Search results

The purpose of this study is to contribute to the theoretical groundwork for socio-psychological investigations into the management of socially sustainable supply chains. It proposes an analytical framework for the study of the psychological conflict potential between the fulfillment of core labor standards and cost efficiency requirements.

Theoretical considerations are illustrated using an explorative qualitative-empirical case study.

An activity-theoretical approach makes it possible to combine the subjective experience of tensions between conflicting requirements on sustainability management and the practical imperatives of the capitalist-market economic system in a coherent socio-psychological analytical framework.

The proposed analytical framework serves as a starting point for theoretical considerations on socio-psychological determinants of the sustainability performance of the management of transnational supply chains.

This paper addresses the novel topic of how supply chain sustainability managers give sense to difficulties concerning the fulfillment of core labor standards while being constrained by cost efficiency requirements. To this end, in a hitherto unique way, concepts from activity theory, social cognitive theory of self-regulation and the theory of communicative action are combined into an analytical framework.

Max Weber called the maxim “Time is Money” the surest, simplest expression of the spirit of capitalism. Coined in 1748 by Benjamin Franklin, this modern proverb now has a life of its own. In this paper, I examine the worldwide diffusion and sociocultural history of this paradigmatic expression. The intent is to explore the ways in which ideas of time and money appear in sedimented form in popular sayings.

My approach is sociological in orientation and multidisciplinary in method. Drawing upon the works of Max Weber, Antonio Gramsci, Wolfgang Mieder, and Dean Wolfe Manders, I explore the global spread of Ben Franklin’s famed adage in three ways: (1) via evidence from the field of “paremiology” – that is, the study of proverbs; (2) via online searches for the phrase “Time is Money” in 30-plus languages; and (3) via evidence from sociological and historical research.

The conviction that “Time is Money” has won global assent on an ever-expanding basis for more than 250 years now. In recent years, this phrase has reverberated to the far corners of the world in literally dozens of languages – above all, in the languages of Eastern Europe and East Asia.

Methodologically, this study unites several different ways of exploring the globalization of the capitalist spirit. The main substantive implication is that, as capitalism goes global, so too does the capitalist spirit. Evidence from popular sayings gives us a new foothold for insight into questions of this kind.

The purpose of this paper is to analyze the wave scattering behaviour of an inhomogeneous and eccentric inclusion in a homogeneous matrix material. Another purpose is to evaluate the influence of epistemic uncertainty on the wave scattering behaviour, particularly on the lack of knowledge about this eccentricity. This task calls for a multidisciplinary model.

The inclusion is modelled as a multi‐layered obstacle, with all layers being eccentric with respect to each other. The material behaviour of the embedding matrix is linear elastic and isotropic. In a multidisciplinary approach, the interaction of the inhomogeneous inclusion and the embedding matrix with respect to an incoming shear wave of arbitrary shape is solved analytically. The purely analytical solution process takes place in the frequency‐domain. Due to the lack of knowledge about the eccentric configuration of the matrix inclusion and its influence on the total wave field inside the matrix material, the mechanical model is coupled with fuzzy set theory for modelling this non‐stochastic uncertainty.

An analytical model for describing the wave scattering behaviour of an elastic matrix inclusion with eccentric set‐up is found and intimately connected with the framework of fuzzy set theory. Hence it is shown that the treatment of epistemic uncertainty with the derived analytical model is possible and fruitful. Additionally, it is shown that eccentric configurations lead to highly increased amplitudes with respect to the reference case of a concentric or even homogenous set‐up of the inclusion.

The value of this contribution is in the analytical model, which allows one to predict the wave scattering behaviour of eccentric configurations of multi‐layered fibres including the surrounding interphase, and its coupling with fuzzy set theory to cope with the epistemic uncertainty inherent in the geometric set‐up of the matrix inclusion.

This article raises the question of to what extent functional flexibility is an operatively designed approach with which European companies confront current short‐term changes in their environment, and whether functional flexibility is integrated into long‐term human resource strategies. The proposition is tested that organisations with a strategic human resource management in the sense of a coordinated, objective‐oriented personnel management pattern, show a higher probability of using job rotation than organisations lacking a strategic‐oriented human resource management approach.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the influence of cultural leadership factors (charismatic/value-based, team oriented, participative, humane, autonomous and self-protective) on the rates of opportunity and necessity entrepreneurship.

The study integrates insights from institutional and cultural leadership theories to provide a fresh perspective to advance comparative entrepreneurship research. To test the hypotheses, the authors conduct a multiple regression analysis with observations from 34 countries, using data (from the year 2013) from the Global Entrepreneurship Monitor for the dependent variable and from Global Leadership and Organizational Behavior Effectiveness to create leadership factors as independent variables.

The results show that all the types of leadership considered in the study have a relevant effect on entrepreneurial activity. However, charismatic leadership has a greater effect on entrepreneurial activity, particularly on opportunity entrepreneurship. The research also shows that autonomous leadership has a negative impact on entrepreneurial activity, although, when it is moderated by the humane dimension, this relationship changes.

Since the alternative dimensions facilitate or inhibit the generation of new firm creation, it is critical for researchers, teachers and leaders to learn about and to foster such leadership types.

This research covers a gap in the cross-cultural evidence presented in the literature and suggests the integration of the concepts leadership and entrepreneurship.

The aim of this paper is to address both the socio-moral climate and how teams process debate and decision comprehensiveness as pre-conditions for team innovation.

A total of 67 teams comprising 413 participants were surveyed. Data were analyzed with a multiple-step multiple-mediation procedure.

The socio-moral climate was positively related to innovation. The positive relation between the socio-moral climate and innovation was mediated stepwise through debate and decision comprehensiveness.

To overcome the limitations of a cross-sectional design, future research opportunities exist in the longitudinal evaluation of participatory socio-moral climates and comparisons between organizations. Debate and decision comprehensiveness can be further studied using behavior-based methodological designs, such as observation.

From this study, practitioners can learn of the needs and opportunities for participative approaches when managing innovation in teams. Promoting a socio-moral climate of cooperation, communication, openness, appreciation, trust and respect and leaving open the possibility that debating can help integrative decision comprehensiveness and thus innovation.

This paper expands the literature on organizational climate, debate, decision comprehensiveness, and innovation. On the one hand, the results empirically linked the socio-moral climate, a theoretically well-founded climate construct, to process variables. On the other hand, the literature on debate and decision comprehensiveness was expanded by adding the socio-moral climate as a pre-condition of debate and decision comprehensiveness. Furthermore, both were linked to a crucial outcome variable, innovation.

The aim of this chapter is to argue that charisma is a collective representation, and that charismatic authority is a social status that derives more from the “recognition” of the followers than from the “magnetism” of the leaders. I contend further that a close reading of Max Weber shows that he, too, saw charisma in this light.

I develop my argument by a close reading of many of the most relevant texts on the subject. This includes not only the renowned texts on this subject by Max Weber, but also many books and articles that interpret or criticize Weber’s views.

I pay exceptionally close attention to key arguments and texts, several of which have been overlooked in the past.

Writers for whom charisma is personal magnetism tend to assume that charismatic rule is natural and that the full realization of democratic norms is unlikely. Authority, in this view, emanates from rulers unbound by popular constraint. I argue that, in fact, authority draws both its mandate and its energy from the public, and that rulers depend on the loyalty of their subjects, which is never assured. So charismatic claimants are dependent on popular choice, not vice versa.

I advocate a “culturalist” interpretation of Weber, which runs counter to the dominant “personalist” account. Conventional interpreters, under the sway of theology or mass psychology, misread Weber as a romantic, for whom charisma is primal and undemocratic rule is destiny. This essay offers a counter-reading.

Sociological conceptualizations of capitalism, modernity, and economic development as due only to factors endogenous to Western Europe have been prominent targets of postcolonial criticism. Instead of an over-the-board condemnation of classical sociology as a whole or of the work of one classic in particular, the present article zooms in on Max Weber's theory of ethnicity from a postcolonial perspective in order to pinpoint the absences, blind spots and gestures of exclusion that Weber's classical analysis has bequeathed to the sociology of social inequality more generally and to the sociology of race and ethnicity in particular. Through a reconstruction of Weber's conceptual and political take on race and ethnicity, the article links Weber's general social theory with his particular views on racial and ethnic matters and reveals both as historically and politically situated. To this end, it starts with a brief look at Weber's theory of modernity as an indispensable prerequisite for an analysis of his approach to race and ethnicity and subsequently discusses his chapter on Ethnic Groups, his treatment of the “Polish question” in the 1890s and of the “Negro question” in the United States in the 1890s. Using Weber's canonical treatment of ethnicity as a test case, the article ends by suggesting that postcolonial critique can prove sociological theory more generally as built upon unwarranted overgeneralization from a particular standpoint constructed as universal.