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1 – 10 of 491Lena Strindlund, Madeleine Abrandt Dahlgren and Christian Ståhl
This article explores theoretical assumptions regarding negative consequences of social capital in the empirical case of a failed cooperation project, and how these consequences…
Abstract
Purpose
This article explores theoretical assumptions regarding negative consequences of social capital in the empirical case of a failed cooperation project, and how these consequences are related to processes involving people, structures and environments.
Design/methodology/approach
The article is based on a case study of a cooperation project within municipal labor market services. The methodology followed a theorizing process, where data were collected through ethnographical methods and analyzed in relation to existing concepts from theories describing negative effects of social capital and shadow organizing.
Findings
The results highlight how the development of negative social capital in the project can be understood through three relational processes, namely the social dynamics of insulation, homogenization and escalating commitment. The authors conclude that the quality of social capital is conditional upon complex interactions within social structures. Moreover, the results highlight the importance of studying organizing practices outside explicit structures, in order to identify the development of non-canonical practices and their consequences.
Practical implications
Organizing cooperation projects that aim to bridge professional competencies or organizational boundaries have to be attentive toward informal organizing practices which if remaining unrecognized may grow and threaten the original intentions.
Originality/value
The study makes a theoretical contribution by combining a shadow organizing approach with literature on social capital. This combination proves especially useful for analyzing how organizational dynamics can influence the development of social capital into producing negative effects.
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Lei Xu, K. Praveen Parboteeah and Hanqing Fang
The authors enrich and extend the existing institutional anomie theory (IAT) in the hope of sharpening the understanding of the joint effects of selected cultural values and…
Abstract
Purpose
The authors enrich and extend the existing institutional anomie theory (IAT) in the hope of sharpening the understanding of the joint effects of selected cultural values and social institutional changes on women's pre-entrant entrepreneurial attempts. The authors theorize that women are culturally discouraged to pursue pre-entrant entrepreneurial attempts or wealth accumulation in a specific culture. This discouragement creates an anomic strain that motivates women to deviate from cultural prescriptions by engaging in pre-entrant entrepreneurial attempts at a faster speed. Building on this premise, the authors hypothesize that changes in social institutions facilitate the means of achievement for women due to the potential opportunities inherent in such institutional changes.
Design/methodology/approach
Using a randomly selected sample of 1,431 registered active individual users with a minimum of 10,000 followers on a leading entertainment live-streaming platform in the People's Republic of China, the authors examined a unique mix of cultural and institutional changes and their effects on the speed of women's engagement in live-streaming platform activity.
Findings
The authors find support for the impact of the interaction between changes in social institution conditions and cultural values. Unexpectedly, the authors also find a negative impact of cultural values on women's speed of engaging in pre-entrant entrepreneurial attempts.
Originality/value
The authors add institutional change to the IAT framework and provide a novel account for the variation in the pre-entrant entrepreneurial attempts by women on the platform.
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The paper explores a management fashion within the Swedish Public Sector called intrapreneurships. Intrapreneurships became popular during a period of public debate on what forms…
Abstract
Purpose
The paper explores a management fashion within the Swedish Public Sector called intrapreneurships. Intrapreneurships became popular during a period of public debate on what forms of organizing are most suitable for the production of welfare. However, while the popularity of the model was short-lived, a few municipalities nevertheless constitute examples of where it was supported for a longer period. The aim of this paper is to investigate how the model became continuously legitimate having lost its appeal elsewhere.
Design/methodology/approach
The paper comprises a longitudinal analysis of two municipalities. Field-material was collected through qualitative methods including interviews (35 interviews, 42 interviewees) and document analysis.
Findings
The results draw attention to how management fashions become enduring. The metaphor of translation highlights how different professional actors in a local setting apply editing rules, and how they constitute work acquired for continuous translation of the model in order to make it legitimate, disseminated and supported. The study draws particular attention to the large number of actors involved in the editing process.
Originality/value
Besides an extended understanding of management concepts, to explain the anomaly of a long-standing management fashion, the paper illustrates the importance of acknowledging editing as processes and not process. A key notion in why intrapreneurships became legitimate is that professional actors edited the model differently in order to satisfy their desires and needs. This contradicts the more common case study design in translation studies, which seeks a unitary translation process, in a single local setting.
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Cristina Mele and Tiziana Russo-Spena
In this article, we reflect on how smart technology is transforming service research discourses about service innovation and value co-creation. We adopt the concept of technology…
Abstract
Purpose
In this article, we reflect on how smart technology is transforming service research discourses about service innovation and value co-creation. We adopt the concept of technology smartness’ to refer to the ability of technology to sense, adapt and learn from interactions. Accordingly, we seek to address how smart technologies (i.e. cognitive and distributed technology) can be powerful resources, capable of innovating in relation to actors’ agency, the structure of the service ecosystem and value co-creation practices.
Design/methodology/approach
This conceptual article integrates evidence from the existing theories with illustrative examples to advance research on service innovation and value co-creation.
Findings
Through the performative utterances of new tech words, such as onlife and materiality, this article identifies the emergence of innovative forms of agency and structure. Onlife agency entails automated, relational and performative forms, which provide for new decision-making capabilities and expanded opportunities to co-create value. Phygital materiality pertains to new structural features, comprised of new resources and contexts that have distinctive intelligence, autonomy and performativity. The dialectic between onlife agency and phygital materiality (structure) lies in the agencement of smart tech–enabled value co-creation practices based on the notion of becoming that involves not only resources but also actors and contexts.
Originality/value
This paper proposes a novel conceptual framework that advances a tech-based ecology for service ecosystems, in which value co-creation is enacted by the smartness of technology, which emerges through systemic and performative intra-actions between actors (onlife agency), resources and contexts (phygital materiality and structure).
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Folorunsho M. Ajide and James T. Dada
The study's objective is to examine the relevance of globalization in affecting the size of the shadow economy in selected African nations.
Abstract
Purpose
The study's objective is to examine the relevance of globalization in affecting the size of the shadow economy in selected African nations.
Design/methodology/approach
To do this, the authors employ the KOF globalization index and implement both static and dynamic common correlated mean group estimators on a panel of 24 African nations from 1995–2017. This technique accommodates the issue of cross-sectional dependence, sample bias and endogenous regressors. Panel threshold analysis is also conducted to establish the nonlinearity between globalization and the shadow economy. To examine the causality between the variables, the study employs Dumitrescu and Hurlin's panel causality test.
Findings
The results show that globalization reduces the size of the shadow economy. The results of the nonlinear analysis suggest a U-shaped relationship. Overall globalization has a threshold impact of 48.837%, economic globalization has 45.615% and political globalization has 66.661% while social globalization has a threshold value of 35.744%. The results of the panel causality show that there is a bidirectional causality between the two variables.
Practical implications
The results suggest that the government and other relevant authorities need to introduce capital controls and other policy measures to moderate the degree of social, political and cultural diffusion. Appropriate policies should be formulated to monitor the extent of African economic openness to other continents to maximize the gains from globalization.
Originality/value
Apart from being the first study in the African region that evaluates the relevance of globalization in controlling the shadow economy, it also analyzes the dynamics and threshold analysis between the two variables using advanced panel econometrics which makes the study unique. The study suggests that globalization tools are useful for affecting the size of the shadow economy in Africa. This study provides fresh empirical evidence on the impact of globalization on the shadow economy in the case of Africa.
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Cheri Macleod and Paula Hayden
The learning skills used by students at a technical college to fully participate in their classes were the focus of this investigation. Researchers shadowed two full-time students…
Abstract
The learning skills used by students at a technical college to fully participate in their classes were the focus of this investigation. Researchers shadowed two full-time students for one full day as they each went to their classes in a technical college in Qatar. An observation schedule was used to record what students did in their classes (for example: solve problems, listen to the teacher, ask questions). At the end of the day students were interviewed and asked to comment on the importance of the learning skills that they used, how they built the skills they needed and how to become a better student. It was found that students used a variety of learning skills throughout a typical day and that they had their own ideas about learning. The learning skills the two students used most during their classes were not the same, owing partly to the format of the courses and partly to personal learning approach. The four learning skills students identified as most important were: understand and apply concepts to current work; concentrate and maintain focus; follow written instructions; and ask questions. The information gathered in this investigation can be used to inform students, instructors and course planners about the skills students need to be active participants in their classes and to ensure that educators support the development of required learning skills.