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1 – 10 of over 4000Kristiina Niemi-Kaija and Steven Pattinson
The purpose of this systematic narrative review is to discourse on vision and organizational performance. By analysing work-life and organization studies journals, the authors…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this systematic narrative review is to discourse on vision and organizational performance. By analysing work-life and organization studies journals, the authors respond to a call to view the process of visioning more holistically.
Design/methodology/approach
The methodological approach is a discourse-oriented qualitative content analysis. The authors explore visioning through an epistemological lens, which emphasizes both the connections and differences between “traditional” philosophical approaches.
Findings
The findings show how the different interpretations of vision and related concepts are tied to the following themes: clarity, causality, embodiment and sensory experiences and actionability.
Originality/value
Through the frameworks of scientific realism and relativism, the authors illustrate novel insights into the ways in which visioning occupies a place in knowledge management.
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Organizational wrongdoing researchers often look to past cases to empirically develop and support theoretical understanding. Their research is therefore conducted at a temporal…
Abstract
Organizational wrongdoing researchers often look to past cases to empirically develop and support theoretical understanding. Their research is therefore conducted at a temporal distance to focal events and frequently relies on retrospective accounts and surviving documentary evidence. These methodological circumstances define historical research practice, and we demonstrate in this paper the valuable insights that historical approaches can provide organizational wrongdoing research. Specifically, we draw on a range of practices from history and the social sciences to introduce four historically informed approaches: narrative history, analytically structured history, historical process study, short-term process study. We differentiate these based on their particular affordances and treatment of two key methodological considerations: historical evidence and temporality. We demonstrate the specific value these approaches represent to organizational wrongdoing research with several exemplars showing how they have been used in related fields of research.
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Markus Kantola, Hannele Seeck, Albert J. Mills and Jean Helms Mills
This paper aims to explore how historical context influences the content and selection of rhetorical legitimation strategies. Using case study method, this paper will focus on how…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to explore how historical context influences the content and selection of rhetorical legitimation strategies. Using case study method, this paper will focus on how insurance companies and labor tried to defend their legitimacy in the context of enactment of Medicare in the USA. What factors influenced the strategic (rhetorical) decisions made by insurance companies and labor unions in their institutional work?
Design/methodology/approach
The study is empirically grounded in archival research, involving an analysis of over 9,000 pages of congressional hearings on Medicare covering the period 1958–1965.
Findings
The authors show that rhetorical legitimation strategies depend significantly on the specific historical circumstances in which those strategies are used. The historical context lent credibility to certain arguments and organizations are forced to decide either to challenge widely held assumptions or take advantage of them. The authors show that organizations face strong incentives to pursue the latter option. Here, both the insurance companies and labor unions tried to show that their positions were consistent with classical liberal ideology, because of high respect of classical liberal principles among different stakeholders (policymakers, voters, etc.).
Research limitations/implications
It is uncertain how much the results of the study could be generalized. More information about the organizations whose use of rhetorics the authors studied could have strengthened our conclusions.
Practical implications
The practical relevancy of the revised paper is that the authors should not expect hegemony challenging rhetorics from organizations, which try to influence legislators (and perhaps the larger public). Perhaps (based on the findings), this kind of rhetorics is not even very effective.
Social implications
The paper helps to understand better how organizations try to advance their interests and gain acceptance among the stakeholders.
Originality/value
In this paper, the authors show how historical context in practice influence rhetorical arguments organizations select in public debates when their goal is to influence the decision-making of their audience. In particular, the authors show how dominant ideology (or ideologies) limit the options organizations face when they are choosing their strategies and arguments. In terms of the selection of rhetorical justification strategies, the most pressing question is not the “real” broad based support of certain ideologies. Insurance company and labor union representatives clearly believed that they must emphasize liberal values (or liberal ideology) if they wanted to gain legitimacy for their positions. In existing literature, it is often assumed that historical context influence the selection of rhetorical strategies but how this in fact happens is not usually specified. The paper shows how interpretations of historical contexts (including the ideological context) in practice influence the rhetorical strategies organizations choose.
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Nicholous M. Deal, Mark D. MacIsaac, Albert J. Mills and Jean Helms Mills
The purpose of this paper is to revisit the potential of the New Deal as a research context in management and organization studies and, in doing so, forward the role one of its…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to revisit the potential of the New Deal as a research context in management and organization studies and, in doing so, forward the role one of its chief architects, Harry Hopkins, played in managing the economic crisis. The exploration takes us to multiple layers that work together to form context around Hopkins including the Great Depression, the Roosevelt Administration, and ultimately, the New Deal. By raising Harry Hopkins as an exemplar of historical-narrative exclusion, the authors can advance the understanding of his role in the New Deal and how his actions produced early insights about management (e.g. modern crisis management).
Design/methodology/approach
The paper experiments with the methodological assemblage of ANTi-History and microhistorical analysis that the authors call “ANTi-Microhistory” to examine the life narrative of Harry Hopkins, his early association with President Franklin D. Roosevelt and later, the New Deal. To accomplish this, the authors undertake a programme of archival research (e.g. the digital repository of The Franklin D. Roosevelt Presidential Library and Museum) and assess various materials (e.g. speeches, biographies and memoirs) from across multiple spaces.
Findings
The findings suggest Harry Hopkins to be a much more powerful actor in mobilizing New Deal policies and their effect on early management thought than what was previously accepted. In the process, the authors found that because of durable associations with Roosevelt, key policy architects of the same ilk as Harry Hopkins (e.g. Frances Perkins, Henry Wallace, Lewis Douglas, and others) and their contributions have been marginalized. This finding illustrates the significant potential of little-known historical figures and how they might shed new insight on the development of the field and management practice.
Originality/value
The aim is to demonstrate the potential of engaging historical research in management with the individual – Harry Hopkins – as a unit of analysis. By engaging historical research on the individual – be it well-known or obscure figures of the past – the authors are considering how they contribute to the understanding of phenomena (e.g. New Deal, Progressivism or Keynesian economics). The authors build on research that brings to focus forgotten people, communities and ideas in management studies but go further in advocating for space in the research to consider the scholarly potential of the individual.
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The paper provides a detailed historical account of Douglass C. North's early intellectual contributions and analytical developments in pursuing a Grand Theory for why some…
Abstract
Purpose
The paper provides a detailed historical account of Douglass C. North's early intellectual contributions and analytical developments in pursuing a Grand Theory for why some countries are rich and others poor.
Design/methodology/approach
The author approaches the discussion using a theoretical and historical reconstruction based on published and unpublished materials.
Findings
The systematic, continuous and profound attempt to answer the Smithian social coordination problem shaped North's journey from being a young serious Marxist to becoming one of the founders of New Institutional Economics. In the process, he was converted in the early 1950s into a rigid neoclassical economist, being one of the leaders in promoting New Economic History. The success of the cliometric revolution exposed the frailties of the movement itself, namely, the limitations of neoclassical economic theory to explain economic growth and social change. Incorporating transaction costs, the institutional framework in which property rights and contracts are measured, defined and enforced assumes a prominent role in explaining economic performance.
Originality/value
In the early 1970s, North adopted a naive theory of institutions and property rights still grounded in neoclassical assumptions. Institutional and organizational analysis is modeled as a social maximizing efficient equilibrium outcome. However, the increasing tension between the neoclassical theoretical apparatus and its failure to account for contrasting political and institutional structures, diverging economic paths and social change propelled the modification of its assumptions and progressive conceptual innovation. In the later 1970s and early 1980s, North abandoned the efficiency view and gradually became more critical of the objective rationality postulate. In this intellectual movement, North's avant-garde research program contributed significantly to the creation of New Institutional Economics.
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Russia's attack on Ukraine on February 24, 2022, marked a very historic turning point in European security architecture. With enlarged Western aid in the immediate aftermath of…
Abstract
Russia's attack on Ukraine on February 24, 2022, marked a very historic turning point in European security architecture. With enlarged Western aid in the immediate aftermath of the invasion, Ukraine could have overcome somehow the crisis, yet many of its cities and infrastructure were largely destroyed and one-quarter of its citizens are now refugees and displaced. What is even more serious is that it remains unclear if and how a diplomatic solution could emerge between the parties. Russia's war against Ukraine is not an overnight event, it is a part of the story of the gradual escalation of Russian aggression on Ukraine since the beginning of the 2000s. Indeed, it is not just the result of the ideological or geopolitical competition between the West/European Union (EU) and Russia regarding their mutually exclusive or even antagonistic integration policies in the shared neighborhood. It is a more dynamic process including the agency of Ukraine with all aspects of its domestic politics and societal features, ideology, the role of energy, business links as well as the impact of regional and global dimensions. This chapter aims to overview the interlinked relationship between the EU, Ukraine, and Russia in a triadic manner within key aspects including ideology, geopolitics, energy, and integration projects and by specifically focusing on the underlying factors that have triggered the emergence of the Russia–Ukraine war of 2022 and further implications for the EU politics.
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Nicholous M. Deal, Christopher M. Hartt and Albert J. Mills
By reconsidering the concept of the historic environment, the aim of this study is to better understand how heritage is expressed by examining the networks within which the…
Abstract
Purpose
By reconsidering the concept of the historic environment, the aim of this study is to better understand how heritage is expressed by examining the networks within which the cultural performances of the historic environment take place. The goal is to move beyond a purely material expression and seek the expansion of the cultural dimension of the historic environment.
Design/methodology/approach
Conceptually, the historic environment is considered a valuable resource for heritage expression and exploration. The databases and records that house historic environment data are venerated and frequented entities for archeologists, but arguably less so for non-specialist users. In inventorying the historic environment, databases fulfill a major role in the planning process and asset management that is often considered to be more than just perfunctory. This paper approaches historic environment records (HERs) from an actor network perspective, particularizing the social foundation and relationships within the networks governing the historic environment and the environment's associated records.
Findings
The paper concludes that the performance of HERs from an actor-network perspective is a hegemonic process that is biased toward the supply and input to and from professional users. Furthermore, the paper provides a schematic for how many of the flaws in heritage transmission have come about.
Originality/value
The relevance here is largely belied by the fact that HERs as both public digital resources and as heritage networks were awaiting to be addressed in depth from a theoretical point of view.
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Billie Eilam, Merav Yosfan, Joel Lanir and Alan J. Wecker
The authors conducted a study at a history museum with the objective of examining changes in the knowledge of students aged 12 to 14 concerning the use of primary sources.
Abstract
Purpose
The authors conducted a study at a history museum with the objective of examining changes in the knowledge of students aged 12 to 14 concerning the use of primary sources.
Design/methodology/approach
Students utilized self-led guides while exploring two museum spaces presenting different historical events. These guides encouraged students to scrutinize the exhibits, become acquainted with the methods employed in their research, and develop an awareness of the information derived from them. Students' responses to pre- and postquestionnaires were compared and analyzed using mixed methods.
Findings
The results revealed that students became familiar with various types of primary sources, recognized that only specific sources endure through time and gained an understanding of the research methods employed to study them. Additionally, most students comprehended that the same sources could lead to diverse historical accounts and the potential reasons for such variations.
Practical implications
Recommendations for practice are discussed.
Originality/value
This study contributed to the limited knowledge regarding learning during a single, self-led tour in a history museum. The findings illuminate the potential for learning and advancing historical thinking concepts even within such museum-visit contexts.
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