Search results

Blockchain is a technical solution integrating multiple technologies, with the potential to overcome the drawbacks of organizational governance. Given the emergence and prevalence of blockchain, its importance for organizational governance has progressively increased. Therefore, this study aims to analyze how blockchain restructure organizational governance.

This study presents a structured systematic literature review of blockchain-enabled applications across diverse organizational governance models and several case studies to illustrate them. Based on the above analysis, governance mechanisms, transaction upgrading and challenges are proposed.

Based on the literature review and typical applications, the authors summarize the advances in the research on the theoretical and practical applications of blockchain in organizational governance. We also identify the influence mechanisms of organizational governance and investigate transaction upgrading based on blockchain. Finally, the authors discuss three types of challenges (i.e. administrative, technical and environmental) to the relationship between blockchain and organizational governance. Along with the development of blockchain applications, the impact of blockchain on organizational governance has progressed in both theory and practice. Therefore, these findings will have significant implications for both academics and practitioners.

This paper makes three key theoretical contributions: we review the literature on the impact of blockchain on organizational governance and present typical cases to illustrate it; propose four governance mechanisms for the application of blockchain in organizational governance; and propose an innovating-and-matching-oriented model of transaction upgrading based on blockchain.

This study aims to analyze the effects of socialization mechanisms (belief system and peer mentoring) on managers’ job engagement and their desire to have a significant impact through work, that is, the desire to substantially improve or facilitate the lives of others by performing their work. The study also examines the moderating role of organizational identification.

A survey was conducted with middle and lower-level managers at one of the largest banks in Brazil, the BankCo. The authors obtained a sample of 201 respondents and tested the research hypotheses with structural equation modeling. The authors also performed a complementary data analysis with fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis.

The results suggest that belief systems and peer mentoring directly promote job engagement and indirectly promote desire to have a significant impact to a better world through work (through full mediation of job engagement). The effects of job engagement on desire to have a significant impact through work are even greater when managers have high organizational identification. Finally, several causal combinations are sufficient for high levels of desire to have a significant impact through work.

Beyond studies that examine how organizational mechanisms influence employee outcomes (e.g. performance), this study explores how socialization mechanisms can promote desire to have a significant impact through work. Thus, the authors demonstrate how organizational core values, mission statement and peer mentoring collaborate for managers to develop altruistic behavior, that is, directly related to other human values, such as empathy and ethics, being able to contribute to a world better.

This study developed and empirically tested a model that connects socialization mechanisms, job engagement, organizational identification and managers’ desire to have a significant impact through their work. Therefore, the paper provides insights into the relevance of socialization mechanisms for orchestrating managers’ proactive and altruistic behaviors.

This research paper aims to elucidate why and how a fair supervisor influences an employee's job satisfaction. While various theoretical approaches have been explored and numerous explanatory mechanisms investigated in prior organizational justice research, it is still unclear which explanatory mechanism is the dominant one to explain fairness effects. To address this gap, the author compares six distinct explanatory mechanisms of fairness effects on job satisfaction.

The author conducted a three-phase survey study with 309 employees from diverse organizations. The author measured all variables twice to control for stability effects and ensure stable findings. The author combined a path analysis with bootstrapping procedures using Mplus 8.3 software.

The influence of supervisor fairness on job satisfaction is primarily transmitted through an employee's negative emotions, a mechanism often examined in previous organizational justice research adopting the moral perspective of fairness.

Supervisors can increase employees' satisfaction with their jobs by treating them fairly and promoting a fair work environment. To increase the benefits of workplace fairness, supervisors can focus on the intervening mechanisms, such as emotions.

First, the author provides a fine-grained understanding of why supervisor fairness increases job satisfaction. Second, the author clarifies how the effects of supervisor fairness are transmitted. Third, the author identifies the most critical mediator to explain how supervisor fairness affects job satisfaction.

This study aims to further the understanding of multi-level analysis in inter-organisational relationships by investigating the interplay of governance, cooperation and coordination in inter-organisational projects (IOPs) on sub-system and project levels.

The authors use the Viable Systems Model as a framework to analyse inter-organisational project governance, cooperation and coordination by adopting a multiple-case study.

The findings illustrate how governance and coordination mechanisms exhibit a filter-down effect on lower sub-systems while cooperation influence is confined within each sub-system. While remarking the importance of specific sub-systems on the overall project performance, the interplay of governance, cooperation and coordination across sub-systems appears to be complex, with governance influencing cooperation and coordination, whereas cooperation and coordination influence each other with an incremental effect.

This study defines two propositions that explain how multiple levels of analysis (project and sub-systems) can support the governance of large inter-organisational projects. The authors elaborate theory on the interplay of inter-organisational project governance, cooperation and coordination.

This paper investigates the relationship between past performance and the development of operational capabilities in manufacturing firms, focusing on the role of intra- and inter-organisational learning mechanisms.

This study is based on a survey database collected in 208 manufacturing plants in 15 countries from three industries: electronics, machinery and transport components. The authors developed a model and tested the study hypotheses using the structural equation modelling technique with two-stage analytical procedures.

In the analysis of the overall sample, the study findings support prior literature by suggesting that firms with successful experiences may become complacent and less motivated to engage in learning, leading to a decline in performance. However, high-performance firms overcome the “success trap” by engaging supply chain partners. In contrast, low-performance firms exhibit limited learning from past poor performance, leading to organisational inertia and further declines in their current performance.

This research provides practical guidance for managers in developing operational capabilities, highlighting collaboration with suppliers as an essential element for high-performance firms.

This study focuses on the little-researched topic of how past performance influences the development of operational capabilities in manufacturing firms. The authors highlight the path for developing capabilities in high- and low-performance firms based on intra- and inter-organisational learning mechanisms.

Digital servitization concerns how manufacturers utilize digital technologies to enhance their provision of services. Although digital servitization requires that manufacturers possess new capabilities, in contrast to strategic (or dynamic) capabilities, little is known about how they develop the required operational capabilities. The paper investigates the mechanisms for developing operational capabilities in digital servitization.

This paper presents an exploratory study based on 15 large manufacturers operating in Europe engaged in digital servitization.

Three operational capability development mechanisms are set out that manufacturers use to facilitate digital servitization: learning (developing capabilities in-house), building (bringing the requisite capabilities into the manufacturer), and acquiring (utilizing the capabilities of other actors). These mechanisms emphasize exploitation and exploration efforts within manufacturers and in collaborations with upstream and downstream partners. The findings demonstrate the need to combine these mechanisms for digital servitization according to combinations that match each manufacturer’s traditional servitization phase: (1) initial phase - building and acquiring, (2) middle phase - learning, building and acquiring, and (3) advanced phase - learning and building.

This study reveals three operational capability development mechanisms, highlighting the parallel use of these mechanisms for digital servitization. It provides a holistic understanding of operational capability development mechanisms used by manufacturers by combining three theoretical perspectives (organizational learning, absorptive capacity, and network perspectives). The paper demonstrates that digital servitization requires the significant application of building and acquiring mechanisms to develop the requisite operational capabilities.

With the advent of Internet technologies, shorter product life cycles and increasing competition, organisations have started looking for innovation sources outside the organisational boundaries. The external community of crowds can be used as a valuable source of co-creation in a company's innovation process to generate value. Despite its growing popularity, organisations often face difficulty capturing value from crowdsourcing due to the lack of proper mechanisms behind crowdsourcing-based value co-creation between a crowd and an organisation and their impact on organisational learning and innovation performance. The present study seeks to understand the crowdsourcing-based co-creation mechanism that influences knowledge transfer effectiveness and the organisation's absorptive capacity, resulting in improved innovation performance.

The model was empirically tested using online survey data received from 300 managers of IT firms. Partial least squares structural equation modelling was used to test the model.

The empirical results reveal that crowdsourcing-based value co-creation causes structural, cognitive and relational linkages between a crowd and a firm, among which crowdsourcing-based cognitive linkage contributes more to organisational value capture. Further, an organisation's effective knowledge transfer and absorptive capacity play an important role in influencing the crowdsourcing-based-co-creation organisational learning-innovation performance framework.

This is the first and foremost study that has developed an integrated model using social capital dimensions to understand the entire mechanism behind crowdsourcing-based value co-creation between a crowd and an organisation and their impact on organisational learning and innovation performance. The study provides organisations with theoretical and practical implications of using crowdsourcing as a value co-creation tool and its effects on enhancing organisational learning and value capture.

This paper aims to shed light on the mechanisms that connect dynamic capabilities and organizational knowledge in the innovative process to offer a new theoretical and practical solution considering the microfoundations of knowledge management strategies.

This research has emerged from an in-depth case study of an effective innovation (from just ethanol and sugar-production to an effective biomass plant). The study represents an “inductive inquiry,” useful to understand specific “organizational mechanisms” of innovation, where the main data came from in-depth interviews with 18 key actors. It proved to help search the development of a specific biomass plant, designed and implemented between 2000 and 2007 in a Brazilian ethanol and sugar-production large company, referred to here as “Energyplant.”

This solution provides a new perspective based on the idea that dynamic capabilities are context-dependent and presents an original typological map that shows and materializes dynamic capabilities as teams of human-based resources. Managerial implications can be drawn from the capabilities typological map highlighting that, although identical dynamic capabilities are not required to change different firms, idiosyncratic dynamic capabilities perform universal knowledge functions that can be mapped, contributing to the planning of a specific innovation.

While the dynamic capabilities research has been seen as one of the most vibrant topics in strategic management, scholars have recently stressed that dynamic capabilities continue to be underrated because the knowledge mechanisms that lead to effective innovations have not been adequately explored. The visual mapping is then applied to solve the reviewed theoretical problems, being also suggested to firms interested in change and adapting their capabilities to the requirements of the business environment.

The COVID-19 pandemic has forced many organisations to transform face-to-face teams into virtual ones through the adoption of remote working modes. This event has represented the starting point of a process that is changing how management control (MC) systems are designed and implemented to guide employees towards organisational objectives. The previous literature on virtual teams (VTs) has devoted scant attention to MC issues. This study aims to fill this gap by exploring how MC – and particularly cultural control – has changed to cope with the shift from face-to-face to VTs and by analysing the interrelationship between the different control mechanisms and the resulting tensions.

The research adopts the methodological framework based on abduction to provide a theoretical explanation and conceptualisation of MC in virtual settings. To tackle the research objective, this work undertakes a cross-sectional field study based on semi-structured interviews with managers of different service companies.

The results of the research highlight the key challenges that managers are called to deal with to design and change MC systems when implementing remote working. In particular, managers must cope with the reduced possibility to leverage cultural controls. To do this, this study’s analysis found that managers act by introducing and/or removing formal and informal controls and by orchestrating the interplays and tensions between these mechanisms.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, to date limited attention has been paid to MC in VTs. Moreover, few researchers have investigated the process of MC change from face-to-face to VTs. This work aims to contribute to this nascent stream of literature by providing interesting implications for both research and practice.

The conceptual foundations of performance measurement and management (PMM) are predominantly rooted in control systems research. However, the appropriateness of this paradigm for volatile and uncertain environments has been questioned. This paper explores whether grounding PMM in social systems theory and viewing uncertainty from an organisational behaviour perspective provides new insights into the PMM theory–practice gap.

A framework, rooted in social systems theory and practice theory, is created that describes how organisational behaviour shapes the social processes associated with organisational change. Semi-structured interviews of 35 people from 16 organisations coupled with thematic analysis are employed to identify the organisational behavioural characteristics that influence how PMM is executed in practice. PMM is then reconceptualised from the perspective of this social systems-based framework.

This investigation proposes (1) performance management is concerned with elements of PMM-related practices open to flexible interpretation by human agents that change the effectiveness of organisational practices, whereas performance measurement is concerned with elements of PMM-related practices not open to interpretation but deliberately reproduced to provide a consistent comparison with the past; (2) the purpose of PMM should be to achieve organisational effectiveness (OE) and (3) the mechanisms underlying performance management and performance measurement are social intervention and embeddedness, respectively.

This first social systems perspective of PMM advances the development of PMM's theoretical foundations by providing a behaviour-based interpretation of, and framework for, PMM-mediated organisational change. This competing approach has strong links to practice.