Search results

The study explores the alignment of Swiss small and medium-sized enterprise (SME) managers' understanding of digital transformation, with evidence of digital tool adoption in managerial and operative work. This reveals opportunities for more fully realizing the potential of digital transformation for SMEs.

This multiple-case study, with four theoretically sampled cases, analyzes data from the qualitative answers of 1,593 respondents to a survey of Swiss SMEs about digital transformation. The study draws on a convenience sample of Swiss SME managers.

The analysis shows little understanding of digital transformation as related to managerial work. However, there are two clear digital tool adoption patterns for managerial work: (1) workflow and workforce management and (2) work-flow and team management. Understandings of digital transformation and operative work focus on the (1) organization of operational work or (2) a combination of organization and changing the way people work. The digital tool adoption in operational work additionally focuses on the digital skills of operational employees.

The study is only able to identify patters of understanding of digital transformation and digital tool adoption in managerial and operative work. More research is needed to understand why these patterns are observed.

SME managers need to think far more carefully about aligning their vision for digital transformation and the digital tools they adopt in both managerial and operational work, but especially in managerial work.

This is the first empirical study of the digital transformation of Swiss SMEs and their digital tool adoption. Significant potential for alignment is revealed, suggesting potential performance gains are possible.

The purpose of this paper is to provide a conceptual analysis on value proposition tools to be used in future empirical research and in building managerial insight. The conceptual analysis focusses on a living lab framework and recent theoretical developments around the concept of value that are reflected in the context of three managerial tools for creating value propositions.

Using abductive reasoning, the descriptions of the tools were analysed as cultural texts, as language-in-use in a social context.

In the context of the living labs approach, the Value Proposition Builder™ (VPB) seems to conflict with the ideas and premises of user-centric innovation processes. In the Value Proposition Canvas (VPC), the co-creation aspect is rather vague, as the enterprise and its offerings are presented as creators of value for the customer. Thus, this tool somewhat contradicts the living lab approach. The People Value Canvas (PVC) is aligned with the service-dominant logic and the premises of living labs. However, all three tools largely neglect a deeper acknowledgement of the role of the wider context, the service ecosystem, and the role of networked actors as resource integrators. Moreover, none of the tools explicitly point out the role of enterprises as intermediaries in constructing invitations for value co-creation.

The paper contributes to the SDL and living labs literature by conceptual analysis on different value proposition tools; the VPB™, the PVC, and the VPC which are relevant for academics as well as practitioners creating new understanding and insights on the connectedness of the living labs framework and SDL as well as their relationship to managerial tools. By identifying the absent elements of S-D logic from managerial value proposition tools, the paper contributes to current discussions by giving attention from scholars towards investigating managerial tools and by providing a new conceptual analysis for future empirical research. The critical analysis of the managerial tools contributes to managerial practice by emphasising the need to consciously evaluate the benefits and failures of tools for developing their organisations.

Innovation processes are inherently uncertain. They account for a high proportion of risks taken by companies and cause tensions. The purpose of this paper is to consider whether some management tools facilitate the smooth implementation of an innovation process. Does the relevance of these tools depend on the size of the company, its activity sector, the type of innovation expected or the viewpoint of the manager in charge?

The author answers these questions using a quantitative questionnaire survey of 169 companies. This survey allows the author to describe the tools and practices of management control of innovation processes and to highlight the specific needs of different sets of companies.

The collected data show a convergence of tools and practices used, which the literature on managerial control and creativity helps us to understand.

The paper also contributes to reconciling management control and innovation activities. In particular, it investigates how the use of management tools varies depending on managers’ viewpoints. A distinction is made between formal, information system-based tools and more informal, human relationship-based tools.

The issue of accounting change, why and how accounting evolves through time and within specific organisational settings, has been addressed by an important body of literature. This paper aims to explain why, in processes of accounting change, organisations confronting similar environmental pressures show different outcomes of change.

Drawing on archetype theory, the paper analyses the case of two Italian local governments. Comparative case studies were carried out, reconstructing a period of 15 years.

Although confronted with similar environmental pressures, the two cases show two different patterns of accounting change, where only one case is able to finally reach radical change. Accounting change can be prompted by external stimuli, but, once the change is prompted, the outcomes of the change are explained by the dynamics of intra‐organisational conditions.

The study contributes to accounting change literature by adopting an approach (i.e. archetype theory) that overcomes some of the limitations of previous studies in explaining variations in organisational change. Through this, the authors are able to explain different outcomes and paces of accounting change and point out the intra‐organisational factors also affecting them in the presence of similar environmental pressures. A specification of the theoretical framework in a particular setting is also provided.

This study aims to expand the theory of organisational citizenship behaviour (OCB) to include “exterior” behaviours. By advancing the work of Blake and Mouton (1964) and remapping the performance/OCB dimensions offered in the historical literature, a new holistic model of organisational performance is proposed. As a further step, a decision-making tool is proposed for managerial decision-making and to help predict employee performance.

The paper adopts a critical review and conceptual approach to explore historical OCB theories and task performance (TP) taxonomies. It then used Blake and Mouton’s managerial grid to construct a contemporary conceptual tool for managerial decision-making.

Despite the performance literature not lacking in quantity, a few of such research have led to a pragmatic managerial tool. The review reveals several confusions regarding the accurate classification of what actually constitutes OCB and what constitutes TP – this gap is filled by the introduction of the OCB model for managerial decision-making (OMMD).

The current work expands our thinking on OCBs that can occur outside the organisation. These exterior behaviours can influence the organisation’s performance and must be managed just like any other performance metric. The OMMD, primarily based on OCB and TP, provides an initial framework for exploring different typologies of employees. Despite being based on several cogent performance literatures, the proposals have not been tested empirically.

Like the Blake and Mouton model, the new OMMD can be useful in estimating the proportions of employee OCBs and TP.

Culture and social exchange theory can be seen as playing a role in separating TP from OCB.

This study extends the work of Bateman and Organ (1983) by suggesting that some work behaviours can occur outside the organisation. Besides, a decision-making proposal is offered based on the managerial grid framework (Blake and Mouton, 1964).

The purpose of the research is to develop a universal mechanism of highly effective decision-making in modern business systems in any business environment.

The methods of logical analysis, modeling of managerial processes, and formalization are used.

A universal mechanism of highly effective decision-making in modern business systems is developed – it could be applied in any business environment and any business system. The mechanism is based on the interactive algorithm of decision-making in modern business systems that allows adapting the process of decision-making to the current situation in the business system and the business environment in view of the changing complexity of problems and criteria of optimality of managerial decisions. The tools of implementing the mechanism are outsource, mediation, and intellectual support for managerial decisions. These tools are used as an addition to traditional tools – organizational structure, organizational culture, and leadership. The result of implementing the developed mechanism is high probability of making of optimal managerial decisions and supporting sustainability and stability of the business system.

The developed mechanism of highly effective decision-making in modern business systems allows selecting the best model of decision-making depending on current needs and possibilities of the business system instead of following one selected model in all situations. That is, the key advantage of this mechanism is its interactive character, which ensures high flexibility of the process of making of managerial decisions together with sustainability of the business system.

The aim of this study is to explore the drivers of supply and demand for attention in the managerial context, and develop a framework of managerial tools for allocating attention to various competing demands.

Deliberative attention refers to the application of attention to prolonged reflection and consideration of problems where routine approaches are insufficient. Drawing on theories of cognitive and structural constraints to the allocation of attention among competing stimuli, the paper investigates how managers match the strategic demands for deliberative attention and the supply available to individuals in their firms. This is used to develop a model of factors influencing the matching of supply and demand.

The paper uses this model to recommend specific strategies for explicitly managing deliberative attention and to categorize the appropriate application of a range of existing strategic management tools based on the nature and inherent uncertainty of the organizational problem being faced.

The model suggests that a primary strategic task of top managers is the appropriate management of attention within the firm. Understanding attention as a firm resource to be appropriately and deliberately managed helps to advance theoretical understanding of the human side of valuable resources in the firm. Such knowledge may also help practitioners to be more cognizant of their investments of valuable attention resources.

This is one of the first studies to treat attention as a scarce and valuable firm resource to be managed, and to use this as the foundation for more appropriate application of a wide range of current management techniques.

The purpose of this paper is to build a working definition of public administration's management capacity (PA‐MANCAP) aiming at empirically testing the existence and size of an implementation gap in public management reforms in Italy.

A confirmatory factor analysis is developed to assess the validity of the proposed operational measure. Data are taken from a survey administered on 204 local governments in Italy.

The validity of the measure is assessed for all the attributes that conceptualize PA‐MANCAP except for the information and communication technology dimension. Findings from a survey of 102 major Italian municipalities indicate a situation with areas of light and shadow with regard to the implementation of public management reforms in Italy.

The paper presents a valuable insight for both academics and practitioners in order to benchmark the managerial capacity of various local governments and to develop additional quantitative research into the determinants of the implementation gap of public management reforms in Italy and abroad.

The purpose of the paper is to classify the full scope of hazards in the way to effective project‐ and decision‐management in teams, and to present team leaders with a practical set of guidelines for coping with those obstacles, towards successful achievements.

The paper provides a classification of the full spectrum of possible factors responsible for mishaps, faults and failures which regularly tend to occur within managerial and organizational activities at all levels. It goes on to present a set of two tools that, jointly applied, can provide managers with the necessary control to lead more team processes and projects towards successful terminations: the “revised decision square model” and the “capi” model.

The paper provides evidence in the form of quotes from testimonies of managers who have adopted the proposed strategy for their every‐day use within their teams.

The paper offers a practical step‐by‐step set of guidelines to lead managers towards a relatively high level of control in the management of effective and efficient team decision making and implementation processes, ensuring their route towards successful achievements.

Limited attention has been given in the literature to the studying of practical and applicable managerial techniques to successful decision‐implementation in teams. This paper focuses on this neglected domain, proposing a solution, in the form of an integrative strategy.