Search results

This paper aims to identify whether relationships exist between emotional intelligence (EI) and specific teamwork behaviours that are associated with transition, action and interpersonal team processes using the ability model of EI.

A total of 68 MBA students comprising 13 randomly assigned teams completed a pencil and paper performance‐based test of emotional intelligence. Some 14 weeks later a score reflecting the extent team members engaged in a number of teamwork behaviours consistent with transition, action and interpersonal team processes was obtained from peer ratings.

Emotional intelligence was found to explain direct and unique variance in transition and interpersonal team processes. However, only three individual branches of EI were found to be of any significance, and these differed in each instance.

These findings add to the growing body of literature suggesting emotional intelligence may be an important aspect of individual difference amongst team members that can contribute to team effectiveness. Individuals with differing EI abilities may be particularly important to teams dependent upon the team's activity phase.

The paper shows that blanket assertions regarding the significance of emotional intelligence for team effectiveness are far too simplistic. Differing EI abilities are associated with particular teamwork behaviours, which in turn become important during different phases of team activity. The findings suggest a need for more sophisticated frameworks regarding how EI relates to specific cognitive, verbal and behavioural teamwork activities.

While researchers and practitioners agree on the importance to adapt business process management (BPM) practices to the nature of processes, the authors observe a lack of research on how to most meaningfully distinguish processes in order to apply context-specific BPM practices that increase process efficiency and effectiveness. The purpose of this paper is to systematically analyze the nature of processes as one contextual factor for BPM.

Based on a literature review, the authors systematically derive process dimensions that describe the nature of processes and apply an information-processing perspective to the process level as a theoretical lens through which to analyze and structure these process dimensions.

The authors identified 36 dimensions used to describe process differences that can be consolidated into five generic dimensions based on an information-processing perspective: interdependence of process participants, differentiation of process participants, process analyzability, variability, and importance.

The paper derives process dimensions from the literature and links them to extant theories as a foundation for context-sensitive BPM. The findings serve as a basis for further conceptualizing BPM and for explaining seemingly contradicting findings about whether management practices increase or decrease organizational performance.

While the paper focuses on understanding and explaining process differences, the authors also demonstrate how these dimensions can be used to make strategic management decisions in order to increase the effectiveness and efficiency of processes.

The authors systematically conceptualize process differences as a foundation for contingent process management. In addition, the authors demonstrate that organizational processes provide a new field of application for information-processing theory.

The purpose of this paper is to determine the extent to which team processes vary between team types, as well as the relative importance of these processes for different team types.

A survey study evaluated a sample of 316 members of various work teams that were classified as either intellectual (e.g. executive team) or physical (e.g. production team) teams. Independent samples t‐tests, paired samples t‐tests, and confirmatory factor analysis were used to evaluate hypotheses.

Confirmatory analysis indicated transition and action oriented process behaviors were distinct from one another. Intellectual teams were found to value transition processes (planning and strategizing) more highly than physical teams. Intellectual teams also valued transition processes (planning and strategizing), more than action processes (monitoring and coordinating).

Research on team processes tends to focus upon a “one size fits all” approach to teamwork, but this approach has yielded inconsistent frameworks. This study provides evidence that these inconsistencies are due to the changing nature of teamwork. This study was limited in that only two broad types of teams and two types of process competencies were assessed.

Differences in the importance of certain processes for specific team types should be taken into account when implementing systems for team selection, performance appraisal, and training.

This paper provides empirical support for previous theoretical suppositions that different team types differ in the level of importance they place on certain processes.

Many researchers and practitioners suggest a contingent instead of a “one size fits all” approach in business process management (BPM). The purpose of this paper is to offer a contingency theory of BPM, which proposes contingency factors relevant to the successful management of business processes and that explains how and why these contingencies impact the relationships between process management and performance.

The authors develop the theory by drawing on organizational information processing theory (OIPT) and applying an information processing (IP) perspective to the process level.

The premise of the model is that the process management mechanisms such as documentation, standardization or monitoring must compensate for the uncertainty and equivocality of the nature of the process that has to be managed. In turn, managing through successful adaptation is a prerequisite for process performance.

The theory provides a set of testable propositions that specify the relationship between process management mechanisms and process performance. The authors also discuss implications of the new theory for further theorizing and outline empirical research strategies that can be followed to enact, evaluate and extend the theory.

The theory developed in this paper allows an alternative way to describe organizational processes and supports the derivation of context-sensitive management approaches for process documentation, standardization, monitoring, execution and coordination.

The theoretical model is novel in that it provides a contextualized view on BPM that acknowledges different types of processes and suggests different mechanisms for managing these. The authors hope the paper serves as inspiration both for further theory development as well as to empirical studies that test, refute, support or otherwise augment the arguments.

Knowledge transfer (KT) processes are important for building and sustaining competitive advantages and dynamic capabilities. Prior research often treats KT processes as a firm-level capability, assuming knowledge flows uniformly within a firm. The purpose of this paper is to examine whether such a view is too simplistic because it ignores potential differences between inter-group and intra-group KT processes within a firm.

The authors surveyed 137 software development professionals in a large Japanese electronics firm regarding co-workers who acted as critical sources of useful knowledge and the factors that affected KT within and across internal organizational boundaries. Using regression analysis, the authors test the extent to which factors such as the characteristics of the knowledge, the characteristics of the tie, and the characteristics of the network differentially affect KT within internal organizational boundaries vs across them.

The authors find that factors such as the accessibility of the knowledge source, network density, and collective teaching all help in transferring knowledge, while knowledge tacitness inhibit such transfers, but that the effect of these properties varies significantly depending on whether KT occurs across group boundaries.

Existing research on KT within firms tends to treat all such transfers as uniform, with little difference between the dynamics of within-group transfer and between-group transfer. This study establishes key differences in KT between and within organizational groups, demonstrating that managers need to consider internal boundaries when deploying tools and strategies for facilitating knowledge flows.

The purpose of this paper is to find out which different failure processes exist among the young manufacturing micro firms, and whether the representation of those processes differs first, in European countries, and second, among exporting and non-exporting firms.

The study is based on financial data of 1,216 manufacturing micro firms from European countries. Failure processes have been detected with a two stage-method: by extracting latent dimensions from financial variables with factor analysis, and then, by clustering the established factor scores.

With firms’ age, the number of different failure processes reduces from four to two. Strong evidence was found about the dominance of different failure processes in different countries for most firm age groups. Failure processes are not strongly associated with (non-)exporting.

This paper is the first one determining young manufacturing micro firms’ failure processes and comparing the representation of those processes in different firm subsets, either based on their country of origin or (non-)exporting behavior. Moreover, previous studies have not encompassed specific sectors, young or very small firms.

Despite an increasing number of publications focusing on the phenomenon of entrepreneurial learning, it is still unclear how this learning process differs from wider organizational learning. This paper aims to address this gap by highlighting four key processual dimensions unique to entrepreneurial learning: intuiting, scanning, internalizing and routinizing.

Drawing on various conceptual and empirical papers published in this area over the past 20 years, common threads in the literature are identified, which point towards these four key dimensions of entrepreneurial learning.

It is thus argued that the ability of the entrepreneurial team to learn form and adapt to changes in the external market involves all four dimensions of intuiting, scanning, internalizing and routinizing. Intuiting involves drawing on prior knowledge to create new opportunity sets, and skills. These ideas and skills are then tested in the market, through scanning and market research. Internalizing allows the entrepreneurial team to question taken for granted assumptions, as existing ways of working and views of the world are continually adapted. Finally, routinization is the process whereby the entrepreneurial team accumulates a situated knowledge of the changing world around them, and in the process, frees up valuable cognitive resources, needed in the continual process of intuiting, scanning and internalizing.

It is argued that the adaptability of entrepreneurial ventures hinges on all four processual dimensions.

Wine tasting is an integral method for engaging consumers. Producers go to great lengths to educate consumers on evaluating quality based on taste and aroma. Understanding the sensory and perceptual processes of wine tasting may offer insight into how consumers at different levels of wine expertise use their senses to evaluate wine.

This study used functional near-infrared spectroscopy to examine processing in the frontal lobe of the brain during wine tasting and aroma evaluation. Sixty subjects evaluated the tastes and aromas of wine samples with various levels of sweetness, whereas 16 defined areas of their frontal lobes were measured with functional near infrared measurement.

The subjects’ orbitofrontal cortices were activated during both olfaction (smelling) and tasting. Further, larger areas of the frontal lobes showed significant activation during the olfaction task than during the tasting task. The level of the subjects’ wine knowledge did not predict differences in neural processing when participants evaluated aroma of wine; however, subjects with higher wine knowledge did show significantly higher activation in specific frontal lobe regions when tasting. Differences in levels of product involvement among the subjects were not significant for the tasting task, but were significant for the olfaction task.

Developing a better understanding of the biological processes involved in tasting may lead to understanding the differences in consumer preferences for wine. This, in turn, may assist tasting room managers to adjust their tasting procedure to be tailored to consumer-specific needs.

The Profit Impact of Marketing Strategy (PIMS) database was used to test the relationship between production process type (small batch, large batch/assembly, and continuous) and eight organizational policy decisions (new products, new plant and equipment, finished goods inventory, raw materials/work‐in‐process inventory, capacity utilization, fixed capital assets, manufacturing costs, gross margin). In addition, the effect of six broad industry types on the proposed relationships was also investigated. Overall industries, raw materials/work‐in‐progress, capacity utilization, manufacturing costs, fixed assets, and gross margin varied with production process type while new products, new plant and equipment, and finished goods inventory did not vary. Within each industry, the findings showed less support for the relationships between production process type and the eight organizational policy decisions. Further analysis showed that most of the industries are dominated by a production process type. Suggests a movement away from the traditional differentiation of production process technologies and a shift of research emphasis to the differing uses of a particular production process technology within an industry.