Search results

While organizations are composed largely of people who follow orders, followers and followership skills are a neglected area of research. Presents the results of a survey of followership types at three UK companies: the Halifax, a regional electricity company and Thorntons. Suggests that an organization’s culture determines the dominant leadership style, and that this in turn has an influence over what types of followers tend to predominate. Recommends that organizations should not only pay due regard to training their followers, but that further action to amend an unhelpful culture and dysfunctional patterns of leadership should also be considered.

The purpose of this article is to expand and extend previous work on the role of organizations in influencing deviant or dysfunctional behavior in those organizations.

Conclusions from previous work on the role of individuals and organizations in influencing dysfunctional behavior is used to lead to a discussion of the interactions between those two especially through organizational culture and leadership.

A model is developed that more carefully identifies how all of these factors come together, resulting in no, little, some, or a lot of dysfunctional behavior.

The model developed here can be employed to improve understanding of the role of organization culture and leadership in motivating dysfunctional work behaviors. Both the individual and the organization constructs utilized in the framework need more complete conceptual development. In each instance, a more complex and integrative analysis of diverse literatures needs to be undertaken. Clear messages regarding individual tendencies toward violent behaviors are embedded in the literatures from such diverse areas as psychology, psychiatry, criminal justice, medicine, sociology, organizational behavior, biology, social psychology, and anthropology. A comprehensive review and synthesis could theoretically yield far more insights than currently exist.

The proposed manifestations of dysfunctional behavior are most likely to occur as the result of the interactive relationship between an individual displaying a relatively high predisposition for violent behavior and an organization with a relatively high propensity to elicit violence. Clearly, a better understanding of the characteristics of such an organization would assist practicing managers in reducing the likelihood of occurrence of dysfunctional behavior.

This paper fills a gap in the literature about the role of organizations in influencing dysfunctional behavior by delineating more fully the role of organizational culture and leadership.

Scholars’ ability to do research based on the notions of “follower” and “followership” is questioned when studying formal leadership in organizations. The paper aims to discuss this issue.

Critical comments are presented on the usefulness of the notions of followers and followership.

There are no evidence that followership exists other than some scholars’ perception of something that they have been unable to define. The conclusion is that the inability to define these notions is tantamount to the inability to research them.

The literature review contains no new empirical data.

The paper stresses that study objects which are not theoretically and empirically defined cannot be investigated.

Talk of “macrofoundations” helps foreground the constitutive and contextualizing powers of institutions – dynamics that are inadvertently obscured by the imagery of microfoundations. Highlighting these aspects of institutions in turn opens intriguing lines of inquiry into institutional reproduction and change, lived experience of institutions, and tectonic shifts in institutional configurations. However, there is a twist: taking these themes seriously ultimately challenges any naïve division of micro and macro, and undermines the claim of either to a genuinely foundational role in social analysis. The authors propose an alternative “optometric” imagery – positioning the micro and the macro as arrays of associated lenses, which bring certain things into focus at the cost of others. The authors argue that this imagery should not only encourage analytic reflexivity (“a more optometric institutionalism”) but also draw attention to the use of such lenses in everyday life, as an underexplored but critical phenomenon for institutional theory and research (“an institutionalist optometry”).

A creative identity, the incorporation of creativity into self-definition, is associated with creative outcomes. Given the importance of creativity to organizational success, understanding creative identity and in particular creative identity work (the formation and maintenance of creative identity) can be useful in understanding creatives within organizations. To be considered creative, individuals need to not only produce unique artefacts, but these artefacts need to be assessed by legitimate judges as being creative. Judges may be within an organization (e.g., senior researchers within a laboratory) or may be external to an organization (e.g., award judges in international advertising competitions). Underpinning creative identity work is the creative assessment, however this assessment is ambiguous and contextual. In other words, what is considered creative in one context or by one judge may not be considered creative in another context or by different judges. The ambiguity of the creative assessment makes creative identity work a precarious undertaking. Based on two case studies – a R&D laboratory and an advertising agency – this research explores the strategies which creative individuals employ in their creative identity work in response to the ambiguity of the creative assessment. This research contributes to the growing area of creative identity research by unpacking three specific strategies used as part of identity work of creatives: defending, emotional distancing and differentiating. These strategies assist the creatives in maintaining a coherent sense of who they are within the organizational context despite the unpredictability of the creative assessment.

In recent years, scholars have engaged in an especially sharp debate about the structural and ideological arrangements on which business organizations rely in their effort to control the workers they employ. A key issue is the degree to which workers have retained the ability to resist such controls. In this chapter, I develop a critical analysis of the scholarly debate over domination and resistance at work, in an effort to clarify the tasks facing this field. My argument hinges on three major points. First, I argue that scholars have approached the control/resistance binary largely as a class relationship, thereby neglecting intersecting inequalities such as race, gender, and sexuality, which inevitably complicate or over-determine the forms that worker resistance assumes. Second, I argue that scholars have increasingly fixated on symbolic or discursive influences, privileging them at the expense of the material or structural conditions that shape managerial control and resistance to it. Third, I contend that much of the literature has failed to acknowledge the duality of managerial control – that is, its tendency not only to limit but also to enable resistance from below. These problems, taken together, explain why the debate has so often seemed to pursue a circuitous path, as if it were chasing its own tail. The chapter concludes by discussing the conditions that resistance presupposes, and by speculating about the emergence of novel forms of resistance that might be well suited to an age of flexible accumulation.

Data science promises new opportunities for organizational decision-making. Data scientists arguably play an important role in this regard and one can even observe a certain “buzz” around this nascent occupation. This paper enquires into how data scientists construct their occupational identity and the challenges they experience when enacting it.

Based on semi-structured interviews with data scientists working in different industries, the authors explore how these actors draw on their educational background, work experiences and perception of the contemporary digitalization discourse to craft their occupational identities.

The authors identify three main components of data scientists’ occupational identity: a scientific mindset, an interest in sophisticated forms of data work and a problem-solving attitude. The authors demonstrate how enacting this identity is sometimes challenged through what data scientists perceive as either too low or too high expectations that managers form towards them. To address those expectations, they engage in outward-facing identity work by carrying out educational work within the organization and (paradoxically) stressing both prestigious and non-prestigious parts of their work to “tame” the ambiguity and hype they perceive in managers’ expectations. In addition, they act upon themselves to better appreciate managers’ perspectives and expectations.

This study contributes to research on data scientists as well as the accounting literature that often refers to data scientists as new competitors for accountants. It cautions scholars and practitioners alike to be careful when discussing the possibilities and limitations of data science concerning advancements in accounting and control.

This research examines global advertising strategies and tactics in a global media brand for a shared audience across seven countries (Brazil, China, France, India, South Korea, Thailand, and USA).

A content analysis of advertisements in local editions of Cosmopolitan magazine compares the extent of standardization in execution elements (advertising copy, models) across product nationality (multinational, domestic) and category (beauty, other).

Local editions deliver more multinational than domestic product ads across all countries, except India. Overall, multinational product ads tend to use standardized strategies and tactics more than domestic product ads, although this propensity varies across countries. Beauty products (cosmetics, fashion) are more likely to use standardized approaches than are other products (e.g. cars, food, household goods).

The research only examines one type of magazine and for one type of audience.

A global medium such as Cosmopolitan offers international advertisers an opportunity to reach a shared consumer segment of women with varying degrees of standardization, and that even in Asian countries, some standardization is possible.

This is the first multi‐country study to examine advertising executions for global advertising strategy within a transnational media brand. Unlike previous studies that advise against global strategy in Asia, we find that contemporary advertisers are practicing some global advertising strategies, but to varying degrees.

The study aims to highlight and understand, and bring the human agency into the debate on the theory of normative control. While, the previous literature has highlighted the problem of the missing subject. However, the actual human agency in terms of agential properties has not been seriously addressed. This study is an attempt to overcome this problem of the missing subject.

A two-phase design inspired by retroductive inference was adopted for this study. In the first phase, abduction was used to explore the literature on normative control to highlight the forces of attraction, which may pull the employees to participate willingly within normative control systems. In the second phase, following retroductive inference, agential explanations of the forces of attraction identified in the first phase were explored by venturing into other related fields, e.g. psychology and sociology.

The study highlights four strategies used by organizations using normative control, i.e. comfort zoning, relational bonding, moral trapping and elitist appeal. These strategies rely on attractive forces. These forces of attraction pull employees to participate in the normative control system. The attractive element in the identified strategies is due to the fact that these strategies target specific agential properties, i.e. the need for comfort, sense of belonging, moral agency and pride. Overall, the findings suggest that individuals drive their concerns from culture but in relation to their capacity as needy beings for being enculturated.

Theoretically, this study adds conceptual strength to the explanations of normative control. It is suggested that neglect of human agency renders explanations conceptually weak. The study fills this gap in the research. Practically, this study would be beneficial for better design and implementation of normative control. Several studies have pointed out that normative control does not yield the intended results. Out of many reasons, a lack of understanding of human agency is a major cause of unsuccessful attempts to normatively control employees. This study provides some basis to understand the human subject for better design of soft systems of control.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first research study that explores agential properties with reference to normative control systems. This study is important for researchers and practitioners.