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Open Access
Book part
Publication date: 1 May 2019

Nicolaj Frederiksen, Lasse Fredslund and Stefan Christoffer Gottlieb

Strategic partnerships and construction supply chain management are claimed to improve productivity through their capabilities of managing internal and external relations between…

Abstract

Purpose

Strategic partnerships and construction supply chain management are claimed to improve productivity through their capabilities of managing internal and external relations between stakeholders. Thus, this study aims to present an analysis of a major Danish contractor group’s efforts to increase performances by building trust and long-term relationships across stakeholders of complex building projects with use of these managerial initiatives.

Design/Methodology/Approach

Scrutinising the social reality of the group, neo-institutional theory provides the analytical lens of an interpretivist case study drawing on empirical data (i.e. interviews and observations) collected through one year of enrolment in the group.

Findings

Findings reveals that internal organisational circumstances negatively influence the efforts to implement logics of strategic partnerships and construction supply chain management. Nevertheless, we propose organisational practitioners to obtain the perspectives of hybridisation as a fruitful concept for creating productive interactions between otherwise distinct managerial logics.

Research Limitations/Implications

The triangulation of the interpretivist data is limited to generalisations based on only one group operating in the Danish construction industry. However, the assumption is that critical implications of hybridity address generic issues across the industry.

Practical Implications

Organisational practitioners should experiment with hybridity of managerial mechanisms and dynamics, which potentially can influence the construction industry positively by innovating the operational performances in the entire value chain.

Originality/Value

The inquiry contributes to the puzzle of integrating strategic partnerships and construction supply chain management by rethinking dualism of logics generating alternatives of how hybridity can increase performance by combining various aspects of managerial initiatives.

Details

10th Nordic Conference on Construction Economics and Organization
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-83867-051-1

Keywords

Open Access
Book part
Publication date: 1 May 2019

Anne Klitgaard and Stefan Christoffer Gottlieb

The study aims to investigate the concept of strategy-as-practice in construction management literature has been investigated. The focus is on the link between strategizing…

Abstract

Purpose

The study aims to investigate the concept of strategy-as-practice in construction management literature has been investigated. The focus is on the link between strategizing practices and project management.

Design/Methodology/Approach

An exploratory literature review is carried out based on fifteen journal articles on strategizing practices in the construction industry.

Findings

The analysis shows how strategy-as-practice questions and contradicts project management practices as depicted in the dominant deterministic perspective. Strategy-as-practice has a focus on reacting and adapting to a chaotic and changing environment, while project management is concerned with creating and maintaining a stable working environment. The findings point to the necessity of considering the organizational and institutional context of project management practices, and hence the values the strategy-as-practice lens, when considering new avenues for improving the industry.

Research Limitations/Implications

As the study is based on an exploratory literature review of only 15 articles, generalizations should be made with caution. The identified literature is restricted by search words and choice of database.

Practical Implications

The differences between strategizing and project management practices are very clear, and a focus on both may offer insights into how the construction industry could improve its productivity by developing more robust management practices.

Originality/Value

The paper illustrates the benefit of applying a strategizing perspective, which hitherto has been under-investigated in construction management research.

Details

10th Nordic Conference on Construction Economics and Organization
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-83867-051-1

Keywords

Abstract

Details

Including a Symposium on Ludwig Lachmann
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-78769-862-8

Book part
Publication date: 18 January 2022

Nadia Bhuiyan, Margaret Young and Daniel J. Svyantek

Over one million individuals diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) will be entering adulthood and attempting to cultivate fulfilling, meaningful life experiences. These…

Abstract

Over one million individuals diagnosed with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) will be entering adulthood and attempting to cultivate fulfilling, meaningful life experiences. These young adults with ASD represent Generation A. The workplace will be a major element in cultivating fulfilling lives for Generation A. Social interaction is an integral component for functioning within most postsecondary and occupational settings. It is necessary to understand the interaction between autistic adults and organizations to understand potential social and behavioral deficits. The workplace is inherently a social place. Understanding both formal and informal social information in the workplace may be critical to successful job performance. Fit, particularly person–organization fit, is used to address this social nature of the workplace. Understanding this interaction helps provide a means for crafting both individual and organizational interventions which support autistic adults in the workplace. This chapter provides an analysis of interventions that support those with ASD in the workplace. It is proposed that these interventions will help create a more supportive work environment for those with ASD. As important, it is proposed that the accommodations for those with ASD are reasonable for any organization seeking to improve both satisfaction and performance for all its employees. By addressing these issues, organizations have the potential to create a more satisfying workplace for all workers, not just those in Generation A.

Book part
Publication date: 7 September 2023

Martin Götz and Ernest H. O’Boyle

The overall goal of science is to build a valid and reliable body of knowledge about the functioning of the world and how applying that knowledge can change it. As personnel and…

Abstract

The overall goal of science is to build a valid and reliable body of knowledge about the functioning of the world and how applying that knowledge can change it. As personnel and human resources management researchers, we aim to contribute to the respective bodies of knowledge to provide both employers and employees with a workable foundation to help with those problems they are confronted with. However, what research on research has consistently demonstrated is that the scientific endeavor possesses existential issues including a substantial lack of (a) solid theory, (b) replicability, (c) reproducibility, (d) proper and generalizable samples, (e) sufficient quality control (i.e., peer review), (f) robust and trustworthy statistical results, (g) availability of research, and (h) sufficient practical implications. In this chapter, we first sing a song of sorrow regarding the current state of the social sciences in general and personnel and human resources management specifically. Then, we investigate potential grievances that might have led to it (i.e., questionable research practices, misplaced incentives), only to end with a verse of hope by outlining an avenue for betterment (i.e., open science and policy changes at multiple levels).

Abstract

Details

Handbook of Microsimulation Modelling
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-78350-570-8

Book part
Publication date: 11 February 2019

Wim van Lent and Andrew D. Smith

It is commonly acknowledged that history matters in strategy. However, the strategy literature mainly discusses history in terms of path dependency, leaving little room for…

Abstract

It is commonly acknowledged that history matters in strategy. However, the strategy literature mainly discusses history in terms of path dependency, leaving little room for managerial agency, despite growing anecdotal evidence that managers can actively draw on corporate history to improve decision-making. An emerging literature on how managers use the past to give sense to internal and external stakeholders has given rise to a more agent-based approach to history, but while sense-giving is commonly connected to sense-making as a driver of strategic change, the role of history in sense-making remains unexplored. Drawing on the concept of analogical reasoning, this chapter theorizes the connection between corporate archives and managerial sense-making, arguing that analogies drawn from past experience can reduce uncertainty and foster learning. This theory leads to the suggestion that consulting the corporate archive can promote strategic renewal and thus boost performance.

Details

Strategic Responsiveness and Adaptive Organizations: New Research Frontiers in International Strategic Management
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-78973-011-1

Keywords

Book part
Publication date: 10 April 2020

Stefan Kirchner and Elke Schüßler

Critics increasingly highlight the dark sides of the sharing economy resulting from the insufficient regulation of competition, labor, or taxes in its for-profit sector. In this…

Abstract

Critics increasingly highlight the dark sides of the sharing economy resulting from the insufficient regulation of competition, labor, or taxes in its for-profit sector. In this chapter, the authors argue that regulatory solutions for the sharing economy hinge on the understanding of the ways in which the sharing economy is organized. Here, digitalization undermines established regulation through underlying organizational shifts pertaining to places, labor inputs and output responsibilities. Mapping out the field of actors that are or could be involved in regulating the sharing economy, the authors highlight a particular role played not only by digital platforms as market organizers, but also of a variety of other public and private actors such as standard setting organizations, social movements, trade unions, organized buyers and sellers, incumbents, or policy makers. The authors suggest that an understanding of sharing economy markets as fields can not only capture the highly organized nature of the sharing economy, but also serve to untangle the contestations and power dynamics unfolding among various actors engaged in different regulatory issues associated with the sharing economy. Seeing “Uberization” as a next development stage away from the modern corporation after global supply chains, the authors highlight regulatory challenges associated with the even more individualized and dispersed way in which sharing economy markets are organized and also discuss new opportunities for regulation provided by digital technology.

Details

Theorizing the Sharing Economy: Variety and Trajectories of New Forms of Organizing
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-78756-180-9

Keywords

Open Access
Book part
Publication date: 14 December 2023

Holger Fleischer

This chapter provides an introduction to the world of family companies and family constitutions from a legal perspective. It first studies the legal types of business…

Abstract

This chapter provides an introduction to the world of family companies and family constitutions from a legal perspective. It first studies the legal types of business organizations that family firms have chosen across time and jurisdictions. It then illustrates how early predecessors of family constitutions evolved in the late Middle Ages and what modern family constitutions look like in different countries today. Further considerations are devoted to the governance framework of family firms. The chapter concludes by exploring the potential legal effects of family constitutions under German company and contract law.

Book part
Publication date: 4 December 2009

George Steinmetz

Anthropologists have long discussed the ways in which their discipline has been entangled, consciously and unconsciously, with the colonized populations they study. A foundational…

Abstract

Anthropologists have long discussed the ways in which their discipline has been entangled, consciously and unconsciously, with the colonized populations they study. A foundational text in this regard was Michel Leiris' Phantom Africa (L'Afrique fantôme; Leiris, 1934), which described an African ethnographic expedition led by Marcel Griaule as a form of colonial plunder. Leiris criticized anthropologists' focus on the most isolated, rural, and traditional cultures, which could more easily be described as untouched by European influences, and he saw this as a way of disavowing the very existence of colonialism. In 1950, Leiris challenged Europeans' ability even to understand the colonized, writing that “ethnography is closely linked to the colonial fact, whether ethnographers like it or not. In general they work in the colonial or semi-colonial territories dependent on their country of origin, and even if they receive no direct support from the local representatives of their government, they are tolerated by them and more or less identified, by the people they study, as agents of the administration” (Leiris, 1950, p. 358). Similar ideas were discussed by French social scientists throughout the 1950s. Maxime Rodinson argued in the Année sociologique that “colonial conditions make even the most technically sophisticated sociological research singularly unsatisfying, from the standpoint of the desiderata of a scientific sociology” (Rodinson, 1955, p. 373). In a rejoinder to Leiris, Pierre Bourdieu acknowledged in Work and Workers in Algeria (Travail et travailleurs en Algérie) that “no behavior, attitude or ideology can be explained objectively without reference to the existential situation of the colonized as it is determined by the action of economic and social forces characteristic of the colonial system,” but he insisted that the “problems of science” needed to be separated from “the anxieties of conscience” (2003, pp. 13–14). Since Bourdieu had been involved in a study of an incredibly violent redistribution of Algerians by the French colonial army at the height of the anticolonial revolutionary war, he had good reason to be sensitive to Leiris' criticisms (Bourdieu & Sayad, 1964). Rodinson called Bourdieu's critique of Leiris' thesis “excellent’ (1965, p. 360), but Bourdieu later revised his views, noting that the works that had been available to him at the time of his research in Algeria tended “to justify the colonial order” (1990, p. 3). At the 1974 colloquium that gave rise to a book on the connections between anthropology and colonialism, Le mal de voir, Bourdieu called for an analysis of the relatively autonomous field of colonial science (1993a, p. 51). A parallel discussion took place in American anthropology somewhat later, during the 1960s. At the 1965 meetings of the American Anthropological Association, Marshall Sahlins criticized the “enlistment of scholars” in “cold war projects such as Camelot” as “servants of power in a gendarmerie relationship to the Third World.” This constituted a “sycophantic relation to the state unbefitting science or citizenship” (Sahlins, 1967, pp. 72, 76). Sahlins underscored the connections between “scientific functionalism and the natural interest of a leading world power in the status quo” and called attention to the language of contagion and disease in the documents of “Project Camelot,” adding that “waiting on call is the doctor, the US Army, fully prepared for its self-appointed ‘important mission in the positive and constructive aspects of nation-building’” a mission accompanied by “insurgency prophylaxis” (1967, pp. 77–78). At the end of the decade, Current Anthropology published a series of articles on anthropologists’ “social responsibilities,” and Human Organization published a symposium entitled “Decolonizing Applied Social Sciences.” British anthropologists followed suit, as evidenced by Talal Asad's 1973 collection Anthropology and the Colonial Encounter. During the 1980s, authors such as Gothsch (1983) began to address the question of German anthropology's involvement in colonialism. The most recent revival of this discussion was in response to the Pentagon's deployment of “embedded anthropologists” in Afghanistan and elsewhere in the Middle East. The “Network of Concerned Anthropologists” in the AAA asked “researchers to sign an online pledge not to work with the military,” arguing that they “are not all necessarily opposed to other forms of anthropological consulting for the state, or for the military, especially when such cooperation contributes to generally accepted humanitarian objectives … However, work that is covert, work that breaches relations of openness and trust with studied populations, and work that enables the occupation of one country by another violates professional standards” (“Embedded Anthropologists” 2007).3 Other disciplines, notably geography, economics, area studies, and political science, have also started to examine the involvement of their fields with empire.4

Details

Political Power and Social Theory
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-84950-667-0

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