Search results

Diversity in boards has gained attention as a reflection of societal imbalances. The purpose of this paper is to investigate the impact of diversity in terms of both gender and nationality in management boards of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) on firm performance from an upper echelons perspective. The authors also examine how board-specific characteristics influence the structural makeup of boards in gender and nationality diversity terms.

The authors focus on the UK because of its individualistic society and flexible labour market and assess 309 SMEs in the manufacturing industry over 2009–2019. A 3-stage least squares (3SLS) estimator is used to analyse the data, the Shannon index to measure board diversity, return on assets as proxy for firm performance, and owner-manager presence, board member age and tenure are the board-specific characteristics of primary interest.

Both gender and nationality diversity contribute to firm performance and represent distinct upper echelon characteristics that change the cognitive and psychological dynamics of boards. Firms with larger boards do not perform better, but diverse boards reduce the narrowing view of CEOs. Yet the presence of owner-managers, despite their performance-enhancing contribution, holds firms back from benefitting from diversity as a strategic choice.

This study extends the upper echelons theory to include board diversity as an important aspect that should become more central in upper echelon thinking when understanding firm performance. The authors’ findings suggest that theoretical developments in search of understanding firm behaviour must proceed by accounting for diversity and not simply focusing on decision-making styles.

Through the study of visualizations, virtual worlds and information exchange, the purpose of this paper is to reveal the complex connections between technology and the work of design and construction. The authors apply the sociotechnical view of technology and the ramifications this view has on successful use of technology in design and construction.

This is a discussion paper reviewing over a decade of research that connects three streams of research on architecture, engineering and construction (AEC) teams as these teams grappled with adapting work practices to new technologies and the opportunities these technologies promised.

From studies of design and construction practices with building information modeling and energy modeling, the authors show that given the constructed nature of models and the loose coupling of project teams, these team organizational practices need to mirror the modeling requirements. Second, looking at distributed teams, whose interaction is mediated by technology, the authors argue that virtual world visualizations enhance discovery, while distributed AEC teams also need more traditional forms of 2D abstraction, sketching and gestures to support integrated design dialogue. Finally, in information exchange research, the authors found that models and data have their own logic and structure and, as such, require creativity and ingenuity to exchange data across systems. Taken together, these streams of research suggest that process innovation is brought about by people developing new practices.

In this paper, the authors argue that technology alone does not change practice. People who modify practices with and through technology create process innovation.

The purpose of this paper is to explore how entrepreneurship traditions evolve in diaspora.

A qualitative multiple case study examining the role of diaspora embeddedness, extended family, ethno-religious-, cultural- and social ties and relevant structures shaping diaspora entrepreneurship.

The authors found that social ties and diaspora embeddedness create dynamism fostering entrepreneurial identity as a part of the Bukharian culture, and as a preferred career option in the context of Bukharian Jews in diaspora. Diasporic family businesses are products of culture and tradition that migrate to new locations with families and communities, not as disconnected business entities.

The ways in which families nurture a highly entrepreneurial culture that transfers across generations and contexts are context-specific and not per se generalizable to other diasporas.

Diasporans often continue their traditions and become again entrepreneurs after their settlement, or they may generate hybrid, circular solutions that allow them to employ their competences in the new contexts or connecting various contexts. This calls for transnational entrepreneurship-policymaking.

Time changes diasporas. A long-term commitment to the business environment evolves and reduces the mobility of the individual diasporan; typically the children of these migrants become more integrated and develop divergent career paths. Hence, their plans are not necessarily including family entrepreneurship creating a challenge for continuation of the original culture of entrepreneurship.

Despite a notable tradition in Jewish studies, there is limited research on Jewish entrepreneurial diaspora and its contemporary entrepreneurial identity and tradition. Furthermore, the population of Bukharian Jews is an unknown and under-explored highly entrepreneurial group that may offer instrumental views to larger diasporic audiences being concerned about maintaining notions of ethnic heritage and identity.

The aim of this study is to identify organisational capabilities (OC) for a successful digital transformation (DT) and associated structures of internal teams to orchestrate and support DT.

An explorative, qualitative study, comprising semi-structured interviews with 82 executives from 43 diverse National Football Associations (NFA) spread across five continents was conducted.

The results show that organisational culture, strategic sensitivity, up-to-date ICT-infrastructure, a digitally skilled workforce, leadership support, knowledge management and internal DT-teams are important capabilities to enable successful DT.

Due to the different levels of maturity of digitalisation and the financial constraints, not every NFA intends or is able to assign a full-time staff member exclusively to digital issues. Therefore, the most appropriate person was interviewed in each NFA.

Adapting an organisational culture to the requirements of the digital age is one of the most important steps in implementing DT. It is equally important for the leadership to form the strategic framework and enable the necessary training of employees to improve the results of the digitalisation processes.

This is the first study investigating NFA's DT from a worldwide perspective, identifying the most important factors for successful DT-processes.

This research paper generates new insights into the challenges of implementation in women’s enterprise policy. It argues that organisations involved in policy implementation need to be understood as operating in a context of institutional pluralism and answers: How do organisations involved in the implementation of women’s enterprise policy manage the challenges of institutional pluralism?

Addressing the need for women’s enterprise policy to learn from the past, the research adopts a historical approach to the study of policy implementation through examination of the UK’s Phoenix Development Fund (1999–2008). It analyses a wide range of secondary sources to examine 34 projects funded and supported by the Phoenix Development Fund that targeted women entrepreneurs.

Potentially conflicting institutional logics associated with central government, mainstream business support and local communities were managed through four key processes: dominance; integration; constellation and bridging. The management of institutional pluralism was effective in delivering support to communities but not in providing an effective platform for learning in government or establishing sustainable, long-term mechanisms.

The paper develops an empirical contribution to practice through identification of processes to manage the challenges of institutional pluralism and lessons for community-engaged policy implementation. A theoretical contribution to academic debates is provided by the conceptualisation of these challenges in terms of institutional pluralism and the novel concept of institutional bridging. The study also demonstrates the value of historical methods for women’s enterprise policy to learn the lessons of the past.

This paper aims to examine the key challenges experienced and lessons learned when organizations undergo large-scale agile transformations and seeks to answer the question of how incumbent firms achieve agility at scale.

Building on a case study of a multinational corporation seeking to scale up agility, the authors combined 36 semistructured interviews with secondary data from the organization to analyze its transformation since the early planning period.

The results show how incumbent firms develop and successfully integrate agility-enhancing capabilities to sense, seize and transform in times of digital transformation and rapid change. The findings highlight how agility can be established initially at the divisional level, namely with a key accelerator in the form of a center of competence, and later prepared to be scaled up across the organization. Moreover, the authors abstract and organize the findings according to the dynamic capabilities framework and offer propositions of how companies can achieve organizational agility by scaling up agility from a divisional to an organizational level.

Along with in-depth insights into agile transformations, this article provides practitioners with guidance for developing agility-enhancing capabilities within incumbent organizations and creating, scaling and managing agility across them.

Examining the case of a multinational corporation's exceptional, pioneering effort to scale agility, this article addresses the strategic importance of agility and explains how organizational agility can serve incumbent firms in industries characterized by uncertainty and intense competition.

This article examines the strategic actions of multinational corporations (MNCs) in creating social value at the base of the pyramid (BoP), providing insights into novel business models (BMs) and tactics employed for poverty alleviation.

This conceptual article links three relevant pieces of literature – creating shared value (CSV), the three-value creation logic and the three core values of social development – to analyze the current research and real-world examples of MNCs implementing the BoP BMs.

The article identifies four strategies and 11 tactics used by MNCs to adapt BMs elements (value proposition, value constellation and value capture) and generate social value at the different levels (coverture of basic needs, self-esteem and freedom from servitude) by following the distinct value creation logics (chain, shop and network).

This article provides a conceptual framework that links relevant literature and sheds light on the strategic actions that MNCs apply in their BMs to tackle the multidimensionality of poverty in the BoP markets.

This study aims to convey lessons learned from two sustainability initiatives at Norway’s largest university. This contributes to knowledge-based discussions of how future, sustainable higher education institutions (HEIs) infrastructures should be envisioned and planned if the fundamental uncertainty of the future development of learning, researching and teaching is acknowledged.

This study was submitted on 24 January 2023 and revised on 14 September 2023. HEIs, particularly when they are engaged in research activities, have a considerable environmental footprint. At the same time, HEIs are the main producers and disseminators of knowledge about environmental challenges and their employees have a high awareness of the urgent need to mitigate climate change and biodiversity loss. In this study, the gap between knowledge and environmental performance is addressed as a question of infrastructural change, which is explored in two case studies.

The first case study presents limitations of ambitious, top-down sustainability planning for HEI infrastructures: support from employees and political support are central for this strategy to succeed, but both could not be secured in the case presented leading to an abandonment of all sustainability ambitions. The second case study exposes important limitations of a circular approach: regulatory and legal barriers were found against a rapid and radical circular transformation, but also more fundamental factors such as the rationality of an institutional response to uncertainty by rapid cycles of discarding the old and investing in new equipment and facilities.

Being based on qualitative methods, the case studies do not claim representativity for HEIs worldwide or even in Norway. Many of the factors described are contingent on their specific context. The goal, instead, is to contribute to learning by presenting an in-depth and context-sensitive report on obstacles encountered in two major sustainability initiatives.

Research reporting on sustainability initiatives too often focuses descriptively on the plans or reports the successes while downplaying problems and failures. This study deviates from this widespread practice by analysing reasons for failure informed by a theoretical frame (infrastructural change). Moreover, the juxtaposition of two cases within the same context shows the strengths and weaknesses of different approaches to infrastructural change particularly clearly.

This conceptual, multi-voiced paper aims to collectively explore and theorize family entrepreneuring, which is a research stream dedicated to investigating the emergence and becoming of entrepreneurial phenomena in business families and family firms.

Because of the novelty of this research stream, the authors asked 20 scholars in entrepreneurship and family business to reflect on topics, methods and issues that should be addressed to move this field forward.

Authors highlight key challenges and point to new research directions for understanding family entrepreneuring in relation to issues such as agency, processualism and context.

This study offers a compilation of multiple perspectives and leverage recent developments in the fields of entrepreneurship and family business to advance research on family entrepreneuring.

This article expands literature on user innovation by exploring the mechanisms that support user innovations in the context of a public organisation. Research has hitherto documented support mechanisms for user innovation in producer companies, where users contribute in early or temporary innovation phases as external non-employees or lead-users engaged by the producer. Complementarily, this paper explores a lesser known area of support mechanisms, those that support internal user innovations in a public sector setting.

Employing a qualitative study of a Norwegian public hospital at the interface between users (personnel and patients) and organisational support (facilitators who orchestrate user innovations), this article analyses in-house user innovation based on observations, text documentation and interviews over a four-year period.

In this public hospital, holistic organisational facilitation of “public user innovators” formed the key support mechanism built on “people” (facilitating co-creation), “process” (facilitating ideas, project realisation and implementation) and “coordination” (facilitating systems and communication). The findings show that public and producer organisational mechanisms both resemble and differ in many respects, as illustrated by the framework developed to describe these characteristics, such as that producers insource users, while the public organisation outsources production.

The originality of the article lies in the identification and description of “public user innovation”, a new term developed from this study of a public organisation in contrast to the dominant literature on producer companies. This article contributes new insights by differentiating the roles of user innovators and the mechanisms that support such innovations. New implications are drawn from the public side of organisational support in user innovation research.