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This paper highlights the evolvement of international business curricula during the 1990s, with an emphasis on occurrences at IU. Because business students are increasingly entering universities with more international experience and international learning expectations than in the past, business schools must respond with course content changes; however, not all professors feel comfortable in adding substantial international content to their courses. Business schools have responded in three organizational ways – separation, infusion, and diffusion – none of which has been without problems. During the 1990s, IU followed a combination of the first two.

Leaders are important social actors in organizations, centrally involved in establishing and maintaining institutional values, a view that was articulated by Philip Selznick (1957) nearly a half-century ago, but often overlooked in institutionalists’ accounts. Our objective is to build on Selznick’s seminal work to investigate the value proposition of leadership consistent with institutional theory. We examine public interview transcripts from 52 senior executives and discover that leaders’ conceptualizations of their entities align with the archetypes of organization (i.e., economic, hierarchical, and power oriented) and institution (i.e., ideological, creative and collectivist) and cohere around a set of relevant values. Extrapolating from this, we advance a theoretical framework of the process whereby leaders’ claims function as transformational mechanisms of value infusion in the institutionalization of organizations.

Teams in extreme and disruptive contexts face unique challenges that can undermine coordination and decision-making. In this study, we evaluated how affective differences between team members and team process norms affected the team's decision-making effectiveness.

Teams were placed in a survival simulation where they evaluated how best to maximize the team's survival prospects given scarce resources. We incorporated multisource and multirater (i.e., team, observer, and archival) data to ascertain the impacts of affect asymmetry and team process norms on decision-making effectiveness.

Results suggest that teams with low positive affect asymmetry and low process norms generate the most effective decisions. The least effective team decision performance occurred in teams characterized by high variance in team positive affectivity (high positive affect asymmetry) and low process norms. We found no similar effect for teams with high process norms and no effect for negative affect asymmetry, however, irrespective of team process norms.

These findings support the affect infusion model and extend cognitive resource theory, by highlighting how affect infusion processes and situational constraints influence team decision-making in extreme and disruptive contexts.

Workarounds represent informal modifications to rules and procedures that individuals will engage into navigate around a process block in order to make their job easier. Although workarounds have been primarily studied from an individual-level perspective, this chapter argues that workarounds are a socially constructed, multilevel phenomenon, meaning that they are influenced by others (e.g., group norms and coworkers) and can result in the emergence of workaround climates. We find empirical support for the view that workarounds are shaped by a variety of social influences. Moreover, based on an inductive exploratory study, we suggest that workarounds are related to informal training and troubleshooting behaviors. We conclude by outlining several theory-based directions for understanding how workarounds spread throughout all levels of an organization as an incubator for future research.

This chapter analyses the causes and effects of the financial crisis that commenced in 2008, and it examines the dramatic government rescues and reforms. The outcomes of this, the most severe collapse to befall the United States and the global economy for three-quarters of a century, are still unfolding. Banks, homeowners and industries stood to benefit from government intervention, particularly the huge infusion of taxpayer funds, but their future is uncertain. Instead of extending vital credit, banks simply kept the capital to cover other firm needs (including bonuses for executives). Industry in the prevailing slack economy was not actively seeking investment opportunities and credit expansion. The property and job markets languished behind securities market recovery. It all has been disheartening and scary – rage against those in charge fuelled gloom and cynicism. Immense private debt was a precursor, but public debt is the legacy we must resolve in the future.

This study uses structural equation modeling to investigate the impact of ABC implementation factors (management support, clarity and consensus of ABC objectives, non-accounting ownership, and training) on quality, cost, and cycle time improvements, the relations among quality, cost, and cycle time improvements and, the influence of quality, cost, and cycle time improvement on financial performance at the business unit level. Overall, the results of the structural analyses support the theoretical model indicating that ABC implementation factors influence quality, cost, and cycle time, and partial support for the relations among quality, cost, and cycle time improvement and their effect on financial performance. When these relationships are further analyzed within the context of ABC implementation stage, adoption of advanced manufacturing practices, industry characteristics and plant size to determine if these contextual factors impact the model constructs and the relationships between the variables in the theoretical model, the results show that these contextual factors do not affect the model constructs, however, they affect the model relations.

This paper traces the fifty-year history of internationalization at Indiana University’s Business School. From the impact of the end of World War II, to the founding of the nation’s second IB department in the 1950s, to the School’s extensive involvement in institution-building abroad, the author examines the various institutional models the School adopted over the years to further its internationalization efforts. Finally, the paper describes the evolution of the infusion model and the range of international opportunities it offers faculty and students at IU’s Business School today.

This chapter develops a framework for classifying approaches to conceptualizing and measuring implementation of innovations. It first develops a typology that distinguishes rollout, modification, programmatic and transformation conceptualizations of implementation. The implications of each conceptualization for measurement of implementation are discussed. Following this a classification scheme for implementation measures is presented that distinguishes measures on the basis of their: (a) criterion for success of the implementation; (b) innovation unit; (c) source of data; (d) measurement scale; and (e) level of analysis. Issues related to various measurement choices are discussed along with recommendations for future research and development in the measurement of implementation.

While many modern institutionalists have shown a renewed interest in Philip Selznick’s early work, previous efforts to reincorporate his perspective have given relatively little attention to values (which are the most central element of the theory itself). This paper addresses this disconnect by: (1) revisiting Selznick’s key arguments about values and explaining their various roles in his thought, (2) expressing a theoretical framework through which values could be “reinfused” into the contemporary institutional literature and, (3) developing six different proposals for theory and research which do just this. These proposals are offered as an a la carte menu of possibilities, rather than a programmatic agenda for reform. While we hope that our paper will facilitate a renewed focus on values within institutional theory, we do not see this as a theoretical imperative.

The chapter discusses the conditions under which a transport small and medium-sized enterprise (SME) engages in strategic corporate social responsibility (CSR) and how complex new technology might be adopted.

The chapter is based on the case study of a transport SME engaging into greening its transport activity with electric trucks.

The case study gives an insight into adoption conditions of radical new technology by an SME where collective adoption is required to make the new system efficient. It suggests that an industry leader undergoes the trial stage to favour later infusion of the innovation across the given industry. It is also shown that strategic CSR from SMEs is hampered by the complex setting into which new technologies are embedded.

Environmental concerns engage companies in important technological changes. In order to set up their strategy, SMEs should get involved in professional organizations within their industry and across industries, to benefit from information and ultimately to facilitate adoption where multi-user adoption is a key technology characteristic.

The work introduces the challenges of transition economy and new technology adoption in the prospect of greening transport activities. It shows the eco-systemic nature of ongoing changes and the necessity for SMEs to network within and across industries.