Search results

This paper aims to describe knowledge productivity coaches and the approach Lockheed Martin has taken to ensure that its employees have the knowledge and skills needed to utilize its information system modeled after Web 2.0 and Enterprise 2.0 concepts and technologies. This information system is branded Unity.

To train the employee population (∼140,000 employees) in using Unity, a small team of knowledge productivity coaches was formed, who in turn mentor and coach more than 100 Unity ambassadors. These ambassadors are responsible for helping employees to understand the Unity platform and to utilize its related tools. A multitude of learning options are offered including Collaboration Playbooks, unMeetings (informal lunch‐n‐learn sessions on a specific Unity topic), videos, quick, short jump‐start guides, one‐on‐one coaching sessions, and personal assistance in setting‐up key team and personal spaces within the Unity environment. While the system is in many ways intuitive, these ambassadors provide the “human” link to learning.

The adoption rate of Unity has increased exponentially. Unity spaces increased 51 percent during the rollout in the third quarter of 2009. Much of this growth can be attributed to knowledge productivity coaches and ambassadors providing the support employees need to utilize Unity to increase their performance and productivity.

This strategy of using knowledge productivity coaches and ambassadors can be repeated for any large system implementation in the future. The methods and processes can also be leveraged to save time and money for every new program utilizing the strategy. This paper details the strategy and processes for reuse.

Building on sociological research that examines the allocation of rewards in peer evaluations, we argue that the recognition of cultural producers’ work varies with their status and social distance from the audience members who evaluate them. We study the influence of these two mechanisms within the context of the Norwegian advertising industry. Specifically, we looked at how cultural producers’ status and social distance from jury members affect their chances of being honored in “The Silver Tag” – one of the main digital advertising award contests in Norway – during the period 2003–2010. While our findings provide support for status-based rewards allocation, the positive effects of status may be more circumscribed than previously thought. When accounting for the existence of previous connections between audience members and cultural producers, we find that cultural producers are more or less likely to receive an accolade depending on their degree of separation from the audience members. By exposing network-based determinants of consecrating decisions, and suggesting that the positive effects of status may be more circumscribed than previously thought, our findings shed important light on the social foundations of evaluation and, more broadly, the mechanisms of reward allocation in cultural fields.

We contribute to the literature on institutional and organizational change by integrating two related areas of study: the theory and methods of analysis informed by the research on institutional logics and historical-event sequencing. Institutional logics provide the theory to understand how the content of culture influences organizational change; historical-event sequencing reveals the underlying patterns of cultural transformation. We apply this dual perspective to the cases of institutional stability and change in organizational governance in three industries: accounting, architecture, and higher-education publishing. Research on governance has focused on changes in organizational design between markets, hierarchies, and networks. Missing from this research is an understanding of how institutions at the wider societal level motivate organizations to adopt one of these governance forms over another. We examine how the governance of firms in these industries has been influenced by the institutional logics of the professions, the market, the state, and the corporation by focusing on three mechanisms – institutional entrepreneurs, structural overlap, and historical-event sequencing. Overall, our findings reveal how accounting was influenced by state regulation producing a punctuated equilibrium model, architecture by professional duality producing a cyclical model, and publishing by market rationalization producing an evolutionary model of institutional change in organizational governance.

We propose that the ambiguity of discourse around a category – rather than being problematic – improves the longevity of that category. This is especially true in the creative industries. Using methods and theories drawn from sociology and art history, we tested this thesis using swing as a case study. Based on three years of archival research we found 70 co-existing definitions of swing and 89 different uses of the term. These multiple meanings enabled various understandings to come in and out of focus over time, contributing to swing’s longevity. Our findings extend to other categories within the creative industries.

Research indicates honesty, ethics and leadership are critical during a crisis. This paper aims to examine that ideology by analyzing the role acceptance or denial of executive malfeasance has on firm value after a crisis.

This is an event study that examines crises attributed to executive malfeasance. These qualitative crises data are blended with an analysis of abnormal returns to assess differences between executive actions.

These results indicate that ethical and timely acceptance of a firm’s role in malfeasance does not appear to be rewarded by stockholders. These data also show that there is no reward for a delayed acceptance of malfeasance. Therefore, ethics and honesty do not appear to differentiate post-crisis recovery.

This research focuses on a major factor of firm success – its value. It would be interesting to explore how stakeholders, beyond those that invest in the firm, impact the value over the long run.

While prior research indicates that honesty is prudent, this examination indicates that obfuscation does not impact firm value during a recovery. This study promotes questioning one’s ethical compass as a stock or stakeholder in malfeasance-mired firms.

In conflict with crisis-based research, this study reveals that honesty in crisis management does not always offer an advantage. The results indicate that value is multidimensional, and it may not be based on trust and ethics in the short run.

The evolution of interorganizational networks is shaped by micro and macro processes. At the micro level organizational dyads negotiate relationships in light of their own cost—benefit analysis. At the macro level resources flow through networks and are mobilized by coalitions. Current research is beginning to examine integrating mechanisms which link network dynamics to dyadic relationship formation. In this paper we examine interorganizational brokerage as an integrating mechanism linking micro and macro network processes. We focus on the formation of networks in the global television industry. The Children's Television Network (CTW) has licensed and co‐produced its flagship program “Sesame Street” in many countries around the globe. Recently, it has expanded beyond a strategy based on direct first‐order linkages to one of brokerage and interorganizational entrepreneurship, entailing the formation of second‐order linkages—linkages between organizations with which CTW has direct first‐order relationships. In the aftermath of the Oslo Peace Agreement, CTW acted as a broker and sponsor of a joint venture between Israeli and Palestinian broadcasters. The main challenge facing CTW was a high degree of distrust between the parties motivated by fears of opportunistic exploitation. Such fears typically result in high transaction costs, making joint venture formation difficult, if not impossible. In its capacity as broker, CTW worked to reduce transaction costs. This was done by providing resources where needed, and by facilitating interaction and trust building between the parties. We describe CTW's tactics during the formation of this joint venture, and we analyze the outcome of the joint venture from the point of view of CTW's overall strategy. We conclude by discussing CTW's network and brokerage strategy in the aftermath of the joint venture.

Although extant theory has illuminated conditions under which organizations mimic each other in form and practice, little research examines how organizations seek to differentiate themselves from conventional forms. Our comparative ethnographic studies examine how the Burning Man and Open Source communities developed organizations to help coordinate the production of an annual temporary arts event and nonproprietary, freely distributed software. Both communities sought to differentiate their organizations from reference groups, but this was not a sufficient condition for sustaining organizational novelty. We found that the ability to pursue a differentiated strategy was moderated by environmental conditions. By exploring the organizing decisions that each community made at two critical boundaries: one defining individuals’ relationship with the organization; the second defining the organization's relationship with the market, we show how organizing practices were recombined from the for-profit and nonprofit sectors in unexpected, novel ways. This comparative research contributes a grounded theoretical explanation of organizational innovation that adjudicates between differentiation and environmental conditions.