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Article
Publication date: 11 September 2017

From the industrial revolution to Trump: Six periods of changing perceptions of American business managers

Anthony M. Gould, Michael J. Bourk and Jean-Etienne Joullié

This paper takes a long-term view of how the US public and private sectors have been viewed in relation to each other. It notes that since the time of approximately the…

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Abstract

Purpose

This paper takes a long-term view of how the US public and private sectors have been viewed in relation to each other. It notes that since the time of approximately the Nixon Administration, each sector has not been viewed favourably by the public. Over the past 40 years, the private sector has been perceived as being run by the unscrupulous and the public sector by incompetents. The essay argues that Donald Trump was able to exploit these circumstances to win the 2016 election.

Design/methodology/approach

This paper presents a polemic. It relies on archival research and data to create a new view of historical eras in US business history. The object of analysis is the idea of relative legitimacy, the public image of the State vis-a-vis business and business managers.

Findings

Although the paper addresses business history, a novel argument is presented about the 2016 US Presidential election. It is proposed that Trump took advantage of unique historical circumstances; therefore, his win had more to do with the moment than with him personally.

Research limitations/implications

The paper interprets the 2016 Presidential race as the end-point of a 250-year journey. It sets a new agenda, in that previous analyses have mostly viewed the ascendancy of Trump as pertaining to distinctively post-industrial twenty-first-century phenomena.

Social implications

In analysing the 2016 Presidential race, the emphasis is largely removed from issues of personality or partisan politics.

Originality/value

The paper takes a view of the 2016 election which has not hitherto been adopted. It proposes a new concept – relative legitimacy – as having a substantial explanatory value.

Details

Journal of Management History, vol. 23 no. 4
Type: Research Article
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1108/JMH-04-2017-0018
ISSN: 1751-1348

Keywords

  • Public administration
  • Politics
  • Management history
  • Private sector

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Article
Publication date: 9 January 2017

The overlooked influence of personality, idiosyncrasy and eccentricity in corporate mergers and acquisitions: 120 years and six distinct waves

Kathleen Marshall Park and Anthony M. Gould

Merger waves have typically been viewed through the prism of either corporate strategy or macro-economics. This paper aims to broaden debate about factors that cause – or…

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Abstract

Purpose

Merger waves have typically been viewed through the prism of either corporate strategy or macro-economics. This paper aims to broaden debate about factors that cause – or are associated with – mergers/merger waves over a 120-year period. It ascribes “personalities” to six distinct waves and draws an overarching conclusion about how merger architects are viewed.

Design/methodology/approach

Databases and interviews are used to piece together detail about CEOs associated with six distinct and recognized merger-waves during a 120-year focal period. The study establishes and defends, a priori, principles for interrogating data to get a sense of each wave-era’s corporate personality/idiosyncrasy. For each era, two exemplar CEO-profiles are presented and – through inductive-reasoning – held out as representative.

Findings

Distinct personalities are associated with six merger waves. Each wave is given a summary anthropomorphic description which conveys a sense that it may be viewed as the non-rationale expression of aggregate and historically distinct CEO behavior within a circumscribed timeframe.

Research limitations/implications

The work’s key limitation – explicitly acknowledged – is that it amassed data/evidence from disparate historical sources. However, the authors have developed and defended principles for addressing this concern.

Practical implications

Improved investment analyses, in particular. The work prefigures formal establishment of a new variable-set impacting share-price prediction.

Social implications

The paper offers a perspective on how psychological/personality-related variables impact management decision-making, creating something of a bridge between mostly non-overlapping research disciplines.

Originality/value

The paper broadens debate about how and why merger waves occur. It removes the exclusive analysis of merger waves from the hands of economic historians and strategic management theorists.

Details

Journal of Management History, vol. 23 no. 1
Type: Research Article
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1108/JMH-09-2016-0056
ISSN: 1751-1348

Keywords

  • Personality
  • Mergers
  • Acquisitions
  • Idiosyncrasy

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Article
Publication date: 9 January 2017

Editorial

Bradley Bowden

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Details

Journal of Management History, vol. 23 no. 1
Type: Research Article
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1108/JMH-11-2016-0059
ISSN: 1751-1348

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Article
Publication date: 9 March 2015

Smart for whom? Cost ambiguity as corporate strategy in the 21st century telco sector

Anthony Morven Gould and Guillaume Desjardins

This paper aims to expose techniques that telco vendors use for maximising revenue from their clients. Although the five-point strategy unearthed was based on the Canadian…

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Abstract

Purpose

This paper aims to expose techniques that telco vendors use for maximising revenue from their clients. Although the five-point strategy unearthed was based on the Canadian telco industry, it is interpreted as generic to the digital-age.

Design/methodology/approach

Findings are based on focus groups with telco vendors and client perception data. Inductive reasoning is used to generalise findings to other distinctively digital-age industries.

Findings

This paper finds five generic techniques that are used within the Canadian telecommunications (telco) industry to ensure that customers cannot control the cost of a smartphone. These techniques are described as an array of telco hybrid offerings, each with its own cost-structure and pricing strategy; the underestimation problem; devices are not geostationary; third-party agreements; and death-by-a-thousand-qualifications.

Research limitations/implications

The research develops theory about modularity and platform technologies.

Practical implications

Findings and insights have implications for strengthening consumer protection arrangements in the teleco industry, as well as other distinctively digital-age industries.

Originality/value

This paper elaborates theory (particularly with respect to platform technologies and modularity). It interprets the flexibility that comes with modern technology as having a specific downside for consumers, namely, the removal of their capacity to control cost. As far as the authors have been able to ascertain, such an interpretation has not hitherto been presented. It is hoped that the classification of findings will become something of a public policy template for ensuring consumer protection.

Details

info, vol. 17 no. 2
Type: Research Article
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1108/info-08-2014-0035
ISSN: 1463-6697

Keywords

  • Government policy
  • Competitive strategy
  • Management strategy
  • Customer satisfaction
  • Information society

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Article
Publication date: 18 May 2015

A spring-clean of Michael Porter’s Attic: The Canadian telecommunications sector as an exemplar of refurbished generic strategy

Anthony M. Gould and Guillaume Desjardins

This paper views the phenomenon of offering/user interface complexity as having competitive strategy-related consequences. Porter’s conception of generic management…

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Abstract

Purpose

This paper views the phenomenon of offering/user interface complexity as having competitive strategy-related consequences. Porter’s conception of generic management strategy was created in the 1980s. It is not well adapted to industries which have proliferated in the Internet age. Accordingly, the conception presented in this article offers a modified version of Porter’s generic strategy framework. The new view incorporates the dimension of complexity alongside the original dimensions of “target market” and “type of advantage”. The article uses an analysis of the contemporary Canadian Telco sector to prosecute its case.

Design/methodology/approach

The project uses an analysis of the stated competitive positioning orientations of firms operating in the contemporary Canadian Telecommunications sector to build a case about the changed nature of generic strategy in the digital age. It uses inductive reasoning to generalise findings about the Telco sector to other recently emerged (digital-age) industries.

Findings

A revised view of Porter’s generic strategy grid is presented and defended.

Research limitations/implications

The study analyses only one sector, but draws many broad conclusions. It uses inductive reasoning which is limited by the extent to which the exemplar case (telecommunications) may be compared to other cases within the same category (other digital age industries). The study does not use an extensive analysis of strategic planning documents of individual firms; however, this is not a limitation unless and until a critique challenges the claims made about generic strategies being pursued.

Practical implications

The new conceptualisation may be used as a planning tool for digital-age firms.

Originality/value

The project is a genuinely new attempt to update Porter’s view of generic strategy. It overcomes the problems which have been associated with previous attempts at such revision.

Details

Competitiveness Review, vol. 25 no. 3
Type: Research Article
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1108/CR-04-2014-0008
ISSN: 1059-5422

Keywords

  • Strategy
  • Complexity
  • Digital age

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Article
Publication date: 29 July 2014

Static and dynamic views of conflict and cooperation in the employment relationship : A new kind of time-based theory with implications for non-standard work forms

Anthony M. Gould and Guillaume Desjardins

The employment relationship is beset by an incongruous mix of bases for cooperation and conflict. Scholars have attempted to reconcile the simultaneous presence of…

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Abstract

Purpose

The employment relationship is beset by an incongruous mix of bases for cooperation and conflict. Scholars have attempted to reconcile the simultaneous presence of convergent and divergent interests between capital and labour in several ways and distinctive bodies of theory addressing this matter have emerged. However, to date, attempts to incorporate the role that the passage of time plays in changing the ratio of conflict to cooperation in the employment relationship have mostly been inadequate. This essay presents a theory about this issue based on six tenets. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

Design/methodology/approach

A critical review of existing genres of literature addressing conflict and cooperation in the employment relationship and a conceptual contribution to a perceived generic limitation of these bodies of literature.

Findings

A new conceptualization of the elements causing conflict and cooperation between employers and their employees. The theory presented is modular and mostly compatible with the work of earlier scholars. It has theoretical and practical application and aids in understanding the strategic management consequences of new employment forms when other pertinent variables are held constant.

Practical implications

The paper offers a fresh perspective on new employment forms in particular

Originality/value

A new conceptualization of the elements causing conflict and cooperation between employers and their employees. The new view is not necessarily incompatible with earlier perspectives but does have potential to create genuinely new research paradigms and reframe certain contemporary debates about non-standard work in particular.

Details

Personnel Review, vol. 43 no. 5
Type: Research Article
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1108/PR-07-2012-0109
ISSN: 0048-3486

Keywords

  • Critical
  • Conflict/cooperation
  • Non-standard work
  • Pluralsim
  • Unitarism

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Article
Publication date: 1 March 2001

The learning organization: an empirical test of a normative perspective

Swee C. Goh

This paper proposes a framework for understanding the concept of a learning organization from a normative perspective. A questionnaire was developed to operationally…

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Abstract

This paper proposes a framework for understanding the concept of a learning organization from a normative perspective. A questionnaire was developed to operationally measure the described management practice attributes of a learning organization. Using a sample of four organizations and 612 subjects, support was found for three a priori predictive hypotheses derived from a conceptual framework. Implications of the results and further empirical research are discussed, especially for linking learning organization attributes to performance using larger samples and multiple measures.

Details

International Journal of Organization Theory & Behavior, vol. 4 no. 3/4
Type: Research Article
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1108/IJOTB-04-03-04-2001-B007
ISSN: 1093-4537

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Article
Publication date: 7 October 2019

The allure of celebrities: unpacking their polysemic consumer appeal

Markus Wohlfeil, Anthony Patterson and Stephen J. Gould

This paper aims to explain a celebrity’s deep resonance with consumers by unpacking the individual constituents of a celebrity’s polysemic appeal. While celebrities are…

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Abstract

Purpose

This paper aims to explain a celebrity’s deep resonance with consumers by unpacking the individual constituents of a celebrity’s polysemic appeal. While celebrities are traditionally theorised as unidimensional semiotic receptacles of cultural meaning, the authors conceptualise them here instead as human beings/performers with a multi-constitutional, polysemic consumer appeal.

Design/methodology/approach

Supporting evidence is drawn from autoethnographic data collected over a total period of 25 months and structured through a hermeneutic analysis.

Findings

In rehumanising the celebrity, the study finds that each celebrity offers the individual consumer a unique and very personal parasocial appeal as the performer, the private person behind the public performer, the tangible manifestation of either through products and the social link to other consumers. The stronger these constituents, individually or symbiotically, appeal to the consumer’s personal desires, the more s/he feels emotionally attached to this particular celebrity.

Research limitations/implications

Although using autoethnography means that the breadth of collected data is limited, the depth of insight this approach garners sufficiently unpacks the polysemic appeal of celebrities to consumers.

Practical implications

The findings encourage talent agents, publicists and marketing managers to reconsider underlying assumptions in their talent management and/or celebrity endorsement practices.

Originality/value

While prior research on celebrity appeal has tended to enshrine celebrities in a “dehumanised” structuralist semiosis, which erases the very idea of individualised consumer meanings, this paper reveals the multi-constitutional polysemy of any particular celebrity’s personal appeal as a performer and human being to any particular consumer.

Details

European Journal of Marketing, vol. 53 no. 10
Type: Research Article
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1108/EJM-01-2017-0052
ISSN: 0309-0566

Keywords

  • Autoethnography
  • Celebrity
  • Consumer appeal
  • Experiential consumption
  • Parasocial relationship
  • Stardom
  • Human brands

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Book part
Publication date: 24 October 2019

Case Study: More Patient Safety by Design – System-based Approaches for Hospitals

Irene Kobler, Alfred Angerer and David Schwappach

Since the publication of the report “To Err Is Human: Building a Safer Health System” by the US Institute of Medicine in 2000, much has changed with regard to patient…

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Abstract

Since the publication of the report “To Err Is Human: Building a Safer Health System” by the US Institute of Medicine in 2000, much has changed with regard to patient safety. Many of the more recent initiatives to improve patient safety target the behavior of health care staff (e.g., training, double-checking procedures, and standard operating procedures). System-based interventions have so far received less attention, even though they produce more substantial improvements, being less dependent on individuals’ behavior. One type of system-based intervention that can benefit patient safety involves improvements to hospital design. Given that people’s working environments affect their behavior, good design at a systemic level not only enables staff to work more efficiently; it can also prevent errors and mishaps, which can have serious consequences for patients. While an increasing number of studies have demonstrated the effect of hospital design on patient safety, this knowledge is not easily accessible to clinicians, practitioners, risk managers, and other decision-makers, such as designers and architects of health care facilities. This is why the Swiss Patient Safety Foundation launched its project, “More Patient Safety by Design: Systemic Approaches for Hospitals,” which is presented in this chapter.

Details

Structural Approaches to Address Issues in Patient Safety
Type: Book
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1108/S1474-823120190000018001
ISBN: 978-1-83867-085-6

Keywords

  • Hospital design
  • information dissemination
  • medical error
  • patient safety
  • system-based interventions
  • systemic approach

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Article
Publication date: 1 June 1985

Management: A Selected Annotated Bibliography, Volume IV

The librarian and researcher have to be able to uncover specific articles in their areas of interest. This Bibliography is designed to help. Volume IV, like Volume III…

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Abstract

The librarian and researcher have to be able to uncover specific articles in their areas of interest. This Bibliography is designed to help. Volume IV, like Volume III, contains features to help the reader to retrieve relevant literature from MCB University Press' considerable output. Each entry within has been indexed according to author(s) and the Fifth Edition of the SCIMP/SCAMP Thesaurus. The latter thus provides a full subject index to facilitate rapid retrieval. Each article or book is assigned its own unique number and this is used in both the subject and author index. This Volume indexes 29 journals indicating the depth, coverage and expansion of MCB's portfolio.

Details

Management Decision, vol. 23 no. 6
Type: Research Article
DOI: https://doi.org/10.1108/eb002686
ISSN: 0025-1747

Keywords

  • Bibliography
  • Management

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