Search results

The aim of this paper is to add to understanding of how cities function. Specifically, through the lens of power relationships in political organisations, it seeks to study the manner in which accounting and politics are involved in the development of city transport strategies.

The paper uses a comparative case study approach in which documents and media coverage are key elements of the visualising of the city.

The findings are on a number of levels. First, the study explains the efficacy of congestion charging systems. Second, in the politicised organisation of the city, the context in which policy makers sit is crucial in the elaboration of strategies. Third, the adoption of calculative practices such as congestion charging may reflect political rationality rather than actual need.

The focus of the study has been cities – a neglected field, but one with considerable research potential. Second, the mobilisation of concepts of power, as articulated by Clegg, Flyvbjerg and Clegg, represent a novel contribution to the accounting literature.

This exploratory study aims to analyse the influence of organisational resources and capabilities on relationship quality and firm performance in the context of high-technology offshore outsourcing service vendors.

Using a qualitative case study design, data from four offshore business process and information technology outsourcing firms were analysed.

Findings highlight that resource dependence, cultural orientation and the vendor’s resources and capabilities strengthen relationship quality and affect firm performance.

The distinctive contribution of this study lies in identifying key organisational mechanisms that improve relationship quality and firm performance, as well as help to understand the adverse effects of ethnocentricity and power faced by vendors and subsidiaries within diverse intercultural contexts. Study limitations and future research directions, along with implications for theory and practice, are also discussed.

The purpose of this paper is to develop a nuanced interpretative frame that can help global managers with recommendations to avoid misapplied power with group and organizational situations.

Embodied metaphor is applied in analysis of the theory-praxis nexus to reconceive the bases, processes and resources associated with group and organizational power. Identified are patterns of relations in organizational bases and circuits of power, as expressed through literal and symbolic aspects of human hands and fingers. The paper does not revolve around gesticulations; instead focusing upon a novel, meta-cultural development of touchlines of the human hand, revealing conceptual relationships with the implementation of influence.

A differentiated understanding of the touchline powers of technology, information, self-awareness, relation to others and access to money can respectively improve decisions and actions. Insights are provided in the areas of controlling people to achieve objectives, demeaning others, managing change and resistance for personal gain, negotiating contracts, advancing personal interests and coordinating reward or punishment.

Choosing one metaphor may contribute to the exclusion of other perspectives, however, the embodied nature of the hand and touchlines tends to cross cultures and may assist further research to address the embedded nature of abuses of organizational power.

The contribution is in the theory-praxis nexus to assist global managers in addressing the risk of potential misuse of power and influence in organizations and to respond to calls for ancient indigenous epistemological systems to assume a role in contemporary management studies.

Existing public–private partnership (PPP) literature that explicitly adopts neo-institutional theory, tends to elucidate the impact of isomorphic pressures and organizational fields and structuration on PPP projects. This paper advances this literature by presenting the institutional work and micro-level dynamics through which actors initiate and implement a new form of project delivery. The authors show how actors enact responses to institutional structuration in the expansion and transformation of an airport from a public entity into a PPP in Saudi Arabia.

The authors use a single case study design that offers an empirically rich and thick description of events such as the dynamic processes, practices and types of institutional work carried out by actors and organizations to deliver the project under investigation.

Religious symbolic work as social integration triggered system integration work, which expanded the power capabilities of individual actors leading the project. Repair work then followed to alleviate the negative effects of disempowering the agency of actors negatively affected by the PPP model and to streamline the project implementation process.

This research offers several practical implications. For PPPs to operate successfully in contexts similar to the Gulf region, policymakers should provide strong political support and be willing to bear a considerable risk of losses or minimal outcomes during the early phases of experimentation with PPPs. Also, policymakers should not only focus their attention on technical requirements of PPPs but also associate new meanings with the normative and cultural-cognitive elements that are integral to the success of PPP implementation. In order to design strategies for change that are designed to fit the unique cultural and sociopolitical settings of each country, policymakers should empower capable individual actors and provide them with resources and access to power, which will enable them to enforce changes that diverge from institutionalized practices.

This research connected the PPP literature with theoretical frameworks drawn from neo-institutional theory and power. It would be valuable for further research, however, to connect ideas from the PPP literature with other disciplines such as psychology and social entrepreneurship. PPP research examines a recent phenomenon that can potentially be combined with non-traditional streams of research in analyzing projects. Expanding the realm of PPP research beyond traditional theoretical boundaries could potentially yield exciting insights into how the overall institutional and psychological environments surrounding projects affect their initiation and implementation.

The paper contributes new insights regarding the roles of religious symbolic work, allied with social and system integration of power relations in implementing PPP projects. It suggests a theoretical shift from structures and organizational fields – macro- and meso-levels of analysis – to individuals – micro-level – as triggers of new forms of project delivery that break with the status quo.

The purpose of this paper is to explore theoretical connections between the cognitive consequences of power on self-perception and the behaviours of leaders.

A systematic literature review was carried out to investigate the psychological consequences of power in terms of self-perception, perspective taking abilities, emotions and behaviours. The literature reviewed is further integrated in a theoretical model, and a series of propositions suggesting a relation between power, perspective taking, self-construal and leadership are introduced.

This paper argues that power creates both temporary and enduring cognitive changes that transform the way individuals assimilate and differentiate their self from others. This transforms the way individuals in power behave as leaders, as well as followers. Individuals’ self-construal and perspective taking seem to play a mediating role in determining the behaviours of powerful and powerless individuals. This relation is moderated by organizational culture and structure, as well as personality traits.

Further research is needed to test these propositions, including the existence of cross-cultural differences in the power – self-construal relation, and the consequences of holding different types of power on an individual's self-construal. For employees and consultants working in organizational development and organizational change, understanding the potential consequences of power in terms of self-perception will improve the understanding of promoting individuals to higher positions. The present research also bears implications for scholars interested in understanding cross-cultural and gender differences in leadership.

This conceptualization of self-construal as an interface between power and leadership reconcile the individual dynamics of trait theories of leadership and the environmental positions of situational theories of leadership. The paper discusses elements considered critical for design of leadership programs in the workplace, professional development and programs to shape the design of leadership.

This paper aims to analyse the rise and institutionalization of the discourse of strategic management. It seeks to advance an agenda for studying strategy from a sociologically informed perspective. Moreover, it aims to make a case for a critically informed, interdisciplinary approach to studying strategy.

The paper provides an overview to studying strategy critically. It is a theoretically informed paper.

The findings can be summarised as: first, strategy emerged as a major discipline in the 1970s; second, as a body of knowledge strategy has remained close to its industrial economics origins; and third, an agenda for the sociological study of strategy revolving around concerns of performativity and power is outlined.

The paper offers a sociologically informed account of strategy.

As knowledge hiding is prevalent and often leaves severe detrimental consequences in its wake, it is imperative to place strategies on the front burner to identify its potential antecedents forthwith if there is going to be any headway to curtail the incidence of this phenomenon in organizations. Therefore, this study aims to examine the relationship between dispositional greed and knowledge hiding with the perceived loss of knowledge power as an underlying mechanism.

A multi-wave, three weeks apart strategy was used for data collection. A sample of 262 employees working full-time in various organizations operating across different industries in Nigeria participated in this study. Data were analyzed with partial least squares structural equation modeling.

The results showed that dispositional greed related positively to a perceived loss of knowledge power but insignificantly to any of the three dimensions of knowledge hiding (i.e. playing dumb, evasive hiding and rationalized hiding). On the other hand, the relationship between perceived loss of knowledge power and the three dimensions of knowledge hiding was positive. Finally, dispositional greed had an indirect positive relationship with the three dimensions of knowledge hiding through perceived loss of knowledge power.

All the variables were self-reported, which may lead to the same source bias.

Human resources managers can subject employees to cognitive restructuring training to help them identify thinking patterns that contribute to the perception of losing their power in the organization if they share knowledge and help reshape their perceptions regarding knowledge sharing. Management can use rewards to encourage employees to adopt knowledge sharing and refrain from knowledge hiding as a desired organizational norm.

This study offers novel insights that identify an underlying mechanism that encourages greedy employees to enact knowledge hiding.

The purpose of this paper is to examine teacher perceptions of the practice of co‐creating leadership and its potential impacts on student achievement.

Using a quantitative approach, the study compared the levels of the practice of co‐creating leadership dispositional values and institutional conditions that facilitate the practice of co‐creating leadership between high‐ and low‐performing high schools. Data was collected using a survey. The respondents were teachers from high‐ and low‐performing high schools. The data were analyzed using descriptive statistics, t‐tests, correlations, and regression.

Teachers in high‐performing schools scored significantly higher on perceptions of the practice of co‐creating leadership dispositional values and the presence of institutional conditions that facilitate the practice. Correlation analyses found positive significant relations between dispositional values and institutional conditions facilitating co‐creating leadership. High‐performing schools had high correlations. Regression analyses indicated that active listening, deep democracy, and evolving power significantly predicted teachers' perceptions of the impact of dispositional values and organizational conditions on student achievement.

The paper offers insights into how co‐creating leadership may have potential impact on student achievement.

The purpose of this paper is to develop a survey for co‐creating leadership dispositional values and contexts by examining the self‐perceptions of school leaders, teachers, and staff on the practice of co‐creating leadership behaviors and conditions that facilitate the practice.

Based on qualitative data and a literature review, survey statements were developed to gather quantitative data for purposes of establishing an instrument for studying the practice of dispositional values and presence of contexts that facilitate co‐creating leadership in schools.

The instrument internal reliability scales covering the seven dispositions and three contexts were calculated using Cronbach's α scores. All scores were above the suggested level of 0.70. The coefficient α reliabilities for the subscales ranged between 0.73 and 0.86. The survey resulted in a two‐factor solution (dispositional values and contexts). Correlation coefficients amongst the subscales of dispositional values and contexts ranged between a moderate r=0.460 and a high r=0.815 (p<0.01).

This study led to the development and verification of a quantitative survey instrument that may be used to assess the practice of co‐creating leadership dispositional values and contexts in schools. Dispositional values consisted of seven factors (trust and trustworthiness, humility, active listening, resilience, patience, collaboration, and cultural anthropology). Contexts consisted of three factors (deep democracy, quality relations, and evolving power).

Concepts equip the mind with thought, provide our theories with ideas, and assign variables for testing our hypotheses. Much of contemporary research deals with narrowly circumscribed concepts, termed simple concepts herein, which are the grist for much empirical inquiry in the field. In contrast to simple concepts, which exhibit a kind of unity, complex concepts are structures of simple concepts, and in certain instances unveil meaning going beyond simple concepts or their aggregation. When expressed in hylomorphic structures, complex concepts achieve unique ontological status and serve particular explanatory capabilities. We develop the philosophical foundation for hylomorphic structures and show how they are rooted in dispositions, dispositional causality, and various mind–body trade-offs. Examples are provided for this emerging perspective on “Big concepts” or “Big Ideas.”