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1 – 10 of 62The decade has witnessed unprecedented interest in what has beenseen as a radically new direction in the management of people inorganisations: human resource management (HRM). HRM…
Abstract
The decade has witnessed unprecedented interest in what has been seen as a radically new direction in the management of people in organisations: human resource management (HRM). HRM has, however, been bedevilled by controversy and ambiguity to the extent of being regarded as just another “flavour of the month” management rhetoric. There is little consensus about what HRM means and what it entails in practice. Conceptual clarity is sought by adopting a multiparadigmatic approach to analyse HRM, which is classified into “hard” and “soft” variants. The use of paradigmatic “frames” or “lenses” enriches our understanding of them, and should enhance our appreciation of the implications of different approaches in the management of employees.
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Often associated with early stages of individual and organizational change is exploration of basic premisses or assumptions held by individuals. Management faculty could benefit…
Abstract
Often associated with early stages of individual and organizational change is exploration of basic premisses or assumptions held by individuals. Management faculty could benefit from an increased awareness of epistemological and values assumptions that they and others are applying in their educational planning and classroom instructional choices. Multiparadigmatic qualitative research on the evolving field of management education itself might allow better understanding of these deeper, partially taken‐for‐ granted and important faculty assumptions. One potentially useful multiparadigmatic approach for qualitative research might include aspects of interpretive, critical and post‐structural/postmodern social inquiry. Results from such basic research, through publication in some forum or outlet in the management discipline, could be applied for reference and unfreezing purposes in faculty development/ change programmes at individual business colleges or management departments.
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Ali Bakir and Vian Bakir
The dominant strategy discourse projects strategy as rational and calculable. However, leading academics conclude that strategy is “elusive” and “complex”. The purpose of this…
Abstract
Purpose
The dominant strategy discourse projects strategy as rational and calculable. However, leading academics conclude that strategy is “elusive” and “complex”. The purpose of this paper is to unravel strategy's elusiveness and unpack its complexity through empirical hermeneutic investigation.
Design/methodology/approach
Strauss' grounded theory is used to investigate leisure and cultural managers' understanding of strategy‐making. Data were collected through multiple interviews with senior managers of a local authority, and the organisation's strategy documents were examined. The grounded theory's transferability to organisations in, and outside, public leisure and culture was provisionally tested.
Findings
It was found that in making strategy, managers engage in purposeful, complex processes, here termed “navigational translation” which have mutually impacting relationships with organisational resources, the environment and managers' character, explaining its complexity and elusiveness. The provisional testing of navigational translation's transferability suggests that it has scope beyond public sector leisure and cultural strategy.
Research limitations/implications
As this research focused on theory generation, a main limitation is its small‐scale testing of navigational translation's transferability. Future research could test transferability with more organisations in leisure, culture and other fields.
Practical implications
This explanation provides a robust understanding of strategy that could improve practice. It empowers managers so that they are no longer subjugated to unrealisable expectations that rationalistic strategy tools will work in a complex world.
Originality/value
Navigational translation offers a richer, practitioner‐oriented understanding of strategy, which utilises leading academic explanations from the various, competing and divergent strategy schools into a pragmatic, multiparadigmatic framework.
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The purpose of this paper is to first define the “jet principle” of (e‐)learning as providing dynamically suitable framework conditions for enhanced learning procedures that…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to first define the “jet principle” of (e‐)learning as providing dynamically suitable framework conditions for enhanced learning procedures that combine views from multiple cultures of science. Second it applies this principle to the case of the “Global Studies” curriculum, a unique interdisciplinary curriculum at Graz University in Austria that is targeted to multicultural and developmental learning among students from diverse ethnic and disciplinary backgrounds.
Design/methodology/approach
Social and learning procedures are heuristically analysed based on ten years of interdisciplinary experience in interdisciplinary learning settings in a multicultural environment with critical approach to globalisation, while also diverse scientific disciplines are counted as “cultures of understanding”.
Findings
The outcomes of the analysis suggest that the negation‐oriented web‐supported five‐level learning suite “Surfing Global Change” (SGC) is capable of providing helpful framework conditions to multicultural learning that can suitably be applied in the “Global Studies” curriculum as well as in other similar international curricula.
Research limitations/implications
Quality criteria are subject to scientific cultures and hence differ from discipline to discipline; thus representing continuous challenge for suitable perception of actors and bystanders.
Practical implications
Complexities of cultural diversity are reflected also by complexities caused by origins in diverse scientific cultures. For constructing thorough and practically implementable consensus solutions, dialogic processes and peer review are best mediated through web‐based discussion, for which this paper provides examples. Discourse‐oriented features and amendments for curricula of “Global Studies” are presented.
Social implications
Networking among multicultural and interdisciplinary curricula with a critical stance towards globalisation is facilitated through suggestions in this paper.
Originality/value
By offering a new type of graphic notation for learning procedures, this paper facilitates new perspectives on the intrinsic dynamics of learning, adoption of new standpoints and acquiring a 360° view of the institutional landscape and interest patterns in complex multi‐stakeholder issues such as globalisation.
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Education for equity in global development and cultural diversity calls for professional capacity building to perceive diverse perspectives on complex procedures of globalisation…
Abstract
Purpose
Education for equity in global development and cultural diversity calls for professional capacity building to perceive diverse perspectives on complex procedures of globalisation. The discipline of human geography is such a “provider of perspectives”. The purpose of this paper is to propose a historic series of how theories of geography and human development have emerged.
Design/methodology/approach
This paper contributes to education and training by proposing a historic series of how theories of geography and human development have emerged.
Findings
The outcomes of this analysis of geographic paradigms offer options for the management of multicultural education in development. A critical synopsis and a combination of various paradigms on global development seem most promising for a holistic and comprehensive understanding of globalisation.
Research limitations/implications
In particular, recent developments in human geography exhibit rapidly changing paradigms (ironically called “the Latin America of sciences”) and are hence difficult to systematise.
Practical implications
Spaces are understood to be communicational spaces, the substrate of which is enabling communication technologies. The theoretical contemplations of this paper permit to design learning environments, learning styles and related technologies.
Social implications
Perception and understanding of contradicting theories on global (economic and human) development facilitate education fostering multiple cultures of understanding. The author's own professional experience shows that only esteem for all paradigms can provide the full picture. Success means “collective production of meaning”.
Originality/value
Understanding history frees us to reach future consensus.
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The purpose of this paper is to inquire about the applicability of the concept of granularity to the necessity of future research or – as often called in the European Union …
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to inquire about the applicability of the concept of granularity to the necessity of future research or – as often called in the European Union – forward looking (FL). After theoretical deliberation, it uses a planned world-wide information system as a case study for applying the notion of granularity regarding economic sectors, time steps, geographic regions and correlations for energy, water, land use and several other drivers of global change.
Design/methodology/approach
A planet-wide information system might optimally include areas such as human development indicators, water demand and supply and deforestation issues. A short literature analysis on “granularity” shows this concept to have a highly culturally determined and constructivist nature.
Findings
The spatial, temporal and sectoral granularity of data presentation strongly impacts conclusions and considerations while looking forward. Hence, granularity issues are of key importance for the question of which megatrends are ultimately discerned as most relevant.
Practical implications
These findings may impact the regular report on global megatrends authored by the European Environment Agency, as well as world-wide energy and emission scenarios and technological foresight, such as the “Global Change Data Base” as a next step of research.
Social implications
In future research, the step from purely quantitative perceptions towards structural perceptions, pattern recognition and understanding of system transitions might be facilitated. The FL statements of larger companies might be diversified, enlarged in scope and use deeper structural understanding.
Originality/value
Earlier databases tend to have been focused on one or several single disciplines; the present approach, however, attempts transdisciplinarity and a multiparadigmatic approach.
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Frank Bogna, Aldo Raineri and Geoff Dell
Traditional approaches in qualitative research have adopted one research paradigm linked to an established typology. This paper addresses the unconventional application of two…
Abstract
Purpose
Traditional approaches in qualitative research have adopted one research paradigm linked to an established typology. This paper addresses the unconventional application of two research paradigms in one study. A critical realist approach was used to augment a constructivist analysis of data in a research project seeking to explore the meaning that managers in small to medium enterprises (SMEs) attach to hazard identification, the construction of a hazard profile reflective of the business and its use in assisting to manage hazards within the SME's safety management system framework. Critical realism offered a complementary but essential framework to explore causal mechanisms that led to a deeper understanding of the findings by searching for the processes and causality that lay beneath the social and organizational phenomena observed.
Design/methodology/approach
This paper compares the two research paradigms in order to seek junctures and apply them to a research project. Analytical tools applied to each research paradigm within the project are presented, followed by a new multiparadigm conceptual model that integrates critical realism and constructivism, providing an original contribution of knowledge to this field of qualitative research.
Findings
The adoption of a multiparadigm model enabled not only the interpretation of social phenomena but also the determination of its causality, enabling a more insightful answering of the research question and leading to a deeper insight into the phenomenology that was studied. This research approach widens the boundaries of qualitative inquiry within organizational research by promoting strategies that challenge more traditionally anchored research typologies, and consequently contributes to better research outcomes.
Research limitations/implications
This study was conducted across four organizations. Similar research is encouraged across a greater number of case studies to validate the process of using a constructivist and critical realist paradigm to gain a more insightful understanding of events and their causality.
Practical implications
The comparison of two research paradigms and consequent provision of a conceptual model (Figure 3) provides potential for the development of further multiparadigm models for research projects within the field of organizational management.
Social implications
This paper has the potential to promote engagement and collaboration between research scholars seeking to explore the use of multiple research paradigms.
Originality/value
Such an approach has not previously been widely discussed or adopted to examine qualitative data, and advances theory in qualitative research. The application of two research paradigms using such an approach can be applied to businesses in a number of different contexts to gain a more insightful understanding of research participant perspectives, observable events arising from those perspectives and their associated causality.
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This article aims to explain why geography is a prime discipline for analysing globalisation and a multicultural view of Global Studies. The generic approach of human geography to…
Abstract
Purpose
This article aims to explain why geography is a prime discipline for analysing globalisation and a multicultural view of Global Studies. The generic approach of human geography to first select an appropriate methodology is taken as a key approach.
Design/methodology/approach
Concepts from aggregate disciplines such as history, economics, and geography are scanned through during a short description of the historical genesis of these sciences and the paradigmatic shifts they have encountered.
Findings
There are four main theses: (1) values are created by appreciation; (2) development is growing jointly with responsibility; (3) accumulation of material value is seen as expenditure to achieve non‐material values; and (4) spatial relations are interrelated with social relations.
Research limitations/implications
Conceptual considerations have to be further corroborated by quantitative analyses using suitable metrics of “development”.
Practical implications
“Social and cultural geography” should contribute to any curriculum of “Global Studies”.
Social implications
Dialogue and discourse between world views is the essential, ideology‐free approach for understanding globalisation.
Originality/value
Unlike other scientific articles focusing on “facts”, this article focuses on perspectives. Thus, it explains “multi‐perspectivity” and a multi‐paradigmatic approach.
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Sid Lowe, Slawek Magala and Ki‐Soon Hwang
The aim of this paper is to focus on methodological development of research into the influence of culture: the use of cross‐cultural, multidisciplinary and multi‐method techniques.
Abstract
Purpose
The aim of this paper is to focus on methodological development of research into the influence of culture: the use of cross‐cultural, multidisciplinary and multi‐method techniques.
Design/methodology/approach
The paper begins with a review of the interdisciplinary debate in business research, general management, IB and cross‐cultural management. It then explores the identities of paradigmatic combatants and possible “strategic peace initiatives”. It finally outlines some tactical and strategic complexities of such a “peace campaign” and identifies examples where multiple‐lens research offers good potentials for “post‐war” new theory development.
Findings
Ambitious calls for the advancement of interdisciplinary research in business research have appeared regularly and often feel like déjà vu. Cultural research appears to have been locked into paradigmatic “cold” warfare between methodologically distinct research “tribes”.
Originality/value
The authors' view is that culture can be likened to a holograph. It is not a real entity but a projection, which looks very different from different positions. The concern is that views of culture have been rather “monocled” and limited in relevance.
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Walter Bataglia and Dimária Silva E. Meirelles
The purpose of this paper is to identify complementarities between the approaches of population ecology and evolutionary economics in order to contribute to a synthesis of…
Abstract
The purpose of this paper is to identify complementarities between the approaches of population ecology and evolutionary economics in order to contribute to a synthesis of organizational evolutionary dynamics and its implications for a strategic management research model. Using the metatriangulation technique to construct theories, we attempt to entwine these two perspectives. The proposed model is structured in two dimensions: the environmental selective system and the corporate adaptation process. The environmental selective system gathers together the complementary factors presented by evolutionary economics and ecology: technological innovation, demographic processes, environmental dynamism, population density and other institutional processes, and interpopulation dynamics. As ecology does not encompass the corporate adaptation process (generation, selection, and propagation of variations), the proposed model adopts the theoretical grounds underpinning evolutionary economics. The model offers three main contributions for future research into strategic management. First, it allows the development of descriptive and normative studies of the relationship among the environmental selection factors and the different types of enterprise strategies. Second, the proposed conceptual framework may be very beneficial for studies of interorganizational learning. Third, the model has the advantage of responding to the criticism of strategy theories in terms of their inability to generalize.
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