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The purpose of this paper is to explore notions of career success from a process-oriented perspective. The authors argue that success can be usefully conceptualized as a subjectively malleable and localized construct that is continually (re)interpreted and (re)shaped through the interaction between individual agency and macro-level structures.

The paper employs a qualitative methodology drawing on 32 in-depth semi-structured interviews with female academics from eight countries in the Arab Middle East.

Findings of this study provide an empirical validation of the suggested Career Success Framework and moves toward an integrative model of objective and subjective career success criteria. More specifically, the findings showed that women's definitions of success are: first, localized in that they capture considerations relating to predominant institutions in the region (i.e. family and gender ideology); second, subjectively malleable in that they capture women's agency embedded in specific macro-level structures; and finally, process oriented in that they reflect a dynamic interaction between the structure agency as well as the subsequent actions, strategies, and behaviors women adopt to alleviate tension and reach their personal notions of career success.

The authors suggest that there may be value in customizing human resource management policies in the region around the salience of family and community service. Moreover, organizations can play a pivotal role in supporting women to work through the experienced tensions. Examples of such support are mentoring programs, championing female role models, and designing corporate social responsibility initiatives geared toward shifting mandated gender structures in the region. Finally, the authors argue that organizations could benefit by supporting women's atypical patterns of career engagement to allow for interactions with wider circles of stakeholders such as the community. This requires organizations to rethink their career success criteria to allow for the integration of non-traditional elements of career.

Adopting a more process-oriented view of career success avoids reification by drawing attention to local macro-level structures as well as individual agency. It also suggests that existing norms for how “success” is understood are only one element in a wider process of what it means to be “successful”, thereby opening space for more diverse and localized conceptualizations.

This paper provides a more process-oriented consideration of career success, highlighting the importance of understanding how perceived tensions shape an individual's behaviors, actions, and career strategies. The value of this contribution is that it allows us to better understand the complex interaction of structure and agency in shaping an individual's notions of career success.

This paper aims to examine organizational information systems based on Web 2.0 technology as socio-technical systems that involve interacting relationships among actors, structure, tasks and technology. Alignment within the relationships may facilitate increased technology use; however, gaps in alignment may impede technology use and result in poor performance or system failure. The technology examined is an organizational wiki used for collaborative knowledge management.

Results of a survey administered to employees of an organization providing cloud computing services are presented. The research model depicts the socio-technical component relationships and their influence on use of the wiki. Hierarchical latent variable modelling is used to operationalize the six main constructs. Hypotheses propose that as alignment of a relationship increases, wiki use increases. The partial least squares (PLS) method is used to examine the hypotheses.

Based on the results, increased perceptions of alignment among technology and structure increase wiki use. Further analysis indicates that low usage may be linked to gaps in alignment. Many respondents with lower usage scores also indicated “low alignment” among actor-task, actor-technology, and task-structure.

The sample size is rather small; however, results may give an indication as to the appropriateness of dimensions chosen to represent the alignment relationships. Socio-technical systems theory (STS) is often utilized in qualitative studies. This paper introduces a measurement instrument designed to evaluate STS through quantitative analysis.

User acceptance and change management continue to be important topics for both researchers and practitioners. The model proposed here provides measures that may reveal predictive indicators for increased information system use. Alternatively, practitioners may be able to utilize a diagnostic tool as presented here to assess underlying factors that may be impeding effective technology utilization.

The paper presents a diagnostic tool that may help management to better uncover misaligned relationships leading to underutilization of technology. Practical advice and guidelines are provided allowing for a plan to rectify the situation and improve technology usage and performance outcomes.

The purpose of this paper is to test Chandler’s dictum that “unless structure follows strategy, inefficiency results” (Chandler, 1962, p. 314) by assessing the continuing efforts to align structure with strategy in the automobile industry from the turn of the century through the 1980s.

The historical analysis utilized conceptual mediation and moderation methodologies wherein the impacts of strategy on structure were mediated by their impacts on coordination and control, and moderated by external conditions such as uncertainty, variability, interdependence and asset specificity.

The findings demonstrate that structure followed differing strategies at General Motors, Ford and Chrysler, and provide strong support for Chandler’s dictum. The findings demonstrate the difficulties of maintaining alignment of strategy and structure with changes in the external competitive environment, and the severe consequences of a misalignment of strategy and structure. The findings also demonstrate that structure alone is not sufficient to implement strategy effectively, and that firms must judiciously utilize both internal firm and external market coordinating and control mechanisms to optimize performance.

Limitations include that this is a study of a single industry over an extended, but specific time period.

Generalization is limited by a study of a single industry, but there are numerous implications for organizational design and strategy implementation that are not industry-specific.

Chandler’s dictum is often cited, but this is one of very few studies that demonstrate the relationship between specific organizational designs and company strategies, and the consequences of misaligning strategy and structure.

Digital supply chain (DSC) is an agile, customer-driven and productive way to develop different forms of returns for companies and to leverage efficient approaches with emerging techniques and data analytics. Though the advantages of digital supply chain management (DSCM) are many, its implementation is quite slow for several reasons. The purpose of this paper is to identify the major barriers which hinder the adoption of DSC and to analyse the interrelationship among them. The barriers of DSC are explored on the basis of existing literature and experts’ opinion.

This paper uses the interpretive structural modelling (ISM) approach to develop a hierarchical structural model which shows the mutual dependence among the barriers of DSC. Cross-impact matrix multiplication applied to classification analysis was performed to represent these barriers graphically on the basis of their driving power and dependence.

The research demonstrates that the barriers “no sense of urgency”, “lack of industry specific guidelines”, “lack of digital skills and talent” and “high implementation and running cost” are the most significant barriers to digital transformation of supply chain. This paper also suggests some managerial implications to overcome the barriers which hinder the implementation of digital transformation of supply chain.

This paper assists managers and policymakers to understand the order in which these barriers must be tackled and adopts a roadmap for successful implementation of DSCM and reap its benefits.

This is one of the initial research studies which has analysed the barriers of DSC using ISM approach.

This paper aims to improve upon the highly dispersed sales and operations planning (S&OP) research by integrating the findings of existing studies to identify and measure the size of the effect of S&OP on firm performance.

The methodology adopted was a systematic literature review of 271 abstracts and 55 papers. Three databases were selected for the search – Emerald, EBSCO, and ScienceDirect.

Although empirical evidence of the effects of S&OP in the supply chain is described, relatively few of the 55 papers reviewed estimate the effect of S&OP on firm performance. The research findings indicate a lack of unifying frameworks for the measurement of S&OP and constructs related to firm performance. The review offers partial evidence of the effect of S&OP on firm performance, suggesting the need for additional scientifically sound survey or case study research on S&OP.

Practitioners will benefit from insights related to the intermediate role of S&OP in mediating the effects of structural changes on firm performance. There is at least partial evidence that cross‐functional planning processes can mitigate the negative effect of misaligned organisational structures and contradictory incentives schemes on firm performance. Formal and informal communications between functions, networking and internal integrating roles can boost performance. Furthermore, internal alignment seems to facilitate supply chain integration with both suppliers and customers, particularly when inter‐organisational information systems favour supply chain integration.

This paper contributes to providing a better understanding of the role of S&OP as a determinant of firm performance in the supply chain.

The purpose of this paper is to critique the existing decision-making models of organizational theory and the ability of strategic managers to address unconventional problems using these models. Strategic management models presume reasonable stability in the task environment and the organizational design features. However, complex problems, or wicked problems, are prolific in a global world. They change profoundly the nature of strategic management, where management faces a deep paradox – an environment of unprecedented interdependence, yet unpredictable forces of chaos and volatility, a landscape of wicked problems. In this paper, the authors address wicked problems within the context of strategic management.

The authors review and critique the organizational theory literature, namely, microeconomics, bounded rationality, organizational failure and the theory of creative destruction within the context of wicked problems.

The authors find that the contemporary models of strategic management are incapable of assisting managers in addressing the reality of wicked problems. They argue that organizational pathologies rest in executive action: pursuit of goals and objectives with a false sense of causation, feedback filters that exaggerate good news and restrict bad news and actions that give only token measures to correct faulty design decisions and faulty decision processes, including more emphasis on vertical channels than horizontal task interdependencies.

The authors conclude that wicked problem-solving is by temperament and time horizon, a multilayered, multitasked, organizational challenge, and requires fundamentally different mindsets for design and performance systems for senior executives. The study of wicked problems requires a new corporate mindset, new collaborative models to address them and new corporate processes and executive training tools who increasingly have to address them. This research is a first step toward extending our understanding of how to address the world of wicked problems.

Islamic banking is a viable sustainable banking model that has shown resilience to financial crises. The aim of this research is to design a consensus-based ethical and market-driven corporate governance index (CGI) to boost financial performance and ensure compliance with Islamic rulings.

The design of the CGI is the outcome of the feedback obtained from a cross-country survey to measure bank efforts in enhancing corporate governance (CG) throughout the ten-year period of 2001-2011. The CGI is divided into six core CG themes and 40 sub-themes.

First, the results of the multiple regression analysis show a consistent positive relationship between CG and financial performance metrics. Second, the authors detect misaligned compensation structures for directors. Third, poor governance leads to higher risk exposures.

CG in Islamic banks is yet an evolving discipline and infant practice. This research aims to introduce a CGI that should be updated and improved as the discipline evolves.

The research concludes by proposing a CG paradigm. The outcome of the research could also be of use to both Islamic banks and to the rapidly growing sustainable banking sector in designing a similar CGI and CG model incorporating the ethical features of sustainable finance.

The core ethos of Islam are: avoiding the exploitation of the needy, avoiding excessively risky transactions, avoiding unethical transactions and justice, equity and income redistribution. If properly applied, Islamic banking will display all features of sustainable finance as well as enhance social welfare.

To the best of the authors' knowledge, this is the first CGI that is based on an ethical and all-inclusive input of all stakeholders.

The purpose of this paper is to qualitatively validate the constructs of a theoretically derived research model while gaining insights to steer the direction of a greater study on methodologies, their elements, and their impact on project success. In doing so, to investigate whether different project environments, notably project governance, impacts the relationship between methodologies and project success.

A deductive approach was applied to validate a theoretically derived research model. In total, 19 interviews across 11 industrial sectors and four countries were used to collect data. Pattern-matching techniques were utilized in the analysis to deductively validate the research model.

There is a positive relationship between project methodology elements and the characteristics of project success; however, environmental factors, notably project governance, influence the use and effectiveness of a project methodology and its elements with a resulting impact on the characteristics of project success.

Project governance plays a major role in the moderating effect of a project methodology’s effectiveness. Contingency theory is applicable to a project’s methodology’s selection and its customization according to the project environment.

Understand the impact of project methodologies and their elements on the characteristics of project success while being moderated by the project environment, for example, the risk of suboptimal project performance due to the effectiveness of methodology elements being negatively impacted by the project environment.

The impact of a project methodology (collection of heterogeneous-related elements) on the characteristics of project success is identified while being moderated by the project environment, notably project governance.

The purpose of this paper is to provide new evidence on the choice of performance measures used in dual-class firms to incentivize CEOs.

This paper uses coarsened exact matching and propensity score matching to match the dual-class firm sample with a control group of single-class firms. This study uses matching estimators to provide an analysis of how a dual-class structure affects the design of performance measures in performance-based stock awards. In addition, regression models are used to investigate the effect of a dual-class structure on performance measure choices.

This paper finds that market-based metrics are less likely to be used by dual-class firms relative to single-class firms. In addition, peer-based measures are much less common for dual-class than single-class firms. This study also finds that the length of the CEO’s performance evaluation period does not differ between dual-class and single-class firms.

This paper attempts to investigate the choice of performance measures to find out the extent to which the board of directors focuses CEO efforts on firms’ long-term versus short-term objectives.

The findings reveal the relationships between the dual-class stock structure and the contractual features of CEO performance-based stock awards, provide empirical evidence for the company’s compensation committee and provide implications for the evolving practices of performance measures regarding CEO stock compensation. The findings are also useful to regulators, compensation consultants and firms pursuing efficient design of executive compensation.

This paper is among the first to study the determinants of compensation contracts. Second, prior literature seldom controls for CEO stock ownership, but this study matches dual-class firms to a control group of single-class firms that are similar in terms of CEO stock ownership and other important firm characteristics. Finally, these findings suggest that dual-class firms shield their executives from short-term market pressures and design stock compensation contracts that deemphasize volatile stock prices.

Organizations are fast adopting new technologies such as automation, analytics and artificial intelligence, collectively called intelligent automation, to drive digital transformation. When adopting intelligent automation, there is a need to understand the success factors of these new technologies and adapt agile software development (ASD) practices to meet customer expectations. The purpose of this paper is to explore the success factors of intelligent automation and create a framework for managers and practitioners to meet dynamic business demands. Total interpretive structural modeling (TISM) framework is a suitable approach to integrate quantitative measurement with qualitative semi-structured interviews capturing the context of the individual organization environment.

This paper identified agility factors and their interrelationships using a TISM framework. TISM results were validated using a one-tailed t-test to confirm the interrelationships between factors. Furthermore, the agility index of a case project organization was assessed using a graph-theoretic approach (GTA) to identify both the triggering factors for agility success and improvement proposals.

Results showed that leadership vision, organization structure and program methodology were driving factors. The TISM model was validated statistically and the agility index of the intelligent automation case project organization was calculated to be79.5%. Here, a GTA was applied and the triggering factors for improvement of the agility index were identified.

The limitations of the study are described along with the opportunities for future research as the field evolves through the rapid innovation of technology and products.

The increasing role of digital transformation in enterprise strategy and operations requires practitioners to understand how ASD practices must be planned, measured and/or improved over time through the implementation of automation, analytics and artificial intelligence programs. The TISM digraph provides a framework of hierarchical structure to organize the influencing factors, which assists in achieving organizational goals. This study highlights the driving factors which contribute to the success of intelligent automation projects and project organizations.

This is a first attempt to analyze the interrelationships among agility factors in intelligent automation projects (IAP) using TISM and the assessment of the agility index of a case IAP organization using a GTA.