bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
The MSc in Information Management of the University of Sheffield taught in Portugal: an example of knowledge transfer in education
Authors: Ramalho Correia Ana Maria , Wilson T.D.
Published: March 2007

This paper describes the background to the estab lishment of a collaborative, distance-learning Master's pro gramme in Portugal, involving the Centre for Technical Infor mation for Industry of the Laboratório Nacional de Engen haria e Tecnologia Industrial, and the Department of Intor mation Studies at the University of Sheffield. Previous collab oration on an intensive, six-month training programme for Information Intermediaries had led to an awareness of a market readiness for a more advanced course and. following a year of preliminary work, the MSC programme was imple mented with the aid of funds from PFDIP.

In this paper, after a brief overview of the training in Information in Portugal. including a short reference to the Postgraduate Course for Information Intermediaries launched by ( ITI, the experience of setting up the Master's Programme in Information Management ot the University of Sheffield, at I NETI/CITI is outlined.
Data handling and text compression
Authors: Gillman Peter
Published: March 2007

Data compression has a function in text storage and data handling, but not at the level of compressing data files The reason is that the decompression of such files adds a time delay to the retrieval process, and users can see this delay as a drawback of the system concerned Compression techniques can with benefit be applied to index files

A more relevant data handling problem is that posed by the need, in most systems, to store two versions of imported text. The first is the "native" version, as it might have come from a word processor or text editor. The second is the ASCH version which is what is actually imported. Inverted file in dexes form yet another version. The problem arises out of the need for dynamic indexing and re-indexing of revisable docu ments in very large database applications such as are found in Office Automation systems

Four mainstream text-management packages are used to show how this problem is handled. and how generic document architectures such as OCA/CDN and SOMI might help.
The use of information technologies in the French education system
Authors: Perriault Jacques , Sautron Christian
Published: March 2007

Computers and audiovisual aids are information technologies used for education purposes Our goal in this paper is threefold. We will first give an historical overview of how these information technologies have been introduced into the French educational system We will then look at factors which seem to condition the use of these new technologies by comparing the situation in the classroom with that of the household and the firm. Finally, we will defend the need for a user oriented policy and suggest some directions for future developments.
Libraries and librarianship in Qatar
Authors: Khalifa Shaban A.
Published: March 2007

The infrastructure of libraries and information cen tres in Qatar consists of a national library, 24 public libraries, 20 school libraries, h university libraries, 150 special libraries and 150 private collections. Statistics on the collections, man power and services in these libraries are presented. Private libraries and library education in Qatar are discussed in detail, while curricula, courses and credits in library education are dealt with especially thoroughly.
Graphic display of information: how do individuals judge one and two variable charts?
Authors: Loslever P. , Bourlon F.
Published: March 2007

The aim of this paper is to build models of be haviour when individuals have to assess one and two variable static displays. The charts investigated are the one and two bargraph views and the rectangular one. The assessment is made in relation to the adjective "large", this being a priori affected by the size of all the stimuli Then, the judgment is obtained through a degree of agreement between a view and an assertion. The data are studied through correspondence analysis. The outcomes are large differences between the individuals and a higher variability with the rectangle than with the two bargraph charts
Subject relationship between articles determined by co-occurrence of keywords in citing and cited titles
Authors: Ali S. Nazim
Published: March 2007

It is assumed that a paper which cites an earlier document shares a subject relationship with that particular document. In order to determine if this assumption is valid, a study was conducted by analysing 1000 articles from the Science Citation Index k and Social Sciences Citation Inde®. These articles were selected in ten different disciplines by using a purposive sampling technique. Various Spearman's Correlation Coefficient tests were computed to find out if a subject relationship existed between the Articles which have the same keywords in their titles (Parent Articles and Related Records). Through the analysis the hypothesis has been veri fied showing that there is a relationship between the articles which are citing the same references. This was determined by co-occurrences of the same keywords among the shared refer ences. However, there are some unique differences in the science and the social science disciplines that exist in these two databases.
A study of the Office Automation training methodologies adopted by Hong Kong companies
Authors: Cheung Scott T.Y.
Published: March 2007

Office Automation (OA) training management is wide and complex. Broad activities include goal setting, strate gic planning, training programmes coordination and resource allocation, courses methodologies selection, actual running and training evaluation. In order to provide an initial picture of the current OA training practices to the local OA plan ners/trainers, a survey was conducted of over 400 local train ers earlier last year (1992) to find out the general training methodology adopted by Hong Kong firms and public organi sations (response rate = 12.7%). This paper reports the find ings of the survey and provides recommendations on the general direction in which local organisations should head.
The effect of postings information on searching behaviour
Authors: Wood Frances , Ford Nigel , Walsh Christina
Published: March 2007

How postings information is used for inverted file searching was investigated by comparing searches, made by postgraduate students at the Department of Information Studies, of the LISA (Library and Information Science Abstracts) database on CD-ROM with and without postings information.
Networking CD-ROMs: technical overview and the view from the Manchester Business School
Authors: Simpson Evelyn , Duncan Stephen , McMurdo George
Published: March 2007

The 1993 post-AGM meeting of the Scottish branch of the Institute of Information Scientists focussed on the principles and practices of networking CD-ROMs. Stephen Duncan presented an evaluative overview of the technical options for networking CD-ROMs, contrasting peer-to-peer and client-server approaches, and also new options for sup porting CD-ROMs directly from LAN operating systems. Then Evelyn Simpson described the practical process of implementing a CD-ROM network for the library at the Manchester Business School (MBS), including non-technical issues such as training and licensing.
Coherence of issues and coordination of instruments in European information policy
Authors: Sillince J.A.A.
Published: March 2007

This paper seeks to demonstrate the lack of any integrated European information policy. This lack of integra tion is shown to be due to intrinsic properties of information itself, as well as due to the political characteristics of the European Union (EU). The paper shows how any EU information policy has to take account of multiple strands of relevance and significance, together with many objectives, some of which conflict. It also evaluates the means by which policy is formulated, with particular reference to internal administrative and political divisions within the European Commission's policy-making bodies, and to the other factors which cause policy uncertainty.
An e-mail-based bibliographic information server
Authors: Sreenivasa Ravi A. , Indira B.C.
Published: March 2007

The National Centre for Science Information (NCSI), of the Indian Institute of Science (IISc), provides var ious computer-based information services to the researchers and scientists in academic and research and development (R & D) institutions in India. Foremost among them is the selec tive dissemination of information (SDI) service, provided in five different disciplines, using the appropriate abstracting/ indexing periodicals published by international bibliograhic agencies in computer-readable form on magnetic tapes. NCSI came on the e-mail network ERNET (Education and Research Network) - India's academic computer network - when its computer system, that runs under the UNIX environment, was connected to IISc's e-mail node through the campus- wide fibre optic network. With a view to providing better access to the bibliographic data which NCSI regularly acquires on tapes, an information server, bibserv, was devel oped that can be made available over ERNET from NCSI's computer system. An information server, or infoserver for short, is software that receives queries in predefined format by e-mail, executes the commands therein by searching the database and sends back the retrieved information or files by e-mail. The infoserver, bibserv, performs these operations on a bilbliographic database. It has the capabilities of: reading the mailbox to obtain the return address and the message lines from each mail arrived; parsing each line of the mes sage, which forms a command for the server, and executing the command if it falls within its set of built-in commands. The built-in commands are: help, which sends a help mes sage containing information on how to use the infoserver through e-mail; find, which finds and shows the number of records retrieved in response to a Boolean query; send, which sends the references and abstracts retrieved from the Boolean search executed, and list, which lists a page from the index of the database starting with a given keyword. To use bibserv, one can send an e-mail to bibserv@ncsi. iisc. ernet. in with one or more commands in the message body. Problems or queries relating to bibserv that require human intervention can be sent to help@ncsi. iisc. ernet. in. The bibserv software is written in the C language and implemented under UNIX System V Release 3.0. The search and retrieval modules that are developed for running the SDI service are utilised for bib serv. Sending the output file as the reply mail is imple mented by using system calls to one of the mail programs of the UNIX system. This paper describes the development and implementation of the bibserv software.
An experiment to test the utility of repeating phrases for information retrieval systems
Authors: Cox Kevin
Published: March 2007

This paper describes a method of evaluating the utility of repeating phrases for information retrieval systems. The method does not use an evaluation approach with pre defined queries and calculating recall and precision. Instead, it compares two different techniques by asking people to perform tasks and then looks at the outcomes of those tasks. It is shown that people found phrases automatically generated by finding repeating content words in documents to be good content indi cators and discriminators and were better than using words alone or phrases generated randomly from content words.
Stone Age babies in cyberspace
Authors: McMurdo George
Published: March 2007

The increasing use of computers and robots at the work place and in peoples' personal lives, paralleled with their portrayal, interpretation and representation in the media and popular culture, has in recent years raised general awareness of some issues previously of interest mainly to philosophers of mind and consciousness. Various issues of artificial intelligence and its computational metaphors are also of more specialised relevance for information scien tists, due to their bases in such things as: languages and vocabularies; categorisation and classification, and the logic of information acquisition, storage and retrieval. It may be the case that the more general acceptance of some of these ideas about human consciousness may be part of a shift in world view comparable to long-term historical precedents such as heliocentrism and natural evolution, both in the way they were initially seen to lessen humanity, and in the ways they were initially opposed and resisted.
Two components of a causal explanation of Bradford's law
Authors: Wagner-Döbler Roland
Published: March 2007

One can suppose that Bradford's law is valid for all scientific fields. As an implication of this general validity and because of limitations of space, journals must differ in their subject structure, and every journal must have its own hierarchy of subjects, conforming to a Bradford or a similar distribution. The phenomenon of subject hierarchies is shown here for ten journals in twentieth-century psychology and mathematical logic and for five journals in nineteenth-century mathemat ics, taking instead of Bradford's original rank-size distribu tion the equivalent, but more general, Pareto distribution. It is hypothesised then that hierarchies of subjects within jour nals correspond to the reception process, i.e. to the structure of interests of their readers. This is illustrated by means of an example of 30 most prolific nineteenth-century mathemati cians. It is argued that the phenomenon of subject hierarchies in journals and in readers has to be considered in a causal explanation of Bradford's law.
Pretty good encryption
Authors: McMurdo George
Published: March 2007

The use of codes and other methods of concealing the contents of messages is as old as recorded information. With the advent of computer communication, the need for a method of ensuring secure communication over insecure channels, such as the Internet, has seen an increased demand for good cryptography. However, the recent avail ability of public domain public-key encryption software, such as Philip R. Zimmermann's Pretty Good Privacy (PGP), has been described as 'letting the cryptographic genie out of the bottle', and has raised issues of national communication policy and personal privacy. In the USA, the government's Clipper encryption chip initiative sought to implement a key escrow system which would enable law enforcement agencies to wiretap all digital communi cation. Civil liberty opponents of key escrow systems argue that they will not affect criminals, and fear that they can only be made effective by banning the use of alternative encryption systems, such as PGP. Methods for obtaining and using PGP to encrypt and decrypt e-mail messages are described.
HTML for the lazy
Authors: McMurdo George
Published: March 2007

The hypertext mark-up language (HTML) is the basis of information provision on the Internet's fast-growing World Wide Web. This medium has increasingly become both an imperative of organizational self-presentation and a part of the mass media and popular culture. The production and publishing of basic HTML is nevertheless a relatively democratising medium, in that it is fairly simple to work with, does not require programming expertise and can be originated on minimal specification computers. It is an appropriate medium for information professionals, since the importance of the content, organisation and presenta tion of the information outweighs the technical computing aspects. Although other options are available, or emerging, for Internet publishing and graphical browsing, HTML is likely to remain the core method for information providers. A 'quick reference' of the main HTML tags and their syntaxes is outlined and discussed. Alternatives to HTML, such as Adobe's Acrobat software and Sun's new Java application language, are briefly described.
Searching for bridges between disciplines: an author co-citation analysis on the research into scholarly communication
Authors: Kärki Riitta
Published: March 2007

An author co-citation analysis (ACA) on the research into scholarly communication in sociology of science and in information science within a 20-year period is presented. The question at issue is: to what extent and in what ways the research on scholarly communication brings together the sociology of science and information science, i.e. if the research on scholarly communication acts as a bridge between these two disciplines. It is natural to think of the research on scholarly communication as a common field for these two disciplines, but, by analysing the co-citations accorded to the researchers within both disciplines, one can define the intensity of the relationship or whether it really exists. The ACA suggests that the research of scholarly communication is not enough to be their common denomi nator: sociologists and information scientists mostly stay in their own respective territories. Finally, as the feasibility of ACA is evaluated in the light of the results, the weaknesses of the method become evident.
Institution Building for Social and Organizational Change: An Appreciation
Authors: Ganesh S.R.
Published: March 2007

The study of institution building and institutionalization has engaged the attention of a variety of scholars from several disciplines. However, institution building as a distinct body of knowledge has emerged only in the last decade. The bulk of the literature has been put together as a result of the efforts of a consortium of American scholars working within a common framework developed in the context of aid to the less developed countries through the United States Agency for International Development (USAID). Unfortunately, while this literature has done much to provide considerable guidance and thrust to institution-building (IB) efforts, it has the danger of producing a cleavage in the social science contributions to this area. True to the spirit in which the various scholars developed the IB model in the United States, this paper attempts to synthesize various relevant streams in this important area of human endeavour. In doing so, it goes beyond the existing models and reports a general processual model of institution building rooted in empirical work. The new model has implications for change at both organizational (microsystem) and social (macrosystem) levels.
Centrally Planned Development: A Comparison of Polish Factories with Equivalents in Britain, Japan, and Sweden
Authors: Kuc Bolec , Hickson David J. , McMillan Charles J.
Published: March 2007

The first data collected by Aston Programme methods in Eastern Europe are reported from Poland. In a sample of factories matched for size, product, and unit status with equivalents in Britain, Japan, and Sweden, striking results are obtained. First, relation ships among size, interorganizational dependence, and technology, and structural characteristics of formalization, specialization, and centralization continue to support the hypothesis that these relationships will be similar in all societies. Second, and more importantly for this particular cross-national comparison, the Polish factories are found to be uniquely and uniformly formalized, functionally specialized, and centralized, to a high degree. This distinctiveness is attributed to the dual effects of an economy which is both a late developer and state planned.
Competition and Monopoly in Interest Representation: A Comparative Analysis of Trade Union Structure in the Railway Industries of Great Britain and West Germany
Authors: Streeck Wolfgang , Seglow Peter , Wallace Pat
Published: March 2007

This article analyses some of the causes of the emergence and the stability of monopolies of representation of industrial unions in competition with sectional interest associations of specific occupational groups. As its empirical point of reference, the article takes the trade union systems in the railway industries of Great Britain and West Germany. In both countries, there are three railway unions whose areas of jurisdiction largely correspond to each other cross-nationally: one industrial union, one union of loco motive engine drivers, and one union for administrative staff. However, while in West Germany the proportion of the industrial union (GdED) in the total number of unionized railway workers increases at the expense of the sectional competitors, in Great Britain it has for a long time been declining. This divergent development of two otherwise similar trade union systems — a development which in Great Britain has led to the establishment of three sectional monopolies of representation, while in West Germany it is leading to the formation of one inclusive monopoly — is explained by three factors:

— the presence in West Germany, and the absence in Great Britain, of a formally union-independent, statutory system of interest representation at the workplace with distinct, legally guaranteed rights of codetermination (Works Constitution);

— the fact that in West Germany the workers represented by the two sectional unions are Beamte and thus do not have the right to take industrial action; and

— the occupational structure which in West Germany permits higher interoccupational mobility, thus rendering the establishment of sectional interest associations more difficult.
Organizational Development and Change in a Union-Management Context: The Voluntary Establishment of Joint Health and Safety Committees in Britain
Authors: Beaumont P.B. , Deaton D.R.
Published: March 2007

The organizational development literature has very largely ignored the role of trade unions, with the result that the traditional organizational change models are held to be unsuitable for analysing the establishment and maintenance of joint problem-solving structures. Accordingly in this article we draw on the mainstream industrial relations literature in order to develop a model which seeks to identify the relevant structural characteristics of plants that had voluntarily established joint health and safety commit tees. This model is tested by performing a multivariate analysis of data obtained from a survey of 970 establishments in the manufacturing sector in Britain.
Organizational Size and Specialization
Authors: Bryman A. , Beardsworth A.D. , Keil E.T. , Ford J.
Published: March 2007

This research note uses the Aston measure of Functional Specialization to examine the effect of the inclusion of smaller organizations than are normally present in studies employing this measure on the relationship between size and specialization. The presence of organizations between 25 and 100 employees raises the magnitude of the correlation coefficient slightly. A regression analysis is also carried out that implies that the prediction of specialization from size is somewhat sensitive to sample size. A correlation analysis of the size-specialization relationship is also undertaken for discrete size ranges.
Research Review: A Survey of Cross-National Organizational Researchers: Their Views and Opinions
Authors: Roberts Karlene H. , Boyacigiller Nakiye
Published: March 2007

This review presents the results of a survey of fifty cross-national organizational researchers with regard to what they assessed to be popular topics of cross-nation and single nation research and what topics they felt could benefit from a cross-national organizational research perspective. It compares research responses about popular topics with an independent title search over recent years of the major academic journals in the field, and ends with a discussion of what the authors see as emerging trends in the field.
Theories of Organizational Culture
Authors: Allaire Yvan , Firsirotu Mihaela E.
Published: March 2007

The notion that organizations may have specific cultures is found sprinkled in a vast array of publications on strategy and business policy, on organizational behaviour and theory. Although the absence of a solid theoretical grounding for the concept of organizational culture has been frequently lamented, little effort has been exerted to bring within the perimeter of the management and organizational field the relevant concepts found in cultural anthropology.

The purpose of this paper is therefore three-fold:

First, to provide a typology of schools of thought in cultural anthropology in order to understand the diverse and complex theories of culture advanced in this field; Second, to relate these different points of view to the emerging notions of organiza tional culture found explicitly or implicitly in the management and organization literature;

Third, to pull together the insights and findings derived from this enquiry in order to propose an integrative concept of organizational culture as a useful metaphor for studying the processes of decay, adaptation and radical change in complex organizations.
Second Thoughts on the Transferability of the Japanese Management Style
Authors: Cool Karel O. , Lengnick-Hall Cynthia A.
Published: March 2007

Adopting a strategic management perspective, an attempt is made to distinguish system-free from system-specific structural and interactional aspects in the Japanese and Western management styles and systems. To determine what system-specific elements can be transferred from the Japanese management system to the Western management system (in particular the U.S.), an ecological-cultural-institutional analysis is conducted. The intent of this analysis is to present a genuine open-systems view on the subject of comparative management and on the issue of transferring elements from one management system to another.
Outside the Goal Paradigm: Power and Structured Patterns of Non-Rationality
Authors: Sunesson Sune
Published: March 2007

It is argued that power is a better explanatory factor in organizational analysis than are 'goals' or 'rationality'. This is supported by examples from the author's research in social-work organizations. These examples illustrate some of the ways that power is organized in what recent writers have called 'loosely coupled', 'street-level' bureau cracies.

Informal and spontaneous organizing practices as well as rituals decide real (as distinct from formal) power and control at the operating level. For the analysis of those processes, a distinction is made between the means of organizing and other operational resources of an organization.
Markets and Hierarchies in a Cultural Perspective
Authors: Boisot Max H.
Published: March 2007

The scope given to cultural phenomena in organizational analysis has been growing but little conceptual integration has taken place. In this paper, a cultural analysis of organizational phenomena is developed using a conceptual framework that throws new light on the Markets and Hierarchies debate. In particular, it is shown that a choice between markets and hierarchies does not reduce to a choice between external and internal transactions. The framework is introduced and developed in sections one and two for the general case and is applied to the modern corporation in section three. The implications of the analysis are discussed in section four.
The Art of Saying No: Linking Power to Culture
Authors: Izraeli Dafna M. , Jick Todd D.
Published: March 2007

This paper applies a micro-political perspective in examining how the art of saying no — that is, refusing requests — is not only a form of socialization and acculturation but also serves to reinforce the distribution of power and authority as a shared social fact. The delivery of bad news from superiors to subordinates becomes a forum for articulating organizational values. Critical incidents of 'refusal ritual' tactics collected from a three-nation sample of lower level participants are categorized and illustrated. Some difficulties in managing the compliance of employees after the refusal are noted, as well as organizational mechanisms for discouraging requests.
Modernism, Post Modernism and Organizational Analysis 2: The Contribution of Michel Foucault
Authors: Burrell Gibson
Published: March 2007

This paper, the second in a series on the relevance of the modernist-postmodernist debate to organizational analysis, looks at the work of the late Michel Foucault. Whilst his work is seen as producing a whole series of problems for those brought up in an Anglo-American tradition of intellectual endeavour, it is maintained that his work is suggestive of alternative ways of approaching problems and ordering material. A three fold periodization of his work is suggested beginning with the 'archeaological' period, then attention is paid to the 'genealogical' period and finally, though less fixed and discernible, his concern for ethics is noted. Ideas and concepts drawn from all but the very last of his writings are then utilized in ways which might allow for a significant reordering in the theory of organizations, particularly in the debate concerning organizational heterogeneity versus homogeneity, the importance of 'total institutions', organizational control of sexuality and the role of new technologies in organizational control systems.
Organizational Logics of Managerial Careers
Authors: Gunz Hugh
Published: March 2007

A theoretical model of managerial careers is presented which links two organizational characteristics (structure and growth) to the pattern of managerial careers within an organization. Different combinations of these characteristics give rise to different organizational career logics (OCLs), which are the rationalities an observer imputes to the pattern of work role transitions within a firm. Each OCL is associated with its own distinctive pattern of work role transition, and a framework for classifying these transitions is described which allows the differences to be made manifest. Three ideal-type OCLs are described, and the perspective is illustrated by reference to work role transition patterns in four large British manufacturing firms. Additional sources of variance are discussed: some are predicted by the OCL perspective and some arise as the result of choices made by individual managers within the overall framework of their firm's OCL. A simple two-dimensional model of individual choice is presented. Each OCL and its associated pattern of transitions is also likely to develop different skills and expertise in its managers; the paper concludes by discussing what these different forms of expertise might be.
Huck Finn Revisited: A 19th Century Look at 20th Century Organization Theory
Authors: Reitzug Ulrich C.
Published: March 2007

This piece looks at contemporary organizations through the eyes of one of American literature's most famous fictional characters, Huckleberry Finn. The dialogue and setting are recreations of those found in The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn. The specific events in this story, while representative of the type found in the original novel by Mark Twain, have been created to illustrate the points being made by contemporary organizational theorists.
Myth, Meaning and Work Organization
Authors: Bowles Martin L.
Published: March 2007

The 'work organization' has, for many, come to replace the Church in dictating the meanings by which people are expected to structure their social action. This paper describes the function of myth in human life, the challenge to traditional mythologies through the emergence of science and technology and how the new order of organizational ideologies and myths fail to provide the integration necessary for life adjustment. The argument for the current emergence of a new form of mythology, one which challenges contemporary understandings of human beings and social organiza tion, is assessed.
The Wonderland of Public Administration Reforms
Authors: Czarniawska-Joerges Barbara
Published: March 2007

The students of public sector organizations are often surprised by the phenomenon of repetitive, costly and inconclusive reforms, which seem to be an unavoidable part of the public sector landscape. One possible reaction to it is to make a rationalistic critique and then to issue recommendations for improvement. An alternative is to look for a different perspective in analyzing functions of reform. A study of Sub-municipal Committee reform in Swedish municipalities is analyzed in terms of a symbolic accomplishment. In the light of the results, it is somewhat doubtful whether so-called reforms change organizational forms, but they do help to re-shuffle power, achieve a renewed legitimacy, re-socialize organization members and, in general, introduce variety into routines of organizational life.
Organization: From Substance to Image?
Authors: Alvesson Mats
Published: March 2007

This paper discusses the increased theoretical and practical interest in the idea tional dimensions of organizations, with particular emphasis on corporate images. The role of these internally in organizations, and not only for the regulation of external relations, in large parts of the modern economy is emphasized. The preconditions for the appearance of images as objects of systematic control and instrumental action in organizations are investigated. A broad trend in modem corporate life is portrayed and conceptualized as a development from a strong focus on 'substantive' issues to an increased emphasis on dealing with images as a critical aspect of organizational functioning and management. This means, among other things, that pseudo-events, pseudo-action and pseudo-structures, i.e. phenomena which have the purpose of producing effects on people's impressions and definition of reality, are important features of modem management and organization.
Systemic Conservatism in North American Organizations
Authors: Carroll Barbara Wake
Published: March 2007

Rational theories of organizational decision-making have shown that organiza tional outcomes and performance reflect a mixture of behavioural, structural and contextual factors, such as the goals of managers, the size and function of the organization, and the condition of the external environment. Critiques of this model suggest that non-rational factors such as national or systemic cultural values also affect the decision-making process. This article treats Canada and the United States as similar systems that differ in the degree to which their cultures embody conservative values. The author hypothesizes that the expenditure pat terns of organizations in the two countries will reflect this variation in systemic conservatism, and tests this expectation against data from a longitudinal sample of firms from three industries in each of the two countries. The analysis suggests that the impact and relative importance of the factors included in rational models of decision-making differ in Canada and the U.S. in ways that are consistent with the systemic conservatism hypothesis.
Nonlinear Models for the Prediction of Early Quits and Dismissals
Authors: Weisberg Jacob
Published: March 2007

The inverse relationship between length of service and labour turnover is a consistent finding in the literature. This paper demonstrates by a longitudinal cohort analysis of 40,816 British Rail workers recruited during 1979-1980, the increased accuracy and sensitivity obtained by concentrating separately on quits and dismissals.

Comparisons between quit rates and dismissal rates during the first ten months of employment pointed to the following major results: (1) quit rates and dismissal rates are better explained by nonlinear functions rather than by a linear one; (2) quits are best described by a parabolic function whereas dismissals are best described by a nearly inverse 'U'-shaped function; and (3) nonlinear patterns of quit rates and dismissal rates remained consistent for 1979 and 1980, although the unemployment levels, quit rates and dismissal rates in 1979 differed substantially from those in 1980.
Post-Modern Organizations or Postmodern Organization Theory?
Authors: Parker Martin
Published: March 2007

Postmodernism is beginning to enter organization studies. After introducing the contours of the debate, some of the early contributions are critically reviewed and then subjected to sympathetic scrutiny. A distinction between the periodization 'post-modern' and a 'postmodern' epistemology is explored in terms of its conse quences for writing about organizations. Each position is shown to have diffi culties attached to it and the political ramifications of these are explored. Some tentative suggestions are made to explain the rising popularity of the 'post' within organizational writing.
The Tyranny of a Team Ideology
Authors: Sinclair Amanda
Published: March 2007

People at work have been tyrannized by a team ideology based on the use of work groups as a key to effective organizational performance. The hegemony of this ideology has created an obsession with teams in workplaces governed by oppress ive stereotypes of what teams should be like and how they should behave. This paper examines four elements of the prevailing team ideology — the way work in groups is defined, links between individual motivation and organizational per formance, views of leadership, and the effects of power, conflict and emotion in work groups. Some alternative perspectives on team behaviour elucidate the ways in which the prevailing paradigm ultimately hinders groups and tyrannizes the individual team member — by camouflaging coercion and conflict with the appearance of consultation and cohesion. Examination of the limits and effects of the ideology provide the basis for an alternative understanding of the strengths, constraints and complexities of group work.
Perceived Political Climate and Job Attitudes
Authors: Drory Amos
Published: March 2007

The present study examines the relationships between perceived Organizational Politics (OP) and job attitudes. Questionnaires containing scales of perceived OP climate and job attitudes were administered to a sample of 200 employees in several organizations. It was found that variables reflecting on the employee's status in the organization such as Gender and Supervisory Position moderate the relationships between perceptions of organizational politics and job attitudes. The association between climate and negative job attitudes was stronger for employees of lower status than for those of a higher status. It was speculated that organizational politics has a potentially damaging effect on lower status employees, who react to a climate of politics by showing increasingly negative attitudes towards the organization.
The Long and Thorny Way to an Organizational Taxonomy
Authors: Sanchez Julio C.
Published: March 2007

Under the assumption that a classification system is necessary for the advance ment of any scientific field, this paper reviews major taxonomic studies in the literature. Although each of these studies has certain limitations in terms of proposed guidelines for the development of a valid taxonomy of organizations, in the aggregate they appear to demonstrate that organizations do indeed cluster in recognizable groups and that organizational scientists have indeed the meth odological and statistical tools to identify them. Some general guidelines for future taxonomic studies are discussed, as well as possible reasons for the lack of research in this area.
Organization Theory and Consumption in a Post-Modern Era
Authors: Knights David , Morgan Glenn
Published: March 2007

In recent years, social theory has become increasingly concerned with consump tion and the changing nature of consumer society. By contrast, students of organizations have given only limited attention to the implications of consump tion and consumerism for the analysis of their subject matter. In the light of this, the paper considers the contribution that the sociology of organizations can and should make to discussions of consumption and associated debates concerning contemporary consumer society. Our argument is that since in contemporary societies, consumption is achieved through the mediation of organizations it fol lows that an adequate study of consumption can only be developed in conjunction with the sociology of organizations. However, it is also the case that the analysis of organizations must change if it is to take the issue of consumption seriously. By placing consumption more centrally in our analysis, the study of organizations is, in our view, forced to address current theoretical and empirical questions about the nature of modern (or is it post-modern?) society, a task that is sometimes ignored by organizational analysts but is implicit in the tradition of study deriving from Weber. The paper seeks to show how these changes open up fruitful new areas for the study of organizations and consumption and, in particular. questions concerning the nature of power and identity in modern societies.
Spontaneous Humour as an Indicator of Paradox and Ambiguity in Organizations
Authors: Hatch Mary Jo , Erhlich Sanford B.
Published: March 2007

Assuming that humour is built on a foundation of recognized contradiction, incongruity and incoherence, then it seems plausible that humour points to dis course capable of revealing the nature and substance of paradox and ambiguity- a topic of increasing interest to students of organization. This paper presents the method and results of a case study illustrating the interpretive possibilities of combining humour analysis with the study of paradox and ambiguity as a means to address everyday experience in organizations. Results are interpreted as indicating a paradox of control and the ambiguity of problem and solution thinking.
The Concept of Ideology and Work Motivation
Authors: Carlisle Ysanne M. , Manning David J.
Published: March 2007

Shamir (1991: 405) noted that 'current reviews of work-motivation theories are unanimous in their dissatisfaction with the state-of-the-art'. He concluded that existing theories offer an inadequate account of the impetus of employ ment and should be 'supplemented by a self-concept based theory of work motivation'. This paper suggests that the concept of ideology can provide a foundation for this kind of theory. First, it attempts to elucidate the explanatory power of the concept of ideology in the context of understanding the effective performance of organizational members. Second, it indicates how ideology can be shown to address the issues of organizational dynamism which Shamir found to be problematic. Third, it shows how the nature of ideologic, in con junction with the substance of ideological belief, offers an explanation of the variety to be found in organizational behaviour.
Transforming Former State Enterprises in the Czech Republic
Authors: Clark Ed , Soulsby Anna
Published: March 2007

The study of organizational transformation has emerged from the foundations established by contingency theory and research. While institutional approaches to organizational analysis have preferred to focus on the tendency towards organizational continuity and inertia, recent developments have begun to con sider institutional pressures leading to change, and to provide clues about how contingency and institutional theories might complement each other in improv ing our understanding of organizational change. The evidence presented in this paper, drawn from a study of organizational transformation in the Czech Republic, allows exploration of the relationship between transforming state enterprises and the wider processes of social, economic and institutional change. The values, motives and actions of the key enterprise managers are shown to be essential factors in explaining both the process of transformation in state enterprises, and the role of institutional factors in that process.
Buffering Organizational Identity in the Marketing Culture
Authors: Christensen Lars Thøger
Published: March 2007

This paper discusses the issue of organizational identity and the role played by marketing in attempts to manage this issue in a complex and turbulent environment. Within prevalent management discourse, marketing is described as a boundary function that ensures a steady conformance of the organization to external expectations and demands. With its strong emphasis on the con sumer and the changing needs of the market, marketing, accordingly, repres ents an attempt to impose and control a flexible identity, that is, an identity without distinctive traits independent of a market-based strategy. In the cultural perspective laid out in this paper, marketing, by contrast, is described as a self-referential system of organizing that enables the organization to establish and maintain a flexible buffer between itself and the environment. Within this buffer, defined by marketing, the organization is able to display a high degree of adaptiveness while upholding and confirming itself. In the marketing- managed organization, identity and flexibility thus become closely inter twined.
Blackboxes, Hostages and Prisoners
Authors: Scarbrough Harry
Published: March 2007

This paper uses empirical evidence drawn from a sample of IT-based innova tion projects to examine theoretical models of the organization of technical knowledge. It suggests that Williamson's transaction cost account is incom plete, in that it fails to take account of the role of social action in communicat ing technical knowledge and organizing transactions. As an alternative model, it describes the 'strategies of social closure' developed by IT experts to achieve effective knowledge trading and a mutually acceptable division of the eco nomic gains of innovation. Empirical data is used to describe three such strat egies : 'blackboxing', 'hostage' and 'prisoner' strategies.
Trust and Contractual Relations in an Emerging Capitalist Economy: The Changing Trading Relationships of Ten Large Hungarian Enterprises
Authors: Whitley Richard , Jeffrey Henderson , Czaban Laszlo , Lengyel Gyorgy
Published: March 2007

Inter-firm relationships vary greatly between capitalist economies as a result of institutional differences, especially in forms of trust and prevalent mechan isms of ensuring that commercial agreements are kept. The transformation of the command economies of Eastern Europe since 1989 and the intensification of competition in their major markets might be expected to destroy previous connections between suppliers and customers and generate instead short-term, ad hoc contractual relationships. However, this study of ten large enterprises in Hungary found that contractual relations between them tended to be more similar to the Japanese firms studied by Sako in her Prices, Quality and Trust (1992) than to the British ones. This seems to reflect the limited extent of change in products, markets and organizational structures of these firms — and the gradual approach to transformation adopted in Hungary as a whole — as well as their specialization in particular industrial branches and their high degree of mutual dependence through debt. Continued dependence on the state has meant that competition between these firms for political support remains important and so they compete more across industrial sectors than within them.
Culture, Institutions and Business in East Asia
Authors: Wilkinson Barry
Published: March 2007

The structures of business in the East Asian 'miracle' economies have been explained by culturists in relation to pre-modern belief systems, and more recently by institutionalists in relation to pre-modern traditions and emerging 'institutional environments'. Each school of thought draws selectively on the work of Max Weber. While the latter school's account carries a higher face validity than the former, it is argued that both are at best partial, are often misleading and, at worse, serve to legitimate, rather than critically analyze, the activities of East Asian business élites. In locating business structures firmly in society-wide belief systems or institutional environments, both approaches tend to give deterministic accounts which deny a role for human agency, and which neglect the importance of interests, power and ideology in the design and maintenance of business structures.