Search results

Critical infrastructures (CIs) for essential services such as water supply and electricity delivery are notoriously vulnerable to disruptions. While extant literature offers important insights into the resilience of CIs following large-scale disasters, our understanding of CI resilience to the more typical disruptions that affect CIs on a day-to-day basis remains limited. The present study investigates how the interorganizational (supply) network that uses and manages the CI can mitigate the adverse consequences of day-to-day disruptions.

Longitudinal archival data on 277 day-to-day disruptions within the Dutch national railway CI were collected and analyzed using generalized estimating equations.

The empirical results largely support the study’s predictions that day-to-day disruptions have greater adverse effects if they co-occur or are relatively unprecedented. The findings further show that the involved interorganizational network can enhance CI resilience to these disruptions, in particular, by increasing the overall level of cross-boundary information exchange between organizations inside the network.

This study helps managers to make well-informed choices regarding the target and intensity of their cross-boundary information-exchange efforts when dealing with day-to-day disruptions affecting their CI. The findings illustrate the importance of targeting cross-boundary information exchange at the complete interorganizational network responsible for the CI and to increase the intensity of such efforts when CI disruptions co-occur and/or are unprecedented.

This study contributes to our academic understanding of how network-level processes (i.e. cross-boundary information exchange) can be managed to ensure interorganizational (supply) networks’ resilience to day-to-day disruptions in a CI context. Subsequent research may draw from the conceptual framework advanced in the present study for examining additional supply network-level processes that can influence the effectiveness of entire supply networks. As such, the present research may assist scholars to move beyond a simple dyadic context and toward examining complete supply networks

The complex and changeable working environment makes individual cross-boundary activities inevitable. Yet, how employee's boundary-spanning behavior (BSB) stimulates innovation performance remains to be further explored. This study aims to analyze the intermediary mechanism and boundary conditions between employee's BSB and innovation performance based on knowledge integration theory.

The authors collected data in two waves (July and August 2017) and from two hierarchical levels (from the final sample of 286 employees and their 29 direct supervisors) within ten manufacturing firms located in Nanjing and Anhui, China.

The results indicate that creative ideas generation mediates the relationship between employee's BSB and innovation performance. Moreover, employees with higher levels of team task interdependence (TTI) lead to a stronger relationship between ideas generation and innovation performance compared to lower levels of TTI (positively moderates the second stage of mediation).

By verifying the key effects of ideas generation and TTI between employee's BSB and innovation performance, the findings of this study provide practical guidance for enterprises to improve the efficiency of employee's BSB.

First, the authors use knowledge integration theory (Grant, 1996a) to deduce the formation process of the mechanism between employee's BSB and his/her innovation results, which clearly shows the driving forces and integral power of the formation process within an individual knowledge integrating system. The authors’ second contribution is further exploring the conditions under which engaging innovative ideas generated by the integration of employee's BSB is more likely to lead to ideas for implementation by examining TTI as a team-level moderator.

Although researchers have long recognized the importance of participating organizations’ (POs) relational behavior for mega construction projects (MCPs) performance, relational behavior may not be executed by POs without effective leadership from project owners. However, little is known about the mechanisms linking owners’ leadership styles to POs’ relational behavior. This study draws on full range leadership theory and role theory to examine the relationships between owners’ leadership styles (i.e. transformational and transactional) and relational behavior. POs’ role orientations (i.e. normative and economic) are considered as potential mediators.

Data were collected from 175 managers deeply involved in MCPs. Hierarchical regression model and bootstrapping methods were performed on the data to examine the direct effects of owners’ leadership on POs’ relational behavior and the mediating effects of POs’ role orientations.

The results revealed that both owners’ transformational and transactional leadership positively affect POs’ relational behavior, despite the former being higher than the latter, and indirectly influence relational behavior via POs’ normative and economic role orientation, respectively.

This study provides a clear picture of how owners’ leadership can motivate POs’ relational behavior to achieve high-quality inter-organizational relationships in MCPs. The findings can guide owners’ top manager selection by prioritizing those with transformational leadership, which is beneficial to achieving high-level relational behavior of POs. The results also imply that owners should pay greater attention to cultivating POs’ normative role orientation by encouraging teamwork and open communication to enhance their implementation of relational behavior.

Unlike previous research focusing more on intra-organizational leader–follower relationship within one PO, this study is one of the first to empirically confirm owners’ leadership as a critical antecedent of POs’ relational behavior, thus enhancing the theoretical understanding of inter-organizational relationship management in MCPs. Based on role theory, this study considers a novel organizational psychology mechanism, i.e. POs’ role orientations, as the mediator to unravel how owners’ leadership affects POs’ relational behavior, which was rarely invoked in MCP leadership literature.

This paper’s main aim is to check the mediating effect of supply chain memory in the relationship between using digital technologies and both supply chain resilience and robustness. In addition, the impact of the COVID-19 disruption was tested as a moderator of the impact of supply chain memory on supply chain resilience and robustness.

Altogether, 257 supply chain managers answered the questionnaire, and data were analysed through structural equation modelling.

This paper contributes to theory and practice by demonstrating that the experience, familiarity and knowledge to deal with disruptions partially mediate the relationship between digital technologies, resilience and robustness. Moreover, our results show that memory is less efficient for the supply chain to maintain an acceptable level of performance in case of a new extreme disruptive event like COVID-19. The full model was able to explain 36.90% of supply chain memory, 41.58% of supply chain resilience and 46.21% of supply chain robustness.

The study helps to understand how to develop supply chain memory, positioning digital technologies as an antecedent of it. The impact of supply chain memory on supply chain resilience and robustness is proved. Knowledge about the impact of industry 4.0 technologies on disruption management is quantitatively improved. It demonstrates that digital technologies impact resilience and robustness mainly through supply chain memory. The study proves that supply chain memory is less efficient for the chain remains effective when a non-routine disruptive event occurs, but it is still imperative to recover from it.

The purpose of this study is to better understand social media (SM) factors that physician leaders need to consider, as they adapt their cross-boundary practices to engage with colleagues and patients. Firstly, this study explores why SM is being used by physicians to cross horizontal (physician to physician) and stakeholder (physician to patient) boundaries prior to COVID-19. Secondly, based on the studies reviewed, this study provides insights on the practical SM implications for physician leaders working in the COVID-19 environment to actively enhance their practices, reduce public confusion and improve patient care, thus informing health-care practices.

A systematic literature review was used to conduct a structured transparent overview of peer reviewed articles that describe physicians’ use of cross-boundary SM across several disciplines (e.g. health, information science). As a baseline assessment prior to COVID-19, the review synthesized 47 articles, identified and selected from six databases and Novanet. This study used NVivo 12 to thematical code the articles, leading to the emergence of four broad factors that influence SM use.

A key reason noted in the literature for physicians use of SM to cross horizontal boundaries is to share knowledge. Regarding stakeholder boundaries, the most cited reasons are to improve patient’s health and encourage behavioural changes. Insights garnered on the practical SM implications include the need for physicians to be stronger leaders in presenting trustworthy and consistent facts about health information to the public and fellow peers. As role models for the effective use of SM tools, physician leaders can mentor and coach their colleagues and counterparts.

As this was a literature review, the authors did not collect primary data to further explore this rapidly changing and dynamic SM world. Next steps could include a survey to determine firstly, how physicians currently use SM in this COVID-19 environment, and secondly, how they could leverage it for their work. Findings from this survey will help us better understand the role of physician leaders as health-care influencers and how they could better create trust and inform the Canadian public in the health information that is being conveyed.

Physician leaders can play a key role in positively influencing institutional support for ethical and safe SM use and engagement practices. Physicians need to participate in developing regulations and guidelines that are fundamentally to physician leader’s SM use. Central to this research would be the need to understand how physicians cross-boundary practices have changed during and potentially post COVID-19. Physician leaders also need to monitor information sources for credibility and ensure that these sources are protected. As role models for the effective use of SM tools, physician leaders can mentor and coach their colleagues and counterparts in this area.

Although there have been studies of how physicians use SM, fewer studies explore why physician leaders’ cross boundaries (horizontal and stakeholder) using SM. Important insights are gained in physician leaders practical use of SM. Key themes that emerged included: organizational and individual, information, professional and regulations and guideline factors. These factors strengthen physician leaders understanding of areas of foci to enhance their cross-boundary interactions. There is an urgency to study the complexity of SM and the effectiveness of regulations and guidelines for physicians, who are being required, at an accelerated rate, to strengthen and increase their cross-boundary practices.

The purpose of this paper is to explore how organizational actors interpret and enact technology in cross-boundary work contexts during e-government implementation in a public organization in East Malaysia.

Case study methodology involving semi-structured interviews, unobtrusive observations, and archival records was utilized in the study. Interview subjects include management staff, general employees, and information technology (IT) specialists to provide rich descriptions of their work practice.

Three distinct contexts contribute to cross-boundary work practice in relation to IT use and non-use, namely, standardization (complete IT use), hybridization (partial IT use), and conventionalization (zero IT use). Technology enactment strategies such as acceptance, avoidance, adaptation, and configuration are employed depending on actors’ interpretation of technology complexity and task interdependency.

Early interventions could involve examining how and why employees accept or avoid technology as part of their work practice and how they switch between enactment strategies. Organizations could ensure better team support to capitalize on the robust social interaction in cross-boundary work contexts to develop greater synergy in technology improvisations.

The study extends the technology enactment perspective as it offers new meanings to structures of action by understanding the temporal agentic orientations and how these are constructed by cross-boundary work contexts. It also offers insight into how enactment strategies are developed according to the productive tensions that arise from the interplay of cognitive orientations.

In contrast to the MDGs' top-down approach, the SDGs took the bottom-up approach of participants, creating an open space for soliciting their aspirations, efforts, creativity, and commitment. Inclusive business (IB), identified as the key means to alleviate poverty and inequality in developing countries, undeniably struggles in this space to find new ways of thinking and management to achieve a suitable balance between serving social needs and achieving business sustainability. However, multinational corporations have not yet made significant achievements, due to a biased orientation of including the poor into their system of developed countries' institutions. From a neutral position, not asking who includes or yields to whom, this research project proposes to use the concept of institutional interconnections and its various analytical factors to examine how diverse partners are interconnected to overcome institutional differences. Differences in interconnections are hypothesized to differentiate IB's socioeconomic effects and poverty alleviation.

The purpose of this paper is to evaluate and analyse the didactic model of a university course, which concerns an applied academic consultancy project and which focuses on skills related to crossing boundaries between disciplines and cultures, and between theory and practice. These boundary crossing skills are needed to develop sustainable solutions for complex environmental problems.

The paper evaluates the course based on recommendations for successful collaborative interdisciplinary research found in literature. Reflections of two cohorts of 30 students are used to analyse the four components that make up the didactic model of the course: organizational “matrix structure” in which students work, two week field‐trip, customized SharePoint web site, and teachers as facilitators rather than providers of information.

The course enhanced the students' awareness of disciplinary and cultural boundaries and added to their appreciation of using different disciplinary and cultural perspectives in developing sustainable solutions. Students learnt to deal with uncertainty in scientific research and realized that decisions in environmental management are based on partial knowledge. They also learnt how to overcome barriers in the design and implementation of interdisciplinary research projects.

The paper presents an innovative didactic model that proved to be successful in educating boundary crossing skills. It contributes to understanding how educational programmes at universities can better equip students to find sustainable solutions.

This study aims to draw on elements of diffusion theory to understand leadership reform. Many diffusion studies examine the spread of an innovation across social units but the objective is to examine diffusion of a collective leadership model within school units. Specifically, the strength of reform diffusion is tested to account for differences in instructional capacity and to explain the spread of leadership reform within Title I elementary schools.

A mixed method design was used to understand how social factors facilitated the diffusion of leadership reform, and to test for a diffusion effect. Qualitative data were derived from interviews, field notes, observations, and documents using a grounded theory approach. Open and axial coding techniques were used to develop coherent categories of major and minor themes. Quantitative data were hierarchical, with teachers and students nested in schools. A random‐intercepts, means‐as‐outcomes model was used to test for a diffusion effect on instructional capacity.

Strong principal leadership, a commitment to collective responsibility and shared influence, frequent and open communication, and time to build capacity were conditions that supported diffusion of the leadership model. Diffusion of the leadership model mattered for instructional capacity. Each indicator of instructional capacity was more prevalent in schools that had diffused the leadership model to the mentoring and sustaining stages.

The study is limited to one type of reform and 36 Title I elementary schools from an urban and urban fringe district in a Southwestern state. Further, the study does not delve deeply into facilitative factors within various stages of the diffusion processes. It focuses on social factors that enable schools to bring the leadership reform to scale.

Framing reform as an intervention to be implemented in schools, rather than a social process that institutionalizes planned change, trivializes the actual complexity of transforming practice. Regular interactions among school members around the school's vision, coupled with leadership and time, contributed to reform diffusion and improved instructional capacity in this study. Reform diffusion, a process that takes time, strong leadership, and regular social interactions, needs to be given more consideration as a valuable process to improve school performance.

The findings suggest that facilitative factors of diffusion can advance reform and improve capacity simultaneously. Successful reforms, defined as ones that disrupt traditional cultures and achieve goals, evolve through developmental stages that eventually lead to a changed culture. The rate of this evolution may vary, but the temporal process of establishing a shared understanding; designing, experimenting, and developing new tools; fostering expertise; and forming strong social networks are foundational supports for authentic and sustainable reform.

Reform diffusion offers an alternative framework to better understand the institutionalization of planned change in schools. The findings, while limited to elementary schools engaged in leadership reform, provide support for studying reform as an holistic social process that encompasses the design, adoption, implementation, and institutionalization of planned change.

Given the complexity of inclusive business (IB) to combine social contribution and business sustainability, companies make strategic choices. One multinational corporation (MNC) avoided interconnections with villagers and used only market-based relations with stimulants and incentives in the market. Another one delegated management completely to local partners, succeeding in stimulating the poor’s self-initiated economic activities. MNCs seem to have difficulties in handling institutional interconnections. In such cases, market-based relations or delegating management to the local partners were found to be highly effective for covering missing capabilities. One foreign NGO, despite its well-developed institutional interconnections with the locals, is struggling to develop markets for its social enterprises. In contrast, one local trust successfully cooperated with many local partners, appealing to local institutions (values and beliefs). Also, poor farmers felt the social contributions of two local companies by being incorporated into the companies’ supply chains backed by their corporate social responsibility (CSR) orientations and activities. Hence, both foreign and domestic organizations seem to succeed in IB by embedding their projects to their original institutions and developing diverse mechanisms to compensate for missing capabilities. One exception is a local company which successfully coordinated MNCs’ CSR activities, local communities, and governments. However, its success is owing to governmental regulation for CSR contribution. In general, though restricted by institutional backgrounds and business orientations, each case tried to create a fit between business models and its contingencies, achieve scale (at the level of communities, nations, or the global market) and business sustainability, and generate socioeconomic effects.