Search results

“Academic values” is one of the most popular terms used in the higher education literature. But how do we study academic values? Besides autonomy, freedom, and collegiality, the “values” in “academic values” often remains implicit, leaving a conceptual gap in the literature. Moreover, autonomy, freedom, and collegiality may reflect the shared normative expectations as part of the value system of a profession, rather than the value orientation at the individual level. To examine the latter, this chapter proposes a conceptual framework adapted from the studies of work values in applied psychology. As a heuristic device, the academic work value framework consists of six ideal-typical value orientations belonging to three dimensions: work autonomy, social orientation, and value of knowledge. The framework's relevance and usefulness are evaluated by revisiting relevant literature on academic orientations. The result shows a spectrum of value positions in academic work, from the “old school” values to the “entrepreneurial” ones to the hybrid orientations. Overall, this framework provides a potential approach to operationalize the concept of academic values for empirical research. At the same time, as a heuristic device, it is open for reflection, critique, and further development.

The marketing literature indicates that a firm’s organizational culture plays a critical role in determining its market orientation (MO) and thereby the firm’s ability to successfully adapt to its environment to achieve superior business performance. However, our understanding of the organizational culture of market-oriented firms and its relationship with business performance remains limited in a number of important ways. Drawing on the behavioral theory of the firm and the competing values theory perspective on organizational culture, our empirical study addresses important knowledge gaps concerning the relationship between firm MO culture, MO behaviors, innovation, customer satisfaction, and business performance.

We used a survey methodology with Clan Cultural Orientation, Adhocracy Cultural Orientation, Market Cultural Orientation, and Hierarchy Cultural Orientation Clan. Market Orientation Behaviors, Innovation, and Customer Satisfaction and CFROA _t (Net Operating Income + Depreciation and Amortization – Disposal of Assets)/Total Assets.

The overall fit of the first Confirmatory Factor Analysis (CFA) containing the three MO behavior sub-scales, the four organizational culture scales, and the innovation and satisfaction performance measures was good with a χ ² = 760.89, 524 df, p < 0.001; CFI = 0.916 and RMSEA = 0.055. The overall fit of the second CFA containing the business strategy, bureaucracy, and customer expectations control variables was also good with a χ ² = 243.26, 156 df, p < 0.001; CFI = 0.937 and RMSEA = 0.061. We also subsequently ran a third CFA in which the MO behavior construct was modeled as a second-order factor comprising the three first-order sub-scales (generation of market intelligence, dissemination of market intelligence, and responsiveness to market intelligence) each of which in turn arose from the relevant survey indicants. This measurement model also fit well with the data with a χ ² = 84.06, 63 df, p < 0.039; CFI = 0.955 and RMSEA = 0.047. Regressions using seemingly unrelated regressions (SUR) with control variables and with R ² values ranging from 0.28 to 0.54.

MO culture has an important direct effect on firms’ financial performance as well as an indirect effect via MO behaviors and innovations. Importantly, our findings suggest that MO culture facilitates value-creating behaviors above and beyond those identified in the marketing literature as MO behaviors. In contrast to a series of studies by Deshpandé and colleagues (1993, 1999, 2000, 2004), our empirical results suggest the value of the internally oriented Clan and to a lesser degree Hierarchy cultural orientations as well as the more externally oriented Adhocracy and Market cultural orientations. The benchmark ideal MO culture profile we identify is consistent with organization theory conceptualizations of strong balanced organizational cultures in which each of the four competing values orientations is simultaneously exhibited to a significant degree (e.g., Cameron & Freeman, 1991). Our findings indicate that the organizational culture domain of MO appears to be at least as important (if not more so) in explaining firm performance and suggest that researchers need to re-visit the conceptualization, and perhaps more importantly the operationalization, of MO as a central construct in strategic marketing thought.

In building an MO culture, an important first step is to assess the firm’s existing organizational culture profile (e.g., Goodman, Zammuto, & Gifford, 2001). Organization theory researchers have developed competing values theory-based organizational culture assessment tools that can provide managers with an easily accessible mechanism for accomplishing this (Cameron & Quinn, 1999). The profile of the firm’s existing culture and the profile of the ideal culture for MO from our study can then be plotted on a “spider’s web” graphical representation (e.g., Hooijberg & Petrock, 1993). This aids the comparison of the firm’s existing cultural profile with the ideal MO profile, enabling managers to easily diagnose the areas, direction, and magnitude MO culture profile “gaps” in their firm (Cameron, 1997). Specific gap-closing plans and tactics for gaps on each of the four cultural orientations can then be identified as part of the development of a change management program designed to create an MO culture profile (e.g., Chang & Wiebe, 1996). Cameron and Quinn’s (1999) workbook provides managers with an excellent operational resource for planning and undertaking such gap-closing organizational culture change initiatives.

Prior studies investigating the relationship between moral reasoning (as measured by the defining issues test, DIT) and political orientation have rendered mixed results. We seek to find an explanation for these mixed results. Using responses from a sample of 284 practicing certified public accountants (CPAs), we find evidence that value preferences underlie both moral reasoning and political orientation. Specifically, we find a statistically significant inverse relationship between moral reasoning and conservatism in univariate tests. However, this relationship is no longer significant when eight individual value preferences and gender are taken into account. These results suggest that variations in moral reasoning scores of CPAs are accounted for by their value preferences, which also underlie their relative conservatism.

A work orientation represents a person’s beliefs about the meaning of work – the function work plays in the person’s life and the constellation of values and assumptions the person holds about the work domain. Research has suggested that adults tend to favor one of three primary work orientations: job, career, or calling. Empirical studies have shown that adults with different primary work orientations tend to experience different work and career outcomes; however, scholars have not analyzed how or why an individual first develops a work orientation. In this study, we take a first step toward investigating the origins of adults’ work orientations.

We propose hypotheses drawing on extant literature on the development of work values and occupational inheritance. We test hypotheses using a retrospective research design and survey methodology, with a sample of working adults.

Work orientations are developed through socialization processes with parents during adolescence. There are different patterns of development across the three work orientation categories: stronger calling orientations are developed when both parents possess strong calling orientations; stronger career orientations develop in accordance with fathers’ career orientations; and job orientations are related more to the nature of the adolescent’s relationship with parents than with parents’ own work orientations.

This research provides the first empirical study of the origin and development of work orientations.

This research offers insight into ways generations are connected through the perceived meaning of their work, even as the nature of work changes. We encourage future scholars to use this as a starting point for research on the development of work orientations, and to continue exploring these questions using additional methods, particularly longitudinal study designs.

Extant theory tends to treat Organizational Culture (OC) and fraud-related values as static, characterizing culture as synonymous with potential ethical values − but devoting less attention to how the culture and values arose and where they are headed. Buffer/conduit theory proposes that accountants learn to use a taxonomy containing three dynamic layers: collective fraud orientation, a buffer/conduit layer, and individual fraud orientation. The middle layer contains OC-related internal controls that buffer the orientation layers from spreading fraud-encouraging values, and serve as conduits transmitting fraud-deterring values − or, when controls do not function as intended, transmitting fraud-encouraging values. A factor analysis of 11 indicators of this three-layer taxonomy suggests that older generations of accounting practitioners apply the taxonomy, but millennials do not. Predisposition to commit fraud is especially salient to internally focused millennials, who uniquely perceive recruitment and training as compensating mechanisms and as collective buffers.

Conceptualizing trust alone or as the starting point for understanding both trust and distrust is insufficient. Therefore, this chapter focuses on the construction of phenotypic trustscapes and distrustscapes that permit an abstract exploration of the concepts of trust and distrust using societal and dyadic relationships and perceptions of the individual as the units of analysis. For theoretical understanding of trust and distrust, it uses social and evolutionary biologic multi-level theory. This chapter builds on the existing trust literature in three ways: (1) by triangulating on trust and distrust through the use of a number of research methodologies; (2) by placing trust and distrust in value orientation theory and models; and (3) by extricating trust and distrust from reciprocity constructs, and placing them into separate phenotypes: trustscapes and distrustscapes. These efforts show that both trust and distrust are naturally occurring phenomena, with one or the other predominant in specific contexts. The chapter includes scenarios in Japan, Bulgaria, and Indonesia to demonstrate how micro- and macro-level examples of trustscapes and distrustscapes function.

The concept of market orientation has attracted attention from both academics and managers and it has been widely used in the marketing discipline to explain marketing phenomena in business and consumer markets (Deshpande, Farley, & Webster, 1993; Jaworski & Kohli, 1993; Kohli & Jaworski, 1990; Steinman, Deshpande, & Farley, 2000). The most common output or effect attributed by the literature to the market orientation concept has been the firm's achievement of good or superior financial performance by delivering superior value to customers (Deshpande et al., 1993; Hunt & Lambe, 2000; Kohli & Jaworski, 1990; Narver & Slater, 1990). The market orientation concept has also generated a stream of research in both domestic and international markets (Breman & Dalgic, 2001; Cadogan & Diamantopoulos, 1995; Cadogan, Diamantopoulos, & de Mortanges, 1999; Dalgic, 1994; Siguaw, Simpson, & Baker, 1998).

We argue that our understanding of how institutions matter has been undermined by a piecemeal approach to temporality in institutional analyses. This paper addresses this shortcoming in the literature. We bring temporality to the fore by conceptualizing practices, which constitute institutions, as understood, situated, and coordinated in time by temporal structures. We elaborate an integrated framework of temporal structures that consist of three types: temporal patterns, temporal conceptions, and temporal orientations – and outline how each type contributes to the reproduction of practices. We discuss the implications of this framework for sustainability initiatives and conclude by suggesting future avenues of research on the temporal foundations of institutions.