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1 – 10 of 11Donald Nordberg and Rebecca Booth
This paper aims to examine how board evaluations have emerged as an important tool in public policy and corporate practice for enhancing board effectiveness.
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to examine how board evaluations have emerged as an important tool in public policy and corporate practice for enhancing board effectiveness.
Design/methodology/approach
The authors review the extensive literature on effectiveness and the emerging literature on board evaluation to identify ways to assess the current policy direction for external evaluation of corporate boards.
Findings
The paper develops an integrated framework of effectiveness that can be used as a tool for board evaluation, in particular for externally facilitated exercises.
Research limitations/implications
Through its integration of prior conceptual work this paper advances our theoretical understanding of this emerging part of policy and practice, with to-date lack much empirical basis.
Practical implications
The framework that is developed shows ways to focus how the practice is conducted by boards and external evaluators alike.
Social implications
It can also help policy formation by pointing out the limitations as well as benefits of various policy options.
Originality/value
In pointing to ways to develop study of the field through empirical research, it provides direction for future academic research. It also identifies a need for and direction toward the professionalization of practice.
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This paper aims to examine the puzzles of “ownership”, the legal and psychological commitment of directors, through the experience of the work of boards at non-profit…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to examine the puzzles of “ownership”, the legal and psychological commitment of directors, through the experience of the work of boards at non-profit organisations.
Design/methodology/approach
An exploration of the literature on charity governance leads to a first-person reflection on the tensions in directing two common types of non-profit organisations.
Findings
In the UK as in other countries, charities are companies, bound by company law as well as regulatory constraints of the non-profit sector. This creates responsibilities of ownership without the material benefits. In contrast to corporate share ownership, a sense of psychological ownership may pre-date appointment as a director, facilitating stewardship behaviour, facilitating stewardship and accountability.
Research limitations/implications
This paper calls for expanded empirical work on boards of non-profit organisations, giving a focused agenda of aspects to highlight the differences between charities and the corporate sector.
Practical implications
The focus on psychological ownership can influence recruitment, induction and organisation of the work of charity boards, helping to ease resource deficits.
Social implications
With pressure mounting in deliver of public services, the charity sector needs to fill growing gaps in provision. The constitution of boards plays a valuable role.
Originality/value
By incorporating psychological ownership in a framework of accountability, this paper points towards both a research agenda and practical considerations for charity boards.
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This article explicates the notion of using a “theoretical lens” to interpret research data, which has grown increasingly common in recent decades, often without a second thought…
Abstract
Purpose
This article explicates the notion of using a “theoretical lens” to interpret research data, which has grown increasingly common in recent decades, often without a second thought about the implications of use of a mere metaphor in the pursuit of truth. Poets may not question that metaphors reveal truths, but should social scientists accept that?
Design/methodology/approach
It looks first at what theory means, then – and in greater detail – what the metaphor of a lens entails.
Findings
Drawing on the base analogy in optics, it identifies four mechanisms through which theory might act as a lens – adjustment, correction, distortion and augmentation-suppression, with examples based on theories of business strategy and organisation studies.
Research limitations/implications
These four mechanisms involve two different ways of seeing – better and differently. With adjustment and correction see better what is, or perhaps what was. With distortion and especially augmentation-suppression, we see differently, which helps us imagine what might be, or what we might have overlooked. They help us escape narrow silos of thinking. Researchers and students alike need to be aware of all four lenses of theory and be ready to experiment.
Originality/value
It argues that if some theories try to help us see better, others push us to see differently, with implications for the practice and teaching of research methods.
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The passage of the Sarbanes‐Oxley Act of 2002 followed hard on the collapses of Enron and WorldCom. Waste makes haste. Official reports for US government agencies worried that the…
Abstract
Purpose
The passage of the Sarbanes‐Oxley Act of 2002 followed hard on the collapses of Enron and WorldCom. Waste makes haste. Official reports for US government agencies worried that the legislation may have impaired New York's competitiveness as a venue for international capital transactions. But a threat from a seemingly different direction – the subprime shakeout – exposed bigger issues. This paper aims to raise questions about many of the assumptions made in the discourse about the relative competitiveness of US and European capital markets.
Design/methodology/approach
Building on Healy and Palepu's analysis of Enron, it compares the root issues at Enron with a preliminary view of the sources of the subprime crisis to build an outline for regulatory response.
Findings
Remedies in Sarbanes‐Oxley failed to address several of the ailments in evidence in Enron. The haste of making “Sarbox” may have led us to waste an opportunity to prevent or reduce the impact of the subprime debacle.
Originality/value
The comparison of the seemingly unrelated cases reveals similar ethical gaps and regulatory lapses, suggesting a different type of legislative and regulatory response may be needed. It makes suggestions for further research to guide future policymaking.
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The purpose of this “viewpoint” is to consider developments in the governance practices in UK public organizations, showing how ideas from the governance of listed companies have…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this “viewpoint” is to consider developments in the governance practices in UK public organizations, showing how ideas from the governance of listed companies have translated into public bodies.
Design/methodology/approach
It discusses the literature of corporate governance and public service motivation and reflects it against practice evidenced in documentation for the UK Corporate Governance Code, codes for boards of different levels of public organizations, and both formal and informal evaluations of practice.
Findings
The use of independent, non-executives directors in public bodies encapsulates the tension in the private sector between the service role of directors and how they control managers. The paper gives a preliminary investigation of three public bodies, comparing how reform of their governance has affected tensions in accountability and director motivation. The changes involve greater emphasis on extrinsic goals, potentially at the cost of the intrinsic ones.
Research limitations/implications
The paper suggests avenues for future research, linking notions of the tensions between the service and control functions in corporate governance with the balance between extrinsic and intrinsic motivation.
Practical implications
Directors in both public and private bodies face a need to hold at bay forces that push in opposing directions to accommodate demands for greater accountability while sustaining the altruism social mindedness.
Originality/value
The area of public sector boards is undergoing considerable change in the UK and this paper, although preliminary, is one of the few to examine the links to motivation.
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The purpose of this paper is to outline the articles presented in the Special Issue on the topic of “Marketing and flexibility”, and to discuss key issues associated with major…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to outline the articles presented in the Special Issue on the topic of “Marketing and flexibility”, and to discuss key issues associated with major debates relating to flexibility in order to position the articles within a wider context and highlight some key issues for further research.
Design/methodology/approach
Themes in prior research relating to “Marketing and flexibility” are documented and the growth of research interest into strategic flexibility is tabulated. The contributions of each article are briefly discussed.
Findings
There has been a steady growth of research interest into flexibility. To provide an example of this growth, the increase in the number of articles published on the topic of strategic flexibility in scholarly journals is highlighted over a 20‐year period. Key issues in prior research such as alternative definitions and the different postulated relationships between market orientation and strategic flexibility are revealed, as are issues for future research.
Originality/value
Key issues relating to research into flexibility for marketing scholars are revealed.
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The purpose of this paper is to examine what counts as knowledge in the organization/management field.
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to examine what counts as knowledge in the organization/management field.
Design/methodology/approach
Conventional, legitimated knowledge is analyzed through research into representations of an influential management text. Management and management accounting textbooks and research papers are investigated to establish the types of knowledge produced.
Findings
Mainstream representations of this book are partial, focusing on a “model” of what is likely to ensure successful organizational change – structural and systemic adaptations. What has been ignored is the problematization of structural change and the role of human agency. The foci and omissions of these representations cohere with divisions in the social sciences more generally – between “objectivist” and “subjectivist” ontologies and epistemologies.
Research limitations/implications
There is a need for further research into representations of texts about organizational change, the way the objectivist/subjectivist divide is played out, and its significance for organization/management studies and more widely for the social sciences.
Practical implications
Questions arise as to the validity and sustainability of such knowledge. Omissions about the difficulties in implementing structural change raise epistemological and practical difficulties for students, managers and consultants.
Social implications
Omissions of human subjectivities and agency from mainstream knowledge is problematic regarding successful organizational change and social issues more widely.
Originality/value
The paper's value lies in the in‐depth analysis of representations of a text in the organization/management area and the linking of the type of knowledge produced with broader epistemological and methodological issues in the social sciences.
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Focuses on the direct and indirect impact of environmental abuse on human wellbeing. In some instances, the impact of environmental abuse on human health is not still unknown…
Abstract
Focuses on the direct and indirect impact of environmental abuse on human wellbeing. In some instances, the impact of environmental abuse on human health is not still unknown, merely being subject to scientific suspicion. This would suggest caution and the need for preventive measures to be applied. The threat to human health from environmental factors is not an isolated problem that exists on a national level. There are environmental factors that affect human health on a global level or are so widespread as to be considered global problems. Other environmental problems cross national boundaries and achieve regional importance.
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Dag Balkmar, Marta Lindvert and Elisabet Carine Ljunggren
Both entrepreneurship and technology are significantly gendered, and when combined in technology entrepreneurship, they make up a fundamentally masculine field. This article…
Abstract
Purpose
Both entrepreneurship and technology are significantly gendered, and when combined in technology entrepreneurship, they make up a fundamentally masculine field. This article investigates men tech entrepreneurs' negotiations of gender and gender (in)equality. The purpose is to gain knowledge on masculinity in tech entrepreneurship and to explore what role this might play in any change towards more gender-equal entrepreneurship.
Design/methodology/approach
Semi-structured interviews were conducted with ten Swedish and Norwegian male tech entrepreneurs in tech incubators. The interviews dealt with gender (in)equality and masculinity in tech entrepreneurship. The data were coded in NVivo and inductively analysed using thematic analysis. We apply a social constructivist understanding of gender.
Findings
We categorise the male entrepreneurs' views of gender equality along “privileged”, “paradoxical” and “potential” articulations of gender (in)equality. Building on these articulations, we discuss the potential entrepreneurial men and masculinities could have for changing gender inequality in the Scandinavian tech entrepreneurship context. The findings are applicable to several entrepreneurial contexts.
Originality/value
The study contributes to further the theoretical understanding of tech entrepreneurship as a gendered phenomenon, its dynamics and its potential for change, particularly in promoting gender equality in tech entrepreneurship. Empirically, it investigates the perceptions about gender (in)equality and gender as negotiated concepts amongst male tech entrepreneurs.
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