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1 – 6 of 6Anne-Charlott Callerstig, Marta Lindvert, Elisabet Carine Ljunggren, Marit Breivik-Meyer, Gry Agnete Alsos and Dag Balkmar
In order to address the gender divide in technology entrepreneurship, we explore how different national contexts impact policies and policy implementation. We investigate how…
Abstract
Purpose
In order to address the gender divide in technology entrepreneurship, we explore how different national contexts impact policies and policy implementation. We investigate how transnational concerns (macro level) about women’s low participation in (technology) entrepreneurship are translated and implemented amongst actors at the meso level (technology incubators) and understood at the micro level (women tech entrepreneurs).
Design/methodology/approach
We adopt gender institutionalism as a theoretical lens to understand what happens in the implementation of gender equality goals in technology entrepreneurship policy. We apply Gains and Lowndes’ (2014) conceptual framework to investigate the gendered character and effects of institutional formation. Four countries represent different levels of gender equality: high (Norway and Sweden), medium (Ireland) and low (Israel). An initial policy document analysis provides the macro level understanding (Heilbrunn et al., 2020). At the meso level, managers of technology business incubators (n = 3–5) in each country were interviewed. At the micro level, 10 female technology entrepreneurs in each country were interviewed. We use an inductive research approach, combined with thematic analysis.
Findings
Policies differ across the four countries, ranging from women-centred approaches to gender mainstreaming. Macro level policies are interpreted and implemented in different ways amongst actors at the meso level, who tend to act in line with given national policies. Actors at the micro level often understand gender equality in ways that reflect their national policies. However, women in all four countries share similar struggles with work-life balance and gendered expectations in relation to family responsibilities.
Originality/value
The contribution of our paper is to (1) entrepreneurship theory by applying gendered institutionalism theory to (tech) entrepreneurship, and (2) our findings clearly show that the gendered context matters for policy implementation.
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Mariana Baldi, Frank G.A. de Bakker and Rodrigo Luís Melz
This study aims to analyse the strategic moves used by major tobacco corporations to thwart the ratification of the World Health Organization’s Framework Convention on Tobacco…
Abstract
Purpose
This study aims to analyse the strategic moves used by major tobacco corporations to thwart the ratification of the World Health Organization’s Framework Convention on Tobacco Control (FCTC) in Brazil.
Design/methodology/approach
The authors conducted a detailed historical case study spanning 1988–2005 and encompassing the period leading up to Brazil’s FCTC ratification. The authors collected qualitative data from various sources to triangulate and develop a comprehensive historical account.
Findings
The historical analysis identified three distinct phases. First, the acquisition of a Brazilian cigarette factory, Souza Cruz, by British American Tobacco dramatically altered power dynamics, strengthening the position of the tobacco industry. The second phase regards the era of dictatorship and the efforts of various actors advocating against smoking and the tobacco industry. The third phase involved Brazil’s re-democratisation and the challenges of securing FCTC ratification, during which fierce industry opposition had to be overcome. Throughout these phases, the authors identified four key strategies used by multinational corporations (MNCs) in Brazil to uphold unsustainable practices and products that contradicted public interests instead of reforming them: shaping collective memory, dissimulation, re-presentation and redirecting attention.
Originality/value
This study contributes to critical international business research on emerging economies by examining how Brazil’s position in the global capitalist system has influenced its dependency and how MNCs produce and maintain cycles of poverty and unsustainable practices through the exploitation of power dynamics within the country.
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Sven Januszek, Torbjørn H. Netland and Andrea Furlan
Do managers at different hierarchical levels in a firm perceive the effectiveness of a lean program differently, and does it matter for their commitment to it and the resulting…
Abstract
Purpose
Do managers at different hierarchical levels in a firm perceive the effectiveness of a lean program differently, and does it matter for their commitment to it and the resulting lean implementation? This study answers these questions by analyzing the perceptions and behaviors of top and middle managers in a manufacturer deploying a global lean program.
Design/methodology/approach
The authors hypothesize that managers at different levels perceive lean programs differently, which, in turn, should affect their commitment to lean and the resulting implementation. To test these relationships empirically, the authors collect survey data from a global manufacturer in the process industry and analyze them using hierarchical linear regression and structural equation modeling.
Findings
The findings show that middle managers perceive lean programs as more effective than top managers do. They further show that higher commitment from the top and middle managers to the lean program is positively related to building the organizational infrastructure needed for lean implementation.
Research limitations/implications
This research is conducted in one global company. Although the research setting implicitly controls for many possible confounding variables, such as the product and process complexity or organizational culture, future research can explore and test the findings in other organizational contexts.
Originality/value
This study is the first to empirically study the relations between perceptions of and commitment to lean programs across different hierarchical levels and what it means for program implementation. The paper contributes new plausible explanations for why many lean programs slow down.
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Sof Thrane, Lars Balslev and Ivar Friis
The purpose of this paper is to investigate how fairness evaluations are constructed in a B2B context.
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to investigate how fairness evaluations are constructed in a B2B context.
Design/methodology/approach
This paper conducts a field study of Air Greenland and its internal and external customers based on strong structuration theory (Stones, 2005). The authors employ context and conduct analysis to analyze how fairness evaluations emerge across four levels of structuration.
Findings
The paper finds that fairness evaluations emerge as a result of the interaction between external institutional pressures, agents' internal structures, and situated reflection and outcomes. The construction of fairness evaluations was embedded in contradictory institutional structures, where groups of actors constructed different evaluations of fair profits, procedures and prices. Actors furthermore worked on changing position-practice relations which shifted relations, external structures and affected outcomes and fairness evaluations.
Originality/value
This paper offers a conceptualization of embedded agency as emerging across the four levels of structuration. This contributes to debates in strong structuration theory through conceptualizing and analyzing how actors may be both be constrained and oriented by structures while reflexively adapting structures across the four levels of structuration. The paper extends extant pricing fairness research by illustrating how actors' construction of fairness flexibly develop fairness evaluations while responding to legitimacy and societal demands, including the needs of particular customer groups.
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Yanjiao Yang, Xiaohua Lin and Robert B. Anderson
Entrepreneurship by Indigenous people in Canada and Australia, while historically connected to the ancestral lands and traditional practices of Indigenous people, has been…
Abstract
Purpose
Entrepreneurship by Indigenous people in Canada and Australia, while historically connected to the ancestral lands and traditional practices of Indigenous people, has been evolving and expanding in scope and nature. In this article, the authors aim to offer an integrative framework for capturing the contemporary dynamics and outcomes of entrepreneurship by Indigenous people as they pursue venture creation as part of their broader development aspirations.
Design/methodology/approach
Drawing on literature from place-based views of entrepreneurship and social identity theory, the authors develop a typology to account for four modes of entrepreneurship by Indigenous people along two contextual dimensions – Indigenous territory and Indigenous marker.
Findings
Indigenous practicing entrepreneurship may choose to conduct business within or outside of traditional lands and demonstrate more or less indigeneity in their business activities as they marshal resources and seek opportunities. The authors identify how these diverse Indigenous businesses contribute to the economic development among Indigenous communities as part of their ongoing struggle to rebuild their “nations” using business.
Originality/value
This article contributes by differentiating sociocultural vs economic resources in noneconomic contexts to develop a theoretical typology of Indigenous entrepreneurship. By detailing the relations between Indigenous territories and Indigenous lands and between Indigenous identity and Indigenous markers, the authors contribute to a more nuanced and practical conceptualization of Indigenous entrepreneurship.
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Valerie Priscilla Goby and Gulnara Z. Karimova
This conceptual paper aims to respond to the dearth of theory and mechanisms for handling the inherent ethereality, multiplicity and mutability of organisational identity and…
Abstract
Purpose
This conceptual paper aims to respond to the dearth of theory and mechanisms for handling the inherent ethereality, multiplicity and mutability of organisational identity and organisational image.
Design/methodology/approach
This study considers existing approaches to organisational identity noting the diverse understandings of the paradoxical nature of identity. The authors suggest that identity is still essentially perceived as what is core and enduring about the character of an organisation with changes of identity being viewed as occurrences effectuated by events. In contrast, the authors argue that, because of the fluid interrelationships between identity and image, organisational identity is better viewed as an unstable construct.
Findings
Departing from Bakhtin’s logic of dialogism, this study proposes that identity–image result from dialogic relationships which in turn construct a system of polyphony. This study devises a preliminary polyphonic model which has the capacity to incorporate diverse stakeholder associations and fluctuating interpretations as well as situational understandings of organisational messages.
Originality/value
This study’s proposed model allows to trace how organisational identity–image is continually co-constructed recursively and cyclically and to systematise the various voices that are important for an organisation’s strategic objectives.
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