Search results

The purpose of this paper is to raise an empirical question: whether a non‐exclusive licensing for a technological exchange contributes to the firm's performance better than an exclusive licensing (closed) structure.

Data from 343 pharmaceutical firms were used to test effects of these exclusive versus non‐exclusive modes (attention‐structures) on inter‐firm knowledge flow and the firm's performance. Logistic regression was used to analyze the evidence.

The results revealed that the firm that used non‐exclusive licensing more than exclusive modes performs better. The performance was measured in two ways: efficiencies and returns, both on assets and on investment. It appears that non‐exclusive licensing is contributing more to the firm's overall performance than an exclusive licensing. This paper makes an argument in favour of an open attention‐structure.

The study is limited to one sector; it can be extended to other industrial sectors. Modes of governance can be extended to internalization or equity investment. The study is also limited to cross‐section analysis. Temporal factors can provide better insights. Knowledge type and its scope are also likely to influence the outcome. These areas provide opportunities for future research.

The study emphasises that structures may precede technologies. Therefore, relevant institutions need to be considered in favour of a non‐exclusive attention‐structure. These findings may be relevant for future research and practice or policy making.

This paper extends the literature by supporting the argument that the usage of knowledge can increase its value to all relevant stakeholders. It provides empirical evidence to indicate that relatively open systems are better for high technology sectors. The study is likely to provide a solution, as well as trigger contentions, in the future.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the central role of communication within teams and jobs satisfaction of the participants in business enterprises. “How communication in the team affects job satisfaction of the team member” shaped the design of the study in developing several propositions.

The paper opted for an exploratory study using semi‐structured interviews at two locations, Singapore and Dalian, China. The respondents had taken part in one team, at least, in the past. These respondents were professionals, junior managers, and sales/marketing executives. The data were organized according to the contextual framework developed in the study. The contextual frame was developed by combing attention‐structure with the four phases in a typical team. The concepts and developed constructs were mapped to reach testable propositions.

The paper provides an empirical insight on the relationship between formal teams and their members’ job satisfaction. The findings are noted in two stages. First, formal teams, positive attitude to conflicts, effective conflict resolution, and “opinion‐count” of the members positive influence job satisfaction of the member. Second, it appears that “opinion‐count” may have more positive effects than any other concept. Therefore, it is concluded that “opinion‐count” in communication mediates the other effects in team communication for job satisfaction.

First, the research is based on limited interviews in only two locations, Singapore and Dalian, China; second, the study is a qualitative one. It lacks generalization. Third, it is acknowledged that the author's own interpretation may have influenced the findings ‐‐ it is often unavoidable. Fourth, the number of propositions is limited in the framework. Finally, the participants’ demographic factors are missing from the analysis. For instance, education, age, professional position, technical background, and financial rewards can be included in a future quantitative study.

It is known that employees’ job satisfaction can lead to better engagement of the employees in the organization. More participation of the employee can be productive for the organization. Since job satisfaction and innovation appear to be highly positively correlated, increasing one can increase the other. Business enterprises lose millions of dollars every year because of the disengagement of their employees. Improving the engagement of employees can improve their productivity.

Based on inductive methodology, this article links the individual employee's opinion‐count at work place and job satisfaction of the employee. These findings are important in the sense that employees’ engagement at work and well being depends on their satisfaction. Therefore, both the employer and employee can benefit from these findings. The study provides a new solution to an old problem. It suggests that opinion‐count is more effective in increasing job satisfaction than other policies.

This chapter first examines the role of attention in the garbage can model of decision making and compares it both to prior approaches in the Carnegie School tradition and the attention-based view of the firm. Both the garbage can model and the attention-based view rely on the same assumption, one that is rarely recognized nor understood – that organizational decision making is characterized by situated attention, where organizational participants vary across time and place in what they attend to. In the garbage can model, decision opportunities are the temporal contexts for situated attention; in the attention-based view, attention is situated in both time and place within the organization's communication channels. In the garbage can, situated attention is also shaped by the ecology of problems and opportunities competing for attention. The final part examines the determinants and consequences of tight versus loose coupling of channels in organizations and its effects on participants’ situated attention. Attention structures external to channels and the architecture of channel structures shape the degree of coupling found in organizations. In viewing coupling as a variable, the chapter suggests that a modified garbage can model, combined with an increased focus on situated attention, provides the foundations for a more general theory of nonroutine decision making.

This study/paper aims to explore civic participation within multimodal expression. With the rise of content produced and circulated within participatory cultures online, there has been much attention raised regarding questions of audience and attention to this content. For example, does production of media content constitute having a voice if no one is paying attention?

Using multimodal analysis and mediated discourse analysis, this study examines adolescents’ school-based media production and use of multimodal ensembles to recruit and maintain audience attention to specific content in their radio and video documentaries.

Research findings reveal deliberate attempts to connect with audience needs when creating media as well as exploration of emerging civic identities.

Questions for how researchers in literacy and learning can further investigate and articulate civic engagement and advocacy are suggested.

Implications for how teachers can use multimodality to create spaces for civic engagement are provided.

This study is original in that few studies have applied the concepts of participatory politics to media products and process conducted in school settings. This study begins to test the utility of these constructs.

This study aims to investigate the effects of CEO gender on social enterprise (SE) value creation and the moderating effect of selective attention on SEs’ dual goals (i.e. relative attention to social versus economic goals).

The authors surveyed 596 active Taiwanese SEs to rate independent and moderating variables and received 191 responses (109 female and 82 male CEOs). The authors used external SE experts to evaluate each SE’s economic and social value creation, lowering the threat of common method bias and enhancing data quality.

Social value creation is higher with female chief executive officer (CEOs) (than with male CEOs), whereas economic value creation tends to be lower. But, attentional selection (i.e. changes in attention) to economic goals by female CEOs mitigates the negative relationship between female CEOs and economic value creation.

Gender diversity in the top management team is critical for dual-goal attainment. Decision-makers’ attention focus could vary along with the situation to achieve the desired outcomes. Thus, creating an attention structure under a given situation may help guide the decision-making process toward the desired performance for SEs.

Little research brings the attention-based view to investigate the effects of managerial gender roles on the dual-goal performance (i.e. social versus economic value creation) of SEs and test its contingency, and to the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is the first to do so. This study also adopted a unique research design asking outside SE experts to provide the performance data.

The aim of this article is threefold: the primary aim is conceptual by outlining two ideal-typical ideas about organizational life. These models offer rival ideas about how organizations balance seemingly conflicting patterns of behaviour and change in everyday life. The second ambition of the article is to outline a theoretical approach of organizational life arguing that even fairly loosely coupled organizations may be profoundly patterned by everyday routines as much as by ambiguity. The third and final ambition is to offer empirical illustrations from organizations that are often considered as archetypes of loose coupling and ambiguities: jazz orchestras and university organizations. The empirical discussion, however, illustrates that behaviour and change in these organizations are coined by routines and rules.

Two common dynamics often observed in organizations are highlighted: first, organizations viewed as sets of formal structures and routines that systematically bias organizational performance and change, and secondly, organizations as loosely coupled structures that enable improvisation with respect to organizational performance and change. How organizations live with and practice such seemingly contradictory dynamics is empirically illuminated in two types of organizations that are seldom analysed in tandem – university organizations and jazz orchestras. Drawing on contemporary research on these seemingly contradictory laboratories of organizational analysis, some observations are highlighted that indeed are common to both types of organizations. Furthermore, it is argued that lessons may be drawn from organizations where turbulence is common and where seemingly un-organized processes are quite regular. University organizations and jazz orchestras represent such types of organizations.

First, the degree of ambiguity in organizations is a matter of degree, not an either/or, and that the uncertainty and spontaneity observed in organizational behaviour and change is more patterned than often assumed (see Heimer and Stinchcombe, 1999; Strauss, 1979). As such, organization theory may be a useful extension of the garbage can model, suggesting that streams in decision-making processes may be systematically pre-packed and patterned by the availability of access and attention structures (Cohen et al., 1976). Secondly, scholarship in organizational studies needs to do away with over-simplistic dichotomies when facing complex realities. This challenge is equal for studies of public sector organizations as for scholarship in business and management. Organization studies often face the tyranny of conceptual dichotomies (Olsen, 2007). This article suggests that the distinction between loose and tight coupling in organizations, as between improvisation and pre-planned activities in organizations, face the danger of shoehorning complex data into simple categories. Originality/value – How organizations live with and practice seemingly contradictory dynamics is empirically illuminated in two types of organizations that are seldom analysed in tandem in organizational studies – university organizations and jazz orchestras. These conflicting organizational dynamics pinpoint one classical dilemma in university and jazz life beleaguered on the inherent trade-off between instrumental design and the logic of hierarchy on the one hand, and individual artistic autonomy and professional neutrality on the other. “[T]he purpose of developing the jazz metaphor is to draw out the collaborative, spontaneous and artful aspects of organizing in contradiction to the engineered, planned and controlled models that dominate modern management thoughts” (Hatch, 1999, p. 4). This dilemma highlights competing understandings of organizational life, of institutional change, and of what the pursuit of organizational goals ultimately entails.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the dynamics of IT-enabled change and organizational learning. This research defines organizational learning in general terms as the capacity of acquiring, transferring and creating knowledge within an organization.

This research design represents a common form of ex-post facto analysis, in which the exploration of relationships between variables is the main focus. The questionnaire used in the first phase was self-administered in a report format, wherein managers were asked to describe the organizational context and problems; the IT intervention or managers’ response to the problems; and the benefits that resulted from the introduction of IT. In the follow-up phase, the interviews used a similar version of the survey, focusing on the same themes.

This paper contends that IT-enabled change such as process redesign and productivity improvements do not take place simultaneously with an organization’s attempts to increase its knowledge base or its capacity to acquire knowledge. Organizations alter processes and re-engineer their operations to improve productivity, not to enhance their knowledge-acquiring and decision-making capacities. It seems that the attention structure of managers may be limited and, therefore, they cannot focus on improving both ends simultaneously. This may suggest that when an organization alters its processes, it may overlook its ability to acquire knowledge and its learning capacity at least for the short term.

The findings of this study can serve as important insights regarding managers’ work practices. Findings support a pragmatic view where managers are concerned with showing immediate gains through the introduction of IT which implies a lack of long-term planning. The findings also can serve as an important lesson to managers in that when they alter organizational processes, they should not overlook the issues of organizational learning and knowledge creation. The findings highlight the complexity of organizations and the conflicting objectives which organizations may attempt to achieve when engaging in change efforts such as the adoption of new technologies.

The current studies on remaining useful life (RUL) prediction mainly rely on convolutional neural networks (CNNs) and long short-term memories (LSTMs) and do not take full advantage of the attention mechanism, resulting in lack of prediction accuracy. To further improve the performance of the above models, this study aims to propose a novel end-to-end RUL prediction framework, called convolutional recurrent attention network (CRAN) to achieve high accuracy.

The proposed CRAN is a CNN-LSTM-based model that effectively combines the powerful feature extraction ability of CNN and sequential processing capability of LSTM. The channel attention mechanism, spatial attention mechanism and LSTM attention mechanism are incorporated in CRAN, assigning different attention coefficients to CNN and LSTM. First, features of the bearing vibration data are extracted from both time and frequency domain. Next, the training and testing set are constructed. Then, the CRAN is trained offline using the training set. Finally, online RUL estimation is performed by applying data from the testing set to the trained CRAN.

CNN-LSTM-based models have higher RUL prediction accuracy than CNN-based and LSTM-based models. Using a combination of max pooling and average pooling can reduce the loss of feature information, and in addition, the structure of the serial attention mechanism is superior to the parallel attention structure. Comparing the proposed CRAN with six different state-of-the-art methods, for the predicted results of two testing bearings, the proposed CRAN has an average reduction in the root mean square error of 57.07/80.25%, an average reduction in the mean absolute error of 62.27/85.87% and an average improvement in score of 12.65/6.57%.

This article provides a novel end-to-end rolling bearing RUL prediction framework, which can provide a reference for the formulation of bearing maintenance programs in the industry.

The purpose of this paper is to address the limitations of prior views regarding knowledge source exploitation by proposing a phenomenological approach to managerial attention and the antecedents of exploiting knowledge sources within the multinational corporations (MNC) network.

A phenomenological approach to attention is taken to explain the antecedents of managerial attention in knowledge source exploitation behavior. This approach provides an alternative way of conceiving of knowledge source remoteness and familiarity, on the one hand, and exclusion and inclusion on the other.

Drawing on a phenomenological approach to attention, the merits and limits of prior studies of attention and knowledge seeking/exchange behavior are addressed and three modes of managerial attention are proposed – relative attention, mimetic attention, implicit attention – to explain the antecedents of managerial attention to MNC knowledge sources.

This approach to knowledge source exploitation and attention provides a rich conceptualization of taken‐for‐granted assumptions in extant literature on managerial attention and knowledge‐seeking behavior. The framework offered here builds on a conceptually rigid foundation of attention that overcomes dualisms such as mind‐body, subject‐object, and thinking‐acting that are often embedded in other mainstream approaches to managerial attention.