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Constructive deviance has received increasing attention across the last 20 years. However, because the distinction between constructive and traditional forms of deviance (i.e., destructive) is based on the intent behind the behaviors, it can be difficult to determine which acts are constructive. As an umbrella construct consisting of several forms of deviant acts (e.g., whistle-blowing, employee voice, necessary evils), research into constructive deviance has largely remained focused on the individual behaviors to date. While advancements have been made, this focus has limited the consideration of an overarching understanding of constructive deviance in the workplace. Further, constructs like constructive deviance that straddle the bounds between beneficial and detrimental necessitate the exploration into their antecedents as determined by the employees (i.e., apples), their environments (e.g., barrels), or some combination of the two. The author seeks to advance the research in constructive deviance by proposing a testable model. In which, the author develops an interactionist perspective of the antecedents to reposition constructive deviance as the acts of good employees in restrictive or negative environments. In doing so, the author considers how various aspects of individuals, their organizational environments, and the influence of their leaders interact. The author then develops a multi-stakeholder approach to the outcomes of constructive deviance to consider how the various parties (i.e., organization, coworkers, customers) are expected to respond and how these responses impact the more distal outcomes as well as the likelihood of engaging in future constructive deviance.

Persistent change has placed considerable pressure on organizations to keep up or fade into obscurity. Firms that remain viable, or even thrive, are staffed with decision-makers who capably steer organizations toward opportunities and away from threats. Accordingly, leadership development has never been more critical. In this chapter, the authors propose that leader development is an inherently dyadic process initiated to communicate formal and informal expectations. The authors focus on the informal component, in the form of organizational politics, as an element of leadership that is critical to employee and company success. The authors advocate that superiors represent the most salient information source for leader development, especially as it relates to political dynamics embedded in work systems. The authors discuss research associated with our conceptualization of dyadic political leader development (DPLD). Specifically, the authors develop DPLD by exploring its conceptual underpinnings as they relate to sensemaking, identity, and social learning theories. Once established, the authors provide a refined discussion of the construct, illustrating its scholarly mechanisms that better explain leader development processes and outcomes. The authors then expand research in the areas of political skill, political will, political knowledge, and political phronesis by embedding our conceptualization of DPLD into a political leadership model. The authors conclude by discussing methodological issues and avenues of future research stemming from the development of DPLD.

This chapter analyses the rise of the ‘global factory’ – the globally integrated network centred on a focal multinational enterprise. This is a response to the increased volatility of the global economy and involves the creation of systems that allow flexibility in both the location and the control of increasingly ‘fine-sliced’ activities, the avoidance of monopoly and the evolution of new management skills. Foreign direct investment is only one strategy amongst several utilised by globally integrated multinationals.

The relationship between multinational enterprises (MNEs) and host governments has seen different waves of trust and mistrust. Over the years, it has changed from a period of conflict after World War II, where MNEs were investing for purposes felt to be contradictory to government policies, to a more cooperative one, where countries are providing incentives and competing with each other to attract foreign direct investment (FDI). The 1990s saw the cooperative relationship leading to the danger of race to the bottom through excessive locational competition. In this chapter, we look at the past, present, and future state of this relationship as reported by different scholars from these periods. We look at the most influential literature from the 1970s onward and the current state of this relationship. Our analysis reveals that the increased tensions are caused by anxiety owing to unanticipated developments in the political economy, company strategies, and government policies. Thanks to globalization MNEs are increasingly becoming more powerful and often this process is accelerated owing to lack of any collaboration between MNEs and the governments. Thus, governments, particularly in emerging markets, are becoming more and more frustrated by the fact that on the one hand they want the MNEs to come and invest in their countries and, on the other hand, they feel that they cannot direct these MNEs to contribute toward economic development and poverty alleviation in their countries. In this chapter, we intend to evaluate the past and the present literature and look ahead to the future. Finally, on the basis of our own studies performed in this project and reported in different chapters of this book, we provide some policy guidelines for host country governments as to how they can encourage MNEs to contribute toward sustainable development and poverty reduction.

Coalitions are informal and interdependent groups of actors operating within organizations, yet their effects in organizations are not widely understood. In this paper, we develop a model of coalition formation and functioning inside organizations. By extrapolating the behavioral intentions (i.e., altruistic or antagonistic) and compositional differences (i.e., supplementary or complementary) among these informal group structures, we classify coalitions into four forms (i.e., lobby, cartel, circle, and alliance), theorizing how each coalition form affects work role innovation, resource allocations, and work performance. Our conceptualization helps clarify previous theoretical inconsistencies and establish an agenda for the study of coalitions at work. Furthermore, this paper provides insights into the ways that coalitions support or impede the organization’s objectives.

The current chapter focuses on environmental and organizational factors that affect the performance appraisal context, performance evaluations, and rating accuracy. Drawing on the extant literature and focusing on current organizational practices, we propose a dynamic multi-level model of performance rating that takes these distal factors into consideration. In doing so, we also provide propositions explicating causal linkages between these distal factors, more proximal performance appraisal factors, and ultimately the accuracy of performance ratings. Furthermore, we identify current and emerging directions in performance appraisal research and practice. The implications of the current and emerging trends are then discussed in the context of our proposed model.

This article explores the contribution of ethnographic studies to our understanding of multinational corporations, through a literature review and through a case study of BMW Plant Oxford. The study considers that ethnographic studies can provide a more complex view of power relations between managers and workers, and can develop embedded perspectives taking into account the influences from outside the firm on its employees’ actions, developing the image of the firm not as a solitary entity, but as embedded in complex global networks and social discourses.