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Unprecedented complexity is reshaping the financial services industry and presenting formidable challenges to financial services leaders and their organizations. “Sensemaking of Complexity: Leadership in Financial Services,” highlights seven leadership principles that could help leaders and their organizations respond effectively to the complexities inherent in financial services today.

After in‐depth secondary research on the topic of leadership and events in the financial services industry, the report offers a novel and holistic approach to managing complexity in today's marketplace.

Beyond the leadership principles, the research suggests that values, competencies and motivations – or “VCMs” – are like an organization's DNA, or the building blocks of organizational behavior, and therefore the basis for real improvement across an organization's many dimensions. VCMs play a critical role in the outcome of change initiatives and an organization's capacity to adapt, yet they are often overlooked in the leadership dialogue.

VCMs that are well aligned with the seven leadership principles can help empower the effective functioning of organizational levers – such as intelligence and risk management, corporate governance, business models, talent processes and organizational culture – and enhance an organization's ability to adapt to complexity, drive strategic agendas, and improve day‐to‐day operations.

Unprecedented interdependencies in the financial services industry may require a move away from the status quo of many leadership strategies, which tend to deal with complexity in a disjointed fashion. Instead, leaders may need to uncover and understand the interconnected root causes of complexity within their organizations and in the marketplace. We believe a focus on leadership principles and the right set of values, competencies, and motivations to support them can help leaders and their organizations systematically and holistically react to and manage their complicated competitive environments.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate how an adequate mix of technological, organisational and managerial tools might support Open Innovation (OI) processes achieved by contests in the food sector.

The methodology of this paper is exploratory in nature. Data have been gathered about the 140 innovation contests launched by the best global food brands (2013 BusinessWeek/Interbrand Best Global Brands) over the last decade.

The research highlights the main changes that have occurred over the last decade, showing that the choice of platform type for contest launches is often neglected or considered as an ancillary element. Indeed, it is a choice that embeds another set of technological, organisational and managerial tools that strongly influence the collaborative behaviour (and the participation itself) of partners throughout the innovation process.

Companies investigated in this paper consist exclusively of top brands in the sector. Future research should strive to obtain larger samples, develop a set of fine-grained hypotheses, and test them by using appropriate statistical techniques.

This paper fills an inexplicable gap in academic literature due to the fact that food companies are those that mainly use contests in order to implement OI but they are scarcely researched regarding this issue.

Despite many years of academic research into organisational integration and effectiveness, organisations still struggle to successfully implement strategy and achieve competitive advantage. However, the rapid evolution of marketing technologies such as big data, marketing analytics, artificial intelligence and personalised consumer interactions offer potential for an integrated marketing communication technological capability that aligns and integrates an organisation. Programmatic advertising is one such integrated marketing communication (IMC) technology capability, applying and learning from customer information and behaviours to align and integrate organisational activity. The literature on programmatic is embryonic and a conceptual framework that links its potential to organisational effectiveness is timely. This paper aims to develop a framework showing the potential for programmatic advertising as an IMC technology capability to enhance organisational integration and performance.

An exploratory methodology gained insight from 15 depth interviews with senior marketing executives from both organisations and external advertising agencies.

Four elements of a programmatic integrated organisation were identified and aligned with seven marketing activity levers to deliver firm performance measures.

This research contributes to theory, affirming IMC as a capability and positioning programmatic as a means of organisational integration.

The model also offers guidance for practitioners looking to integrate programmatic into their organisation.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first paper to look at programmatic from an IMC perspective and as a means of organisational integration. It is also the first to apply Moorman and Day’s (2016) model to explore organisational integration and programmatic, developing a new model, specifically contextualised for programmatic advertising.

Investigates the management of change in a UK manufacturing company and reports data gathered from two sources within the company ‐ interviews carried out on‐site with senior managers concerning key managerial practices enacted by the company and self‐report questionnaires completed by employees. Uses data collected at two time points, approximately two years apart. Observes, from the findings, a common internal desire for organizational change, especially from a product/market perspective: efforts have been made to improve internal communications and re‐design certain jobs. Finds that emphasis on quality initiatives has been enhanced by greater customer focus, improved product appearance and better measurement of quality. Notes that changes in human resource management have included the formalization of issues such as training, the introduction of a novel performance appraisal scheme for managers and technical specialists, and the active pursuance of Investors in People accreditation.

The purpose of this paper is to put forward a model to map the evolution of a business Community of Practice (CoP) in terms of learning and knowledge management processes.

Empirical evidence is based on seven case studies and the analyses of three best practices from secondary sources. Two of those cases are analyzed longitudinally from inception, while the others are retrospective. Cases were chosen in order to cover different kinds of industries and, especially, to analyze sharing of different kinds of knowledge (from call‐centre operators to complex new products knowledge).

The article sheds light on the different evolutionary paths that business CoPs follow and the role of the dynamics of the organizational commitment and the people involvement. It was noticed that a high level of commitment from both the organization and its members is related to the effectiveness of the Community in supporting learning and knowledge management processes.

The case studies and best practice examples reported are all based on the experiences of Western companies – although some, if not all, may have global operations. It is possible that some of the conclusions (e.g, levels of organizational commitment and individual participation, evolutionary stages and drivers), may not be valid for Asian‐headquartered companies.

This article aims to develop actionable knowledge to support management in understanding how to manage a business CoP, in order to create value for both the organization and its members. The proposed model can be used for mapping the CoP evolution, while identifying the appropriate governance tools to cultivate, stimulate and drive the Community evolution.

In the model, the evolution of a Community has been assessed in terms of its vitality – i.e. its effectiveness in supporting knowledge management and learning. This vitality depends on the combination of the organization's commitment and members' involvement. Therefore, supporting a Community in its evolution means stimulating and maintaining the commitment (animation and promotions levers) of these two parties.

This study aims to explore the extent to which companies rely on sustainability management control systems (SMCS) to translate corporate social responsibility (CSR) into superior performance building upon the premise of the natural resource orchestration perspective.

Data were collected based on a survey data set from 118 Chief Financial Officers of publicly listed companies in Iran. The theoretical model was tested using partial least squares structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM, SmartPLS 3.0) as a method that enjoys minimum demands concerning normality assumptions and sample size.

The findings support the full mediation effect of SMCS on the relationship between CSR and organizational performance. This implies that CSR affects performance only through the mediating role of SMCS.

The central premise in the proposed theoretical framework is that the utilization of proper management control mechanisms (i.e. SMCS) can help the organization to better synchronize, measure and manage – i.e. “orchestrate” – the social, environmental and economic impacts, and this, in turn, leads to improved organizational performance.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first study of its kind, building on a unique synthesis of the agency cost perspective and resource orchestration theory, to introduce the “natural resource orchestration” approach for examining the intervening role of SMCS between CSR and organizational performance.

The purpose of this paper is to determine how and to what extent firms are using “environmental choice architecture” to “nudge” innovation across the organization. The Cultural Alignment Model was designed based on the concept that individual and collective workforce behaviors are formed by an organization’s environment. Although existing since the 1950s, behavioral theory has seen a recent resurgence of popularity in shaping culture. Described in the book Nudge, compelling research demonstrates that individual and collective behavior can be influenced through what is termed “environmental choice architecture.” The Oxford Innovation Insights Project was established to test the Cultural Alignment Model, by answering the question – How and to what extent are firms using “environmental choice architecture” to “nudge” innovation across the organization?

Semi-structured interviews were conducted with 60 “C-Suite” executives, representing 15 different industries. Each executive was asked to respond to the same four items: to what extent do you agree or disagree with the statement – innovation is a strategic priority for our firm; on a scale of 1 (low innovation) to 10 (high innovation) please rate your firm’s organization-wide level of innovation; Which of the following processes does your firm use to encourage innovation across the organization? And for the processes that your firm uses, please provide examples of how each is designed to encourage innovation behaviors across your workforce.

Eighty-six percent of respondents identified innovation is a strategic priority for their firm, while just 8% of respondents rated their companies as having a “high” level of firm-wide innovation. The environmental choice architecture components most frequently used by firms to encourage innovation behaviors across the workforce are identified. A strong positive relationship was found between “high innovation” firms and the number of environmental choice architecture components they use to encourage innovation. Firms having a low level of innovation underperformed market peers, while firms rated as having a high level of firm-wide innovation outperformed the market benchmark.

Repeat the current study to include more respondents and industries; rather than relying on self-ratings, determine a firm’s innovation rating through an external assessment, such as industry expert ratings of firms’ innovativeness; beyond frequency of utilization, assess the strength of innovation “nudge” each cultural lever provides; determine if a relationship exists between the market and financial performance of firms and the number of “cultural levers” they use to nudge innovation across the workforce; and compare the level of innovation between each industry by expanding the respondent pool to include more representatives from each industry.

Company culture is identified as one of the top obstacles for a firm’s innovation performance in a global survey of 1,500 executives. Moreover, the authors of the McKinsey Global Innovation Survey state, “The best companies [in the study] find ways to embed innovation into the fibers of their culture, from the core to the periphery”, but tellingly the authors do not identify how to go about creating that embeddedness. The Cultural Alignment Model presented provides management a pragmatic approach to embed innovation across their firm’s culture using elements of the organization’s choice architecture.

Behavioral theory has seen a recent resurgence of popularity in shaping culture. The Oxford Innovation Insights Project tests the Cultural Alignment Model, by answering the question – How and to what extent are firms using “environmental choice architecture” to “nudge” innovation across the organization?

This paper discusses results from an international study of continuous improvement in product innovation. The empirical research is based upon a theoretical model of continuous product innovation (CPI) that identifies contingencies, behaviours, levers and performances relevant to improving product innovation processes. As successful knowledge management is widely recognised as a key capability for firms to successfully develop CPI, companies have been classified according to identified contingencies and the impact of these contingencies on key knowledge management criteria. Comparative analysis of the identified groups of companies has demonstrated important differences between the learning behaviours found present in the two groups thus identified, and in the levers used to develop and support these behaviours. The selection of performance measures by the two groups has highlighted further significant differences in the way the two groups understand and measure their CPI processes. Finally, the paper includes a discussion of appropriate mechanisms for firms with similar contingency sets to improve their approaches to organisational learning and product innovation.

This paper aims to unpack the relationship between the interactive use of project control systems (PCS) and project performance by examining the role of stakeholder analysis effectiveness in enacting this relationship. A conceptual framework was developed based on the stakeholder theory and the levers of control framework.

Partial least square-structural equation modelling analysis was conducted on the cross-sectional questionnaire data collected from 109 information technology (IT) projects.

The interactive use of PCS enables project managers to effectively deal with the stakeholders-related uncertainty, and stakeholder analysis effectiveness partially mediates the positive relationship between the interactive use of PCS and IT project performance.

This study extends the project control literature by explaining the positive relationship between the interactive use of PCS and project performance. The findings contribute to the stakeholder analysis literature by operationalizing the stakeholder analysis effectiveness construct and identifying it as a new mediator between the interactive use of PCS and project performance.

This paper aims to contribute to defining the concepts of boundary spanner, gatekeeper and knowledge broker.

A review of the literature covering more than 100 sources.

A review of past research leads to proposing a set of new definitions and also to the detection of six research avenues.

The ability of organizations to recognize, source and integrate key information or knowledge is important for their strategy, innovation and performance over time. Three types of individuals have information gathering and knowledge dissemination roles at the frontier of organizations and groups: boundary spanners, gatekeepers and knowledge brokers. Although research on these individuals is well-developed, we found that in practice, the definitions of the concepts overlap and still need a clarification. So far, no systematic comparison of these roles has been undertaken.