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1 – 10 of over 1000This research examines how social media helps increase the dynamic capabilities of health organizations. Using the concepts of “technical fitness” and “evolutionary fitness…
Abstract
Purpose
This research examines how social media helps increase the dynamic capabilities of health organizations. Using the concepts of “technical fitness” and “evolutionary fitness,” the research focuses on changes in: (1) the number of “likes”; (2) the amount of discussions in these pages; and (3) enabling factors for (1) and (2) over time.
Methodology
Missouri Hospital Association (MHA) provides a sample of 164 hospitals. The Facebook pages of these hospitals are analyzed. Specifically, the number of “likes” and the amount of discussions are readily available for analysis. Data collection was conducted at two time points.
Findings
At time 1, 39% of the hospitals had an official Facebook page, increased to 47% at time 2. On average, there was a 22.2% increase in likes and a 4.0% increase in pages of discussions. Whether measured by staffs or patients’ capacity, size is a significant factor that contributes to the increase in likes and discussions. Yet, the location of a hospital — measured by urbanity — is statistically insignificant. Qualitative analyses suggest that certain patient groups particularly welcomed social media. Beside, pictures, videos, and “happy news” tended to increase usage of social media for hospital stakeholders.
Implications
Social media can help health organizations fulfill the social needs of their patients. This research applies several useful concepts. In further study, researchers may examine how hospitals optimize staffs’ and patients’ inputs. Besides, comparing how hospitals’ social media platforms operate differently in other states or countries may yield findings with practical implications.
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Moez Essid and Nicolas Berland
This paper aims to analyze the organizational capabilities involved in the adoption of environmental management tools in eight large French firms. The analysis also…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to analyze the organizational capabilities involved in the adoption of environmental management tools in eight large French firms. The analysis also examines the antecedents that contributed to the emergence of those capabilities and the consequences of their involvement in terms of environmental management.
Design/methodology/approach
To analyze the organizational capabilities deployed when environmental management tools are adopted, this paper takes an exploratory approach based on a qualitative study of eight large French firms.
Findings
The findings show how organizational capabilities, dynamic and ordinary, are operationalized in the adoption of environmental management tools. This operationalization is made possible by internal and external antecedents and simple and complex routines. The findings also identify two possible configurations of organizational capabilities, each one leading to a specific form of environmental management. The first configuration leads to stand-alone environmental management systems, while the second succeeds in engendering integrated management systems. This study shows that this difference is explained by heterogeneous endowments in terms of antecedents across firms.
Practical implications
The study provides useful information for managers about the conditions that favor and facilitate adoption of environmental management tools and the ways these conditions operate.
Social implications
The study illustrates the impact of society on large firms’ adoption of certain environmental management practices. It shows that external visibility – which has created strong societal pressure – is one of the external antecedents that led eight large French firms to develop specific organizational capabilities.
Originality/value
In analyzing the antecedents, routines and capabilities involved in the adoption of environmental management tools, the study adds some original, innovative contributions to current knowledge on the conditions for adoption of such tools.
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I seek to further develop the behavioral approach to strategic management through sketching a communitarian view of the firm. Specifically, I argue that the latter…
Abstract
I seek to further develop the behavioral approach to strategic management through sketching a communitarian view of the firm. Specifically, I argue that the latter, informed by a practice-based onto-epistemology, especially a neo-Aristotelian understanding of praxis, and the related institutional work of Selznick, suggests the centrality of value commitments firms make, which, through habituation, are integrated to form organizational character. The latter provides firms with certain core competences – a distinctive style with which practitioners enact their tasks. Organizational character helps confront the self-command problem firms face. However, the behavioral consistency that character provides may lead to rigidities when competitive circumstances change, while organizational character, through praxis, may take on features that prevent the leadership of a firm from realizing the novelty of the circumstances in order to modify existing core competences and the accompanying organizational character dispositions.
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Darwin’s theory of natural selection, which explains how individual organisms can become exquisitely adapted to their environments, does not explain the evolution of…
Abstract
Darwin’s theory of natural selection, which explains how individual organisms can become exquisitely adapted to their environments, does not explain the evolution of adaptive societies with equal ease. To understand the nature of the problem, imagine a mutant individual who behaves in a way that increases the survival of everyone in her society, including herself, to an equal degree. Such a “no-cost public good” might not appear very feasible (and will soon be amended), but is useful for illustrative purposes. By increasing the fitness of everyone, the mutant trait will not increase in frequency within the society (other than by drift, which can equally cause a decrease in frequency). This example illustrates the elementary fact that natural selection is based on relative fitness. It’s not enough for a mutant trait to increase its own survival and reproduction; it must do so more than alternative traits in the population. The relative nature of fitness makes the evolutionary forces within a population insensitive to the welfare of the population as a whole.