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1 – 10 of 15Katarina Lagerström, Emilene Leite, Cecilia Pahlberg and Roger Schweizer
In this paper, the authors contribute with insights on competition and cooperation in multinational enterprises with a focus on challenges related to these governance mechanisms…
Abstract
Purpose
In this paper, the authors contribute with insights on competition and cooperation in multinational enterprises with a focus on challenges related to these governance mechanisms in a knowledge development context. The mechanisms have been widely recognized as important for developing knowledge, but their contradicting nature implies considerable complexity when it comes to governance. The complexity is further increased as a result of the headquarters-subsidiary relationships. The aim of this paper is to contribute with theoretical and empirical insights on these aspects by focusing on the research question: How and why does competition and cooperation in an MNE emerge over time?
Design/methodology/approach
A manufacturing MNE with headquarters (HQ) in Sweden is analyzed on both HQ and subsidiary levels. Interviews with 24 managers in Sweden and India have been performed.
Findings
The study illustrates that competition and cooperation are integral aspects in HQ-subsidiary relationships. The results show that both competition and cooperation depend on environmental, organizational and object-related conditions and that these conditions influence the dynamics of the interplay. The importance of including a subsidiary perspective and the interdependencies in an MNE setting are emphasized.
Originality/value
The authors add to the discussion on the interplay between competition and cooperation as they play an important role for knowledge development in MNEs. The results indicate that they do not take place simultaneously, and therefore, the authors suggest that the dynamic can be better understood by focusing on the interplay and analyze the concepts separately.
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Beata Segercrantz, Annamari Tuori and Charlotta Niemistö
Drawing on a performative ontology, this article extends the literature on health promotion in organizations by exploring how health promotion is performed in care work. The focus…
Abstract
Purpose
Drawing on a performative ontology, this article extends the literature on health promotion in organizations by exploring how health promotion is performed in care work. The focus of the study is on health promotion in a context of illness and/or decline, which form the core of the studied organizational activities. The paper addresses the following question: how do care workers working in elderly care and mental health care organizations accomplish health promotion in the context of illness and/or decline?
Design/methodology/approach
The article develops a performative approach and analyses material-discursive practices in health promoting care work. The empirical material includes 36 semi-structured interviews with care workers, observations and organizational documents.
Findings
Two central material-discursive health promoting practices in care work are identified: confirming that celebrates service users as residents and the organizations as a home, and balancing at the limits of health promotion. The practices of balancing make the limitations of health promotion discernible and involve reconciling health promotion with that which does not neatly fit into it (illness, unachievable care aims, the institution and certain organizing). In sum, the study shows how health promotion can structure processes in care homes where illness and decline often are particularly palpable.
Originality/value
The paper explores health promotion in a context rarely explored in organization studies. Previous organization studies have to some extent explored health promotion and care work, but typically separately. Further, the few studies that have adopted a performative approach to material-discursive practices in the context of care work have typically primarily focused on IT. We extend previous organization studies literature by producing new insights: (1) from an important organizational context of health promotion and (2) of under-researched entanglements of human and non-human actors in care work providing a performative theory of reconciling organizational tensions.
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Alice Schmuck, Katarina Lagerström and James Sallis
This study aims to understand the performance implications of when a business internationalizes. Many managers take the performance implications of internationalization for…
Abstract
Purpose
This study aims to understand the performance implications of when a business internationalizes. Many managers take the performance implications of internationalization for granted. Whether seeking a broader customer base or cost reduction through cross-border outsourcing, the overwhelming belief is that internationalization leads to higher profits.
Design/methodology/approach
This paper offers a systematic review, content analysis and cross-tabulation analysis of 115 empirical studies from over 40 major journals in management, strategy and international business between 1977 and 2021. Focusing on research settings, sample characteristics, underlying theoretical approaches, measurements of key variables and moderators influencing the multinationality and performance relationship, this study offers a detailed account of definitions and effects.
Findings
The findings of this study suggest a tenuous connection between internationalization and performance. No strain of research literature conclusively identifies a consistent direct path from internationalization to performance. The context specificity of the relationship makes general declarations impossible.
Research limitations/implications
Future researchers should recognize that internationalization is a process taking different forms, with no specific dominant form. General declarations are misleading. The focus should be on the process of internationalization rather than on the outcome.
Originality/value
This study contributes to the international business literature by exploring reasons for the inconsistent results and lack of consensus. Through a detailed account of definitions and effects, this paper explores the lack of consensus as well as the identified shapes of the relationship.
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Katarina Labajova, Julia Höhler, Carl-Johan Lagerkvist, Jörg Müller and Jens Rommel
People’s tendency to overestimate their ability to control random events, known as illusion of control, can affect financial decisions under uncertainty. This study developed an…
Abstract
Purpose
People’s tendency to overestimate their ability to control random events, known as illusion of control, can affect financial decisions under uncertainty. This study developed an artifactual field experiment on illusion of control for a farm machinery investment.
Design/methodology/approach
In an experiment with two treatments, the individual farmer was either given or not given a sense of control over a random outcome. After each decision, the authors elicited perceived control, and a questionnaire collected additional indirect measures of illusion of control from 78 German farmers and 10 farm advisors.
Findings
The results did not support preregistered hypotheses of the presence of illusion of control. This null result was robust over multiple outcomes and model specifications. The findings demonstrate that cognitive biases may be small and difficult to replicate.
Research limitations/implications
The sample is not representative for the German farming population. The authors discuss why the estimated treatment effect may represent a lower bound of the true effect.
Originality/value
Illusion of control is well-studied in laboratory settings, but little is known about the extent to which farmers’ behavior is influenced by illusion of control.
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Dianne Sundby and C. Brooklyn Derr
The purpose of this paper is to present a retrospective of the career life of Michael Driver, from the time of his Princeton graduate studies and early faculty years at Purdue…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to present a retrospective of the career life of Michael Driver, from the time of his Princeton graduate studies and early faculty years at Purdue University through the over three decades he spent at USC.
Design/methodology/approach
The history and development of his theoretical and research interests are presented, as well as the many contributions he made to both management consulting and the education of MBA students. His 1970s role in the founding and development of the Careers Division of the Academy of Management and his contributions to career research are highlighted and illuminate one of the critical periods in the renewal of the field. His orientation towards complexity and integration stand out as characteristics that positively impact theory building and research.
Findings
Michael Driver's career life was one of depth, scope, growth, and continuity. As a humanist, he would want us to not only continue our pursuits to better understand the complexities of human behavior, but to integrate them into something more meaningful.
Originality/value
This retrospective provides insight into the history and development of Mike Driver's theoretical and research interests and underscores his many contributions. The essay also highlights the history of career studies during the renewal period of the 1970s and 1980s. Hopefully, Mike Driver's legacy will inspire younger scholars to extend the field and carry it forward.
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Katarina Pettersson and Susanna Heldt Cassel
This paper aims to explore how gender is “done” on farms in Sweden in the context of increased tourism and hospitality activities. The authors seek to investigate how gender is…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to explore how gender is “done” on farms in Sweden in the context of increased tourism and hospitality activities. The authors seek to investigate how gender is done vis-à-vis women’s farm tourism entrepreneurship. They seek to answer the questions: What has motivated the farm women to become tourism entrepreneurs? How are the gendered divisions of labor changed through women starting businesses? How does the gendered associated symbolism, as well as the identities, change?
Design/methodology/approach
Research has indicated that introducing tourism entrepreneurship at farms may challenge established gender relations, as many of these entrepreneurs are women. The empirical material consists of in-depth interviews with 15 women farm tourism entrepreneurs in central Sweden.
Findings
The analysis suggests that the gendered divisions of labor are not changed through the interviewed women starting tourism businesses. The authors conclude that the women build their entrepreneurship and develop some of their products on an image of rural domesticity, including a representation of themselves as traditional farm women. At the same time they are changing how gender is done through identifying as entrepreneurs and changing the use of the farms.
Originality/value
The authors seek to fill the research gap concerning women’s farm tourism entrepreneurship and the potential associated gendered changes. Their theoretical contribution is applying the perspective of “doing gender” and entrepreneurship, for delineating potential changes in gendered relations.
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Diellza Gashi Tresi and Katarina Katja Mihelič
Building on the work–home resources model, the purpose of this paper is to test the mediating role of employee self-efficacy in the relationship between job crafting and work–self…
Abstract
Purpose
Building on the work–home resources model, the purpose of this paper is to test the mediating role of employee self-efficacy in the relationship between job crafting and work–self facilitation. The paper further explores the moderating role of the quality of leader–member exchange (LMX).
Design/methodology/approach
A sample of 204 employees from a European country was used to test the proposed moderated mediation model. The analysis was performed using Hayes’ Process Macro.
Findings
The findings indicate that job crafting is positively associated with self-efficacy which, in turn, is positively associated with work–self facilitation. In other words, self-efficacy mediates the relationship between job crafting and work–self facilitation. Furthermore, LMX moderates the relationship between job crafting and self-efficacy.
Practical implications
The results of this study offer guidelines for human resource (HR) professionals interested in grasping how organisations can assist employees in experiencing work–self facilitation.
Originality/value
This study advances the existing literature by investigating the antecedents of work–self facilitation, which is an understudied variable in the work–family and HR literature, thereby responding to calls to include aspects of self in the discussion on different life domains in order to obtain an all-inclusive view of how employees function. Furthermore, it demonstrates how LMX and job crafting promote the fulfilment of an employee’s own personal interests and hobbies. Such information is relevant to HR practitioners as it might help them boost employees’ work performance.
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Maria Lindberg, Bernice Skytt, Magnus Lindberg, Katarina Wijk and Annika Strömberg
Management and leadership in health care are described as complex and challenging, and the span of control is known to be a key component in the manager’s job demands. The…
Abstract
Purpose
Management and leadership in health care are described as complex and challenging, and the span of control is known to be a key component in the manager’s job demands. The implementation of change can be a challenge in health care, and managers often have roles as implementation leaders. Little attention has been given to how managers perceive the process of implementation. Thus, this study aims to explore second-line managers’ perceptions of, prerequisites for and experiences from the implementation of changes in their manager’s work conditions.
Design/methodology/approach
A grounded theory–based qualitative design was used. Data were collected from a purposive sample of nine second-line managers by individual semi-structured interviews. The three stages of initial coding, focus codes and axial coding were used in data analysis.
Findings
Three thematic areas were identified: engagement, facilitation and achievement. The second-line managers’ descriptions suggest that the change work entails a complex challenge with an unclear result. Involvement, consideration for the context and facilitation are needed to be able to conduct a cohesive implementation process.
Originality/value
This study findings outline that to succeed when implementing change in complex organizations, it is crucial that managers at different levels are involved in the entire process, and that there are prerequisites established for the facilitation and achievement of goals during the planning, implementation and follow-up.
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Studies of strategic change are mainly characterized by a linear time view, treating time as a variable, a package of narrative events or as a path that the organization “travels”…
Abstract
Purpose
Studies of strategic change are mainly characterized by a linear time view, treating time as a variable, a package of narrative events or as a path that the organization “travels” over time. The purpose of this paper is to move beyond this view providing an alternative, nonlinear conception of time.
Design/methodology/approach
Framed by the logics of consequence and appropriateness an empirical example of strategic change within the Scandinavian consumer co‐operation is given, illustrating the exploration of business opportunities and the exploitation of socially and historically rooted values and principles. Drawing on philosophical hermeneutics a qualitative method is chosen, the basis on which the empirical material through interviews and documents is generated.
Findings
The empirical study illustrates that the logic of consequence communicates with the logic of appropriateness in a nonlinear manner while interrelating the future and the past. The exploration of business opportunities shapes the past, which is brought to light when opportunities are expressed through the present, continuously forming and reforming the present and in turn shedding new light on the past.
Originality/value
Although various forms of intellectual bridging and transfer are encouraged within the field of strategic management, notably lacking are studies that focus on time. This paper brings to the fore an alternative conception of time. It acknowledges the past in its hermeneutical significance when ascribing the past a dynamic repetitive role.
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The purpose of this paper is to examine the role of work-family and family-work conflict and enrichment in predicting job satisfaction and its subsequent relation with turnover…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to examine the role of work-family and family-work conflict and enrichment in predicting job satisfaction and its subsequent relation with turnover intentions in a transition country.
Design/methodology/approach
This study examined the role of work-family and family-work conflict and enrichment in predicting job satisfaction and its subsequent relation with turnover intentions in a transition country.
Findings
While work-family enrichment was significantly and positively related to job satisfaction, family-work enrichment was not. A similar pattern was observed for conflict, whereby only work-family conflict exhibited a positive relation to job satisfaction. Moreover, job satisfaction partially mediated the relationships between work-family interface and turnover intentions. The results revealed indirect effects of work-family enrichment and work-family conflict on turnover intentions.
Originality/value
This study is unique because it tested the relationships among the negative and positive sides of the work-family interface and job attitudes in a transition country in CEE, an underrepresented cultural context in the work-family literature. Furthermore, it tested the direct and indirect effects of work-family interface on turnover intentions. In addition, it provided evidence of the significance of same-domain effects and insignificance of cross-domain effects.
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