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Purpose – This chapter explores the determinants of trust, a manifestation of the relational dimension of social capital, between interaction partners in multinational corporations at interpersonal and inter-unit levels of analysis.

Methodology – The study is based on two quantitative data sets from the Finnish subsidiaries of foreign MNCs, one at the individual level and another at the unit level (n= 265/102).

Findings – Our results indicate that the drivers of trust exhibit similar patterns across both levels of analysis, but are stronger at the interpersonal level. Trust was significantly and positively related to the length of the relationship between the two individuals or units, and to the frequency of the communication between them whereas it was found to be unrelated with cultural distance.

Limitations – The key limitations of the study were as follows. First, the samples at both levels were relatively small, a factor that may partly explain why some of the statistical relationships were relatively weak. Second, the study was carried out in one location only, and our findings need to be corroborated in other cultural settings. Third, we only examined the level of trust from one side of the relationship, as a dyadic analysis was not possible with the present data.

Practical implications – For practicing managers, the main message from our research is that communication frequency and the length of the relationship matter for the relational social capital that exists within MNCs – both at the interpersonal and unit levels.

Purpose – The integration of librarians and technologists to deliver information services represents a new and costly organizational challenge for many library administrators. To understand how to control the costs of integration, this study uses structural contingency theory to study the coordination of librarians and technologists within the information commons.

Design/methodology/approach – This study tests the structural contingency theory expectation that an organization will achieve higher levels of performance when there is a positive relationship between the degree of workflow interdependence and the complexity of coordinative structures necessary to integrate these workflows. This expectation was tested by (a) identifying and collecting a sample of information common; (b) developing and validating survey instruments to test the proposition; and (c) quantitatively analyzing the data to test the proposed contingency theory relationship.

Findings – The contingency theory expectations were confirmed by finding both a positive relationship between coordination and interdependence and a positive relationship between perceptions of performance and degree of congruency between interdependence and coordination.

Limitations – The findings of this study are limited to both the context of an information common and the structures tested. Future research should seek to both broaden the context in which these findings are applicable, and test additional structural relationships as proposed by contingency theory

Practical implications – This study contributes to the library profession in a number of ways. First, it suggests that managers can improve IC performance by matching coordination structures to the degree of interdependence. For instance, when librarians and technologists are strictly co-located, managers should coordinate workflows using less resource-intensive policies rather than meetings. Second, the instruments developed in this study will improve the library manager's ability to measure and report unit interdependence and coordination in a valid and reliable manner. Lastly, it also contributes to the study of structural contingency theory by presenting one of the first empirical confirmations of a positive relationship between interdependence and coordination.

Originality/value – This study represents one of the first empirical confirmations of the structural contingency theory expectations of both a positive relationship between workflow interdependence and coordination, and a positive relationship between performance and coordination's fit to workflow interdependence. These findings are of value to both organizational theorists and to administrators of information commons.

Most research of post-acquisition integration examines integration of individual business units. The research pays less attention to corporate level integration processes, by which we mean the standardization of integration routines and synchronization of integration activities across a firm’s business units. We argue that corporate level acquisition activities and post-acquisition integration processes strongly influence long term corporate performance, particularly as a firm which comprises interdependent business units becomes geographically diffuse. Acquisitions tend to increase system diversity and goal diversity across business units. Some goal diversity is beneficial, but excessive goal diversity and the existence of system diversity can reduce long run corporate performance by requiring greater managerial effort and increasing the opportunity cost of managerial efforts. The negative effects become stronger as a firm becomes geographically diffuse or if business units are interdependent. Firms that employ active corporate level integration processes – particularly firms that acquire frequently and have interdependent business units – can enhance the benefits and eliminate some of the problems of diversity.

Does staffing contribute to organizational effectiveness and sustained competitive advantage, or are many of staffing’s implications merely cross-level fallacies? This article provides a critical examination of staffing research and practice, and proposes a multilevel model of staffing that ties together micro (e.g. personnel selection), meso (e.g. team staffing), and macro (e.g. organizational strategy, Human Resources practices) theory, research, and practice. The model is both integrative and prescriptive, providing a basic organizing structure for examining staffing research within and across levels. The article begins with a review of multilevel theory, followed by a review and critique of the dominant staffing paradigms from a multilevel perspective. It is shown these single level paradigms cannot answer many of the primary questions of interest to staffing specialists. In contrast, the multilevel staffing model not only addresses these limitations, but also prompts a variety of new predictions that oftentimes run counter to prevailing wisdom. Staffing specialists are challenged to show how our science and practice contribute to better functioning organizations.

This study proposes targeted modernization of the Department of Defense (DoD's) Joint Forces Ammunition Logistics information system by implementing the optimized innovative information technology open architecture design and integrating Radio Frequency Identification Device data technologies and real-time optimization and control mechanisms as the critical technology components of the solution. The innovative information technology, which pursues the focused logistics, will be deployed in 36 months at the estimated cost of $568 million in constant dollars. We estimate that the Systems, Applications, Products (SAP)-based enterprise integration solution that the Army currently pursues will cost another $1.5 billion through the year 2014; however, it is unlikely to deliver the intended technical capabilities.

Over the past decade, the U.S. workforce has become increasingly diverse. In response, scholars and practitioners have sought to uncover ways to leverage this increasing diversity to enhance business performance. To date, research evidence has failed to provide consistent support for the value of diversity to organizational effectiveness. Accordingly, scholars have shifted their attention to diversity management as a means to fully realize the potential benefits of diversity in organizations. The principal aim of this chapter is to review the current wisdom on the study of diversity climate in organizations. Defined as the extent that employees view an organization as utilizing fair personnel practices and socially integrating all personnel into the work environment, diversity climate has been proposed as a catalyst for unlocking the full value of diversity in organizations. During our review, we discuss the existent individual- and aggregate-level research, describe the theoretical foundations of such work, summarize the key research findings and themes gleaned from work in each domain, and note the limitations of diversity climate research. Finally, we highlight the domains of uncertainty regarding diversity climate research, and offer recommendations for future work that can enhance knowledge of diversity climate effects on organizational outcomes.

We explore: (1) the effects of work unit pressure on employees’ satisfaction with work–family balance (S-WFB); (2) the effects of individual-level job and family pressures on S-WFB; and (3) the extent to which schedule control moderates the negative influences of work unit pressure and other demands on employee S-WFB – among employees in a large healthcare system.

The data come from employee responses to the baseline survey (n = 3,950) administered in September 2012, and from administrative unit-level data (445 units) showing the extent to which units were “on-budget” (within 5 percent), “over-budget,” or “under-budget.”

Practices associated with cost containment in a healthcare system of 10,000 employees in the United States appear to have a negative impact on employee S-WFB. Working in a unit that is “under-budget” is negatively associated with individual S-WFB. Employees with high job demands, longer hours, responsibilities for children and/or adults, also reported lower S-WFB than employees without these characteristics.

Research is limited by lack of measures specific to healthcare workers, the use of baseline data only, and sample size for some of the analyses.

Schedule control makes a difference even under high work pressure. The lack of interactions among variables that typically moderate relationships between work pressures and S-WFB suggests the need for more support for healthcare workers under the strain of cost containment.

We include an objective indicator of unit-level job pressures on individual employees, thus identifying specific ways that work stress affects S-WFB.

To review and address current approaches and limitations to modeling change over time in social entrepreneurship research.

The article provides a narrative review of different practices used to assess change over time. It also shows how different research questions require different methodologies for assessing changes over time. Finally, it presents worked examples for modeling these changes.

Our review suggests that there is a lack of research in social entrepreneurship that takes into account the many different considerations for addressing how time influences outcomes.

This chapter introduces an analytic technique to social entrepreneurship that effectively models changes in predictors and outcomes even when data are non-normal or nested across time or levels of analysis.

Organizational researchers have become increasingly interested in multi-level constructs – that is, constructs that are meaningful at multiple levels of analysis. However, despite the plethora of theoretical and empirical work on multi-level topics, explicit frameworks for validation of multi-level constructs have yet to be fully developed. Moreover, available principles for conducting construct validation assume that the construct resides at a single level of analysis. We propose a five-step framework for conceptualizing and testing multi-level constructs by integrating principles of construct validation with recent advancements in multi-level theory, research, and methodology. The utility of the framework is illustrated using theoretical and empirical examples.

Scholarship on reputation in and of organizations has been going on for decades, and it always has separated along level of analysis issues, whereby the separate literatures on individual, group/team/unit, and organization reputation fail to acknowledge each other. This sends the implicit message that reputation is a fundamentally different phenomenon at the three different levels of analysis. We tested the validity of this implicit assumption by conducting a multilevel review of the reputation literature, and drawing conclusions about the “level-specific” or “level-generic” nature of the reputation construct. The review results permitted the conclusion that reputation phenomena are essentially the same at all levels of analysis. Based on this, we frame a future agenda for theory and research on reputation.