bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Engineering Culture: Control and Commitment in a High-Tech Corporation
Authors: Kunda Gideon
Published: October 2008

Engineering Culture grew out of an attempt to take seriously the conceptual and methodological requirements of a cultural perspective on organizations. Briefly, the book is a critical ethnography of a large and successful high-tech corporation lauded in the popular managerial literature for its innovative postbureaucratic “corporate culture.” The corporate culture, the official story went, drove the company’s employees to peaks of corporate performance and personal self-actualization. Academic views of these managerial claims fell, unsurprisingly, into two distinct camps. On the one hand (the upper one, of course) were those who participated in the construction of this grand utopian narrative: numerous texts reinforced, jargonized, and legitimated managerial claims and fed them back to ever-hungry corporate consumers of good words. On the other hand, less popular but no less persistent and no less grand, was a continuing stream of criticism of the corporation. In this view, utopian managerial claims were—as ever—no more than a disguise for malevolent managerial intentions, now in the form of tyrannical attempts to penetrate and shape employees’ minds and hearts.
Rewards to Investors in Innovative Information Technology Applications: First Movers and Early Followers in ATMs
Authors: Dos Santos Brian L. , Peffers Ken
Published: October 2008

Innovative information technology (IT) applications are risky investments. Unless successful applications provide innovators with exceptional returns, these investments would not be justified. Other than a few case studies, there is no evidence that the first movers of successful IT applications are rewarded for the risks they bear. We present the results of an extensive longitudinal study of the effects of early adoption of automated teller machines (ATMs) by banks, on market share and income. The study spans the period from 1971 to 1983 and includes 2,534 banks from across the United States. Results indicate that the earliest adopters (1971 through 1973) were able to increase market share, with market share gains being sustained for a long time. Banks that adopted ATMs between 1974 and 1979, however, did not gain market share. The results also indicate that early ATM adoption enabled banks to increase income and income gains were sustained for a long time. These findings support case study evidence that early adoption of new IT applications can lead to long-term competitive advantages for firms.
Perspective Making and Perspective Taking in Communities of Knowing
Authors: Boland Richard J. , Tenkasi Ramkrishnan V.
Published: October 2008

Knowledge-intensive firms are composed of multiple communities with specialized expertise, and are often characterized by lateral rather than hierarchical organizational forms. We argue that producing knowledge to create innovative products and processes in such firms requires the ability to make strong perspectives within a community, as well as the ability to take the perspective of another into account. We present models of language, communication and cognition that can assist in the design of electronic communication systems for perspective making and perspective taking. By appreciating how communication is both like a language game played in a local community and also like a transmission of messages through a conduit, and by appreciating how cognition includes a capacity to narrativize our experience as well as a capacity to process information, we identify some guidelines for designing electronic communication systems to support knowledge work. The communication systems we propose emphasize that narratives can help construct strong perspectives within a community of knowing, and that reflecting upon and representing that perspective can create boundary objects which allow for perspective taking between communities. We conclude by describing our vision of an idealized knowledge intensive firm with a strong culture of perspective making and perspective taking, and by identifying some elements of the electronic communication systems we would expect to see in such a firm.
Social Context and Interaction in Ongoing Computer-Supported Management Groups
Authors: Zack Michael H. , McKenney James L.
Published: October 2008

Electronic communication has been proposed as a key technology enabling new organization forms and structures, work designs, and task processes. This view assumes that organization structure and form can be defined in terms of communication linkages among organizational units. Communication is a social process, however. Therefore, to better understand the potential for these technologies to enable fundamental organizational change, we must understand how existing structures and social contexts influence patterns of organizational communication. This research examined the use of electronic messaging by ongoing management groups performing a cooperative task. By means of an in-depth multimethod field study of the editorial group of two daily newspapers, it examined the influence of the groups’ social context on the patterns of face-to-face and computer-mediated communication. The results show that different groups using the same functional structure and performing the same task with identical communication technologies, but operating within different social contexts, appropriated the communication technology differently and in a way that was consistent with and reinforcing to their existing social structure. This finding suggests that researchers must, at the very least, explicitly take into account social context when studying the effects of introducing technologies which may alter group interaction. Additionally, researchers should look to social context as an important explanatory construct to be explicitly varied and investigated with regard to effects and outcomes of these technologies. The findings also suggest that managers must diagnose and explicitly manage the social context of the workplace prior to implementing technologies, if their intent is to restructure the patterns of interaction and information exchange in support of new organizational forms.
Improving Interorganizational Effectiveness through Voice Mail Facilitation of Peer-to-Peer Relationships
Authors: Lind Mary R. , Zmud Robert W.
Published: October 2008

This study examines the impact of the introduction of voice mail on (1) the effectiveness of the interorganizational relationship between a manufacturing firm and its network of dealerships and (2) the sales performance of these dealerships. As voice mail was introduced into two of five sales regions, this trial intervention provided an opportunity to assess these organizational impacts using a quasi-experimental research design. The results indicate that voice mail enhanced interorganizational effectiveness as measured by dealership sales performance in two primary ways: directly, due to the store and forward nature of voice mail; and indirectly, due to improved interorganizational relationships between the manufacturer’s field representatives and the dealerships’ sales managers enabled by the more effective use of written communication media. The study also demonstrates the importance, when examining the organizational impacts of information technology, of devising data-gathering procedures which tightly link the functionality of the technology being examined to specific organizational processes.
Influences Upon Organizational Ethical Subclimates: A Multi-Departmental Analysis of a Single Firm
Authors: Weber James
Published: October 2008

Organizational values and beliefs significantly influence employee decision making and behavior and manifest themselves as multiple climates existing within a single organization. A subset of organizational climate is an ethical climate, embodying normative values and beliefs involving moral issues shared by the employees of the organization. Researchers have found multiple ethical climates present in an organization. This research explores a plausible explanation for the discovery of multiple ethical climates, or subclimates, within an organization. Specifically, the research tests the assumptions that the departmental task and stakeholder relationships influence and differentiate the ethical decision-making framework used by employees and the resulting ethical subclimate. Categories developed by Thompson (Thompson, J. D. 1967. Organizations in Action. McGraw-Hill Book Company, New York.) are extended to identify distinct departmental tasks and stakeholder relationships in order to assess their influence upon the employees’ ethical decision-making process and departmental ethical subclimate. In order to uncover the various ethical subclimates within each workgroup, the Ethical Climate Questionnaire, developed by Victor and Cullen (Victor, B., J. B. Cullen. 1987. A theory and measure of ethical climate in organizations. W. C. Frederick, ed. Research in Corporate Social Performance and Policy: Empirical Studies of Business Ethics and Values, Vol. 9. JAI Press, Greenwich, CT, 51–71; Victor, B., J. B. Cullen. 1988. The organizational basis of ethical work climates. Admin. Sci. Quart. 33(1) 101–125.), was used in a modified form. The original instrument required the subjects to rate, on a Likert scale, the relevance of each ethical climate statement. In this project, a ranking of the statements was performed by the subjects, which minimizes the social desirability bias in the subjects’ responses. This research found that the departmental task and stakeholder relationships so strongly influence employee decision making in all three department types that the ethical subclimate was also affected. Employees in a technical core department tend to use an individual locus of analysis and an egoistic criterion for decisions, emphasizing an instrumental ethical climate type. Buffer department employees exhibit a mix of ethical decision characteristics, but clearly manifest a caring ethical climate type. Employees in boundary spanning departments show a preference toward a cosmopolitan perspective and principle ethical reasoning, as well as a law and code ethical climate type.
The Appeal and Difficulties of Participative Systems
Authors: McCaffrey David P. , Faerman Sue R. , Hart David W.
Published: October 2008

One can identify compelling reasons for private and public organizations to embrace participative systems. Scholars and organizational consultants maintain that organizations need such systems to prosper in an increasingly competitive and turbulent world, and that such changes are now taking place. Yet, participative techniques have diffused minimally. Why is there such a discrepancy between the endorsements and adoption of participative methods, despite the strong arguments for them and their intuitive appeal? This paper maintains that barriers to participative systems are embedded in social, economic, and political principles deeply valued in their own right. Writings on participative systems treat these barriers as difficult problems that can be overcome through patient, well-designed behavioral and organizational interventions. In contrast, we suggest that the structures and attitudes impeding participative systems are usually valued more highly than the prospective gains from the systems, and that, in the future, true participative systems will have difficulty sustaining themselves in an organizational landscape that continues to favor systems of centralized control. Similar impediments operating in areas as different as management and government regulation suggest basic processes that rise above specific contexts. The paper draws on two pertinent but heretofore disconnected scholarly literatures—the literatures on cooperation and on collaboration—to analyze the experiences with participative systems in management and regulatory policy. Four themes—prior dispositions toward cooperation, social and political organization, the nature of purposes, issues, and values, and leadership capacity and style—are critical to understanding each area. Generally, participative systems bump into problems of collective action: dispositions against cooperating with prior adversaries, the costs of collaboration in complex social and political systems, the difficulties of engaging deep conflicts, and leadership incentives favoring control that develop in this context. These conditions repeatedly undermine incipient, fragile participative systems. The study of participation would benefit from closer attention to how social, economic, and political structures constrain or facilitate such systems, and more extensive links among the various literatures on the subject.
Crossroads
Authors: Frost Peter J.
Published: October 2008

Introduction to CrossRoads.
Institutional Constraints on Economic Reform: The Case of Investment Decisions in China
Authors: Child John , Yuan Lu
Published: October 2008

The paper examines the process of investment decision making in six Chinese state enterprises during the economic reform which combined moves towards a market system with a continuing role for the state in industrial governance. This placed investment at the boundary between bureaucratic control and market forces, the theory being that enterprise managers would advance investment proposals in response to the market while government authorities retained the right of final approval in the light of broader-based priorities.

This mixed “market socialism” model has been treated with considerable scepticism by the so-called “reform economists” in Eastern Europe who doubt that enterprises can pursue policies which are rational in terms of market forces so long as they remain subject to significant administrative influence. Resource dependence and institutional perspectives, in drawing attention to higher administrative agencies as providers respectively of critical resources and of legitimacy for the state enterprises under their purview, also predict that institutional constraints will continue to operate on enterprise decision making. North's discussion of informal institutional arrangements and incremental change gives rise to similar expectations.

Detailed examination of the investment decision process at the three major stages of initiation, design and detailing, and final authorization does in fact indicate that it remains heavily dependent upon higher authorities. The reasons for this continuing dependence are discussed and comparisons are drawn with the investment decision process in western countries.
The Kindness of Strangers: The Usefulness of Electronic Weak Ties for Technical Advice
Authors: Constant David , Sproull Lee , Kiesler Sara
Published: October 2008

People use weak ties—relationships with acquaintances or strangers—to seek help unavailable from friends or colleagues. Yet in the absence of personal relationships or the expectation of direct reciprocity, help from weak ties might not be forthcoming or could be of low quality. We examined the practice of distant employees (strangers) exchanging technical advice through a large organizational computer network. A survey of advice seekers and those who replied was conducted to test hypotheses about the viability and usefulness of such electronic weak tie exchanges.

Theories of organizational motivation suggest that positive regard for the larger organization can substitute for direct incentives or personal relationships in motivating people to help others. Theories of weak ties suggest that the usefulness of this help may depend on the number of ties, the diversity of ties, or the resources of help providers. We hypothesized that, in an organizational context, the firm-specific resources and organizational motivation of people who provide advice will predict the usefulness of advice.

We investigated these theories in a study of employees of a global computer manufacturer. We collected survey and observational data on the relationships between information seekers and information providers; the number, diversity, resources, and motivations of information providers, and subjective ratings of the usefulness of the advice (from both parties in the exchange) and whether or not the advice solved information seekers' problems.

We found that information providers gave useful advice and solved the problems of information seekers, despite their lack of a personal connection with the seekers. The data support the main hypotheses and provide some support for resource and diversity explanations of weak tie influence. We discuss how this organization's culture sustained useful intormation exchange through weak ties.
Resource-based View of Strategic Alliance Formation: Strategic and Social Effects in Entrepreneurial Firms
Authors: Eisenhardt Kathleen M. , Schoonhoven Claudia Bird
Published: October 2008

Why do firms form strategic alliances? The traditional theoretical answer has been transaction cost explanations. Yet, these explanations which center on transaction characteristics, static efficiency, and routine situations do not capture the strategic and social factors which propel many firms into alliance formation. In this study, however, we combine these alternative social and strategic explanations for alliance formation. Consistent with these explanations, we find that alliances form when firms are in vulnerable strategic positions either because they are competing in emergent or highly competitive industries or because they are attempting pioneering technical strategies. We also find that alliances form when firms are in strong social positions such that they are led by large, experienced, and well-connected top management teams. The underlying logic of alliance formation is, thus, strategic needs and social opportunities.

We develop these findings by extending the resource-based view of the firm to alliance formation and then examining the resulting hypotheses using product development alliances. The study is longitudinal and focuses on entrepreneurial semiconductor firms. Overall, strategic and social explanations of organizational phenomena as well as industry, firm, and top management team factors emerge as central in the paper. This suggests that these factors are relevant for predicting alliance formation, especially in high-velocity industries such as semiconductors. We conclude that failure to include social and strategic explanations creates an impoverished view of alliance formation.
The Two Faces of Competition: Dynamic Resourcefulness and the Hypercompetitive Shift
Authors: Thomas L.G.
Published: October 2008

Competition in the American economy has fundamentally changed over the last few decades, from static to dynamic. This study labels this important change the hypercompetitive shift, and documents it across 200 industries of the US manufacturing sector during I958 to 1991. For industries that undergo a hypercompetitive shift, there is an increase in the cross-firm variance in performance and a rotation in the value-rivalry relationship from a negative association to an inverted-U. As a consequence of these competitive changes, the strategic focus of firms shifts from careful exploitation of given, highly durable strategic assets to the steady creation of many new, rapidly depreciable ones.

The key driver of hypercompetitive shift is the dynamic resourcefulness of an industry, or the ease with which new strategic assets can be created. Determinants of dynamic resourcefulness include the dynamism of related transactors (notably consumers and suppliers). the knowledge base of the industry, and structural conditions that promote easy entry.
Technological Platforms and Diversification
Authors: Kim Dong-Jae , Kogut Bruce
Published: October 2008

As the invention of fundamental new sciences spawns subsequent research, discovery, and commercialization, core technologies branch into new applications and markets. Some of them evolve over time into many derived technologies, whereas others are essentially “dead ends.” The pattern of evolution and branching is called a “technological trajectory.” An intriguing question is whether some firms can ride the trajectory by developing proprietary experience in a “platform technology.” Because the knowledge is proprietary, firms that originate in industrial fields based on a platform technology acquire the technological skills to diversify and to mimic the branching of the underlying technological trajectory.

The ability to compete in hypercompetitive markets depends on the acquisition of know-how that is applicable to a wide set of market opportunities. Such capabilities serve as platforms into quickly evolving markets. To respond rapidly to market changes, a firm must have already acquired fundamental competitive knowledge. In a high-technology industry, such knowledge invariably is derived from experience with the underlying science and related technological fields.

The authors examine capabilities as platforms by analyzing the temporal sequence of diversification as contingent on market opportunities and previous experience. The pattern of diversification of firms reflects the evolutionary branching of underlying technologies. In that sense, the aggregate decisions of firms are driven by the technological trajectories common across an industrial sector. Certain technologies have wider technological and market opportunities, and consequently experience in those technologies serves as a platform for expansion. The authors propose that a firm's experience in platform technologies increases the likelihood of diversification when environmental opportunities are favorable.

The proposition is tested with the sample of 176 semiconductor startup companies founded between 1977 and 1989. Evidence from multidimensional scaling of expert opinion and from an analysis of patent records was gathered to identity relatedness among subfields and the evolutionary direction of the technologies. A discrete hazard model is specified to estimate the effect of technological histories on subsequent diversification. The results confirm the relationship between relatedness and directionality of technologies and the industrial path of diversification. The finding that diversification depends on technological experience and market opportunity has important implications for firms' entry decisions. The authors discuss those implications by describing experience as generating options on future opportunities and distinguishing between the historical path by which the stock of knowledge is accumulated and the path by which new knowledge is generated and commercialized.
Eating Your Own Lunch: Protection Through Preemption
Authors: Nault Barrie R. , Vandenbosch Mark B.
Published: October 2008

Recent discussions of management practices among successful high-technology companies suggest that one key strategy for success is to “eat your own lunch before someone else does.” The implication is that in intensely competitive, or hypercompetitive, markets, firms with a leading position should aggressively cannibalize their own current advantages with next-generation advantages before competitors step in to steal the market. Given the pace of technological and other types of change, such strategy often requires creating next-generation advantages while the current advantages are still profitable—that is, trading current profits for future market leadership.

We capture the tradeoff between a market leader's willingness to reap profits with its current set of advantages and its desire to maintain market leadership by investing in the next generation. Using a competitive model that determines the equilibrium launch time of a next generation advantage, we find that, in absence of lower launch costs for an entrant, the incumbent will be first to launch to maintain its market leadership. That is, regardless of the severity of penalties for being a follower in the next generation, it is optimal for the incumbent to preempt the entrant by launching early—even if the incumbent consequently loses money at the margin. We derive a straightforward condition to determine when an incumbent will make negative incremental profits from its investment in the next-generation advantage. The fact that the condition does not depend on the size of the incumbent's investment costs indicates that the severity of competition, rather than the costs of developing and introducing a next-generation advantage, is what forces firms to cannibalize at a loss.

Finally, we find that a preemptive launch can result in an earlier launch of the next generation than is socially optimal, and provide a sufficient condition for that to occur. Although customers are better off as a result of an earlier launch, their gain may be outweighed by the additional costs firms incur from launching prematurely.
Toward the Flexible Form: How to Remain Vital in Hypercompetitive Environments
Authors: Volberda Henk W.
Published: October 2008

Hypercompetition has received much attention, but an important question has not been answered: What organizational forms lead to success in hypercompetitive environments? Hypercompetition forces firms to move more quickly and boldly and to experiment in ways that do not conform to traditional administrative theory. Bureaucratic vertical forms severely hamper the ability to respond to accelerating competition. Flexible forms, in contrast, can respond to a wide variety of changes in the competitive environment in an appropriate and timely way. The author examines several alternative flexible forms for coping with hypercompetitive environments.

Flexibility derives from the repertoire of managerial capabilities (management challenge) and the responsiveness of the organization (organization design challenge). On the basis of theories of control, the author argues that organizational flexibility is inherently paradoxical and requires a constructive friction between change and preservation. The paradox of flexibility is portrayed in a conceptual model that relates competitive environments, certain types of flexibility, and organizational conditions.

The author develops a rich typology of organizational forms for coping with hypercompetition, each of which reflects a particular way of addressing change and preservation. Furthermore, he explores different trajectories of organizational development over time, especially those relating to revitalization. The implications of the typology for strategy and organization design research in hypercompetitive environments are profound.
Responding to Hypercompetition: The Structure and Processes of a Regional Learning Network Organization
Authors: Hanssen-Bauer Jon , Snow Charles C.
Published: October 2008

The authors present a model of the learning process in a regional network organization. The model is based on a six-year study of Nordvest Forum, perhaps the only multifirm network in the world to have been purposefully formed to help its member companies learn how to develop and apply knowledge about management and organizational change. The network, composed of 46 companies located in and around Ålesund. Norway, has been an effective mechanism for helping many of the region's firms respond to today's hypercompetitive global marketplace. Implications for research on hypercompetition, learning networks, and regional development policy are discussed.
Crossroads—Spontaneous Organizational Reconfiguration: A Historical Example Based on Xenophon's Anabasis
Authors: Aupperle Kenneth E.
Published: October 2008

This paper examines an ancient historical event that has profound implications regarding the role of organizational culture in facilitating spontaneous organizational reconfiguration. Xenophon's Anabasis documents the successful retreat of a Greek army trapped in Persia in a setting that is comparable to the hypercompetition of today. Spontaneous reconfiguration is seen here to be a vital survival element in hypercompetitive environments, past and present. As a result, a historical case is used as a time-bridge to reveal the importance of rapid and substantive organizational redesign when confronting highly competitive and quickly shifting environments. The Anabasis is also used to animate several of Gareth Morgan's (Morgan, G. 1986. Images of Organization. Sage Publications, Newbury Park.) metaphors. In particular, metaphors pertaining to a biological organism, the brain, and culture are used to parallel the Greek emphasis on body, mind, and spirit. While Xenophon's army is depicted here in terms of being an organic, biological organism, as well as a brain with holographic properties, it is culture that emerges as the truly defining metaphor.

The Greek supraculture appears to have played a vital role in facilitating nearly instantaneous organizational restructuring. This was a culture that emphasized an integrative balance between the ethic of community and individuality. Such redesigning properties were essential for an isolated, leaderless army which faced a variety of hostile competitors, rapidly shifting environmental conditions, and starvation. The culture metaphor enables us to see how widely shared values and beliefs can facilitate an organic type of behavioral programming capable of enabling Xenophon's army to transcend the formal attributes of organizational structure. Ultimately, it was culture, not strategy, qualitative and informal properties, not well defined roles and structures, that produced the Greek success. Contemporary organizations that attempt to become more horizontally focused, team oriented, and process driven are adopting a paradigm that is now 2,400 years old. Toynbee would not be surprised: What light have we that we can project upon the darkness of the future? We have the precious light of experience, which has always been Mankind's guide to action in public, as in private affairs. No sensible person, of course, has ever imagined that a mechanical application of past experience to present problems will grind out automatic solutions of these. Experience gives us enigmatic hints, not blueprinted instructions. Yet these hints are invaluable, since they are the only light on the future that we can bring to bear, and where the future that is in question is a society's not an individual's the experience of other societies has the same significance for us as the experience of our contemporaries and our elders is the ordering of our personal lives (Toynbee [Toynbee, A. J. 1953. Greek Civilization and Character. Mentor, New York.], p. xii)
The Resource-Based Theory of the Firm
Authors: Barney Jay B.
Published: October 2008

Interest in the resource-based view of the firm continues to grow in the field of business policy and strategy. Recently, most of this interest seems to have been focused on understanding the empirical implications of this theory and especially on how a firm's resources and capabilities can affect its performance. Evaluating the empirical implications of the resource based view is, of course, a worthwhile endeavor. We present an overview of contributions in this issue.
Demographic Diversity, Conflict, and Work Group Outcomes: An Intervening Process Theory
Authors: Pelled Lisa Hope
Published: October 2008

Research has suggested that, within a work group, diversity with respect to members' demographic backgrounds can have a powerful effect on both turnover from the group and on the group's performance on cognitive tasks (i.e., “thinking” tasks that involve generating plans or ideas, solving problems, or making decisions). While such diversity tends to increase turnover, its effects on cognitive task performance are more mixed, sometimes enhancing performance and sometimes impairing it. An understanding of how diversity leads to these outcomes may help managers enhance work group effectiveness. Thus, in this paper I develop a theoretical model to explain the turnover and mixed performance consequences of demographic diversity in work groups.

The proposed model suggests that each demographic diversity variable (e.g., diversity with respect to age, gender, race, group tenure, organization tenure, education, or functional background) can be classified according to its level of visibility and its level of job-relatedness. Visibility is the extent to which the variable is easily observed by group members, and job-relatedness is the extent to which the variable directly shapes perspectives and skills related to cognitive tasks. The model then suggests that the visibility and job-relatedness of a diversity variable indirectly influence how much turnover and/or performance enhancement the variable yields. More specifically, the visibility and job-relatedness of a diversity variable influence the levels of affective (emotional) and substantive (task) conflict in the group, and the levels affective and substantive conflict, in turn, influence the amount of turnover from the group and the group's performance.

After generating six research propositions based on the model, including three addressing demographic diversity variable- conflict linkages and three addressing conflict-turnover and conflict-performance linkages, I discuss boundary conditions of the model and offer recommendations for future research.
The Effect of Lengthening Job Tenure on Managers' Organizational Commitment and Turnover
Authors: Taylor M. Susan , Audia Giuseppe , Gupta Anil K.
Published: October 2008

Using the psychological contract literature as a framework, we examined upwardly mobile managers' reactions to lengthening job tenure brought about by slower organizational growth and greater competition among peers. We hypothesized that managers tend to view lengthening job tenure as a violation of the relational employment contract held with their corporate employers and, therefore, experience decreased organizational commitment, and an increased probability of turnover. We also examined three variables expected to exacerbate or to offset these relationships: manager's past career success, their current level of job responsibility, and the candidness of the career feedback they received from the organization. The sample consisted of 109 general managers working in Fortune 500 companies. Results showed that lengthening job tenure decreased managers' affective commitment and increased the likelihood of turnover during a three year follow-up period for managers who had previously experienced greater success in the organization and for those whose jobs included higher levels of responsibility. Contrary to hypotheses, candid career feedback did not offset the negative effects of lengthening job tenure on the dependent variables. Conceptual and practical implications are discussed.
Crossroads—Concerning Postmodernity and Organizations in the Third World: Opening a Debate and Suggestions for a Research Agenda
Authors: Alvarado Felix
Published: October 2008

A large part of writing concerning postmodernity has originated, either implicitly or explicitly, in “developed” countries. This includes both post-modern thought about issues of modernity and pre-modernity, and the discussion of post-modernity as an empirical “fact.” What first became apparent in art, literary criticism and philosophy has more recently affected our understanding of organizational phenomena. In this paper I intend to discuss some ramifications that postmodernity may have for the expansion of organizational theory, and more specifically for our understanding of organizations in contexts other than those of the United States and Western European and Far-Eastern industrial nations. The paper covers three aspects. First, it develops an account of my use of the concept of postmodernity as applied to organizations. Like other works in the field, for this I resort to the contrasting of modern and post-modern theories. Second, going beyond that well-trodden path, this paper includes an exercise in the application of the notion of the postmodern in organizations to contexts other than industrialized societies. Finally, drawing on the outcome of the exercise, it suggests some future key issues for inquiry, and a justification for a postmodern approach to the study of organizations in Third World contexts.
Training and Turnover in the Evolution of Organizations
Authors: Glance Natalie S. , Hogg Tad , Huberman Bernardo A.
Published: October 2008

An organization's decision whether or not to train its workers affects the overall economy, even if the firm does not factor the economy into its decision. If all firms within an industry fail to train their workers, the whole economy suffers. Hence, training workers is a type of public good, a category that encompasses a broad range of social dilemmas. Employees face a similar dilemma in their choice of how much to contribute to the overall productivity of the organization. If employees receive a share of the profits regardless of their contribution, some may decide to free ride on the efforts of their fellow workers. If all employees decide to do so, the company will fail.

The two dilemmas on the employee and organizational levels are closely interrelated. On one side, the benefits of training accrue only to the extent that employees contribute to the organization. Thus, a firm should take into account how it expects a training program to affect employee effort as well as employee turnover. On the other side, trained workers produce at higher rates, which in turn may affect how much they contribute and how often they migrate to other firms in comparison with untrained workers.

The authors study the dynamics of training and turnover in firms facing both organizational- and employee-level dilemmas. First they establish a simple model that captures those conflicts and incorporates imperfect information and both worker and organizational expectations. Organizations can be both created and dissolved, and employees can move between firms, start new ones, or leave the industry for good. Next the authors summarize the different ways the dilemmas can unfold over time, collated from a number of computer experiments. For example, under one set of conditions, the double dilemma can be resolved for the industry as a whole and productivity then increases steadily over time. Alternatively, the organizational-level dilemma may remain unresolved and workers may contribute at fluctuating levels. In that case the overall productivity stays low. The authors find a positive correlation between high productivity, low turnover, and enterprise size, a relation that has also been observed in the empirical literature on training, stability, and turnover in organizations.
Crossroads—The Virtues of Closet Qualitative Research
Authors: Sutton Robert I.
Published: October 2008

This essay asserts that, although qualitative methods now enjoy wide legitimacy among organizational researchers, there are still times when it is best to conceal or downplay the role that qualitative data played in developing an author's ideas. I identify four circumstances where treating qualitative research as a closet rather than an open activity may help authors write papers that flow better, are more convincing, and are more readily accepted for publication. These circumstances are when weak qualitative data lead to good insights, when describing the qualitative research reduces the quality of the writing, when an outlet does not publish “empirical” papers, and when writing for an audience that remains biased against qualitative research. I illustrate these points primarily with my own closet qualitative research, but also draw on Cialdini's writings on the qualitative inspiration for his experimental research and discussions with colleagues about how they have used closet qualitative research.
Competition in a Multimarket Environment: The Case of Market Exit
Authors: Boeker Warren , Goodstein Jerry , Stephan John , Murmann Johann Peter
Published: October 2008

Studies of competition typically have two underlying assumptions: that competition occurs within the boundaries of industries or markets and that all firms in a market or industry are affected equally by competitive pressures. The concept of multipoint competition challenges both assumptions. Multipoint theory addresses how different levels of contact between firms across multiple markets affect competition in individual markets. Its main argument is that high levels of contact between firms across markets will induce mutual forbearance, causing multipoint competitors to refrain from aggressively attacking each other.

The restraint stems from the fact that high levels of intermarket contact enable a firm to respond to an aggressive action by a multipoint rival in markets other than the one in which the action takes place. That possibility raises the potential costs of aggressive moves and serves as a credible deterrent, especially if a firm can respond in several markets. In addition, multipoint competition helps firms to interpret their rivals' intentions and signal their own, reducing the likelihood of costly misunderstandings.

The authors elaborate on those ideas to examine how a hospital's degree of intermarket contact with its competitors in a particular service market affects the likelihood that it will exit that market. They find that hospitals are less likely to exit markets in which they meet large numbers of their multipoint rivals. As a result of mutual forbearance, competitive rivalry is reduced across the markets that multipoint rivals share, lessening the types of pressures that typically prompt market exit. With lower levels of competitive rivalry, markets shared by multipoint rivals are relatively more hospitable environments in which to operate and are less likely to be exited. Rather than competing intensely, multipoint rivals appear to adopt a “live and let live” approach toward each other.

The fact that multipoint contact across markets may lessen competitive pressures within individual markets has implications for the contact between firms in several settings. Multimarket contact can occur across different product or service markets and also across different geographic markets, thus affording an intriguing perspective for the investigation of the rivalry between emerging transnational firms. True transnationals, by successfully integrating global operations while still addressing local market concerns, have been seen by some as having the capabilities necessary for successful performance in international competition. Perhaps transnational firms, because they have an integrated decision-making structure, can coordinate their actions to reduce competitive rivalry with each other across the markets they share. If so, markets dominated by transnationals may become more stable than the current state of international competition would predict.
Top Management Team Structure: Differential Effects by Environmental Context
Authors: Keck Sara L.
Published: October 2008

Despite the extensive literature on top management team structure (demographics), disagreement persists as to whether specific aspects of team structure have, on the whole, positive or negative results for the firm. The author addresses conflicts in the literature by using several typical structural measures in different contexts.

Shorter-tenured, heterogenous teams are found to provide the skills needed to address environmental complexities and will be more productive in turbulent environments because they deliver problem solving skills and new perspectives on strategic formulation and implementation processes. Longer-tenured, homogeneous teams are found to be more productive in stable environments because they will promote basic team maintenance functions (socialization, cohesion, etc.). Firms that are the most successful financially are ones that match their team structures to the environmental context over time. The results reported are unique because time, different contexts, and financial performance were combined to assess the interaction of top management teams with their environments.

Surprisingly, the type of turbulence encountered in the firm's context may determine whether a specific element of team structure will be beneficial or detrimental to financial performance. Relatively high levels of constant environmental change require different team structures than unusual, disruptive change. Differences are discussed.
Mitigating Underinvestment Through an IT-Enabled Organization Form
Authors: Nault Barrie R.
Published: October 2008

Information technology (IT) enables a new refinement of the horizontal network organization. We show that IT can be applied to a hybrid form of market and hierarchy, franchising, and demonstrate how the resulting horizontal network organization can be an improved organization form. Specifically, we use IT-enabled “ownership of customers” to refine the horizontal network organization and show how that refinement can alleviate the problem of franchise underinvestment in traditional franchising. In traditional franchising each franchise underinvests relative to investments in an integrated firm because the benefits that accrue to other franchises from its investment (horizontal externalities) are not accounted for in its investment decision. Ownership of customers is a combination of identifying individual customers with individual franchises, monitoring customer transactions across franchises, and transferring benefits between franchises based on those transactions. Because ownership of customers rewards franchises for the beneficial horizontal externalities generated by their investments, the levels of investment that are chosen by franchises may be increased, although not to the levels that would occur in an integrated firm. As long as IT costs are covered, the franchisor is always more profitable and, if necessary, the franchisor and franchisees can be jointly more profitable. Consequently, if profits can be redistributed in lump-sum form, then the franchisor and franchisees can be individually more profitable. The analysis applies to all horizontal organizations where ownership of customers is feasible and where there are sufficient transactions between units for ownership of customers to be worthwhile.
Irony and the Social Construction of Contradiction in the Humor of a Management Team
Authors: Hatch Mary Jo
Published: October 2008

The thesis I explore in this essay is that organizational members use humorous remarks to discursively construct and organize their cognitive and emotional experiences in and of their organizations. My assumptions are that: (1) organizations are socially constructed through discourse about them (especially managerial discourse), (2) humorous discourse provides a contradiction-centered construction of organizations that operates in the domains of both cognition and emotion, and (3) interpretation of the text of ironic remarks will suggest the processes by which contradictions and their cultural and emotional contexts are socially constructed through discourse. In this essay I use a form of analysis that I developed in relation to humor theory (Mulkay [Mulkay, M. 1988. On Humor. Basil Blackwell, Oxford, UK.]), theories of irony (Brown [Brown, R. H. 1977. A Poetic for Sociology: Toward a Logic of Discovery for the Human Sciences. University of Chicago Press, Chicago, IL.], Weick and Browning [Weick, K. E., L. D. Browning. 1986. Argument and narration in organizational communication. J. G. Hunt, J. D. Blair, eds. 1986 Yearly Review of Management of the Journal of Management 12 243–259) and Rorty's (Rorty, R. 1989. Contingency, Irony, and Solidarity. Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, UK.) concept of the ironic disposition to interpret spontaneous humorous exchanges observed during the regular meetings of a group of middle managers. My interpretations of ironically humorous remarks indicate that the managers in my study constructed at least some of their cognitive and emotional experiences in contradictory ways including: possible/impossible, great/horrible, comic/serious, and up-to-date/unprepared. The interpretations also suggest how, in constructing contradiction, the managers reflexively constructed themselves in relation to their organization. The analysis points to a paradoxical understanding of organizational stability and change and informs a contradiction-centered view of organizations.