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Book part
Publication date: 6 November 2015

Gregory Bott

Through an inductive approach, I examine the process in which autonomy is exercised in the board-executive director relationship. A further contribution of the current study is…

Abstract

Purpose

Through an inductive approach, I examine the process in which autonomy is exercised in the board-executive director relationship. A further contribution of the current study is the exploration of the antecedents of the delegation process.

Methodology/approach

Utilizing the benefits of semi-structured critical incident interviews, and analysis of organizational documentation, I study the process in which autonomy is exercised in the board-executive director relationship.

Findings

Evidence is found within organizations of times when it is clear that board members understand that there are boundaries to their role, respecting this autonomy, and times when board members overstep their role. Next, in the current study, I explore the antecedents of the delegation process, including identification of role boundaries, role clarity, clear expectations, trust in the executive director, and trust in the governance control systems.

Research implications

Autonomy has historically been examined within seemingly paradoxical frameworks; this has included investigating autonomy as part of the definition of laissez faire leadership, as a key feature of transformational leadership and as one component of the jobs characteristics model, while others have characterized it as a stream of shared leadership. In the current project, the process of providing autonomy takes on characteristics consistent with both vertical leadership and distributed leadership. The executive director similarly plays a role in maintaining previously defined role boundaries, which is evidence of bidirectional influence. However, the board plays a disproportionately larger role in delineating and maintaining role boundaries – characteristics I demonstrate as being consistent with transformational leadership.

Originality/value

In this chapter, I provide a refreshing divergence from typical board prescriptions, in that I examine the board-executive director relationship through a behavioural lens. A clear understanding of the mutual influence and antecedents of autonomy are important to practitioners seeking to enhance performance through the delineation of roles.

Details

Contingency, Behavioural and Evolutionary Perspectives on Public and Nonprofit Governance
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-78560-429-4

Keywords

Book part
Publication date: 22 June 2012

Maria Amoamo

This research examines, in a case study of Pitcairn Island, the meaning of community. Such meanings emerge in the empirical field whereby the ‘field’ offers its own cues to both…

Abstract

This research examines, in a case study of Pitcairn Island, the meaning of community. Such meanings emerge in the empirical field whereby the ‘field’ offers its own cues to both issue and method. The main lesson learned from this ethnographic study stems from the experiential nature of fieldwork whereby ‘community’ is viewed as a cluster of embodied dispositions and practices. Influenced by Anthony Cohen's ethnographic work (1978, 1985) the case study demonstrates the centrality of the symbolic dimensions of community as a defining characteristic. Described as one of the most isolated islands in the world accessible only by sea, Pitcairn is the last remaining British ‘colony’ in the Pacific, settled in 1790 by English mutineers and Tahitians following the (in)famous mutiny on the Bounty. It represents in an anthropological sense a unique microcosm of social structure, studied ethnographically only a handful of times. Results show symbolic referents contribute to a sense of ‘exclusivity’ of Pitcairn culture that facilitates co-operation and collectivity whilst also recognizing the internal–external dialectics of boundaries of identification. The study reveals culture as a symbolic rather than structural construct as experienced by its members, seeing the community as a cultural field with a complex of symbols whose meanings vary amongst its members. Thus, connection and contiguity of culture continually transform the meaning of community, space and place. As such, community continues to be of both practical and ideological significance to the practice of anthropology.

Details

Field Guide to Case Study Research in Tourism, Hospitality and Leisure
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-78052-742-0

Keywords

Book part
Publication date: 29 January 2018

Francesco Polese, Orlando Troisi, Luca Carrubbo and Mara Grimaldi

This study aims at rereading public governance (PG) and public value management (PVM) in the light of viable systems approach (VSA). Starting from the common points and the…

Abstract

This study aims at rereading public governance (PG) and public value management (PVM) in the light of viable systems approach (VSA). Starting from the common points and the dissimilarities between the two theories, an integrated framework for pinpointing the key drivers leading to the emersion of public value co-creation in a public system conception of governance is elaborated. An overview on the emersion of PVM and PG is conducted in order to identify the main features of the new mindset. Then, VSA’s assumptions also are analyzed (with particular focus on their managerial implications) and then subdivided into four macro-areas.

The combination of the two theories allows recognition of four levers (with relative postulates) for fostering public value co-creation: (1) strategic selection of actors; (2) establishment of system and relational boundaries; (3) pursuit of the fit strategy-tactics; (4) system governance diffusion. From a theoretical point of view, the study provides suggestions for the creation of a public system theory of governance. Regarding managerial standpoint, revealing the drivers for public value co-creation can aid managers to better elaborate strategies for stimulating actor’s engagement in order to challenge complexity and user’s demands variability.

Details

Cross-Sectoral Relations in the Delivery of Public Services
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-78743-172-0

Keywords

Book part
Publication date: 8 June 2012

Christiane Molina

The international context provides multinational enterprises (MNEs) with distinct and plural institutional arrangements. The concept of institutional logic, which has received…

Abstract

The international context provides multinational enterprises (MNEs) with distinct and plural institutional arrangements. The concept of institutional logic, which has received little attention in MNE management research, provides theoretical tools to address the plurality of institutional contexts that characterize MNEs. By focusing on the concept of institutional logic rather than on traditional neo-institutional views of organizational phenomena, this chapter aims to provide a theoretical framework to address the institutional plurality of MNEs and to study the impact of diverse arrangements of institutions on individual and organizational behaviours in the context of MNEs.

Details

Institutional Theory in International Business and Management
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-78052-909-7

Book part
Publication date: 12 September 2003

Joel A.C Baum and Theresa K Lant

Organizations create their environments by constructing interpretations and then acting on them as if they were true. This study examines the cognitive spatial boundaries that…

Abstract

Organizations create their environments by constructing interpretations and then acting on them as if they were true. This study examines the cognitive spatial boundaries that managers of Manhattan hotels impose on their competitive environment. We derive and estimate a model that specifies how the attributes of managers’ own hotels and potential rival hotels influence their categorization of competing and non-competing hotels. We show that similarity in geographic location, price, and size are central to managers’ beliefs about the identity of their competitors, but that the weights they assign to these dimensions when categorizing competitors diverge from their influence on competitive outcomes, and indicate an overemphasis on geographic proximity. Although such categorization is commonly conceived as a rational process based on the assessment of similarities and differences, we suggest that significant distortions can occur in the categorization process and examine empirically how factors including managers’ attribution errors, cognitive limitations, and (in)experience lead them to make type I and type II competitor categorization errors and to frame competitive environments that are incomplete, erroneous, or even superstitious. Our findings suggest that understanding inter-firm competition may require greater attention being given to the cognitive foundations of competition.

Details

Geography and Strategy
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-0-76231-034-0

Book part
Publication date: 14 October 2010

Chris Goldspink and Robert Kay

Many approaches to understanding organization change approach “the organization” as a relatively static entity. Punctuated equilibrium models have also become popular, but here…

Abstract

Many approaches to understanding organization change approach “the organization” as a relatively static entity. Punctuated equilibrium models have also become popular, but here too the notion of unfreeze–change–refreeze suggests change as an exception — a break with the more normal stability upon which organizational control is predicated (Taplikis, 2005). By contrast, Tsoukas and Chia (2002, p. 570) have argued that “Change must not be thought of as a property of organization. Rather, organization must be understood as an emergent property of change. Change is ontologically prior to organization — it is the condition of possibility for organization.” Intuitively we agree with their position. However, it raises some significant questions for practitioners, principal among them: If change is constitutive of the organization rather than something which managers can control, then to what extent can change be subject to strategic influence?

Details

Advanced Series in Management
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-84855-833-5

Book part
Publication date: 2 October 2003

Brian R Dineen and Raymond A Noe

Past research involving turnover in work teams has largely focused on turnover as a dependent variable. With the growing trend towards more fluid, project-based teams, the effects…

Abstract

Past research involving turnover in work teams has largely focused on turnover as a dependent variable. With the growing trend towards more fluid, project-based teams, the effects of team membership changes on team processes and outcomes are in need of theoretical development and systematic study. Building on previous work by others (e.g. Arrow & McGrath, 1995; Marks, Mathieu & Zacarro, 2001), we develop a framework for understanding the effects of the rate of membership change, or team fluidity, on emergent states and processes in teams. Specifically, we: (a) discuss the theoretical underpinnings of team fluidity; (b) review past team research involving turnover; (c) make theoretically-grounded propositions about the effects of team fluidity on emergent states and process variables as well as additional propositions about boundary conditions; (d) discuss implications for human resource management practices; and (e) identify methodological challenges, including measurement issues, in studying team fluidity.

Details

Research in Personnel and Human Resources Management
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-84950-174-3

Book part
Publication date: 24 November 2022

Susan Hopkins

This chapter draws on my affective memories and personal history of fandom and fascination with the celebrity body of Sharon Stone and with the gendered narratives she embodied…

Abstract

This chapter draws on my affective memories and personal history of fandom and fascination with the celebrity body of Sharon Stone and with the gendered narratives she embodied through playing a particular character type of the icy cool, feminine trickster who seduces a dominant or hypermasculine male action hero in Hollywood films of the 1990s. Through close analysis of images, scenes and dialogue, the chapter explores the construction of the Sharon Stone persona and character type within action-thriller film case studies of Total Recall, Basic Instinct, The Specialist and Last Action Hero. These films are positioned as pedagogical tools as well as pleasurable texts, engaging theory around fandom and ‘fictional realities’ (see also Frauley, 2010) to intentionally blur the boundaries between popular culture texts and the ‘real’ life of fans. From a fan perspective, this chapter explores the emancipatory potential of these filmic narratives and moral pedagogies; reconsidering what the feminine Sharon Stone character teaches the masculine action hero within the film, and what she also teaches us beyond the film. For while the rise and fall of the Sharon Stone character in action-thriller narratives is typically constructed in misogynistic moral terms anchored in eroticised violence, it is the strength, resilience, power and transcendence promised by her embodied star image and its seductive, defiant, idealized femininity which the fan remembers, and which echoes still in fantasy futures beyond the filmic text.

Details

Gender and Action Films 1980-2000
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-80117-506-7

Keywords

Abstract

Details

The Culture of Women in Tech
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-1-78973-426-3

Abstract

Details

Functional Structure and Approximation in Econometrics
Type: Book
ISBN: 978-0-44450-861-4

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