarify selected aspects of the problematic relationship between density and legitimation across different levels of analysis.
Tacit Knowledge, Organizational Learning and Societal Institutions: An Integrated Framework
Authors: Lam Alice
Published: March 2007

The importance of tacit knowledge in organizational learning and innovation has become the focus of considerable attention in the recent literature. Our understanding of the nature of the links between tacit knowledge and organizational learning, however, has been hampered by the lack of a conceptual framework integrating micro-level learning activities with organizational forms and macro-level societal institutions. This paper seeks to achieve such an integrative task. It argues that there is an interactive relationship between dominant knowledge types and organizational forms. Further, the extent to which tacit knowledge constitutes the knowledge base of the firm, and how it is formed and used are powerfully shaped by the broader institutional context. The paper develops a four-fold typology at the cognitive, organizational and societal levels, as an analytical framework to explain the links between knowledge types, organizational forms and societal institutions. It shows how the three levels interact to shape the learning and innovative capabilities of firms. The theory developed in this paper represents the first attempt to integrate the diverse strands of literature and different levels of analysis into a single coherent framework.
Constructing Organizations: The Example of Public Sector Reform
Authors: Brunsson Nils , Sahlin-Andersson Kerstin
Published: March 2007

Organizations are socially constructed phenomena. A crucial task for organizational research is to analyze how and why people construct organizations rather than other social forms. In this paper, it is argued that recent public-sector reforms can be interpreted as attempts at constructing organizations. Public-sector entities that could formerly be described as agents or arenas have been transformed into `more complete' organizations by installing or reinforcing local identity, hierarchy and rationality. This interpretation helps to explain important aspects of the reform process.
Advanced Manufacturing Technologies and HRM Policies. Findings from Chemical and Food and Drink Companies in the Netherlands and Great Britain
Authors: Heijltjes Mariele G.
Published: March 2007

This paper explores in two steps the relationship between the design of HRM policies and the use of advanced manufacturing technologies. First, the relationship between advanced manufacturing technologies and changes in the production environment is examined. Second, changes in the production environment are related to the design of HRM policies. For one, data from ten Dutch and eight British companies in the chemical and food and drink industries indicate that the use of advanced manufacturing technologies significantly alters the production environment in terms of product, production and process flexibility. The strength of the impact, however, differs between large batch and mass production on the one hand and continuous process production on the other, and is dependent on the type(s) of automation methods implemented. Subsequently, a refined classification of manufacturing types is developed to relate these changes to the design of HRM policies.
The Institutional Structuring of Innovation Strategies: Business Systems, Firm Types and Patterns of Technical Change in Different Market Economies
Authors: Whitley Richard
Published: March 2007

Innovation patterns and technological specialization vary considerably between market economies with different institutions because they coordinate economic activities in different ways with different kinds of firms developing contrasting innovation strategies. Six major forms of economic organization, or business systems, with different kinds of firms can be distinguished: fragmented, coordinated industrial district, compartmentalized, collaborative, highly coordinated and state organized. These kinds of business system develop and are reproduced in particular institutional contexts. They are associated with five kinds of innovation strategies: dependent, craft-based responsive, generic, complex and risky, and transformative. These strategies can be distinguished in terms of the following characteristics of innovations: technical and user uncertainty, user differentiation and product quality specialization, organizational competence destruction, use of codified knowledge, and the complexity of the knowledge base. Firms with different kinds of governance structures and organizational capabilities pursue these innovation strategies to varying degrees in different institutional environments. As a result, institutional differences between market economies lead to variations in innovation strategies and patterns of innovative performance.
Institutions and Forms of Co-ordination in Innovation Systems
Authors: Nooteboom Bart
Published: March 2007

This article shows how institutions enable and constrain forms of co-ordination for inter-organizational relations, and how these affect innovative performance. The analysis is based on a theory of learning and on a theory of relations that combines a social exchange perspective with elements from transaction cost economics. Performance is analysed in terms of production costs, transaction costs, product differentiation, diffusion of innovations, incremental innovation, and radical innovation. The method is illustrated with a comparison between the US and Germany. The first is more flexible and market oriented; the second is more oriented towards inter-organizational networks. Policy recommendations focus on how flexibility and durability of relations might be reconciled.
Innovation Systems and Innovative Performance: Voice Systems
Authors: Unger Brigitte
Published: March 2007

The literature on `exit' and `voice' countries (Anglo-American versus continental European economies and Japan) points to performance differences between these two generic systems of innovation. However, little has been done so far to study differences among voice countries. This paper suggests that four `voice' countries, Austria, Finland, the Netherlands, and Germany, with stable long-term trust relations between economic actors and a relatively consensual style of decision making, show substantial differences in innovative performance. I argue that this is due to both sector specialization and the institutional environment. This is because the capacity to escape from historical patterns of industrial specialization depends in part on the set of institutions in a country. They provide important resources for innovation, such as capital and skilled personnel. Indirectly, innovations are affected by the system of economic governance, which is more or less corporatist in these four countries. However, a corporatist regime can be responsive or rigid, depending on the degree of exposure to external challenges and crises (regime effect). Furthermore, the same responsive or rigid regime can result in different types of innovation, depending on whether firms have to operate in a competitive, highly exposed sector or in a sheltered one (sector exposure effect). The first tentative empirical results show that the regime effect dominates over the sector exposure effect.
A Strategy for the Analysis of Idea Innovation Networks and Institutions
Authors: Hage Jerald , Hollingsworth J. Rogers
Published: March 2007

The perspective of this paper is that variation in commercially successful radical product/process innovations among science-based industrial sectors can be explored by focusing on idea innovation networks. Idea innovation networks have six arenas reflecting research basic research, applied research, product development research, production research, quality control research, and commercialization/ marketing research. The paper develops two interrelated hypotheses. The first is that the greater the diversity of competencies or knowledges that are connected with frequent and intense communication within an arena and the greater the size of the arena, and the greater the likelihood that radical innovations will emerge. The second hypothesis involves the same kind of logic: if radical solutions are to occur in more than one arena, there must be intense and frequent communication among the different arenas involving radically new ways of thinking. Radical research solutions in one arena usually involve tacit knowledge and to be effectively communicated to another arena, both tacit knowledge and codified knowledge must be communicated across arenas. However, the communication of tacit knowledge is more likely to occur when there is frequent and intense communication across arenas.

In analyzing connectedness, the authors draw on the literatures about organizational innovation and organizational learning. In addition, they recognize that institutional environments shape the size of research arenas and the connectedness within and among them. The suggestion is that the more similarity there is across sectors, in patterns of research arena size and connectedness, the greater the support for a national system of innovation interpretation. Contrariwise, less similarity of network arena characteristics across sectors may mean more support for the strong role of globalization forces in affecting innovation.
Ordinary Theorists in Mixed Industries
Authors: Calori Roland
Published: March 2007

In this article, the collective knowledge of practitioners, expressed in narratives and translated into a rigorous form (cognitive maps) is considered as a useful contribution to theory building. The article discusses the epistemic foundations of this pragmatic approach to organization studies, presents a method for analyzing and integrating the knowledge of practitioners, and reports an application in which such collective practical knowledge is compared to mainstream theories of the dynamics of international competition
Relational Demography and Relationship Quality in Two Cultures
Authors: Pelled Lisa Hope , Xin Katherine R.
Published: March 2007

Prior research has shown that demographic similarity between supervisors and sub-ordinates shapes supervisor-subordinate relationship quality in US settings. The current study extends this body of research by comparing effects in a US production facility to effects in a Mexican facility owned by the same company. Results suggest that, in both locations, demographic similarity influences the quality of relationships between supervisors and subordinates. The specific patterns in Mexico, however, are not identical to those in the United States. Age similarity has negative effects on relationship quality in Mexico, but not in the United States. Also, gender similarity has a stronger positive impact on one dimension of relationship quality (trust) in Mexico, but it has a stronger positive impact on a second dimension of relationship quality (leader-member exchange) in the United States. Both the overlap and disparities between demography effects in the two regions are important considerations when attempting to transfer human resource management practices, such as diversity management programmes, across the American-Mexican border
The Organization of Charisma: Promoting, Creating, and Idealizing Self
Authors: Weierter Stuart J. M.
Published: March 2007

This paper focuses on charisma made possible by organization. For such charisma to emerge, two conditions are necessary. The first condition is that potential members perceive in the organization, something of profound significance for their lives. The second is that the organization offers the means through which this profound significance may be attained. Based on these two conditions, three charismatic relationships are described: the self-promoting, the self-creating, and the self-idealizing. In order to provide a more fully detailed account of the relationship between member expectations and satisfaction by an organization, an interpretivist study, which focuses on the way in which charisma is organized and sustained, is presented.
`Doing' Organizational Culture in the Saturn Corporation
Authors: Mills Terry L. , Boylstein Craig A. , Lorean Sandra
Published: March 2007

As we break loose from an urban-industrial way of life and become engulfed in technological, information-based worlds, this dramatic shift in reality pushes many of us towards feelings of intense crisis. The fragmentation of the macro-cultural framework enables a multiplicity of thought-styles to emerge. This rise of social multiplicity, plurality, fragmentation, and indeterminacy leads to aggressive criticisms of traditional modern culture and politics. Yet while there is a break from the rationalized, homogeneous modern world, the `postmodern' world remains ambiguous. Deeply rooted within this struggle for meaning lies language and knowing. Reality is `made real' through language and thought. One way to remain organized is through the manipulation of thought through language. How is a meaningful, stable existence conveyed in a world in which the taken for granted meanings and stability that were `there' in modern settings now appear to be shattered? Our analysis of the Saturn Corporation, USA, focuses on the organizational function of creating and re-creating the roles of producer, consumer, and product in a way that taps into a need for community and affiliation that is acutely felt in this time of rational crisis. Through the mechanism of storytelling, the Saturn advertisements create a grand narrative, weaving a tale that makes the existence of a single, family-like symbolic community between the Saturn corporation and the consumers of its product seem real to those intimately involved in acting out the story.
Patterns of Interactive Learning in a High-tech Region
Authors: Meeus Marius T.H. , Oerlemans Leon A.G. , Hage Jerald
Published: March 2007

This paper aims at developing a theoretical framework that explains levels of interactive learning. Interactive learning is defined as the exchange and sharing of knowledge resources conducive to innovation between an innovator firm, its suppliers, and/or its customers. Our research question is: Why do levels of interactive learning of innovator firms, their customers, and/or suppliers vary? Our theoretical framework combines a resource-based perspective with an activity-based account of interactive learning. It starts with a resource-based argument, which is specified by introducing competing and complementary theoretical arguments such as the complexity and structuring of innovative activities, and sectoral technological dynamics. The strength of internal knowledge resources can either hamper or facilitate levels of interactive learning. We assume that more complex innovative activities urge firms to co-ordinate and exchange information between users and producers, which implies a higher level of interactive learning. The structuring of innovative activities, as well as sectoral technological dynamics can foster interactive learning.

To test our theoretical claims, we estimated six models predicting the level of interactive learning of innovator firms with: (1) their customers (here the innovating firms are the producers); (2) their suppliers (here the innovating firms are the customers); (3) with customers and suppliers split by size (four separate models). These analyses allow a comparison of the antecedents of interactive learning of innovator firms performing dual roles, and having a different size. Both monotonic and non-monotonic effects of the complexity of innovative activities, the strength of the internal knowledge base, and monotonic effects of the structuring of innovative activities are tested.

Our findings suggest that our theoretical model best fits the interactive learning of small- and medium-sized innovator firms. Interactive learning with customers is positively associated with the complexity and structuring of innovative activities, and with moderate scores of the cross-product term of `complexity of innovative activities and the strength of knowledge resources'. Interactive learning with customers is positively affected by higher technological dynamics. Stronger internal knowledge resources yield positive effects on interactive learning with suppliers up to a threshold point. Once this threshold is crossed, the effects of stronger knowledge resources become negative. Interactive learning with suppliers as well as with customers is positively associated with internal and external structuring of innovative activities, but is not affected by sectoral technological dynamics.
Chasing Shadows: Control, Virtuality and the Production of Trust
Authors: Knights David , Noble Faith , Vurdubakis Theo , Willmott Hugh
Published: March 2007

In recent years, the topic of trust has become the focus of renewed attention in organizational theory and research and, in particular, where electronic distribution and associated `virtual' forms of organizing are prevalent. The question of trust, always an issue in financial transactions, is exacerbated the more the physical element is removed. The paper focuses on the issue of trust as it currently appears in the newest of these distribution channels, online and Internet financial services, and smart cards. In both theory and practice, notions of trust are often opposed to concepts such as power or control, and are deployed as part of a dualistic either/or proposition. Drawing on ongoing research in the financial services sector, the paper attempts a more nuanced exploration by focusing on attempts to `manage' trust, the problems such attempts encounter, the various techniques employed in their resolution and the power relations in which they are embedded
Power, Identity and New Technology Homework: Implications for `New Forms' of Organizing
Authors: Brocklehurst Michael
Published: March 2007

This paper reports on research which tracked the experience of a group of professional workers as they moved from being conventional office workers to becoming homeworkers where they used the new information and communication technologies (ICT's), but remained as full-time salaried employees. The paper evaluates the value of Giddens's conceptualization of power, identity and time/space in explaining the consequences of this move and compares his approach to post modem theorizations, which draw on the work of Foucault and Lash and Urry. The paper concludes with the view that such a form of organization is neither inherently corrosive of character (Sennett 1998) nor does it provide a space for aesthetic reflexivity (Lash and Urry 1994). What has yet to develop is a sense of `the other' within the emerging discourse serving to articulate this new form of organizing.
On the Shape of Verbal Networks in Organizations
Authors: Nelson Reed E.
Published: March 2007

Almost without exception, organizations contain a pyramid-shaped formal hierarchy of some sort. It is also known that organizations harbour frequent informal relations that do not necessarily follow patterns set by the formal hierarchy. While the shape and features of formal hierarchies are known and understood by most members of organizations, very little is known — by either academics or practitioners — about the shape and attributes of these informal relations. This paper explores regularities in the shape of verbal ties — a relationship that escapes most formal regulation — across the hierarchies of diverse organizations. Results indicate that the verbal networks of the upper echelons of organizations rarely follow a classic hierarchical pattern. Rather, several different morphologies surface. The most common of these regularities — the centre-periphery pattern — has been frequently observed in large human systems, including tribal and modern societies, national and international economies, industries, and political systems, but has not been studied inside organizations.
Cooperation Contracts between Embedded Firms
Authors: Blumberg Boris F.
Published: March 2007

Successful inter-firm cooperations require that the participating partners mitigate potential opportunistic behaviour. Contractual commitments are one management mechanism to achieve stable mutual cooperation. However, the impossibility in designing complete, explicit and easily enforceable contracts restricts their efficacy as a management mechanism. Mechanisms based on the social embeddedness of the partners can form a viable alternative and compliment for contracts. Hence, the usage of contractual commitments is explained by combining transaction cost economic reasoning with arguments on the social embeddedness of economic transactions. Finally, the derived hypotheses are tested on a data-set of 92 cooperations within five Dutch multinationals.
Subsidiary Embeddedness and Competence Development in MNCs A Multi-Level Analysis
Authors: Andersson Ulf , Forsgren Mats , Holm Ulf
Published: March 2007

Recent research on the competitive advantage of multinational corporations (MNC) has emphasized the importance of the ability of subsidiaries to assimilate new knowledge from their external environment. Such an ability is important for the individual subsidiary's own performance as well as for the possibility it affords the MNC to combine and use resources from different parts of the corporate system.

This paper explores the nature of business embeddedness at the subsidiary level and its role at the corporate level. It is suggested that the subsidiaries' embeddedness in a network of business actors can explain why certain subsidiaries demonstrate higher achievements than others, both in terms of their market performance and regarding their importance for competence development within the MNC. It is argued that the closer a subsidiary's external business relationships with suppliers and customers the easier it will be to assimilate new knowledge from outside, the more it will be able to innovate and therefore the more it will be able to advance its performance in the local market. Further, because embeddedness influences the innovative capacity of subsidiaries, it is also claimed to be a decisive factor in explaining which subsidiaries will contribute to competence development at the corporate level.

Hypotheses concerning the relationships between a subsidiary's external technical embeddedness, market performance and the subsidiary's importance for competence development at the level of the MNC are formulated and tested in a LISREL model. Data is used from 97 subsidiaries belonging to 20 global divisions of 13 Swedish multinational corporations. The results indicate that a subsidiary's extemal technical embeddedness can be a strong predictor of both its own expected market performance and its role as a provider of competence to other MNC units.

The paper concludes with a discussion about the role that a subsidiary can play as a bridgehead between external and intemal units of an MNC and the negative impacts that might occur if a subsidiary's business network is too embedded.
On Trees and Triviality Traps: Locating the Debate on the Contribution of Cognitive Mapping to Organizational Research
Authors: Daniels Kevin , Johnson Gerry
Published: March 2007

In his critique of Daniels et al. (2002), Hodgkinson (2001a) raises a number of issues concerning the use and comparison of ideographic cognitive maps. Hodgkinson claims that there are problems associated with global similarity ratings, and that ideographic methods should be replaced by methods that have some nomothetic component. In reply, we show that the specific issues raised by Hodgkinson are not at all problematic in the context of the research questions addressed by Daniels et al. We examine Hodgkinson's proposed alternative and explain why it would not be appropriate for the questions addressed by Daniels et al. We then argue that Hodgkinson' s approach, far from being a panacea for problems in cognitive mapping research, will deflect from the issues of real debate in this area.
Uncharted Territories of Organizational Research: The Case of Karl Popper's Open Society and its Enemies
Authors: Armbrüster Thomas , Gebert Diether
Published: March 2007

This paper argues that Karl Popper's notions in his work The Open Society and Its Enemies offer an approach to under-explored issues in organizational research, independent of Popper's epistemology. Popper's thoughts on the philosophy of science have largely been rejected in organization studies, and his socio-philosophical notions have hardly been considered. Yet they provide a frame of reference for viewing management trends, such as anti-bureaucratism and collectivist forms of work organization, in a different light. Popper's socio-philosophical notions suggest that `closed' patterns of thinking are detrimental to a liberal-democratic social order. The paper argues that an outline of the philosophy of openness and closedness and an application to managerial concepts allows for insights into whether certain types of managerial thinking stand in contrast to, or in accordance with, a liberal-democratic order. It is concluded that, through the Popperian lens, some supposedly liberationist movements of management (liberation from bureaucracy or from a lack of belonging and emotion at work) possess clear traits of closedness and thus resemble the intellectual underpinnings of totalitarianism.
Governmentality Matters: Designing an Alliance Culture of Inter-Organizational Collaboration for Managing Projects
Authors: Clegg Stewart R. , Pitsis Tyrone S. , Rura-Polley Thekla , Marosszeky Marton
Published: March 2007

The concept of governmentality was developed by Michel Foucault to address the specificity of contemporary neo-liberal forms of governance — premised on the active consent and subjugation of subjects, rather than their oppression, domination or external control. These neo-liberal forms of governance are evident in new forms of alliance contracting in the construction industry. We review the major innovations in organization form in the sector, before considering the specific management practices of surveillance and control that are typically associated with governance in these projects. Project management has been a historically evolving field. This paper reports on an example of governmentality applied to the practice of project management. While governmentality refers to the design of project governance as an activity, the management of projects as a mode of organization, irrespective of the mode of governance, is highly complex and uncertain. These themes have already been widely addressed in organization theory. Here, we draw on recent treatments of them that combine transaction costs and resource dependence perspectives. Moreover, we argue that projects also display an acute sense of temporality, as Schutzian-influenced approaches have explored. In the context of governmentality, complexity, uncertainty and temporality are addressed in a specific and highly innovative project management.

The research methods used in the ethnography are spelt out, as well as the methods used in constructing the interpretation of the case. Economies in authoritative surveillance have been sought through building collaborative commitment and transparency into the moral fibre of a project. The governmental tools used to do this are a strong project culture, monetized key performance indicators, and a stake-holder conception of the project to bind different organizational stakeholders together. The case does not record an unqualifiedly successful project: the governmentality that was constructed had limits, as the case spells out. The failure indicates some issues that the stakeholder theory of the firm will need to address. We conclude that governmentality projects premised on stakeholder conceptions are particularly susceptible to discrepancies between ambition and outcome. In such a context, the constant injunction to improve may itself be an integral part of the governmental method. Hence, governmentality is particularly appropriate for understanding quality management issues.
The Ties that Bind: Strategic Actions and Status Structure in the US Investment Banking Industry
Authors: Li Stan X. , Berta Whitney Blair
Published: March 2007

We applied Giddens' (1979, 1984) structuration theory to investigate the US investment banking industry and found support for the notion that industry network structure impacts the strategic actions of the firms embedded in it, and that the status hierarchy component of the industry structure is reproduced by the dyad-level interactions of firms in this industry. Investment banks conform to the homophily phenomenon — they tend to transact with others in the industry of similar status. Status ranking also enables high-status banks to maintain an extensive exchange relationship with other banks, while status ranking constrains low-status banks to transact repeatedly with banks with which they have previously transacted.
Narratives of Organizational Identity and Identification: A Case Study of Hegemony and Resistance
Authors: Humphreys Michael , Brown Andrew D.
Published: March 2007

This paper focuses on issues of identity and identification in a UK-based institution of higher education (Westville' Institute). It is suggested that identity, both individual and collective, and the processes of identification which bind people to organizations, are constituted in the personal and shared narratives that people author in their efforts to make sense of their world and read meaning into their lives. The research contribution this paper makes is threefold. First, it illustrates how an organization's identity narrative evolves over time, and the variety of identification narratives, including dis-identification, neutral identification and schizo-identification, in terms of which participants define their relationship to it. Second, it makes a contribution to what are still rather inchoate efforts to theorize the dynamics of individual-collective processes of identification and identity construction. Finally, it argues that the efforts of senior managers to control processes of organizational identity formation, and participant identification, are interpretable as hegemonic acts required for legitimation purposes.
Moral Atmosphere and Moral Influence Under China's Network Capitalism
Authors: Snell Robin , Tseng Choo Sin
Published: March 2007

A weak legal system, weak civic accountability, market distortions, public cynicism, and workforces lacking moral self-efficacy, present challenges to moral integrity in Chinese mainland enterprises. Our predominantly qualitative study, in Wuhan, of organizational moral atmosphere (OMA) in two large state-owned enterprises (SOEs), two smaller, shareholder invested SOEs, two foreign-invested joint venture companies (JVCs) and one private company, indicated that felt distributive inequity may have compounded these problems. Government-championed, in-company ideological propagation of avowed business morality appeared to have little impact on OMA, owing to normative incoherence. The JVCs, by adopting the foreign partners' system of rational-legal administration and internal justice, appeared to have found a relatively more effective approach to formal moral governance. Non-JVCs had a more punishment-oriented yet less rigorous approach to regulation, which was commended only at the private company, where personal share ownership gave middle and senior managers incentives to enforce discipline and thus minimize losses. Developmental and dialogue-based approaches to improving OMA were largely untried.
Global Management Concepts and Local Adaptations: Working Groups in the French and German Car Manufacturing Industry
Authors: Woywode Michael
Published: March 2007

In this paper, the diffusion process and organizational consequences of management concepts that spread globally through an industry are analyzed. Taking the example of the working group concept, the organization of the final assembly of a sample of French and German car manufacturers is studied. It can be shown that, in both countries, working groups similar to the ones used in Japanese car companies are widely diffused in the car industry. It also becomes clear from the analysis that plants have been experimenting with working groups and have adjusted them to their proper needs; a process which we call `local adaptation'. Our results indicate that the local adaptation of working groups is brought about to a large extent by the institutional differences between countries. Because of diffusion and adaptation processes, isomorphic as well as idiosyncratic tendencies in organizational structures can be observed at the same time.
The Dominance of Firm-Level Competitive Pressures Over Functional-Level Institutional Pressures: The Case of the Finnish-Based Forest Industry Firms
Authors: Laurila Juha , Lilja Kari
Published: March 2007

Previous management and organization literature has recognized the contradictions between competitive and institutional pressures. Firms must simultaneously secure competitiveness by being different from their competitors, and legitimacy by being similar to them. While trade-offs between these conflicting pressures have been studied at the population and firm levels, little attention has been paid to the same phenomenon within firms. This paper suggests that, in order to achieve competitiveness at the firm level, firms need to deviate from some institutionally legitimate practices at the functional level. For example, we show how being strategically different at the firm level forces the Finnish-based forest industry firms to dismantle isomorphic practices in their organizational functions. Thus, we extend the previous work in this field by showing that the ability of firms to adopt and develop new practices is path-dependently biased in the sense that the firm-level definition of the strategic context can have a major impact on the types of organizational practices that are adopted, nurtured and abandoned within the functions.