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1 – 10 of over 3000
Book part
Publication date: 2 September 2010

Thomas Hutzschenreuter, Un-Seok Han and Ingo Kleindienst

Managerial intentionality has been assumed to be the most differentiating, but also the most neglected factor influencing internationalization. Although various scholars have…

Abstract

Managerial intentionality has been assumed to be the most differentiating, but also the most neglected factor influencing internationalization. Although various scholars have emphasized its relevance, the key question still remains unanswered: What is managerial intentionality and why and how does it matter? Researchers share the view that internationalization paths are a joint outcome of environmental factors, path dependence and learning, and managerial intentionality. However, although managerial intentionality is argued to be an important factor, it is rather taken as a “given.” Therefore, we step back and take a closer look at its very nature and relevance for international business research.

Details

The Past, Present and Future of International Business & Management
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-0-85724-085-9

Book part
Publication date: 22 November 2021

Randall Westgren and Peter Foreman

We argue for a new microfoundational approach to organizational identity to replace common vertical theory-borrowing from individual identity theory. Organizational identity…

Abstract

We argue for a new microfoundational approach to organizational identity to replace common vertical theory-borrowing from individual identity theory. Organizational identity becomes either an individualistic account of member representations of the group identity held together by other-regarding cognitive structures or a group-level account where jointly understood identity is tied to joint goals and agency as we-intentionality. Organizational identity is linked to collective action through intentionality. For large organizations, jointly held identity is crucial to guide individual action on behalf of the collective. This approach also internalizes shared identity within the organization as a collectively constructed cognitive representation rather than just an externally oriented social evaluation of membership in a category. In support of this approach, the authors examine a case study of individual wineries’ expectations and perceptions of the collective identity of their jointly constructed wine trail and how these evaluations affect commitment to membership and collective action.

Article
Publication date: 7 April 2015

Farhad Eizakshiri, Paul W. Chan and Margaret W. Emsley

In this paper, the dominant techno-rational view of studying delays in projects is challenged. In so doing, the purpose of this paper is to urge for more attention paid to…

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Abstract

Purpose

In this paper, the dominant techno-rational view of studying delays in projects is challenged. In so doing, the purpose of this paper is to urge for more attention paid to studying the intentionalities of the planners involved in planning the schedule for projects.

Design/methodology/approach

In this paper, the authors take a critical approach to review a range of literatures related to the concept of project delays. Through this review, the authors render the relative absence of acknowledging intentionality in the study of delays problematic. Therefore, the authors inject fresh insights into how intentionality can play a crucial role in advancing the understanding of project delays.

Findings

Prevailing research tends to assume the primacy of the project plan and conceptualise delays as a consequence of flawed execution. The review offers three possibilities for reconceptualising delays as a consequence of flawed plans. In so doing, the authors refocus the attention on how intentionality could play a crucial role in shaping “inaccurate” plans, which in turn could lead to the creation of delays.

Research limitations/implications

As a consequence of this review paper, the authors invite scholarship into project delays to move away from finding “cause-and-effect” mechanisms to attend more closely to the role intentionality plays in creating delays, whether intended, unintended, or imagined.

Originality/value

This paper brings intentionality to the fore to challenge the assumptions over the nature of delays. In so doing, the review expands the understanding of project delays by incorporating unintended, intended, and imaginary perspectives.

Details

International Journal of Managing Projects in Business, vol. 8 no. 2
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 1753-8378

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 21 November 2018

Suzanne Findlay and Michael Moran

As an emerging field of financing, impact investing is under-institutionalised and is in a legitimacy building phase. In an attempt to unpack how impact investing is deployed in…

2956

Abstract

Purpose

As an emerging field of financing, impact investing is under-institutionalised and is in a legitimacy building phase. In an attempt to unpack how impact investing is deployed in global markets, the key elements of its definition (intentionality, returns and measurement) are examined through a review of academic and practitioner literature. A refined definition is developed which emphasises the key elements of intentionality and measurement as separating impact investment from the established field of socially responsible investment (SRI).

Design/methodology/approach

Funds and products from a publicly available database are systematically analysed against the refined definition to determine the rigour with which intentionality and measurement are applied by self-identified market participants. These elements are used as a proxy to determine “purpose-washing” – a process where funds are presented as impact investments but do not satisfy a tightly applied definition. Purpose-washing enables the possibility of “retrofitting”, where funds originally defined as other products (e.g. SRI) retrospectively claim to be impact investments.

Findings

Having found evidence of purpose-washing but not retrofitting, actions are identified to enhance impact investment’s integrity, focussing on intentionality, measurement and transparency. Clarity of definition and purpose are important for a field in the market-building phase, as a lack of clarity could have negative implications for integrity and growth. The authors postulate that purpose-washing may be attributed to twin but distinctive motivations by market participants: interest in fee-generation among fund managers and attempts to bolster field legitimacy by demonstrating sector growth among impact investing proponents.

Originality value

This paper represents a unique analysis of impact investments against a robust and refined definition. By doing so, it offers a systematic appraisal of impact investments and an overall assessment of market integrity in its field-building phase.

Details

Social Responsibility Journal, vol. 15 no. 7
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 1747-1117

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 9 November 2015

Víctor Iglesias, Concepción Varela-Neira and Rodolfo Vázquez-Casielles

– The purpose of this paper is to analyze the effects of attributions on the efficacy of service recovery strategies in preventing customer defection following a service failure.

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Abstract

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the effects of attributions on the efficacy of service recovery strategies in preventing customer defection following a service failure.

Design/methodology/approach

The empirical investigation is carried out on the retail banking industry with a final sample of 448 real cases of customer retention or defection after a service failure.

Findings

The results of the study not only highlight the relevance of intentionality as an additional factor in explaining customer defection, but also show the effects of some attributional dimensions (intentionality and controllability) on the efficacy of some recovery strategies (redress, apology and explanation) applied by companies to prevent post-complaint customer defection.

Practical implications

The efficacy of the recovery strategies depends on the causal attributions that the customer makes about the service failure.

Originality/value

This study analyzes not only the effects of traditional dimensions of attribution (stability and controllability), but also the additional effect that intentionality attributions may have on actual customer defection (not intentions). Moreover, it analyzes their effects on the effectiveness of recovery strategies in preventing customer defection. Most of these effects have never been empirically analyzed in the literature.

Details

Journal of Service Theory and Practice, vol. 25 no. 6
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 2055-6225

Keywords

Article
Publication date: 6 May 2014

Concepción Varela-Neira, Rodolfo Vázquez-Casielles and Víctor Iglesias

This paper aims to determine whether intentionality attributions have an effect on the customer’s complaint and switching behavior after a service failure, after accounting for…

1690

Abstract

Purpose

This paper aims to determine whether intentionality attributions have an effect on the customer’s complaint and switching behavior after a service failure, after accounting for the effects of the traditional dimensions of attribution (stability and controllability), and to examine whether intentionality attributions give rise to humiliation and to what degree this negative emotion enables us to understand the customer’s complaint and switching behavior after a service failure.

Design/methodology/approach

A contribution of this investigation is that it studies real complaint and switching behaviors, as the few studies that focus on understanding customers’ complaint and defection behaviors mostly analyze customers’ intentions.

Findings

The results of the study indicate that intentionality attributions have an effect on the customer’s switching behavior after a service failure, in addition to the impact of the traditional dimensions of attribution. The findings also show that humiliation is the emotion that mediates the relationship between intentionality attributions and switching behavior, opposite to other emotions that may also be related to attributions. Finally, the results also support that the effect of attribution of intentionality on complaint behavior is indirect; it only exists because attribution of intentionality influences negative emotions like humiliation, which in turn influences complaint behavior.

Practical implications

To understand what makes customers complain after a service failure or switch service providers without giving them first the possibility of recovering the failure may help managers reduce the damage caused by the failure and increase the company’s profits.

Originality/value

This study will try to contribute to the service failure research by analyzing the role of two variables that have not been analyzed before in this context: intentionality attribution and humiliation.

Details

European Journal of Marketing, vol. 48 no. 5/6
Type: Research Article
ISSN: 0309-0566

Keywords

Book part
Publication date: 17 November 2011

Christopher W.J. Steele and Brayden G King

Sociologists often treat groups and organizations as if they had collective intentionality – that is, a collective impetus for action that exists semi-independently of the members…

Abstract

Sociologists often treat groups and organizations as if they had collective intentionality – that is, a collective impetus for action that exists semi-independently of the members of the group. At present, however, we lack a sound understanding of how collective intentionality is achieved or maintained. Furthermore, although organizations provide a well-defined and distinctive setting for an empirical and theoretical investigation of collective intentionality, organizational intentionality in its own right has received little attention. In this chapter, we seek to address the relationship between collective intentionality, organizational identity, and organizational decision-making, using the potentially powerful method of meta-ethnography: the comparison, contrast, and synthesis of multiple ethnographies.

Details

Advances in Group Processes
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-0-85724-774-2

Book part
Publication date: 22 July 2005

Yrjö Engeström

The chapter makes an attempt at hybridization between three relatively separate fields of inquiry: (a) theories and studies of collective intentionality and distributed agency…

Abstract

The chapter makes an attempt at hybridization between three relatively separate fields of inquiry: (a) theories and studies of collective intentionality and distributed agency, (b) theories and studies of social capital in organizations, and (c) cultural–historical activity theory. Employees’ collective capacity to create organizational transformations and innovations is becoming a crucially important asset that gives a new, dynamic content to notions of social and collaborative capital. In philosophy, sociology, anthropology and cognitive science, such capacity is conceptualized as distributed agency or collective intentionality. The task of the chapter is to examine the possibility that current changes in work organizations may bring about historically new features of collective intentionality and distributed agency. The understanding of these new features is important if we are to give viable content to the emerging notion of collaborative capital. After a conceptual overview, the chapter will first analyze a fictional example of distributed agency, then findings from the author's fieldwork in health care settings. In conclusion, the chapter will propose the notions of ‘object-oriented interagency’ and ‘collaborative intentionality capital’ as characterizations of important aspects of agency and intentionality currently taking shape in work organizations.

Details

Collaborative Capital: Creating Intangible Value
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-0-76231-222-1

Book part
Publication date: 12 October 2012

John Hamilton Bradford

Purpose – This essay attempts to answer the question, “What distinguishes inter-human influence from other forms of influence?”Design/methodology/approach – Specifying the…

Abstract

Purpose – This essay attempts to answer the question, “What distinguishes inter-human influence from other forms of influence?”

Design/methodology/approach – Specifying the micro-foundations of social structures in terms of communicative inferences necessitates a revision of the concept of social structures (and institutions) as distributed, and hence, uncertain, structures of expectation. Institutional realities are generated in linguistic interaction through the indirect communication of generic references. The generalizing function of language – in particular, abstraction and memory – coupled with its reflexive function, to turn references into things, are sufficient to generate both social structures and institutions as collective inferences.

Findings – Social relations are fundamentally communicative relations. The communicative relation is triadic, implying an enunciator, an audience, and some referential content. Through linguistic communication, humans are capable of communicating locally with others about others nonlocally. Institutions exist only as expectations concerning the expectations of others. These expectations, however, are not only in the mind, and they are not exclusively psychological entities. Linguistically, these expectations appear as the reported statement within the reporting statement, that is, they are constituted through indirect discourse.

Research limitations/implications – An important implication for current sociological theory is that, from the point of view of a sociology defined as communication about communication from within communication, institutional realities should not be reified as existing naturalistically or objectively above or behind the communications through which they are instantiated.

Originality value – This approach, then, is decidedly anti-“realist.” The goal of such research is to examine the inadequacy of nonreflexive models of social order. Accounts of how sets of social relationships emerge will remain inadequate if they do not reflect upon the cognitive and communicative processes which make possible the consideration of such structures.

Book part
Publication date: 6 December 2011

Edward Feser

Purpose – The chapter provides an exposition both of Hayek's causal theory of the mind (especially as applied to intentionality) and of Popper's critique of causal theories…

Abstract

Purpose – The chapter provides an exposition both of Hayek's causal theory of the mind (especially as applied to intentionality) and of Popper's critique of causal theories, argues that Hayek fails successfully to rebut Popper's critique, and shows how the dispute between Hayek and Popper is relevant to controversies in contemporary philosophy of mind.

Methodology/approach –The chapter elucidates Hayek's ideas and Popper's by situating them within the history of the mind/body problem and comparing them to the views of contemporary philosophers like Fred Dretske, Jerry Fodor, and Hilary Putnam.

Findings – Popper's critique has yet to be answered, either by Hayek or by contemporary causal theorists.

Originality/value of the chapter –The chapter calls attention to some important but neglected ideas of Hayek and Popper and examines some of their as-yet-unpublished writings.

Details

Hayek in Mind: Hayek's Philosophical Psychology
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-78052-399-6

Keywords

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