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1 – 10 of 117Gaia Bassani, Jan A. Pfister and Cristiana Cattaneo
The purpose of this paper is to explore the role of leadership in management accounting change processes and outcomes.
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to explore the role of leadership in management accounting change processes and outcomes.
Design/methodology/approach
The paper draws on an ethnographic study in a Southern European company and mobilizes leader–follower relations as a method theory to analyse the observations.
Findings
The findings show how a leadership dispute between two top managers can be amplified during the management accounting change process and percolate throughout an organization. The authors identify five contested areas where the role of accounting amplifies the leadership dispute by unfolding its reach to other organizational actors. The leadership dispute can shape and reinforce a fragmented organization, with some organizational members creating convergent leader–follower relations while others divert and fragment with an increased turnover. This amplification can lead to unexpected outcomes of the change process in terms of how and by whom accounting is performed.
Research limitations/implications
The authors propose the study of leadership and followership as an important but, to date, largely neglected theme in management accounting research.
Originality/value
In contrast to the prior management accounting literature, the paper departs from a leadership-centric and role-based approach and employs a co-constructionist and relational approach to leadership and followership to analyse management accounting change. In addition, it applies and extends Alvesson's (2019a) theory on “divergent relationalities” between the presumed leaders and followers. In doing so, the paper also adds to the leadership field by theorizing and integrating the situation of a leadership dispute in this novel theoretical framework.
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Tony Lingham, Bonnie A. Richley and Ricard S. Serlavos
The purpose of this paper is four‐fold: to highlight the emerging stream of team interaction in research; to present a methodology to measure and map out team interaction; to…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is four‐fold: to highlight the emerging stream of team interaction in research; to present a methodology to measure and map out team interaction; to compare team interaction between US and Spanish MBA teams so as to identify any differences between the two cultures; and to propose team interaction focused programs in educational institutions and organizations.
Design/methodology/approach
The study used a quantitative research design and administered a survey that captures ten aspects of team interaction in four major dimensions to 32 US MBA teams (n = 176) and 31 Spanish MBA teams (n = 152) engaged in the same group exercise and used ANOVA analysis to compare the two groups.
Findings
The findings show that the US and Spanish teams differ only in the diverging dimension of their actual team interaction (F = 26.42, p < 0.000). A comparative analysis of the ideal team interaction show that both MBA samples desire increased levels of the diverging (F = 37.7, p < 0.000) and recursiveness (F = 23.65, p < 0.000) dimensions.
Practical implications
The study provides a methodology and highlights the significance of employing a team interaction perspective for team learning and development programs in educational and organizational settings.
Originality/value
The paper presents team interaction along four major dimensions – divergent, convergent, status and recursiveness – and provides a brief overview of the theory of Conversational Learning. The approach used in this study contributes to this emerging stream of team research and presents the significance of focusing on the social‐emotional aspects of team interaction in educational and organizational team development programs.
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Jane Ribbens McCarthy, Ruth Evans, Guo Yu and Fatou Kébé
The category of ‘child’ is often presumed to be underpinned by ‘natural’ biological differences from the category of ‘adult’, and the category of ‘family’ is open to similar…
Abstract
The category of ‘child’ is often presumed to be underpinned by ‘natural’ biological differences from the category of ‘adult’, and the category of ‘family’ is open to similar ‘naturalising’ and universalizing tendencies. Challenging this view has been a central tenet of the New Social Studies of Childhood, arguing instead that ‘child’ and ‘childhood’ are socially constructed, and highlighting children’s agency in shaping their social worlds. More complex frameworks have since emerged, whether concerning the need for a relational ontology of ‘child’, or for a recognition of the diversity of childhoods and families globally. Here we extend the debate to engage with the problematic of the very nature of ‘categories’ themselves, to explore how categorical thinking varies across, and is embedded within, linguistic, historical and philosophical processes and world views. Drawing on the examples of the categories of ‘child’ in China, and ‘family’ in Senegal, West Africa, we consider aspects of fluidity in their indigenous linguistic framing, and how their translation into European terms may fail to fully capture their meanings, which may ‘slip away’ in the process. Such ‘gaps’ between divergent linguistic framings include underlying world views, and assumptions about what it means to be human, raising issues of individuality, relationality and connectedness. Through this discussion we raise new questions concerning the processes of categorical thinking in relation to ‘child’ and ‘family’, calling for cautious consideration of what may be ‘unthought’ in these categories as they feature in much of contemporary childhood and family studies.
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David Andrew Vickers, Alice Moore and Louise Vickers
This study aims to weave together narrative analysis (hereinafter NA) and Actor-Network Theory (hereinafter ANT), in order to address recent calls for performative studies to…
Abstract
Purpose
This study aims to weave together narrative analysis (hereinafter NA) and Actor-Network Theory (hereinafter ANT), in order to address recent calls for performative studies to combine approaches and specifically to use ANT. Particularly, they address how a conflicting narrative is mobilised through a network of internal–external and human–nonhuman actors.
Design/methodology/approach
A fragment of data, generated from a longitudinal case study, is explored using NA and ANT in combination.
Findings
By engaging with ANT’s rejection of dualisms (i.e. human–nonhuman and micro–macro) and its approach to relationality, the authors inform NA and performative studies. They also add to the limited literature addressing how conflicting antenarratives are mobilised and shape the organisation’s trajectory.
Research limitations/implications
Generalizing from a single case study is problematic, although transferability is possible. Generalisability could be achievable through multiple performative studies.
Practical/implications
By demonstrating how counter networks form and antenarrative is constructed to supplant hegemonic narrative, the authors are able to problematise the taken for granted and highlight the possibilities offered by divergent voices.
Originality/value
The performation provides a deeper understanding of organisational performance through our NA-ANT combination, and the authors provide insight into the mobilisation of conflicting narratives in organisation studies.
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Premilla D’Cruz and Ernesto Noronha
The purpose of this paper is to report a study of targets’ experiences of cyberbullying on online labour markets (OLMs). In addition to highlighting the link between targets’…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to report a study of targets’ experiences of cyberbullying on online labour markets (OLMs). In addition to highlighting the link between targets’ coping and power and control, the paper compares conventional and digital workplaces.
Design/methodology/approach
The method of critical hermeneutic phenomenology is used in the inquiry, bringing political and applied dimensions into the study. Targets’ lived experiences, developed as case studies, were explored via conversational interviews. Thematic analysis was undertaken ideographically, followed by ideology-critique at a nomothetic level. Adopting the psychological/behavioural lens of coping theory, ideology-critique identified micro-level schemas and macro-level ideologies that perpetuate target disenfranchisement. Critical hermeneutic phenomenology illuminates the mutuality between individual and social processes, opening new doors to address power inequities through emancipation.
Findings
Hermeneutic phenomenology uncovered the core theme of “pursuing holistic and long-term well-being”, capturing targets’ attempts at working through their experiences of bullying without jeopardising their position on the OLM. Ideology-critique went beyond highlighting problem-focussed and emotion-focussed coping strategies that empowered targets to indicate how participants’ mindsets, anchored in ongoing circumstantial discourses and long-standing social cognitions, inhibited them from questioning the status quo and exploring alternative coping strategies like legislation and collectivisation, thereby curbing their agency. The findings were theorised in terms of power and control vis-à-vis the unique attributes of workplace cyberbullying, comparing and contrasting conventional and virtual workplaces.
Research limitations/implications
The inquiry is limited to the Upwork platform. Including other OLMs will enhance theoretical generalisability.
Practical implications
The study feeds into praxis by alerting digital workers in general and targets in particular about their circumstances, setting the stage for mobilisation.
Originality/value
The study makes several pioneering contributions. First, it reports the first empirical inquiry examining bullying in digital workplaces, importantly, also extending knowledge on cyberbullying across conventional versus digital workplaces. Moreover, OLM research on abuse and harassment has not been undertaken so far. Second, methodologically, the inquiry illustrates the combination of hermeneutic phenomenology with ideology-critique, taking the rare steps of joining ontological perspectives conventionally viewed as divergent and of incorporating a largely neglected micro-level focus into ideology-critique. Third, it furthers theoretical insights into power and control in workplace bullying while drawing links with coping.
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Manuel F. Suárez‐Barraza1 and Tony Lingham
As organizations become more team oriented, research on teams continues to increase especially involving how teams contribute to organizational performance and effectiveness…
Abstract
Purpose
As organizations become more team oriented, research on teams continues to increase especially involving how teams contribute to organizational performance and effectiveness. Although there has been existing research on Kaizen teams in the private sector, very little research has included Kaizen teams in the public sector. In this paper, we present a method to study Kaizen teams in a local Spanish government that have been using Kaizen teams for more than ten years.
Design/methodology/approach
Quantitative research was adopted for this study. Twenty teams participated in the study by filling out the Team Learning and Development Inventory (TLI) proposed by Lingham (2004). In addition, we interviewed members of the teams in order to clarify and assure our quantitative results.
Findings
Based on the findings, we propose that Kaizen teams should practice both Continuous (CI) and Process Improvements (PI) in their projects. We also propose that Kaizen teams should not be teams skilled only at developing better improvement processes (both CI and PI) for the organization but that such teams should also be skilled at engaging in team development using both CI and PI processes internally – a Kaizen within Kaizen teams approach.
Research limitations
Its based in one case study. However, it is working paper and the research project still is developing.
Practical Implications
Serve as a guide to practitioners (Public managers) who desire to understand how their Kaizen teams involves both internal (conversational spaces) and external (methodology) perspectives that would contribute to both team and organizational effectiveness. In this paper, we focus on the Internal Processes (both CI and PI) using the TLI as an effective method for Kaizen teams to engage in the Kaizen process.
Originality/value
This study is one of the first to look at team’s performance using Team Learning and Development Inventory in Spain’s public sector. It is also the first to mention about the relationship of the team’s performance and the implementation of process improvement methodologies in Spain local government environment.
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Martina Hutton and Charlotte Lystor
This paper focuses on the analytical importance of voice and the value of listening and representing voices in private contexts. It highlights the under-theorised position of…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper focuses on the analytical importance of voice and the value of listening and representing voices in private contexts. It highlights the under-theorised position of relationality in family research. The paper introduces the listening guide as a unique analytical approach to sharpen researchers’ understanding of private experiences and articulations.
Design/methodology/approach
This is a conceptual and technical paper. It problematises voice, authority and analytical representation in the private location of family and examines how relational dynamics interact with the subtleties of voice in research. It also provides a practical illustration of the listening guide detailing how researchers can use this analytical approach.
Findings
The paper illustrates how the listening guide works as an analytical method, structured around four stages and applied to interview transcript excerpts.
Practical implications
The listening guide bridges private and public knowledge-making, by identifying competing voices and recognises relations of power in family research. It provides qualitative market researchers with an analytical tool to hear changes and continuities in participants’ sense of self over time.
Social implications
The paper highlights how peripheral voices and silence can be analytically surfaced in private domains. A variety of studies and data can be explored with this approach, however, research questions involving vulnerable or marginal experiences are particularly suitable.
Originality/value
The paper presents the listening guide as a novel analytic method for researching family life – one, which recovers the importance of voice and serves as a means to address the lack of debate on voice and authority in qualitative market research. It also highlights the under-theorised position of relationality in tracing the multiple subjectivities of research participants. It interrupts conventional qualitative analysis methods, directing attention away from conventional coding and towards listening as an alternative route to knowledge.
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Monica Diochon, Gabrielle Durepos and Alistair R. Anderson
The chapter aims to enhance our understanding of “opportunity” in the context of social entrepreneurship through a paradigm interplay juxtaposing a functionalist thematic analysis…
Abstract
The chapter aims to enhance our understanding of “opportunity” in the context of social entrepreneurship through a paradigm interplay juxtaposing a functionalist thematic analysis and interpretivist sensemaking. This paradigmatic contrasting identifies differences and connections in the tensions of: linearity and simplicity/dynamism and complexity; forward/backward, generalizability/situated relationality, and value-laden/value-neutral. These contrasts deepen our understanding of “opportunity” so that the theoretical and practical implications can be seen.
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M. Paola Ometto, Michael Lounsbury and Joel Gehman
How do radical technological fields become naturalized and taken for granted? This is a fundamental question given both the positive and negative hype surrounding the emergence of…
Abstract
How do radical technological fields become naturalized and taken for granted? This is a fundamental question given both the positive and negative hype surrounding the emergence of many new technologies. In this chapter, we study the emergence of the US nanotechnology field, focusing on uncovering the mechanisms by which leaders of the National Nanotechnology Initiative managed hype and its concomitant legitimacy challenges which threatened the commercial viability of nanotechnology. Drawing on the cultural entrepreneurship literature at the interface of strategy and organization theory, we argue that the construction of a naturalizing frame – a frame that focuses attention and practice on mundane, “rationalized” activity – is key to legitimating a novel and uncertain technological field. Leveraging the insights from our case study, we further develop a staged process model of how a naturalizing frame may be constructed, thereby paving the way for a decrease in hype and the institutionalization of new technologies.
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