Search results

Insufficient productivity development in the global and Finnish infrastructure sectors indicates that there are challenges in genuinely achieving the goals of resource efficiency and digitalization. This study adapts the approach of capability maturity model integration (CMMI) for examining the capabilities for productivity development that reveal the enablers of improving productivity in the infrastructure sector.

Civil engineering in Finland was selected as the study area, and a qualitative research approach was adopted. A novel maturity model was constructed deductively through a three-step analytical process. Previous research literature was adapted to form a framework with maturity levels and key process areas (KPAs). KPA attributes and their maturity criteria were formed through a thematic analysis of interview data from 12 semi-structured group interviews. Finally, validation and refinement of the model were performed with an expert panel.

This paper provides a novel maturity model for examining and enhancing the infrastructure sector’s maturity in productivity development. The model brings into discussion the current business logics, relevance of lifecycle-thinking, binding targets and outcomes of limited activities in the surrounding infrastructure system.

This paper provides a new approach for pursuing productivity development in the infrastructure sector by constructing a maturity model that adapts the concepts of CMMI and change management. The model and findings benefit all actors in the sector and provide an understanding of the required elements and means to achieve a more sustainable built environment and effective operations.

This paper aims to investigate how purchasing organizations implement supplier diversity (SD) initiatives over time.

A multiple case study approach was conducted. Data were collected through in-depth interviews with participants from purchasing organizations, intermediary organizations and diverse suppliers.

The research suggests that the SD journey encompasses three different, but interrelated stages before full implementation is achieved: structuring, operation and adaptation. The findings also provide evidence that SD implementation in Brazil is highly influenced by the lack of a consistent knowledge base and the lack of legitimized intermediary organizations.

Using a temporal approach to understand how different practices suggested by the literature have been managed by practitioners over time, this study contributes to the understanding of the path to effective SD implementation and how intra- and interorganizational context influences this journey.

By identifying which practices should be adopted during different phases of SD implementation and proposing ways to overcome some of the inherent challenges, managers can better plan and allocate resources for the adoption of a successful SD initiative.

This research demonstrates how organizations can promote diversity and reduce social and economic inequalities by buying from diverse suppliers.

Using a temporal approach, the research empirically investigates how different purchasing organizations have implemented and managed the known practices and dealt with the challenges faced when trying to adopt SD.

The purpose of this paper is to provide a theoretically informed analysis of the evolution of environmental management accounting (EMA) and social and environmental reporting (SER), and the accompanying development of a sustainability programme, in a large family-owned, unlisted corporation.

A longitudinal case study based on semi-structured interviews and documentary data was conducted. The main periods of fieldwork were carried out in 2007 and between 2010 and 2012. Sustainability reports were collected until 2019 when SER appeared to cease. The case analysis draws on the concepts of organisational identity (OI) and internal legitimacy (IL) to examine the decision-making and actions of a range of key organisational actors as they engage with EMA and SER.

The study demonstrates that a gap between an organisation’s identity claims (“who we are”) and its enacted identity (“what we do”) can enable the adoption of constitutive, performative and representational EMA and SER. It illuminates the nature of the role of key actors and organisational dynamics, in the form of OI and IL, in adapting these practices. It also demonstrates that, in giving meaning to the concept of sustainability, organisational actors can draw on their organisation’s identity and construct the comprehensibility of an organisational sustainability programme.

More empirical work is needed to examine the applicability of OI and IL to other settings. It would also be beneficial to examine the potential for OI work to allow organisations to change and reinvent themselves in response to the evermore pressing environmental crisis and the role, if any, of EMA in this process.

The study enriches our understanding of why and how EMA and SER evolve by demonstrating that paying attention to OI and IL can provide further insight into the decision-making and actions of organisational members as they recognise, evaluate, support and cease these practices.

This paper aims to operationalise and juxtapose variables related to identity, strategy and communications, and then examine the impact of such integration on organisational stakeholders’ trust, loyalty and commitment by using commitment/trust theory.

This research design utilises explanatory research at the preliminary stage, as informed by the literature and conceptual framework. The subsequent model was examined via a positivist survey carried out among stakeholders in high-end retail stores in London. Structural equation modelling (SEM) via AMOS was conducted to gain insight into the various relevant influences and relationships.

The results indicate that identity and strategy are key drivers of integrated corporate communication, and they serve to build stakeholder trust, loyalty and commitment.

The paper shows that while practitioners have indicated that integrated marketing communication is important for organisations, there are a few other areas of concern with regard to consequences related to trust, loyalty and commitment, especially in a retail context. This paper empirically examined relationships between these constructs by validating a conceptual model by using SEM.

Strategy scholars have widely recognized the central role that narratives play in the construction of organizational identities. Moreover, storytelling is an important strategic asset that firms can leverage to inspire employees, excite investors and engage customers' attention. This chapter illustrates how advancements in computational linguistic may offer opportunities to analyze the stylistic elements that make a story more convincing. Specifically, we use a topic model to examine how narrative conventionality influences the performance of 78,758 craftsmen selling their handmade items in the digital marketplace of Etsy. Our findings provide empirical evidence that effective narratives display enough conventional features to align with audience expectations, yet preserve some uniqueness to pique audience interest. By elucidating our approach, we hope to stimulate further research at the interface of style, language and strategy.

This study aims to identify the legitimacy issues raised during a sustainable business model innovation, deployed by an Italian company, which was analyzed through the lens of the legitimation theory and the business model innovation theory.

A single case study methodology is employed for empirical research. Semistructured interviews, with top and middle management, were conducted together with the analysis of several internal and external documents, to corroborate the case analysis.

Results show how the potentiality of digital technologies allows the development of new sustainable business models, which, though, still need to gain legitimation to be accepted. The study findings allow drawing both on the business model innovation theory and on the legitimation theory, as they show how legitimation is a dynamic concept that involves internal as well as external stakeholders to support business model innovation.

The paper is novel, since it addresses the topic of sustainable business models development, showing how companies can get legitimation. The paper builds on existing theories and provides a practical example.

Cultural intermediaries define the standards many consumers use when evaluating cultural products. Yet, little research has focused on whether cultural intermediaries may systematically differ from each other with regard to the standards they emphasize. The purpose of this paper is to build on Bourdieu’s theory of cultural production to examine how the type of subfield reviewed and/or the cultural intermediary’s expertise (or “field-specific cultural capital”) affect the standards an intermediary uses.

This paper employed a computer-aided content analysis of the full corpus of “Rolling Stone” music album reviews (1967-2014).

Critics with lower field-specific cultural capital reflect the same logic as the subfield they are critiquing. Critics with higher field-specific cultural capital reflect the opposite logic.

Bourdieu was ambivalent about whether cultural intermediaries will reflect the logic of a subfield. Results show that the answer depends on the intermediary’s field-specific cultural capital. The results also reinforce previous findings that individuals with high field-specific cultural capital are more likely to break with the logic of a field.

Not all intermediaries are created equal. Producers and consumers who rely on cultural intermediaries should understand the intermediary’s critical analysis within the context of his/her experience.

This is one of the first studies to examine how a cultural intermediary’s field-specific cultural capital impacts his or her work. The findings are based on a large review sample and include reviewers’ analyses as they developed from having lower to higher field-specific cultural capital.

Much recent work on hybrids has focused on the strategies and practices these organizations develop to manage the institutional contradictions associated with straddling competing logics. Less attention has been paid to what we call the liability of novelty, defined as the heightened institutional challenges new hybrid forms face both internally and externally. These, we argue, go beyond the liability of newness commonly associated with new venture formation. In this chapter, we use the case of Incubate, a Muslim social incubator in Germany. This case is particularly instructive insofar as Incubate is a hybrid in both substance and mode of organizing: Its mission integrated domains of religion, commerce, and community, and its mode of organizing straddled the digital–analog divide. Neither Incubate’s members, nor its external stakeholders could rely on existing institutional templates to make sense of it. It was not only organizationally new, but also institutionally novel. As a consequence, it experienced what we distinguish as descriptive and evaluative challenges. It was both “not understood” and “not accepted.” This chapter outlines four practices to address these challenges: codifying, crafting, conforming, and configuring, and categorizes them along internal versus external as well as forming versus transforming dimensions.

The objective of this research is to propose a framework which is apt to assess how a nation branding campaign could promote cultural identity by ultimately curbing political polarization.

By relying on a multidisciplinary approach that blends theoretical constructs from different fields the methodology is based on a mixed-method approach whereby the qualitative data stemming from a set of interviews with key-informants is coupled by a survey of Colombian citizens in order to gain in-depth insights over the impact of nation branding on political polarization.

From the findings, it emerges that a campaign based on nation branding and targeting domestic citizens could curb political polarization within Colombia, by also fostering cultural identity.

The study considers only Colombia. To fully assess the robustness of the framework it would be useful to extend the analysis to a broader range of countries and to a wider set of domestic issues.

The research not only provides in-depth insights on how nation branding can be used effectively in order to curb political polarization but also practical guidance on how a nation branding campaign can be effectively designed. The findings are relevant to policy-makers that have the opportunity to implement informed and educated nation branding campaigns not just overseas, but also to strategically address important domestic issues by engaging the domestic stakeholders.

While country branding has been extensively investigated within the context of international business, we have a relatively limited understanding of its domestic impact. In contrast to traditional country branding literature, this paper aims to theoretically advance our understanding of nation branding and its effect on political polarization, as well as gauging its impact on cultural identity.

This paper investigates how two characteristics of language, abstractness vs concreteness and narrativity, influence user engagement in communication exercises on innovation targeted to the general audience. The proposed conceptual model suggests that innovation fits well with more abstract language because of the association of innovation with imagination and distal construal. Moreover, communication of innovation may benefit from greater adherence to the narrativity arc, that is, early staging, increasing plot progression and climax optimal point. These effects are moderated by content variety and emotional tone, respectively.

Based on a Latent Dirichlet allocation (LDA) application on a sample of 3225 TED Talks transcripts, the authors identify 287 TED Talks on innovation, and then applied econometric analyses to test the hypotheses on the effects of abstractness vs concreteness and narrativity on engagement, and on the moderation effects of content variety and emotional tone.

The authors found that abstractness (vs concreteness) and narrativity have positive effects on engagement. These two effects are stronger with higher content variety and more positive emotional tone, respectively.

This paper extends the literature on communication of innovation, linguistics and text analysis by evaluating the roles of abstractness vs concreteness and narrativity in shaping appreciation of innovation.

This paper reports conceptual and empirical analyses on innovation dissemination through a popular medium – TED Talks – and applies modern text analysis algorithms to test hypotheses on the effects of two pivotal dimensions of language on user engagement.