Search results

Against the backdrop of European eGovernment (eGov) and new public management strategies, public sector mergers are the ultimate transformation after collaboration and integration. The land administration domain is useful to evaluate how and why mergers occur or not. The domain usually comprises two types of organizations, cadastres and land registries. There are both national and international calls to merge these two types, yet some countries have opted to merge these, while others persist in maintaining two separate ones. How and why this occurs is the key question.

This study applies a mixed-methods approach of data collection and a co-evolutionary perspective on organizational changes. Agencies change alongside perceptions of staff members and external stimuli of policies. These are exposed through narrated personal vignettes and international benchmarking surveys of land agencies.

Decisions on mergers are primarily embedded in local organizational cultures, and follow non-linear paths and are historically path-dependent. Internal staff members tend to disfavour mergers. Contrastingly, external stimuli such as the benchmark surveys act as national and international stimuli which favour mergers. The common narrative of both perspectives is an increased relevance of “simplicity”, which does not however have an effect on merger decisions.

The land administration domain is perhaps idiosyncratic. It has a long history with discussions on merging collaborating organizations. Still, other domains affected by eGov strategies have so far only focused on operational interoperability and database integration, and less on the potential for institutional or organizational mergers. Therefore, experiences from land administration will be useful in the future.

During the formulation of new eGov projects which foster further collaboration and integration in the public sector, it is necessary to take the merger experiences of land agencies into account. It is especially necessary to be aware of implicit norms which are fostered by positive feedback loops of social networks during mergers, which may influence discretionary decisions. In addition, international benchmarks and ranking need to reconsider their benchmarking criteria which currently only focus on efficiency measures.

Mergers may not be a next logical step when collaborating and integrating. Instead, mergers need to be rooted in personal long-standing collaboration practices. Furthermore, individual staff members may only be willing to engage in the operational aspects of mergers if it significantly makes their own tasks simpler and the quality of their work better appreciated by external customers.

The purpose of this paper is to aim at proposing a research agenda in the intersection of strategic supply chain management and logistics (SCML) of global organizations from the perspective of international human resource management (IHRM).

To disclose the intellectual structure of research to date across both fields, the content of up to 280 articles dealing with IHRM and 174 papers addressing challenges in SCML in global organizations from a human resource management (HRM) viewpoint were analyzed. A stepwise hierarchical cluster and discriminant analysis were conducted to map a joint research agenda. Approaches from Upper Echelons theory and Co-Evolutionary theory of global organizations were adopted.

Top management teams (TMT) are crucial to manage SCML successfully in today’s global organizations. Research on this intersection should draw attention to find antecedents, consequences and the process showing how those talented people grouped in dispersed teams can be a source of competitive advantage. Six different areas of research are proposed. It is proposed that future research should focus on the human capital (HC); meaning those key individuals of an organization that make things happen. In the near future, the global organization’s competitiveness will be shaped by how the organization manages its HC in SCML. Methodologies such as meta-analysis are suggested to summarize the extant literature on IHRM when applied to SCML in global organizations.

The search was conducted in SSCI-ISIWoK and Scopus databases. As a limitation, some articles and other scientific contributions not abstracted there were not included. Nevertheless, both searches enabled obtaining balanced results between scope and richness of content.

Only a marginal portion of literature reviews have been conducted by using mixed methods in the fields of IHRM and SCML. The results will be useful for scholars of both fields in their attempts to enlarge the knowledge boundaries in these areas. From a practitioner’s viewpoint, this research may provide an integrative framework for global organizations to build a competitive advantage based on managing HC and its SCML strategically.

The purpose of this paper is to identify the conceptual underpinnings of the theoretical weaknesses of extant research investigating the HRM‐Organizational Performance Link (hereafter HRM‐P Link).

The paper reviews a number of different empirical approaches to the HRM‐P Link and reflects upon, and defines, theory, focusing upon two important dimensions: prediction and explanation. The paper also discusses why the field in its current guise cannot sustain a commitment to explanation, so that under‐theorisation and lack of explanatory power go hand‐in‐hand. It then tackles the possibility that theoretical underpinnings for empirical research on the HRM‐P Link might come from other disciplines such as economics. The paper also begins to set out a meta‐theoretical alternative.

The paper finds that: theoretical underpinnings will not emerge and develop simply by doing more, and/or better, empirical work; meta‐theoretical problems besetting the paradigm are actually far worse than is usually recognised; and attempts to borrow theories from other disciplines have not been successful.

The paper shows that this is a broad and complex field and it has been necessarily selective in its evaluation. It does, however, signpost additional writing in this area to complement the word limit it faces here.

The paper shows that both organizations and researchers need to think more robustly about the meta‐theoretical underpinnings of the relationship between HRM practices and their capacity to enable people to perform. It is hoped that renewed meta‐theoretical debate will be triggered in this direction.

This paper is the only critical review of the meta‐theoretical underpinnings of the HRM‐P field.

This article revisits Nicolas Carr's popular Harvard Review article IT Doesn't Matter on its ten-year anniversary. The purpose is to analyze Carr's argument by analyzing the development of the argument itself as opposed to finding exceptions to the argument, which has been done in the past.

The authors use co-evolutionary theory as a case against Carr's argument by showing that Carr has only looked at the growth of IT from a population ecology perspective and has failed to anticipate the adaptive nature of IT within the organization.

The authors show that Carr's new rules for IT management may not be applicable if viewed through the lens of the three principles of self-renewing organizations espoused by co-evolutionary theory.

The authors provide a new basis for evaluating the strategic nature of IT and offer a background for future research and case studies into evaluating IT strategic competitive advantage within the organization.

The research provides guidelines for organizations to better decide how to strategically implement IT to more fully utilize its capabilities.

The paper provides a new method for refuting a popular article by attacking the argument as opposed to finding exceptions to the argument. This is valuable to those who wish to evangelize the strategic capacity of IT within the organization.

The purpose of this paper is to describe co-devolutionary processes of multinational enterprise (MNE)/emerging economy institutional relationships utilizing concepts from “old” institutional theory as well as the institutional aspects of socially constructed realities.

The authors develop a set of propositions that explore the new concept of a co-devolutionary relationship between MNEs and emerging economy institutions. Guided by prior research, the paper investigates MNE/emerging economy institutional co-devolution at the macro-(MNE home and host countries), meso-(MNE industry/host country regulative and normative institutions) and micro-(MNE and host country institutional actors) levels.

MNE/emerging economy institutional co-devolution occurs at the macro-level via negative public communications in the MNE’s home and host countries, at the meso-level via host country corruption and MNE adaptation, and at the micro-level via pressures for individual actors to cognitively “take for granted” emerging economy corruption, leading to MNE divestment and a reduction in new MNE investment.

By characterizing co-devolutionary processes within MNE/emerging economy institutional relationships, the research augments co-evolutionary theory. It also assists in developing more accurate specification and measurement methods for the organizational co-evolution construct by using institutional theory’s foundational processes to discuss MNE/emerging economy institutional co-devolution.

The research suggests the use of enhanced regulation, bilateral investment treaties and MNE/local institution partnerships to stabilize MNE/emerging economy institutional relationships, leading to more robust progress in building emerging economy institutions.

The research posits that using the concepts of institutional theory as a foundation provides useful insights into the “stickiness” of institutional instability and corruption in emerging economies and into the resulting co-devolutionary MNE/emerging economy institutional relationships.

Existing literature acknowledges information systems development (ISD) to be a complex activity. This complexity is magnified by the continuous changes in user requirements due to changing organizational needs in changing external competitive environments. Research findings show that, if this increasing complexity is not managed appropriately, information systems fail. The paper thus aims to portray the sources of complexity related to ISD and to suggest the use of complexity theory as a frame of reference, analyzing its implications on information system design and development to deal with the emergent nature of IS.

Conceptual analysis and review of relevant literature.

This article provides a conceptual model explaining how top‐down “official” and bottom‐up “emergent” co‐evolutionary adaptations of information systems design with changing user requirements will result in more effective system design and operation. At the heart of this model are seven first principles of adaptive success drawn from foundational biological and social science theory: adaptive tension, requisite complexity, change rate, modular design, positive feedback, causal intricacy, and coordination rhythm. These principles, translated into the ISD context, outline how IS professionals can use them to better enable the co‐evolutionary adaptation of ISD projects to changing stakeholder interests and broader environmental changes.

This paper considers and recognizes the different sources of complexity related to ISD before suggesting how they could be better dealt with. It develops a framework for change to deal with the emergent nature of ISD and enable more expeditious co‐evolutionary adaptation.

Earlier research has identified adaptive leadership strategies and organizational culture as two key factors that influence a firm's adaptive capabilities. However, little is known about how leadership and organizational culture affect each other. Nor do the authors know how the combined effects of adaptive leadership and culture facilitates organizational adaptation over time. The purpose of this paper is to address this gap by using a co-evolutionary perspective to enhance the understanding of this phenomenon.

Data were collected through informant interviews, observations and archival material.

Study findings reveal that leaders can enhance organizational adaptability by creating an appropriate context to guide the co-evolutionary interactions between their leadership strategies, organizational culture and employees towards the ongoing achievement of firm goals.

The study enhances the understanding of how leaders facilitate organizational adaptability, especially in a family business context.

What new empirical implications can emerge in the organizational adaptation domain by adopting a multi-level co-evolutionary theoretical perspective? How does the performance appraisal process affect the evolution of the organization? The purpose of this paper, positioned within the organizational evolution research field, is to untangle the complexity behind emergence, development, and extinction of business processes over time, highlighting the inner mechanisms behind the adaptation process.

The work is presented as a longitudinal, single case study of a service firm. Scholars concur in considering this approach particularly reliable when investigating the evolution of a practice (Feldman, 2000; Howard-Grenville, 2005; Lazaric and Denis, 2005). Data have been collected during 2014 through three main methods: unstructured interviews, meeting observations, and direct observation of participants.

From the analysis, it emerges that the impact of the performance appraisal routine on individual and group dynamics is the main determinant behind organizational inertia and resistance to change. In particular, the degree of managerial control exerted, the feedback scheme applied, and the group interaction mechanisms are predictors of the degree of business process exploitation or exploration within a practice.

In order to address the exploratory nature of the work, further developments may deepen the analysis investigating and comparing the findings obtained in different business contexts, highlighting important similarities or differences in various sectors. Different empirical settings might also be beneficial in further investigating the complexity of additional dimensions of routines’ evolution, especially at the group and organization level of analysis.

The insights from the case may serve as useful inputs to improve the efficiency of the service firm examined, and to identify possible mechanisms to foster knowledge production and replication within the practice.

The paper, by adopting a co-evolutionary perspective, has been conceived as a deliberate search for new empirical implications in the organizational evolution research domain at multiple levels of analysis.

General theories have been criticized for their inability to explore the mechanics of more specific domain knowledge and understand how, when and where general theory applies to and extends domain knowledge in supply chain management (SCM). Middle-range theorizing (MRT) is a potential solution to this limitation. This paper aims to assist researchers in understanding the relationship between MRT and general theorizing (GT) and connecting MRT research findings to general theory.

This research provides a structured literature review of 518 articles, from eight journals in logistics, SCM and operations management. Theoretically based articles are analyzed by primary domain and SCM context.

There are frameworks for conducting MRT; however, the literature does not sufficiently assist researchers in understanding how middle-range (MR) theory should relate to general theory. Findings include a better understanding of underserved areas in SCM, guideline frameworks for understanding when to apply MRT, when to apply GT and how MRT knowledge can be connected to SCM domain knowledge.

This study provides a timely and appropriate compilation of theory research in SCM, including significant implications for both theory and practice, by helping to articulate the evolving philosophy of science in SCM.