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The 1980s and 1990s at Stanford University were a uniquely productive era for research on organizations and labor markets. I describe three important, interconnected themes that characterize the research on organizations and labor markets that emerged from Stanford during this era: the central role of the firm in a multi-level system that determines labor market outcomes, the role of institutions in both creating and constraining labor market outcomes, and the dynamic, often unexpected, consequences of labor market outcomes. I describe the genesis and development of each theme and conclude by discussing what lessons can be learned from this era about creating an innovative and productive research culture.

“It should also be noted that the objective of convergence and equal distribution, including across under-performing areas, can hinder efforts to generate growth. Contrariwise, the objective of competitiveness can exacerbate regional and social inequalities, by targeting efforts on zones of excellence where projects achieve greater returns (dynamic major cities, higher levels of general education, the most advanced projects, infrastructures with the heaviest traffic, and so on). If cohesion policy and the Lisbon Strategy come into conflict, it must be borne in mind that the former, for the moment, is founded on a rather more solid legal foundation than the latter” European Commission (2005, p. 9)Adaptation of Cohesion Policy to the Enlarged Europe and the Lisbon and Gothenburg Objectives.

The fast-developing processes of globalization, with increased political and economic interdependence, along with competition; regionalization dynamics revealing more localized ambitions and either constraining or advancing intentions and policies; and Europeanization as a particular dynamic related to the EU role as a global actor, applied to the Polish post-communist transition, constitute our vectors of analysis. This essay aims to address the simultaneously interconnected and heterogeneous responses of Polish post-communist course of change to global and regional processes, including European integration. In this line of research, we search for answers to how the linkages among globalization, regionalization, and Europeanization work in the case of Polish post-communist transition. This will be pursued through an analysis of the democratization course, mainly regarding political, institutional and social aspects, and economic integration. Despite elements of complementarity and resistance in the working relationships among the three concepts, which are highly debatable, we find they have substantial implications on Polish policy-making. These implications include adjustment and bargaining between demands and concessions, resulting in gains and losses, though despite the negative effects associated and acknowledged, the fact of Poland pursuing the course of integration in the EU reveals an equation of cost–benefit, in favor of the EU.

Purpose – The aim is to introduce a sociological perspective on resource integration and value co-creation into service research using a service systems approach.

Methodology/approach – Conceptual and a case study of the service system a Telecom Equipment and Service Provider is embedded in is reported.

Findings – The service practice of the service system is framed by social structures of signification, legitimation, and domination. However, the practice is also independent of the structures since it is embedded in and shapes the structural realm.

Research implications and limitations – Drawing on structuration and practice theory, the chapter offers a new framework describing how social and service structures and practices can inform and reveal mechanisms of service system dynamics. Based on the framework, three propositions are developed focusing on the mechanisms of resource integration and value co-creation. The implications need to be generalized in future research by studying other empirical contexts.

Practical implications – The chapter provides some tentative guidelines on how organizations can design service systems that enable and support customers and other actors in their resource integration and value co-creation processes by paying attention to social structures and forces and not only resources as such.

Originality – The chapter explicates how social structures have implications for value co-creation and resource integration in service system. It makes systematic use of structuration and practice theory to understand the social dimensions of service systems. A distinction between intended and realized resource integration is made.

This study proposes targeted modernization of the Department of Defense (DoD's) Joint Forces Ammunition Logistics information system by implementing the optimized innovative information technology open architecture design and integrating Radio Frequency Identification Device data technologies and real-time optimization and control mechanisms as the critical technology components of the solution. The innovative information technology, which pursues the focused logistics, will be deployed in 36 months at the estimated cost of $568 million in constant dollars. We estimate that the Systems, Applications, Products (SAP)-based enterprise integration solution that the Army currently pursues will cost another $1.5 billion through the year 2014; however, it is unlikely to deliver the intended technical capabilities.

World Vision exists to eradicate extreme poverty. The primary fundraising mechanism that has fuelled its growth into one of the largest international non-governmental organizations (INGOs) has been Child Sponsorship, which connects over 10 million individual donors with vulnerable children around the world. However, shifts in the market, geopolitical landscape, and institutional logics have seen this once innovative product come under increasing pressure. Using World Vision New Zealand (WVNZ) as a case study, we explore the challenges of implementing social entrepreneurship strategies, including the institutional constraints of developing new business models, through hybridization. Hybridity has gained increasing attention in the field of entrepreneurship and has been offered as a sense-making frame for business model innovation within social entrepreneurship. The use of institutional logics to understand the challenges of hybrid organizing in social entrepreneurship has been invaluable. However, as with any theoretical perspective, this approach has limitations. We suggest that nuanced challenges and sources of resistance to social entrepreneurship in established sectors and organizations might usefully be explored through concepts drawn from complexity theory. Specifically, we propose the use of the concept of structural attractors, which enables the explication of convergent, unifying, and generative dynamics. Our case study findings suggest that, paradoxically, the very essence of historical success may constrain future success. To wit, when faced with changes to institutional and market conditions, WVNZ was constrained by the very construct that enabled its initial growth. The challenge that this case demonstrates is that despite ostensibly hybrid shifts occurring in the management, governance, and espoused innovation strategy of the organization, the governing structural attractor of Child Sponsorship has constrained innovation and change.

The purpose of this study was to explore the couple relationship context within the venture creation process over time. Conservation of Resources and Family FIRO theories were the theoretical foundation, and constructs from these theories were integrated to develop the analytical framework. The sample consisted of couple-level data from 94 start-up businesses at Time 1 with information from entrepreneur and spouse; there were 78 businesses at Time 2. Analysis of spousal resources invested in the newly created businesses indicated that direct and indirect spousal involvement in the business, spousal moral commitment, spousal perception of entrepreneur's business self-efficacy, business communication quality, and emotional support from the spouse were enabling resources during the venture creation process. Work overload and work and family conflict were constraining resources during this process. Couples in a very strong relationship reported significantly more enabling resources and fewer constraining resources than couples not in a very strong relationship.

Many international management scholars have expressed concern about whether societal culture changes so rapidly that research which attempts to represent it has little utility. We address this fundamental concern of international management by providing three theoretical lenses to examine the forces that produce and maintain a society's culture: functional theory, neo-institutional theory and complexity theory. We consider principles of progressive change and problems of social psychology from functional theory, the three pillars and conflicting institutional logics of neo-institutional theory and the ideas of stable equilibrium, oscillations and chaos of dynamic systems from complexity theory. Although these three theoretical lenses sometimes produce conflicting explanations of culture change, they often complement each other. Together, they provide a more realistic picture of the dynamics of the societal cultural milieu of organizations than do cultural representations that favour stability or those that completely discount the utility of any attempt at representing cultural continuity.