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The leadership style and communication practices of supervisors in the Australian construction industry were measured. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the effect of leadership style and communication practices of Australian construction supervisors on workgroup health and safety (H&S) climate and behaviour.

A questionnaire was administered to members of 20 workgroups engaged in rail construction work on the Level Crossing Removal Project and the Melbourne Metro Tunnel Project in Victoria, Australia. The survey measured components of supervisors’ transformational and transactional leadership, communication practices, the group H&S climate and workers’ self-reported H&S compliance and participation.

Supervisors’ transformational and transactional leadership, as well as communication practices, were all positively and significantly correlated with group H&S climate and workers’ self-reported H&S behaviours. The transformational leadership component of providing an appropriate model was the strongest predictor of H&S participation, while H&S compliance was predicted by the transactional leadership component of providing contingent reward, as well as supervisors’ communication practices. H&S climate fully mediated the relationship between supervisory leadership and workers’ self-reported H&S behaviour.

The research demonstrates that both transformational and transactional supervisory leadership are important in the construction context. Effective communication between supervisors and workers is also important for H&S. The findings suggest that supervisory leadership development programmes may be an effective way to improve H&S performance in predominantly subcontracted construction workgroups.

The purpose of this paper is to research the nature of supply chain strategy (SCS). It represents one stage of an on‐going research initiative aimed at providing a framework for systematic understanding of the linkages between corporate strategy (CS) making and supply chain management (SCM).

The paper explored the theory and literature related to strategic management and SCM. Four generic levels of strategy were linked to SCM, and synthesized into an explanatory SCS‐framework. Propositions for future research were presented based on the framework.

The paper shows that most of the literature on SCS relates to the functional level. Largely undiscovered are the links between corporate and business unit strategies with supply chain strategies and capabilities, especially on the network level (NL).

A fit between CS and SCM positively impacts the performance of a firm. The framework developed can be used by managers to assist in thinking through possibilities to link supply chain capabilities with the CS making processes.

By distinguishing between functional, business, corporate, and NLs, the paper provides a framework for future research to enhance knowledge related to supply chain strategies and capabilities.

This chapter explores a relatively underresearched assumption in the diversity literature, namely, that more variety in demographic characteristics, educational or functional backgrounds, or hierarchical status in the workforce represents a wider repertoire of perspectives, approaches, and ways of thinking. Using data from members of innovation teams across 27 organizations in 11 industries (for which variation in thinking should be highly valued), we explore at the individual level whether people with different demographic and informational backgrounds evidence differences in ways of thinking which we define in terms of cognitive styles, learning styles, cultural orientations, and communication preferences. We find large differences in ways of thinking due to culture and communication preferences but modest and limited differences in ways of thinking by level and type of education, occupational function, and hierarchical status. We find few differences by gender. The findings raise questions about the frequently repeated claims that categorical and informational diversity among organizational members reflects differences in ways of thinking.

Over the last several decades, businesses have faced mounting pressures from diverse stakeholders to alter their corporate operations to become more socially and environmentally responsible. In turn, many firms appear to have responded by implementing more sustainable practices — measuring, documenting, and publishing annual CSR or sustainability reports to showcase how they are addressing important issues in this area, including: resource stewardship, waste management, greenhouse gas emission reductions, fair and safe labor practices, amongst other stakeholder concerns. And yet, research in this domain has not yet systematically examined whether businesses have, on the whole, changed their practices in tandem with the important changes in its institutional context over time. Have corporate CSR initiatives, in fact, been growing over the last 25 years or has the increased attention to CSR actually been much ado about nothing? In this chapter, we review the empirical literature on CSR to uncover that common measures of CSR such as the KLD do not support the concept that CSR practices have increased substantively over the last 25 years. We supplement this historical review by modeling the growth curves of CSR implementation in practice and find that the pace of positive change has indeed been glacial. More alarmingly, we also look at corporate social irresponsibility (CSiR) and find that, contrary to expectations, businesses have become more, not less, irresponsible during this same time period. Implications of these findings for theory are presented as are suggestions for future research in this domain.

This study investigates the connection between corporate governance and zombie firm’s exit time.

With a sample of 2,794 French zombie firms, the analysis focuses on four aspects of corporate governance: board size (BS), managerial ownership (MO), director turnover (DT) and ownership concentration, using tobit regression.

Dimensions of corporate governance have an important role in determining zombie firms’ exit time. MO and ownership concentration increase zombie firm exit time, whereas larger BSs and DT reduce it.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is the first to include corporate governance as a characteristic relevant to zombie firms’ exit time. It provides new insights on why some zombie firms remain in the market longer than expected.

While there is a growing pool of literature on the drivers of adoption of green supply chain management (GSCM) practices, the literature has not properly explored the role of green capabilities as drivers of GSCM adoption. This study aims to examine four green capabilities (green supplier development, green marketing, green manufacturing and packaging and environmental participation) as the drivers of GSCM adoption.

The study develops and empirically tests a research model which explores the effect of green capabilities on GSCM adoption. A survey of 200 manufacturing and extractive firms operating in Ghana was conducted, with 94 usable responses obtained. The research model was analyzed by using partial least squares structural equation modeling.

The results revealed that green supplier development capabilities and environmental participation capabilities had positive and significant effects on GSCM adoption. Green marketing capabilities had a positive but weak effect on GSCM adoption. Green manufacturing and packaging capabilities, however, did not significantly impact GSCM adoption.

To the best of the researchers’ knowledge, this is the first study that empirically examines green capabilities as drivers of GSCM adoption.

In the workplace, forgiveness can increase positive interactions between the victim and offender in the aftermath of a conflict. As an important intrapersonal factor in an organization, a victim’s power motives may shape one’s forgiveness. However, previous research shows inconsistent results because it only considers explicit power motives while ignoring the possible contingent role of implicit power motives in influencing forgiveness. This paper aims to consider both implicit and explicit power motives and aims to examine their joint effect on interpersonal forgiveness in the workplace conflict.

Polynomial regressions with response surface analysis were conducted with 415 Amazon Mechanical Turk users. Implicit power motives were measured by using a modified picture story exercise technique, whereas explicit power motives were measured via self-response scales.

First, congruence in power motives was associated with higher empathy and forgiveness than incongruence. In addition, high-implicit/high explicit power motives led to higher level of empathy and forgiveness than low-implicit/low-explicit power motives. Furthermore, directional power motive incongruence had an additive effect on forgiveness, such that discrepantly low-implicit/high-explicit power motives were more detrimental to empathy and forgiveness than discrepantly high-implicit/low-explicit power motives. Finally, empathy underlies the combined effect of implicit and explicit power motives on forgiveness.

The findings suggest that in a workplace conflict, managers should consider an employee’s explicit and implicit motives. To build the harmony group work climate, managers can improve intrapersonal implicit–explicit power motive congruence by providing developmental support and training focusing on self-enhancement and self-affirmation with the low-explicit-powerful employees. Further, to promote forgiveness in a conflict, organizations can use empathy-based exercise and provide team building activities to increase employees’ empathy and perspective-taking toward others.

By integrating implicit–explicit framework, this paper conciliates previous studies investigating the relationship between power and forgiveness by proposing that the two types of power motives, implicit and explicit power motives, jointly influences a victim’s forgiving tendency. This study serves as a meaningful touchstone for future research to consider both implicit and explicit power motives into the organizational conflict framework.

The resource-based view of the firm and strategic groups research are two of the most investigated frameworks in strategic management. Historically, assumptions behind these two views have seemingly put them at odds. The resource-based view of the firm argues that sustained competitive advantage is best attained when firms have unique resources, while strategic groups research argues that a number of firms within the same industry can achieve sustained profitability with strategies that are similar to one another, but distinct from other industry members. The two views focus on different levels of analysis and each largely ignores the other’s focal level. Yet neither offers any propositions that are incompatible with the tenets of the other. Thus, conceptual integration that crosses levels of analysis is possible and potentially fruitful. Indeed, some strategic groups research has begun to bridge the gap between these two theories by suggesting that firm differences exist both within and between strategic groups. This article adopts a multi-level view by developing propositions concerning contingencies when firm differences, group processes, or both may lead to sustained competitive advantage. Implications for practitioners as well as suggestions for future theory building and empirical tests are also discussed.

The contrast of multilevel and comparative research may seem counterintuitive at first. After all, one might argue that comparative research on organizations by necessity spans several levels of analysis (Rokkan, 1966). Yet, multilevel and comparative research on organizations present rather distinct traditions in organization studies, each with its own epistemological assumptions and associated methods. Accordingly, an approach that aims to incorporate both multilevel and comparative ideas needs to start with taking inventory of these prior literatures to situate itself. In the following, we thus turn to the literatures on multilevel and comparative research as different traditions with surprisingly little overlap.