Search results

The purpose of this study is to empirically explore how firms configure centrifugal and centripetal forces in promoting breakthrough innovation (BI), thus improving their strategic performance (SP) in the artificial intelligence (AI) context.

This study applies the centrifugal and centripetal forces model to a survey sample of 285 Chinese AI firms. Fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA) and propensity score matching (PSM) are integrated to explore the configurational effects of three centrifugal forces—the autonomy of technical experts, knowledge search and alliance network—and two centripetal forces—strictness of organisational institutions (SOI) and human–human–AI collaboration (HHAC)—on BI, examining whether the configurations that enhance BI can further improve SP.

The results indicate that the strictness of innovation institutions (SII) and strictness of ethical institutions (SEI) are equally important for determining SOI. Three configurations can improve BI when SOI and HHAC are the core conditions; only one of three configurations can further improve SP significantly.

By introducing SOI composed of equally important levels of SII and SEI and HHAC, this research is one of the few empirical studies to explore the mechanisms behind the impact of centrifugal and centripetal forces on BI and SP, which may help researchers and managers address innovation challenges in the AI context.

Global businesses create and sustain operational success and create value by balancing the centripetal and centrifugal organizational forces they generate. Productive efforts to achieve strategic and operational success are enabled by the balance of competing tensions not their oscillations. Internal regulators contribute to this balance when they are understood and systematically integrated into both short and long-term decision-making. Inattention to the intricacies of interactive regulating dynamics and systems dilute value creation, or worse, destroy it. The whole business organization must be greater than the sum of its parts to deliver optimum value. Anything less creates gaps which competitors will exploit to the detriment of shareholder value creation. The business landscape is replete with companies that failed to create or sustain balance. There are also examples of great companies that nurture tensions to promote proper balance.

Multicultural teams (MCTs) and their managers are subject to numerous exogenous forces that profoundly affect how these teams’ members relate, what their difficulties are, and how they interact with task, technology and the larger organization(s) around them. We approach such teams from a multi-level perspective, focusing on global business culture, industry situation, and national political context as macro forces affecting these teams. We explain how these factors affect team functioning through the centripetal and centrifugal forces that they exert on individuals. Our perspective will acknowledge the complex reality of social construction among team members, and offer the view that members’ expectations and their mutual interactions are responsible for shaping each other's subsequent cognitions.

The purpose of this paper is to contrast the speech genres in the original and the published versions of an article written by academic researchers and published in the US practitioner-oriented journal, Strategic Finance. The original version, submitted by the researchers, was rewritten by a professional editor in the USA before it was published.

The paper analyses the “persuasive” speech genre of the original version and the “authoritative” speech genre of the published version.

Although it was initially thought that the differences between the two versions were due to differences in the forms communication used by academics and practitioners, as the analysis progressed it became clear that the differences the authors were observing could be traced to more profound differences in philosophical assumptions about the “way of understanding and constructing a world”.

The choice of language and argumentation should be given careful attention when the authors craft the accounting frameworks and research papers, and especially when the authors seek to communicate the findings of the research to practitioners. However, the authors have focused on just one instance in which a text written by academics was re-written for publication in a practitioner journal.

The paper contrasts the rationalism of the persuasive speech genre and the pragmatism of the authoritative speech genre. It cautions academic researchers against uncritically adopting specific speech genres, whether they are academic or practitioner speech genres, without carefully reflecting on their relevance and implications for understanding the nature of the phenomenon being discussed.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the development process of the fire whirl in the fixed-frame facility and focus on the impacts of the fire whirl’s vortex core on the formation and flame structure of the fire whirl.

The complex turbulent reacting flame surface is captured by the large eddy simulation turbulence closure coupled with two sub-grid scale (SGS) kinetic schemes (i.e. the chemistry equilibrium and steady diffusion flamelet). Numerical predictions are validated thoroughly against the measurements by Lei et al. (2015) with excellent agreements. A double maximum tangential velocity refinement approach is proposed to quantify the vortex cores’ instantaneous location and region, addressing the missing definition in other studies.

The numerical results show that the transition process of the fire whirl is dominated by the vortex core movement, which is related to the centripetal force. The unsteadiness of the fully developed fire whirl was found depending on the instantaneous fluctuation of heat release rate. The steady diffusion flamelet scheme is essential to capture the instantaneous fluctuation. Furthermore, the axial velocity inside the vortex core is the key to determining the state of fire whirl.

Due to intensive interactions between buoyant fires and ambient rotating flow, the on-set and formation of fire whirl still remain largely elusive. This paper focused on the transition process of fire whirl between different development stages. This paper provides insights into the transition process from the inclined flame to the fire whirls based on the centripetal force.

This paper presented and compared two SGS kinetic schemes to resolve the fire whirl development process and the unsteadiness of its vortical structures. The modelling framework addresses the shortcoming of previous numerical studies where RANS turbulence closure and simplified combustion kinetics was adopted. Numerical results also revealed the fire whirl transition process and its relationship to centripetal force.

No previous research has considered the changing agglomeration effect of foreign direct investment (FDI). The purpose of this paper is to fill the gap in the literature.

The paper uses China as the object of study and examines the centripetal and centrifugal forces associated with FDI clustering over time.

Through studying the FDI determinants for the 29 Chinese provinces from 1993 to 2008, the empirical analysis supports a weakening agglomeration effect of FDI over time in China and further suggests that the effect has nearly vanished in the past few years.

Data availability restricts the analysis to using provincial aggregate data and so further research is called for. It would provide more accurate and insightful information to study the FDI agglomeration effects at a finer level, using more disaggregated city‐level data by sector and by source country.

As the Chinese government has been making efforts to direct FDI to inland areas, this research provides immediate policy implications. Policy‐makers' investment incentives to direct FDI could go to waste when the agglomeration effect of FDI is too strong. The incentives should be able to achieve a much larger effect when the agglomeration effect becomes less strong.

The purpose of this study is to understand venture capital family businesses (VCFBs) governance of portfolio companies through the deal process.

This study applies a theory-developing approach. A model of VCFB governance is developed whose key aspects are illuminated by four examples (cases) of VCFBs.

Recent research suggests that a venture capital firm's corporate deal processes can be divided into the pre-deal, deal and post-deal phases. Based on the age, size and succession dimensions, propositions for how a governance trajectory develops for VCFBs, affecting the deal process of target family firms (TFFs), are presented. These propositions highlight how the family owners' actions and behavior are related to VCFB governance, which in turn, influences the three phases involved in making an investment.

The propositions suggest how personal and administrative VCFBs' governance of the deal process of portfolio companies is significantly affected by centrifugal and centripetal forces that drive the respective types of governance where third-generation family owners appear as changers of governance approach.

In this paper, the authors aim to clarify the relationship between organization and society. They argue that the proliferation of organization in modernity has not yet been properly understood in light of the absence of organization in premodern times. The authors therefore ask: Why do organizations proliferate? Why do they proliferate in such manifold organizational forms? And how can these heterogeneous forms nevertheless be related to a common problem to which organizations provide a solution? A comparative historical analysis based on the theory of social systems reveals that organizations fill a gap which the decline of morality as an integrative success medium created.

The paper develops a conceptual framework focusing on the theory of media within Luhmann’s theory of social systems as a point of departure. The authors discuss the concept of “interpenetration” to assess the relation between morality and organization. They raise several follow-up questions for future empirical research, most prominently pertaining to the relationship between organization and digitalization.

The main finding is that morality can be conceptualized as a specific success medium (alongside religion and symbolically generalized communication media) which used to structure premodern societies by means of social and interhuman interpenetration at once. Modern society instead employs two differentiated forms of interpenetration: Social interpretation through organizations and interhuman interpenetration through love relationships. These centripetal counterforces help to mediate the centrifugal forces unleashed by the full development of modern success media. Modern society critically depends on the proliferation of organizations.

This paper examines the relationship between morality and organization not from the perspective of interaction or organization, but from the perspective of society. This approach provides novel insights in that it opens up promising avenues of comparison between organization and other social forms. Understanding the distinctively modern “success story” of organization as a social form makes it possible to ask about corresponding potentials and limitations, but also alternative possibilities. In doing so, the authors depart from most studies of organizations grounded in social systems theory as the authors primarily focus on Luhmann’s theory of media (as opposed to the theory of differentiation).

Looks at the process whereby certain members of corporate management teams are marginalized as a result of the central and powerful role of central departments such as finance and personnel. Investigates the impact on the effective working of the team and the consequences for the organization as a whole.

Workforce diversity is becoming a crucial matter in the area of internal communication. Realizing that there are multiple brackets within the body of a workforce (i.e. internal audience), the purpose of this paper is to develop an intermediate approach to manage diversity by segmenting the internal audience.

Developing a segmentation approach for managing diversity, the authors recommended the use of a few mathematical methodologies, including the expectation-maximization algorithm, partial least squares structural equation model (PLS-SEM) methodology, and Chow test, on a surveyed data set collected from 1,236 nurses of the US healthcare system. A PLS-SEM model, including employees’ mission awareness, management’s mission fulfillment, employees’ mission fulfillment, and turnover intention, was examined with respect to two internal segments.

Using a simple set of demographic variables, the authors demonstrated a practical approach to segmenting an internal audience and showed that causal relationships in a nomological network of variables regarding mission integration are significantly different between internal segments. Based on the segmentation approach, the authors proved that managers, in an effort to gain maximum diversity, can mix and match both the centrifugal force of diversity and the centripetal force of diversity to value individuals and for mission integration in their practices, respectively.

The authors highlighted a practical matter of internal communication by connecting the concepts of diversity and internal audience segmentation. However, the generalizability of the results must be assessed in other settings.

While managing diversity involves valuing employees as individuals, the segmentation concept can function as a practical and useful intermediate tool for managing diversity. Practitioners can utilize varied sets of segmented variables according to their contexts.

The authors emphasized valuing employees as individuals and developed a managerial way to make personal differences an asset to the productivity of an organization and society.

Introducing a segmentation approach to internal communication and adopting a set of useful statistical techniques, the authors attempted to develop a unique managing model of diversity. The authors suggested a dynamic and substantial segmentation of an internal audience with a smaller set of appropriate variables in each context.