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Book part
Publication date: 8 October 2018

Stephan Leixnering, Andrea Schikowitz, Gerhard Hammerschmid and Renate E. Meyer

Public sector reforms of recent decades in Europe have promoted managerialism and aimed at introducing private sector thinking and practices. However, with regard to public sector…

Abstract

Public sector reforms of recent decades in Europe have promoted managerialism and aimed at introducing private sector thinking and practices. However, with regard to public sector executives’ self-understanding, managerial role identities have not replaced bureaucratic ones; rather, components from both paradigms were combined. In this chapter, we introduce a bi-dimensional identity approach (attitudes and practices) that allows for different combinations and forms of hybridity. Empirically, we explore the role identities of public sector executives across Europe, building on survey data from over 7,000 top public officials in 19 countries (COCOPS survey). We identify country-level profiles, as well as patterns across countries, and find that administrative traditions can account for these profiles and patterns only to a limited extent. Rather, they have to be complemented by factors such as stability of the institutional environment (indicating lower shares of hybrid combinations) or extent of reform pressures (indicating higher shares of hybrid combinations).

Book part
Publication date: 29 July 2019

Natalia Guseva and Olga Tishchenko

This chapter examines the possibilities of economic growth in Russia from the perspective of the development of organizational capability, namely through the study of best…

Abstract

This chapter examines the possibilities of economic growth in Russia from the perspective of the development of organizational capability, namely through the study of best managerial practices of multinational companies (MNCs) doing business in Russia, and their use by Russian companies. With tightening competition, companies are forced to focus on the development of organizational capabilities. Our large-scale empirical research into the managerial capabilities and management practices of MNCs and Russian companies employs a comprehensive sample of 1,530 companies and 1,245 companies in 2016 and 2017, respectively, covering the 10 main sectors of economic activity in Moscow and the Moscow region. The analysis was performed across five managerial capabilities: communication, leadership, problem-solving and decision-making, conflict resolution, and motivation, each subdivided into five management practices. Using statistical methods, we identified the major statistically significant differences in and between the managerial practices of MNCs and Russian companies operating in the Russian market, and their dynamics from 2016 to 2017. Taking MNCs operating in the Russian market as a benchmark, we discover that Russian companies need to close the gap in 17 out of the 25 managerial practices in order to maintain competitiveness in the Russian market and be able to influence their economic growth in Russia.

Details

Tech, Smart Cities, and Regional Development in Contemporary Russia
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-78973-881-0

Keywords

Book part
Publication date: 13 August 2018

Niran Subramaniam

Purpose – This study investigates the interplay between strategic performance measurement and management accounting to gain a deeper understanding of how strategic measures of

Abstract

Purpose – This study investigates the interplay between strategic performance measurement and management accounting to gain a deeper understanding of how strategic measures of performance evolve with the managerial accounting practices.

Design/Methodology/Approach – The study explored the performance measures used at a bank focused on the development and sustainability initiatives in Africa. Thirty-two semistructured interviews were conducted with directors, managers, and analysts from nine different categories of job families.

Findings – Analysis shows that managers assimilate a comprehensive, multifaceted measurement system to understand the creation and delivery of sustainable value. The results show that the managerial accounting practices adapt to incorporate an integrated set of performance measures that afford sustainable value to the stakeholders. The findings provide rich insights into how the managers adapt their information assimilation practices to the changing demands of the different stakeholders and adopt practices which innovate measures of performance that are aligned to the strategic goals. Finally, the findings illustrate that the interplay between strategic performance and managerial accounting practices has the potential to improve or inhibit sustainable development.

Originality/Value – Little is known about how performance measures evolve, and how they interplay with the managerial accounting practices within organizations. This study reveals that the interplay of strategic performance measurement and managerial accounting can only be understood in the confluence of organizational change and sustainability. While acknowledging the need to embrace change and sustainability simultaneously, the study offers insights into the dynamics of change – the duality of emergent managerial accounting practices and the evolution of strategic performance measurement systems.

Book part
Publication date: 27 June 2015

Susanne Ollila and Anna Yström

This chapter asks how we can understand the managerial practices in open innovation, a recently popularized way of organizing innovative work. Open innovation implies opening up…

Abstract

This chapter asks how we can understand the managerial practices in open innovation, a recently popularized way of organizing innovative work. Open innovation implies opening up the borders of the organization, creating a context where conventional steering and managerial tools no longer apply. Utilizing a collaborative research approach, following an open innovation collaboration over 8 years, this chapter outlines the managerial practices that direct the collaboration. These practices are important for meaning making and identity creation in the collaboration and can be understood as a form of authorship, a continuous intervention strategy to manage, develop and change the organizational context.

Details

Research in Organizational Change and Development
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-78560-018-0

Keywords

Book part
Publication date: 1 August 2019

Tatiana N. Litvinova

Purpose: The purpose of the chapter is to determine the specifics of making of managerial decisions in business systems of modern countries of Europe, to compile a European model…

Abstract

Purpose: The purpose of the chapter is to determine the specifics of making of managerial decisions in business systems of modern countries of Europe, to compile a European model of decision making in modern business systems, and to determine its capabilities for ensuring optimal decisions.

Methodology: The authors use the method of systemic and problem analysis, the method of comparative analysis (for comparing the European practice of managerial decisions to practices of other regions of the world), and the methods of modeling and formalization.

Conclusions: A European model of making of managerial decisions in modern business systems is compiled; it has the following peculiarities: collective offering, discussing, and making managerial decisions; presence of independent marketing committee that conducts systemic marketing; internal communications of business entities only with the production committee; and sustainability of horizontal connections between committees with the linear organizational structure.

Originality/value: Due to determined peculiarities, such advantages of the European model as making of well-balanced managerial decisions from positions of all interested parties, low expenditures for decision making due to usage of internal outsource, high effectiveness of marketing activities, and integration of managerial staff that allows solving current problems of the business system are achieved. However, in the European model, the process of making of managerial decisions is the longest as compared to other studied regional models. That's why application of the European model of decision making in modern business systems allows achieving high effectiveness of this process in a period of stability, and in case of downward wave of economic cycle, this model cannot ensure high effectiveness of managerial decisions.

Details

Specifics of Decision Making in Modern Business Systems
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-78756-692-7

Keywords

Book part
Publication date: 26 November 2018

Rikke Kristine Nielsen

This chapter addresses the call for identification of organizational contingencies related to a global mindset, exploration of different forms of a global mindset, and the…

Abstract

This chapter addresses the call for identification of organizational contingencies related to a global mindset, exploration of different forms of a global mindset, and the relationship of global mindset with global strategies. To this end, the chapter explores global mindset development in the context of a three-year case study of middle managers in a Danish multinational corporation working with deliberate global mindset capability development as a vehicle for global strategy execution. The analysis of individual middle manager practices of a global mindset and associated organizational practices, as observed from a middle manager strategy implementation perspective, is condensed into four core aspects of individual-organizational practice that enables the enactment of global mindset: inclusive strategy co-creation, interactional synergy, imagined community building, and performance flexibility. On the basis of these learnings, the potentials and opportunities of applying a contextual, behavioral perspective on global mindset that incorporates both individual and organizational factors, as opposed to a generic, cognitive perspective, are discussed in terms of advancing knowledge of both the global mindset–performance causal chain and the practical impact of global mindset research.

Book part
Publication date: 9 May 2014

Isabelle Flachère

We utilise the actor-network theory (ANT) – based especially on Latour (2005) – to examine how management accounting tools affect physicians’ representations and new managerial…

Abstract

Purpose

We utilise the actor-network theory (ANT) – based especially on Latour (2005) – to examine how management accounting tools affect physicians’ representations and new managerial practices in French public hospitals currently undergoing reform.

Design/methodology/approach

We conducted a longitudinal case study – based on interviews and observations – in a large French public hospital in which dashboards are diffused to physicians and nurses dealing with both medical and managerial activities.

Findings

The case shows that head physicians and nurses are implicated in their new managerial tasks and spend time analysing dashboards. Management accounting tools thus play a role, as mediators, in organising new managerial practices, and dashboards are a means of materialising and giving structure to new managerial practices and enabling discussions and exchanges to take place between actors who were previously separated.

Research implications

The case shows that management accounting tools are not necessarily useful because they help in decision-making or control – as in the dominant paradigm; rather, they are beneficial because they may help in changing representations and building a new collective organisation. Future research should therefore expand on the organisational and social roles of management accounting tools, especially in the healthcare field.

Originality/value

Most ANT-inspired studies in management accounting focus on explaining changes in accounting practices, which are perceived as a consequence of an ANT process. This chapter, however, analyses the practices by which management accounting tools act as a vehicle to organisational change.

Details

Performance Measurement and Management Control: Behavioral Implications and Human Actions
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-78350-378-0

Keywords

Book part
Publication date: 27 October 2014

Simonne Vermeylen

This paper proposes to rethink the concepts of relevance and usefulness and their relation to the theory–practice gap in management research.

Abstract

Purpose

This paper proposes to rethink the concepts of relevance and usefulness and their relation to the theory–practice gap in management research.

Methodology/approach

On the basis of the cognitive-linguistic relevance theory or inferential pragmatics, supplemented by insights from information science, we define relevance as a general conceptual category, while reserving usefulness for the instrumental application in a particular case.

Findings

There is no reason to hold onto the difference between theoretical and practical relevance, nor to distinguish between instrumental and conceptual relevance.

Originality/value

This novel approach will help to clarify the confusion in the field and contribute to a better understanding of the added value of management research.

Details

A Focused Issue on Building New Competences in Dynamic Environments
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-78441-274-6

Keywords

Book part
Publication date: 22 October 2016

Benedetto Lepori

The goal of this chapter is to review the potential of institutional logics theory for the study of higher education. After providing a concise introduction to institutional…

Abstract

The goal of this chapter is to review the potential of institutional logics theory for the study of higher education. After providing a concise introduction to institutional logics, the chapter reviews the small number of studies in higher education that have adopted this approach. It is concluded that most uses of New Institutionalism in the field are still based on its original formulation in the late 1980s, which emphasized the importance of compliance and isomorphism; it is suggested that logics theory could provide a more nuanced and flexible framework, which takes into account the role of (embedded) human agency and the multi-level nature of societal dynamics. The last section of the chapter therefore provides a few directions for future research grounded in logics theory. We distinguish in this respect between the investigation of the field-level coexistence and the interaction between managerial and professional logics; studies of how higher education institutions manage conflicting institutional pressures, for example, through selective compliance; and analyses of the emergence of hybrid practices in academic work and higher education management.

Details

Theory and Method in Higher Education Research
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-78635-895-0

Book part
Publication date: 10 October 2022

Victor Yawo Atiase, David Sarpong, Senyo Agbanyo and Johnson Kwesi Ameh

Organisational resilience is a strategic resource within the contingencies of organising in Small and Micro businesses (SMEs). In this regard, the notion of resilient human…

Abstract

Organisational resilience is a strategic resource within the contingencies of organising in Small and Micro businesses (SMEs). In this regard, the notion of resilient human capital in propelling a resilient organisation has come to dominate the contemporary discourse on the performance of SMEs. Drawing on human capital theory as a meta-theoretical lens, we examine the cumulative effect of managerial training on managers’ performance in the context of relatively underdeveloped institutions and markets. Employing a quantitative research methodology, data for our empirical inquiry comes from a survey of 506 Ghanaian SMEs operating in diverse sectors of the economy. Following SMEs being at the convergence point of resource constraint, we show why some firm managers are more likely to exhibit managerial resilience than those in other firms. Our data evidence suggests that targeted managerial training, in practice, has the potential to strengthen organisational resilience. Nevertheless, the content, efficiency and frequency of the training received, we argue, accounts for the differential performance of managers within the contingencies of everyday organising. We conclude by delineating some relevant implications of our study for the theory and practice of managerial resilience nurturing in organising.

Details

The African Context of Business and Society
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-80117-853-2

Keywords

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