Search results

Because franchising is a popular and important business alternative, we propose that concerted effort be taken by organization scientists to develop and test theoretical perspectives relevant to this business form. Rather than risk “reinventing the wheel”, researchers should first consider findings from outside the franchising arena to assess their generalizability to franchisors. To this end, three common configurations of franchise organization are described and placed within Mintzberg’s (1979) framework, and the logic linking various organization, strategy, and environment features into an harmonious configuration is presented with respect to each. This configuration view is used to describe franchise organization transitions, and propositions to guide future study of franchise organizations are presented. Thus, both franchising and organization theory are extended by showing how the franchising phenomenon fits into a general perspective on organizations.

The European Union (EU) is not a state, though it has some statelike attributes; it is not an empire, though it includes many former European imperial powers; and it is not a federation, though Euro-federalists seek to make it one. There is, however, no need to argue that the Union is a singularity, nor to invent novel terminology, such as that deployed by “neo-functionalists” and “intergovernmentalists” to capture its legal and political form. The EU is a confederation, but with consociational characteristics in its decision-making styles. This conceptualization facilitates understanding and helps explain the patterns of crises within the Union.

The paper draws on the evaluation activities of a European transnational Internet training programme involving trade union confederations and other worker education organisations. Three complementary views of the role of ICT in worker education are identified and discussed: the Internet as a topic of training; the Internet as a tool for delivering training; and the Internet in the mediation of changing relationships between union education and organisation. There is no inevitable progression through these views of the Internet: the outcomes of Internet use are dependent on a range of interacting influences that are likely to result in a diversity of patterns of Internet use.

The purpose of this paper is to reflect on the developments which have characterized Italy’s industrial relations from post-war Fordism to neo-liberal hegemony and recent crisis, with a particular focus on the major changes occurred in the twenty-first century, especially those concerning concertative (tripartite) policy making between the government, the employers’ organizations and the trade unions.

This study is a conceptual paper which analysis of main development trends.

Italy’s industrial relations in the twenty-first century are characterized by ambivalent features which are the heritage of the past. These are summarized as follows: “collective autonomy” as a classical source of strength for trade unions and employers’ organization, on the one hand. On the other hand, a low level of legislative regulation and weak institutionalization, accompanied by little engagement in a generalized “participative-collaborative” model. Due to the instability in the socio-political setting in the twenty-first century, unions and employers encounter growing difficulties to affirm their common points of view and to build up stable institutions that could support cooperation between them. The result is a clear reversal of the assumptions that had formed the classical backdrop of the paradigm of Italy’s “political exchange.” This paradigm has long influenced the way in which the relationships between employers, trade unions and the state were conceived, especially during 1990s and, to some extent, during 2000s, that is the development of concertative (tripartite) policy making. However, since the end of 2000s, and particularly from 2010s onwards national governments have stated their intention to act independently of the choices made by the unions (and partially the employers). The outcome is the eclipse of concertation. The paper explores how the relationships among the main institutional actors such as the trade unions (and among the unions themselves), the employers, and the state and how politics have evolved, within a dynamic socio-political and economic context. These are the essential factors needed to understand Italy’s industrial relations in the twenty-first century.

It shows that understanding the relationship among the main institutional actors such as the trade unions (and among the unions themselves), the employers and the state and their politics is essential to understand the change occurred in contemporary Italy’s industrial relations.

The purpose of this paper is to highlight the circumstances preventing the Wellington Phoenix, New Zealand's only professional football team, from participating in the Asian Champion's League.

A single case study approach has been adopted to generate rich data designed to aid understanding of the complexities of multi‐level governance, feature of international football governance.

The key conclusions of this research are that the Phoenix is attracted to the Asian football market because of the financial rewards but are prevented in doing so because of policies related to Fédération Internationale de Football Association's confederation structures.

It is hoped that this paper will encourage more academics to investigate: the extent to which football's governance structures act as either a facilitating or constraining factor to the growth of football in the region; the possible convergence between Asian and Pacific sporting economies; how other Asian sporting organisations are reacting to increasing interest from non‐Asian organisations in accessing their marketplaces; and the performance of a network and its members when subjected to multiple levels of governance.

The originality of this paper lies in its proposition that conflict within an international strategic alliance is likely to be exacerbated when the alliance is characterised by multiple levels of governance. Further originality is offered through the introduction of the term covalent organisation, to describe those sport organisations that are subjected to multiple levels of governance.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the nature of union responses to globalisation and, in particular, the global financial crisis; the consequences of the financial crisis for workers; and lessons from the experience.

The authors examined numerous union statements, declarations, reports and actions as well as extensive documentary evidence from other sources. The focus was on the behaviour of supranational trade unions, including the European Trade Union Confederation, the International Trade Union Confederation and Global Unions.

The supranational unions’ methods gradually shifted in the 2000s from reliance on institutional politics to collaboration with broader alter‐globalisation protest movements, though this carried risks. The global financial crisis appeared to be a strategic opportunity for trade unions, but while they developed sophisticated policy packages, they were unable to change the behaviour of global institutions. This accentuated the shift in union strategy. Governments initially set aside free market ideology for stimulus packages, but failed to regulate to prevent future crises. Workers bore the brunt of the crisis. The experience highlighted the contradictions facing unions dealing with global issues.

The outcomes of crises depend on the actions, strategies and prior strengths of the parties. Different outcomes emerged from prior crises and may emerge from future ones.

Few studies have examined the role of supranational unions in the context of the financial crisis. A clearer understanding of the weaknesses of and impediments to supranational union responses may increase the likelihood that future crises will be better understood and be followed by more effective responses.

DRIVER embodies a bold vision – that of worldwide networks of scientific data repositories. This paper seeks to examine the aims of the European Union funded project, to explore the development of a distributed infrastructure that enables enhanced interoperability of data, resulting in a global knowledge infrastructure supporting the scholarly communication of the future.

The primary objective of DRIVER was to establish a flexible, robust, and scalable infrastructure for all European and world‐wide digital repositories, managing scientific information in an open access model increasingly demanded by researchers, funding organisations and other stakeholders. Adopting a result‐driven approach, activities focused on the expansion of the content base with high quality research outputs, including textual research papers, data sets and other scholarly publications.

The release of the D‐NET v1.0 open source software proved a successful basis for a distributed service‐oriented architecture, enabling enhanced interoperability of data and service‐providers, and offering wide‐ranging functionality including search; recommendation; collection building, and personal profiling as innovative tools for repository managers. In addition, it was found that in building a robust network of voluntary content providers, known as the DRIVER Confederation, the infrastructure came to support a durable organisational structure, now formally constituted as the Confederation of Open Access Repositories (COAR). The international repository organisation enables further collaboration between research communities in a co‐ordinated network comprising a growing number of institutional repositories, national federations and research institutions and data aggregators.

The development of COAR is the extension of the EU‐based infrastructure to global research communities in China, India, Africa and Latin America, deploying a vigorous awareness and advocacy programme. Evolving from the DRIVER Confederation, COAR aims to provide an ongoing support service for repository managers, in a dynamic set of guidelines aimed at data interoperability, and to provide the strategic support required to implement new forms of scholarly communication. These issues are addressed in terms of technical infrastructure developments but will focus on strategic issues of policy development, improved services and additional functionality offered to the scholarly community.

This paper outlines DRIVER's unique response to the changing global information environment. Concepts of strategic international collaboration are pursued in COAR, based on the scientific and technical collaboration achieved in DRIVER. The paper addresses significant repository development goals that currently challenge repository managers, librarians, scholars and funders and that indicate the future of Open Access publication – in the ultimate goal of a global and interactive representation of human knowledge.

This case is focused on the allegations of corrupt practices within the strategic leadership at the board level of an international sports organization – the Asian Football Confederation (AFC). The theoretical premise is that the practices and decisions of the AFC’s leadership will have a profound impact on the AFC’s performance. However, because the AFC is the continental governing body, the impact is theorized to be far larger, across an entire industry. In writing the case, the authors were guided by upper Echelons theory (UET) (Hambrick and Mason, 1984; Hambrick, 2007; Hambrick et al., 2015), which argues that an organization’s strategic direction is directly influenced by its leader’s values. The authors selected UET for the theoretical framework, as it considered a spectrum of factors from industry, leader characters (values), their choices and the results of their actions. Such a comprehensive theory aligned with the complexities of the AFC and its leadership. In constructing the case roadmap using UET, the authors first adopted an ethnographic methodology. This was motivated by the fact that one of the authors had been embedded for many years as part of the leadership team at the AFC. His career work notes based on direct interactions and observations of these leaders helped in two ways: to identify the complex set of personal characteristics of these leaders (i.e. background, their careers outside football and financial standing) as they originated from 47 different nationalities. UET refers to these as observable factors to better theorize the hidden intentions of their alleged corrupt behaviors. UET identifies this second set of non-observable factors as psychological factors. These two different sets of observations combined helped to theorize their drivers, intentions and strategic decisions (options). For the second methodology, the authors accessed archival, publicly available media news and reports to understand the consequences of their actions to the AFC and the Asian football industry. This completed the final parts of the UET framework (Yamak et al., 2014).

This case relied on information that was widely reported within international media, press announcements by various organizations, published decisions by tribunals and publicly available information on the AFC. All of the names and positions in this case are actual persons.

This case focuses on the role and influence of the AFC as the Asian football governing body. The AFC is a member of the world football governing body – FIFA. With a US$1bn budget, the AFC has a strong impact on the future of football among Asia’s three billion people. Unfortunately, the AFC has been unable to create the value in its sports events or properties that attracts fans and investors. Central to this problem is the issue of corruption and corruption allegations within the AFC, especially with regard to its leadership. This case, therefore, attempts to highlight the various issues, discusses the circumstances around these challenges and brings forth the complexities of leading a truly international organization across 47 countries. Such factors are then tied to the value of the organization’s products or services in the marketplace.

The case is written and designed for a graduate level (MBA) class or an upper level undergraduate class such as corporate strategy, leadership, international management, international marketing, contemporary issues in management, cross-cultural management, sports management and sports marketing. In general, the case will also be a good fit for courses that discuss leadership, organizational strategy, organizational structure, organizational ethics and organizational behavior.

Describes two‐way dialogue, between each side of industry, is a key element in social policy. Proposes to analyse and comment on some of the social dialogue, in particular both the role and significance of this notion in the soon‐to‐be enlarged Europe. Acknowledges that the ten candidate countries that join on 1 May 2004 must build a social dialogue and negotiate and conclude collective agreements.

Policymakers implementing pay-for-performance schemes within general practice should seek to design schemes which work with rather than against the professional values and goals of general practitioners. In this way, schemes are more likely to enhance the practitioners' engagement. The purpose of this paper is to show how this was done in two case studies of pay-for-performance design and present the lessons from this study for policymakers.

A Most Similar Systems collective case study of the design of two pay-for-performance schemes for general practitioners, the United Kingdom's Quality and Outcomes Framework (QOF) and the New Zealand’s Performance Management Programme (PMP) was undertaken, involving 26 semi-structured interviews with policymakers, documentary and literature analysis.

Innovation in processes was found in both case studies which facilitated engagement by general practitioners in the formulation and implementation of these schemes. These were careful selection of highly skilled design teams, use of principle-based negotiation techniques and academic mediation of indicator selection. In addition, in England the majority of members in the combined QOF design team were general practitioners. The evidence from these two case studies reinforces approaches to scheme design which seek to harness rather than challenge medical professional values and which maximise the participation of general practitioners in the design process. Achieving funder/practitioner collaboration should be a key goal in the policymaking process.

Pay-for-performance scheme designers can improve their ability to engage general practitioners in scheme design and scheme uptake by adopting approaches which actively engage general practitioners as designers and users of such schemes.

This study compares two contemporaneous processes of pay-for-performance scheme design and implementation in similar systems of general practice funding and delivery at the national level, offering a rare quasi-experimental opportunity for learning lessons from comparative analysis.