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An automation project for linking knitted components has required development of a high‐speed vision sensing system

This analysis investigates the micro-dynamics of organizational decision-making by exploring connections between institutional theory, on the one hand, and both social psychological research on conformity and recent work in economics on herd behavior and information cascades, on the other hand. The authors draw attention to the differences between normative and informational conformity as distinct motivational drivers of adoption behaviors by exploring their differential effects on the post-adoption outcomes of decoupling (e.g., Westphal & Zajac, 1994), customization (e.g., Fiss, Kennedy, & Davis, 2012), and abandonment (e.g., Ahmadjian & Robinson, 2001). The authors conclude that normative conformity leads to certain post-adoption outcomes while informational conformity is associated with others.

This chapter conceptualizes computational methods across three related, yet distinct approaches: (1) Social Simulation, (2) Data Science, and (3) Big Data. Group communication research is then situated and reviewed along these three lines of research. Although some areas have considerable visibility (e.g., network analysis, text mining), some areas are less visible in group communication research (e.g., Social Simulation, Big Data designs). The chapter concludes with suggestions for issues regarding reliability, validity, and ethics.

A growing number of individuals identify as cosmopolitans, that is, citizens of the world. They voluntarily move from country to country in pursuit of self-fulfilment in both life and work, and construct a cosmopolitan identity in the process. With the help of three entrepreneurial narratives the authors investigated how cosmopolitan disposition affects entrepreneurial behaviour. The authors found that cosmopolitan entrepreneurs share many common entrepreneurial characteristics, such as openness to opportunities, a need for achievement and the locus of control. However, they also challenge the understanding of entrepreneurship by downplaying the role of environment and interpreting success in an unconventional way. The study demonstrates that this growing group of entrepreneurs deserves more attention from entrepreneurship scholars.

We examined the moderating role of age on the politics perceptions—organizational commitment relationship. Confirmatory factor analyses of data collected from 633 office employees of a private sector organization indicated that the scales measuring politics and commitment reflected unique constructs. Perceptions of politics were inversely but weakly related to commitment. However, results of hierarchical moderated multiple regression analysis revealed that perceptions of organizational politics and commitment were essentially unrelated among workers in and above their 40s, but were moderately related among younger workers. Implications of the results and directions for future research are discussed.

This chapter sets forth a form of comparative analysis that is explicitly organizational, in the sense that it uses cross-level, contextual or compositional, analysis to explain organizational-level observations, especially comparisons between organizations. Inter-organizational comparisons often surface paradoxical results, in the form of unexpected differences among similar kinds of organizations, or unexpected similarities among different kinds of organizations. The value of using comparative analysis in these cases is that the information required to unravel organizational-level puzzling results is often located at a higher or lower levels. The proposed form of comparative analysis thus extends the conventional top-down, unidirectional form by adding a bottom-up component – making it bi-directional. In addition to introducing an organization-centered form of comparative analysis, the chapter offers suggestions for its practice and speculates about the potential benefits of its broad application within organizational studies.

This study has a twofold goal. First, we examined perceptions of organizational politics as viewed by the academic staff in a public university. Second, we tested the potential mediating effect of perceptions of politics on the relationship between social capital and work outcomes. We surveyed 142 junior and senior faculty members of a large public Israeli university and tested several competing models. Major results, based on Structural Equations Model (SEM) analysis, indicate that the mediating model has several advantages over the direct effect model. In addition, a revised, mixed model provided additional advantages. The models are compared and discussed. Finally, implications of the findings and recommendations for future studies on internal politics and social capital in academia and beyond are suggested.