Role of middle managers in dealing with hierarchy and network logics: exploration in the context of Sino-Foreign Cooperative University

While organizations tend to introduce network mechanism to activate the potential of members in the hierarchical dominated context, it is not clear how individual members deal with the complexity caused by two logics of hierarchy and network. To address this gap, this study focuses on the role of middle managers in collaborating with others in the multiple-logic complexity. We identify three types of collaboration scenarios, top-down, bottom-up, and horizontal, through 27 semi-structured interviews within a Sino-Foreign Cooperative University from 2021 to 2023. Guided by the grounded theory approach, we conceptualize the composite role of middle managers as the translucent hand of explicit and implicit connections, which help us to interpret middle managers' tangibly and intangibly impact under a hybrid organization context. The empirical results also reveal that the boundary perception of authority and responsibility as an important factor determines middle managers' awareness of power involvement in cooperation. The findings extend the understanding of middle managers in network organizations in the higher education context and provide suggestions for the dynamic role of middle managers and hybrid university management in the information age.

A multi-dimensional study of organisational boundaries and silos in the healthcare sector

Purpose: The aim of this study is to understand how healthcare practitioners experience organisational boundaries and silos in day-to-day operations. Based on a multi-dimensional scale of organisational boundaries, the study examines how organisational demarcation lines enable and constrain daily work tasks in the healthcare sector.Research design: The study is based on a quantitative and qualitative analysis of survey responses from 895 healthcare practitioners in Denmark.Results: The results indicate that tendencies toward organisational silos relate to systems and hierarchies (management-staff) rather than professions and departments. Moreover, the study identifies resource scarcity as an important undercurrent in the understanding of the respondents' perceptions of boundaries and silos.Conclusion: The study contributes to existing research by documenting the coordination and collaboration challenges linked to the multitude of demarcation lines in complex health organisations.

Assessing agricultural gene editing regulation in Latin America: an analysis of how policy windows and policy entrepreneurs shape agricultural gene editing regulatory regimes

This article explores the new developments and challenges of agricultural Gene Editing (GED) regulation in primarily nine countries of Latin America and the Caribbean (LAC) Region: Argentina, Bolivia, Brazil, Colombia, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico, Paraguay and Peru. As Gene Editing technology develops, Latin America and the Caribbean regulatory regimes struggle to keep pace. Developers and regulators face challenges such as consumer perceptions, intellectual property, R&D funding (private and public), training, environmental and social impact, and access to domestic and international markets. Some Latin America and the Caribbean countries (e.g., Argentina) interpret existing legislation to promulgate regulations for biotechnology and Genetically Modified Organisms (GMOs), while others (e.g., Brazil and Honduras) have specific legislation for Genetically Modified Organisms. In both those cases, often a case-by-case approach is chosen to determine whether a Gene Editing organism is subject to Genetically Modified Organisms regulations or not. Other countries such as Peru have opted to ban the technology due to its perceived resemblance to transgenic Genetically Modified Organisms. After presenting the regulatory landscape for agricultural Gene Editing in Latin America and the Caribbean, this article addresses some of the differences and similarities across the region. Some countries have had more foresight and have dedicated resources to increase capacity and develop regulations (e.g., Brazil, Argentina, Colombia, Guatemala, Honduras, Mexico before 2018) while others struggle with bureaucratic limitations and partisanship of policymaking (e.g., Paraguay, Bolivia, Peru, Mexico after 2018). We propose that the differences and similarities between these regulatory regimes have emerged in part as a result of policy entrepreneurs (influential individuals actively involved in policy making) taking advantage of policy windows (opportunities for shaping policy and regulation). The third and remaining sections of this study discuss our main findings. Based on 41 semi structured interviews with regulators, scientists, product developers, NGOs and activists, we arrived at three main findings. First, there seems to be a consensus among most regulators interviewed that having harmonized regimes is a positive step to facilitate product development and deployment, leading to commercialization. Second, reducing bureaucracy (e.g., paper work) and increasing flexibility in regulation go hand in hand to expedite the acquisition of key lab materials required by developers in countries with less robust regimes such as Peru and Bolivia. Finally, developing public and private partnerships, fostering transparency, and increasing the involvement of marginalized groups may increase the legitimacy of Gene Editing regulation.

How Does Hierarchy Steepness Affect Coordination in Project-Based Organizations? A Social Network Analysis

This study aims to reveal the impacts of hierarchy steepness on intraorganizational coordination in project-based organizations (PBOs) at both organizational and individual levels. We discovered that hierarchy steepness has a positive correlation with organizational coordination intensity but a negative correlation with an individual’s coordination power. A steeper hierarchy is beneficial for intraorganizational coordination so, averagely, an individual’s coordination power weakens in well-coordinated organizations. The findings refuted previous arguments that took hierarchy as an obstacle to coordination and proved the functionality of a steeper hierarchy. They suggest PBOs steepen the hierarchical structure to improve intraorganizational coordination.

Sustainable risk management practice in the organization: a Malaysian case study

Businesses are becoming more conscious of operational risk management practices due to the COVID-19 pandemic. However, some firms practice risk management without fully comprehending how it might help them and their needs. As a result, companies that practice risk management without realizing it are being controlled by the discipline itself. The goal of this study is to look into the epistemic process of risk management practice in the workplace. This phenomenological study interviewed 39 risk management officers, executives, and employees. Data are thematically analyzed. This study discovered five epistemic processes of risk mapping using Foucault's governmentality paradigm. This phenomenological study, interestingly, revealed the black box of risk management practices, as well as the behavior of risk management officers, executives, and risk owners who preferred to monitor the compliance aspects of risk management practices rather than comprehend the capabilities of risk management that could be used within their strategic planning process. Unaware of this black box, organizational actors were blanketed by the organization's culture of fear, which created the impression that the authority was always watching every word said and every action taken. Practically, this study contributes an improved understanding of the real function of risk management that helps them justify the practice and reduce unnecessary fear. The paper concludes with limitations and research recommendations.

HRM models of online labor platforms: Strategies of market and corporate logics

Studies on online labor platforms (OLPs) have revealed that OLPs can have extensive managerial control over independent workers, which affects their autonomy and precariousness. The permeability of the management makes some OLPs' roles as neutral intermediaries in labor exchanges questionable. While there are several platform work studies on the effects of human resource management (HRM) activities, earlier studies have focused more on certain types of OLP companies. Earlier OLP classifications did not make systematic distinctions between HRM activities either. This paper offers a classification to view how HRM activities manifest in OLPs. The study utilizes terms of service and webpage data from 46 multinational and Finland-based OLPs. Based on these data, OLPs have been classified into six models with five governance principles and institutional logic. The study uses the idea of institutional complexity and claims that OLPs balance their operations between the complexity of two institutional logics, market, and corporation, by using varying strategies with their HRM activities. Differently managed OLPs are also often marketed to different worker groups. This indicates that workers' levels and quality of autonomy differ between OLPs. Hence, could be expected that platform workers' expectations toward OLPs, perceptions of fairness, and experiences of wellbeing may be influenced by the HRM activities in which they engage. The results contribute to the ongoing discussions of power asymmetries between OLPs and platform workers, and thus OLPs' roles as either marketplaces or hierarchical corporations. Formed models can be utilized to enrich studies on key issues of platform workers' autonomy, precariousness, and experiences in different types of OLPs.

Alternative leadership and the pitfalls of hierarchy: When formalization enables power to be tamed

Hierarchy is a key – but under-studied – lens for critically exploring leadership. The critical literature suggests that both mainstream and alternative leadership contribute to the perpetuation of hierarchy. In mainstream leadership, even in its most recent forms in allegedly ‘flattened’ organizations, hierarchy continues to exist and followers often remain disempowered. In alternative leadership, which occurs for instance in non-hierarchical organizations, an unofficial hierarchy tends to persist: even when leadership is rejected, it is enacted in less-formalized forms, resulting in the tyranny of structurelessness and the undermining of horizontal democratic practices. Our research therefore explores whether and how alternative leadership can be practiced in such a way that it avoids the pitfalls of formal or informal hierarchy. We conducted an in-depth case study of a non-hierarchical group of freelancers, combining 140h of participant observation, 15 semi-structured interviews, and documentary analysis. Our research shows that it is possible to practice alternative leadership in a way that avoids the pitfalls of hierarchy and that this happens through the formalization of leadership. Leadership formalization allows power to be tamed by making it visible but it also involves some tensions.

An investigation of the role of leadership in consensus decision-making

Leadership is a widespread phenomena in social organisms and it is recognised to facilitate coordination between individuals. If the role of leadership in group foraging or swarm movement is well understood, it is not clear if leaders would also benefit more complex forms of coordination. In particular, a number of organisms coordinate by consensus decision-making, where individuals explicitly communicate their opinions until they converge toward a common decision. Taking inspiration from physical sciences, we extend a consensus formation model to integrate leaders, which we define by three traits: persuasiveness, talkativeness, and stubbornness. We use numerical simulations to investigate the effect of the number of leaders and their characteristics on the time a group spends to reach consensus, and the bias in final decision. We show that having a minority of influential individuals (leaders) and a majority of influenceable individuals (followers) reduces the time to reach consensus but biases the decision towards the preferences of the leaders. This effect emerges solely from the differences in individuals' personality traits, with the most determinant trait being the talkativeness of the individuals. Overall, we provide a comprehensive investigation of the effects of leaders and their traits on consensus decision-making.

People as Our Most Important Asset: A Critical Exploration of Agility and Employee Commitment

In this article, we examine how employees experience different types of work commitment at an IT consultancy company using agility to give staff greater autonomy and decision-making latitude. We analyze its agile practices through an in-depth case study comprising interviews and non-participative observation of managers and employees, concluding that the company aims to increase autonomy and decision-making latitude by introducing agile approaches to project management, but thereby risks eroding its employees’ commitment. Indeed, the new social dynamics engender new professional insecurities and decision-making passivity and appear to lack a clear organizational purpose, thus challenging certain aspects of employee commitment.

Remote Working in a Public Bureaucracy: Redeveloping Practices of Managerial Control When Out of Sight

This article examines managerial control practices in a public bureaucracy at the moment of introducing remote work as part with a new ways of working (NWW) project. The qualitative study builds on 38 interviews with supervisors and subordinates conducted before the advent of COVID-19. By interpreting interviewees’ conversations about current and anticipated future work practices in the changing work setting, we reveal tacit and hidden practices of managerial control that are currently prevalent in many organizations introducing remote working. Three constitutive moments of the organization’s transformation to NWW are analytically distinguished: (i) how implicit becomes explicit, (ii) how collective becomes self, and (iii) how personal becomes impersonal. Our findings emphasize that the transition to NWW must take into account prevailing institutional logics and must reconnect to a fundamental and often neglected question: What does doing work mean within the particular organization? Negotiating this fundamental question might help to overcome supervisors’ uncertainties about managerial control and provide clarity to subordinates about what is expected from them while working remotely. Finally, we discuss how the transition to NWW may serve as both an opportunity and a potential threat to established organizational practices while highlighting the challenge supervisors face when the institutional logics conflict with remote working.

Contradictions and Interventions in Health IS

The study analyzes data collected in two case studies in the healthcare industry, which is characterized by a variety of social and technical elements forming an activity system where all elements interact with each other. The findings indicate that many problems emerging during the implementation of a health information system can be traced back to contradictions between elements of the activity systems that are created or amplified by the new IS. The authors find that some contradictions are latent and become salient when introducing a new IS, while other contradictions are (unintentionally) newly created. Also, the study shows that contradictions are more complex than hitherto assumed and often concern more than two elements of a healthcare activity system. In a similar vein, effective interventions geared toward countering these contradictions are found to account for additional complexity while not always achieving their goal. Drawing on activity theory, the authors develop a framework to coherently synthesize the findings. The study can help increase the understanding of the IS’s role within an activity system and help guide IS implementation projects aimed at avoiding unintended consequences.

When Cognitive Proximity Leads to Higher Evaluation Decision Quality: A Study of Public Funding Allocation

Project expert evaluation is the backbone of public funding allocation. A slight change in score can push a proposal below or above a funding line. Academic researchers have discovered many factors that may affect evaluation decision quality, yet the subject of cognitive proximity towards decision quality has not been considered thoroughly. Using 923 observations of the 2017 Beijing Innofund data, the study finds that cognitive proximity has an inverted “U-shape” relation to decision-making quality. Moreover, two contextual factors, evaluation experience and evaluation efforts, exert moderation effects on the inverted U shape. These findings fill the gaps in the current research on cognition-based perspective by specifying the mechanism of cognitive proximity in the evaluation field and contributing to improving decision-making quality by selecting appropriate evaluators. Theoretical contributions and policy implications have been discussed.

What Questions Are You Inclined to Answer? Effects of Hierarchy in Corporate Q&A Communities

Are employees willing to voluntarily share knowledge with their higher-ups? The existing studies show that the answer is no—employees are less likely to share knowledge with their higher-ups in the offline setting, corporate wikis, and online discussion groups. We answer the same question in a corporate question-and-answer (Q&A) community and argue that the answer can be yes. A potential-dyads approach and a quasi-natural experiment jointly demonstrate that employees are inclined to answer a question from their higher-ups and even exert more effort in those answers. Using an instrumental-variable design, we show that users who post more answers to higher-ranked individuals and who display greater effort in those answers are more likely to get promoted in subsequent years, meaning that employees do not need to worry about their careers when sharing knowledge with their higher-ups in corporate Q&A communities. Our research, together with research on other contexts, are useful for companies to take the role of the managers into account when considering which type of online community to adopt. Community designers can use our findings to better motivate knowledge sharing by considering users’ different job ranks.

Business Process Management Culture in Public Administration and Its Determinants

Public administration institutions increasingly use business process management (BPM) to innovate internal operations, increase process performance and improve their services. Research on private sector companies has shown that organizational culture may impact an organization's BPM and this culture is often referred to as BPM culture. However, similar research on public administration is yet missing. Thus, this article assesses BPM culture in Germany’s municipal administration. 733 online survey responses were gathered and analyzed using MANOVA and follow-up discriminant analyses to identify possible determinants of public administration’s BPM culture. The results indicate that the employees’ professional experience and their responsibility influence the assessment of BPM culture, as does the size of a municipality. Based on these findings, the article proposes testable relationships and an agenda for further research on BPM culture in public administration.

Hybrid institutional complexes in global governance

Most issue areas in world politics today are governed neither by individual institutions nor by regime complexes composed of formal interstate institutions. Rather, they are governed by "hybrid institutional complexes" (HICs) comprising heterogeneous interstate, infra-state, public-private and private transnational institutions, formal and informal. We develop the concept of the HIC as a novel descriptive and analytical lens for the study of contemporary global governance. The core structural difference between HICs and regime complexes is the greater diversity of institutional forms within HICs. Because of that diversity, HICs operate differently than regime complexes in two significant ways: (1) HICs exhibit relatively greater functional differentiation among their component institutions, and hence suffer from relatively fewer overlapping claims to authority; and (2) HICs exhibit greater informal hierarchy among their component institutions, and hence benefit from greater ordering. Both are systemic features. HICs have characteristic governance benefits: they offer good "substantive fit" for multi-faceted governance problems and good "political fit" for the preferences of diverse constituents; constrain conflictive cross-institutional strategies; and are conducive to mechanisms of coordination, which enhance substantive coherence. Yet HICs also pose characteristic governance risks: individual institutions may take on aspects of problems for which they are ill-suited; multiple institutions may create confusion; HICs can amplify conflict and contestation rather than constraining them; and the "soft" institutions within HICs can reduce the focality of incumbent treaties and intergovernmental organizations and forestall the establishment of new ones. We outline a continuing research agenda for exploring the structures, operations and governance implications of HICs.

Work empowerment among cancer care professionals: a cross-sectional study

BACKGROUND

There is a growing understanding that empowerment of interprofessional personnel is linked to job satisfaction levels and quality of care, but little is known about empowerment in the context of cancer care. This study describes how interprofessional cancer care personnel perceive their performance and factors that promote work empowerment.

METHODS

This cross-sectional study enrolled 475 (45.2%) of the 1050 employees who work at a regional cancer centre. The participants used two self-administered questionnaires - the Performance of an Empowered Personnel (PEN) questionnaire and Work Empowerment Promoting Factors (WEP) questionnaire - to report perceptions of work empowerment. Both questionnaires' categories comprise moral principles, personal integrity, expertise, future orientation, and sociality. The data were analyzed using IBM SPSS Statistics, Versions 24 and 25.

RESULTS

Overall, the performance of work empowerment was evaluated as being rather high (overall sum score mean: 4.05; range: 3.51-4.41; scale: 1-5). The category that rated highest was moral principles (4.41), and the one rated lowest was the social category (3.51). The factors that promoted work empowerment also ranked high (3.93; range: 3.55-4.08; scale: 1-5), with personal integrity (4.08) the highest and future orientation (3.55) the lowest. Performance and factors that promoted work empowerment correlated positively, moderately, and highly statistically significantly (r = 0.531; p < 0.001). Statistically significant associations also were found between empowered performance of personnel and empowerment promoting factors (sex, education, leadership position, belonging to an interprofessional team, and time elapsed since training in interprofessional cooperation).

CONCLUSION

The personnel rated their performance and the factors perceived to promote work empowerment rather highly. Personal empowerment can be promoted through teamwork training and supportive management in interprofessional cancer care.

Silence and proactivity in managing supervisor ostracism: implications for creativity

Purpose

Anchored in a social control theory framework, this study aims to investigate the mediating effect of defensive silence in the relationship between employees' perception of supervisor ostracism and their creative performance, as well as the buffering role of proactivity in this process.

Design/methodology/approach

The hypotheses were tested using three-wave survey data collected from employees in North American organizations.

Findings

The authors found that an important reason for supervisor ostracism adversely affecting employee creativity is their observance of defensive silence. This mechanism, in turn, is less prominent among employees who show agency and change-oriented behavior (i.e. proactivity).

Practical implications

For practitioners, this study identifies defensive silence as a key mechanism through which supervisor ostracism hinders employee creativity. Further, this process is less likely to escalate when their proactivity makes them less vulnerable to experience such social exclusion.

Originality/value

This study establishes a more complete understanding of the connection between supervisor ostracism and employee creativity, with particular attention to mediating mechanism of defensive silence and the moderating role of proactivity in this relationship.

Diffusing Sustainable Urban Mobility Planning in the EU

This paper explores how the European Commission promotes the concept of Sustainable Urban Mobility Planning (SUMP) among European cities. Despite the strong uptake of the SUMP concept, mobility-related problems persist in European municipalities. Linking theoretical approaches to understand the diffusion of policies with empirical findings from working with cities in the SUMP context, this article explores channels of policy diffusion and investigates shortcomings related to the respective approaches. Studies on the diffusion, the transfer and the convergence of policies identify formal hierarchy, coercion, competition, learning and networking, and the diffusion of international norms as channels for policy transfer. The findings which are presented in this paper are twofold: First, the paper finds evidence that the Commission takes different roles and uses all mechanisms in parallel, albeit with different intensity. It concludes that the approaches to explain policy diffusion are not competing or mutually exclusive but are applied by the same actor to address different aspects of a policy field, or to reach out to different actors. Second, the article provides first evidence of factors that limit the mechanisms’ abilities to directly influence urban mobility systems and mobility behaviour.

Confidential Gossip and Organization Studies

This essay sets out the case for regarding confidential gossip as a significant concept in the study of organizations. It develops the more general concept of gossip by combining it with concepts of organizational secrecy in order to propose confidential gossip as a distinctive communicative practice. As a communicative practice, it is to be understood as playing a particular role within the communicative constitution of organizations. That particularity arises from the special nature of any communication regarded as secret, which includes the fact that such communication is liable to be regarded as containing the ‘real truth’ or ‘insider knowledge’. Thus it may be regarded as more than ‘just gossip’ and also as more significant than formal communication. This role is explored, as well as the methodological and ethical challenges of studying confidential gossip empirically.

Corporate Law Versus Social Autonomy: Law as Social Hazard

This article argues that corporate law has become the legal platform upon which is erected a social process impeding society's capacity to lucidly reflect on its primary ends; in this sense, corporate law is in conflict with social autonomy. This process is described here as a social feedback loop, in the structural centre of which lies the corporation which imposes its own purpose as an irrational social end, i.e. irrespective of its potentially catastrophic social consequences. The article argues that resolving the conflict between corporate law and social autonomy is impossible, because it presupposes a change of social paradigm towards one where corporate law as business organisation law has no obvious fit. This questions the social legitimacy of corporate law, signifies its non-permanence and thus opens up the field for seeking radical alternatives in the future.

Boundary Negotiations in a Self-Organized Grassroots-Led Food Network: The Case of REKO in Finland

Self-organization is a term that is increasingly used to describe how engaged citizens come together to create sustainable food systems at the local community level. Yet, there is a lack of understanding of what this self-organizing activity actually means. While previous literature has addressed self-organization as an outcome of building consensus and a collective intentionality shared by the members of a group, we focus on the complex social processes involved when people with a diverse set of interests and motivations interact in the food network. In this study, we analyze what kinds of boundary negotiations emerge when grassroots-led food networks scale up. Our embedded single case study focuses on a REKO (‘REjäl KOnsumtion’, meaning ‘fair consumption’ in English) network in Finland comprising distributed local food groups and three types of actors: consumers, producers, and local administrators. We examine a conflict that arose within the REKO network in May–June 2016 when a small group of actors demanded that all local groups should implement similar rules, principles, and ethical standards. Our findings illustrate how moral, geographic, market, and power boundaries emerge in a self-organized grassroots-led food network. We further explicate the challenges that may appear within a self-organized grassroots-led food network, as it grows in scale and scope.

A multilevel model of organizational learning

Purpose

Organizational learning has long been recognized as an important determinant of organizational performance and sustainability. Existing research, however, has commonly viewed organizational learning as a single-level, top-down and organized organizational event initiated by the leader. This particular perspective may fall short of explaining the effect of employee spontaneous workplace behaviors on organizational learning. Thus, the purpose of this paper is to develop a multilevel theoretical model exploring how an employee’s upward helping and voice behavior foster organizational learning through developing leadership capital.

Design/methodology/approach

A conceptual analysis was conducted by incorporating relevant research.

Findings

This paper proposes the following. First, an employee’s upward helping increases a leader’s human capital and social capital. Second, the leader’s human capital and social capital enhance the employee’s psychological empowerment and knowledge leadership. Third, the employee’s psychological empowerment leads to employee voice behavior. Fourth, employee voice behavior strengthens knowledge leadership. Finally, knowledge leadership promotes organizational learning.

Originality/value

This paper provides a theoretical framework for future research attempting to understand organizational learning from a multilevel, bottom-up perspective. Practically, this paper offers several implications that help promote organizational learning through encouraging employee upward helping and voice behavior.

‘We are all herd animals’: Community and organizationality in coworking spaces

This article develops an understanding of coworking spaces as organizational phenomena. Based on an ethnography of betahaus in Berlin, we demonstrate how coworking spaces not only provide a sense of community but also pattern the work activities of their members. We theorize this finding by drawing on the emergent literature on organizationality. Our contribution is twofold. First, we challenge current understandings of coworking spaces as neutral containers for independent work. Instead, we show how coworking incorporates the disposition of becoming organizational. That is, coworking spaces can frame and organize work and may even provide a basis for collective action. Second, we add to research on organizing outside traditional organizations by drawing attention to the complex and shifting interplay of formal and informal relationships in such settings. In doing so, we inform current debates about new forms of organization and organizing.

How analyst recommendation change influences strategic change

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to examine how analyst recommendation change is associated with a firm’s magnitude of strategic change.

Design/methodology/approach

This study argues that unfavorable analyst recommendation change serves as a powerful external assessment that current strategies are inappropriate and that changes are needed. This study also incorporates the moderating roles of CEO power and board’s informal hierarchy in the relationship between analyst recommendation change and firm’s magnitude of strategic change. Results from a sample of 824 observations generally support our predictions.

Findings

The findings of this study show that the greater the analysts downgrade for the company’s stock, the larger the magnitude of strategic change will be made. This study also considers the moderating roles of CEO power and the clarity of board’s informal hierarchy. In particular, the higher the CEO power, the weaker the relationship between analyst recommendation change and the magnitude of strategic change will be. The higher the clarity of board’s informal hierarchy, the more positive the relationship between analyst recommendation change and the magnitude of strategic change will be.

Originality/value

It extends research on the external predictors of strategic change by incorporating the role of unfavorable analyst recommendation change. In addition, it contributes to institutional theory by showing how external legitimacy pressure and internal corporate governance tool complement each other.

The effect of leadership in the development of innovation capacity

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to analyse the impact of leadership on culture and on the structure of learning, and of these two constructs on the innovation capacity.

Design/methodology/approach

A quantitative study utilising a survey was carried out. By means of an ad hoc questionnaire, educational administrators were asked about some characteristics of their organisations. The authors have proven the model of research through a model of structural equations, that is, by means of the partial least squares technique.

Findings

The hypothesis is confirmed that leadership affects culture and learning structure, and both impact on the innovation capacity of schools.

Practical implications

This work addresses the role of three critical aspects in the management of educational organisations—leadership, culture and structure—in the development of innovation that is essential in improving organisational development.

Originality/value

The role of leadership in the development of favourable conditions for innovation is verified, as is the impact of these conditions on the innovation capacity of educational organisations.

Me, myself and I

Purpose

This research focuses on the role of customer behavior in service outsourcing relationships that are governed by outcome-oriented contracts. The purpose of this paper is to explain how non-collaborative customer behavior impedes the effectiveness of outcome-oriented contracts to align the goals and incentives of the customer and service provider, and leads to service provider opportunism.

Design/methodology/approach

Nine hypotheses are developed regarding customer behavior and the reaction of the service provider to this. These are tested using structural equation modeling with data from 213 service outsourcing relationships.

Findings

Outcome-orientated contracts in service outsourcing may have unintended consequences because they create value attribution ambiguity. This ambiguity induces non-collaborative customer behavior, which, in turn, results in service provider opportunism. This reveals a paradox, where customer behavior aimed at curbing service provider opportunism instead induces such opportunism. This chain of effects can be counteracted by increased outcome attributability, which reduces the ambiguity and, thus, the motivation for non-collaborative customer behavior.

Originality/value

This research extends the existing literature by stressing that non-collaborative customer behavior is a key reason why outcome-oriented contracts fail in effectively governing outsourcing relationships, and that this can be counteracted by increased outcome attributability.

Autonomy and Authority in Public Research Organisations: Structure and Funding Factors

This paper establishes a structural typology of the organisational configurations of public research organisations which vary in their relative internal sharing of authority between researchers and managers; we distinguish between autonomous, heteronomous and managed research organisations. We assume that there are at least two sources of legitimate authority within research organisations, one derived from formal hierarchy (organisational leadership) and another derived from the research community (professional); the balance of authority between researchers and managers is essentially structural but is empirically mediated by the funding portfolio of organisations and the corresponding endowment of resources at the disposal of leaders or researchers. Changes in the level, sources and strings of organisational and individual research funding are expected to affect the balance of internal authority in different ways depending on the organisational configuration, and to open the door to the influence of external actors in the development of research agendas.

Formal and informal governance mechanisms in state-owned enterprises

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to shed light on the formal and informal governance mechanisms of state-owned enterprises operating in a post-transitional economy of Poland.

Design/methodology/approach

The study combines legal analysis of Polish regulations in force, review of literature on the Poland’s institutional legacy, and a statistical analysis, based on a data set of 204 management board members, 180 external supervisory board members, and 114 state officials supervising Polish SOEs in 2011.

Findings

Legally designed relationships among the management board, supervisory board, and the state treasury, represented by the minister and ministry officials, constitute the key formal governance mechanisms in Polish SOEs. They are, however, complemented by relationships between SOEs and their stakeholders and distorted by other informal phenomena, including informal noninstitutional behavior, mechanisms grounded in cognitive and normative institutions, and perception of the relationship structure by the actors themselves. As a result, key corporate governance actors differ in their perception of governance influences upon SOEs.

Practical implications

This study contributes to policymaking by helping authorities gain a better understanding of the governance challenges in SOEs.

Originality/value

This paper is one of the first and few empirical studies investigating the issue of formal and informal governance mechanisms in SOEs in post-transitional economies of CEE.

Why is organizing human resource development so problematic?

Purpose

Human resource development (HRD) is an important field within management. Developing employees is often regarded as an instrument to improve the internal labor market and support organizational change. Organizing HRD to these ends, however, is frequently a problematic affair, in terms of training effectiveness, participant motivation and added value. This study, which consists of two parts, aims to investigate the question of why this is the case. In this first part, the problem is stated and the backgrounds and basic tenets of learning-network theory are addressed.

Design/methodology/approach

The paper first describes three approaches to organizing HRD, namely, as a training issue: customization by HRD practitioners; as a learning issue: didactic self-direction by employees; and as a strategic issue for employees and managers: micro-politics. The learning-network theory is then introduced as an integration of these three approaches. It presents a number of key organizational actors that organize four HRD processes, each operating strategically in their own way.

Findings

Organizing HRD is mostly viewed as designing training courses and instruction sessions for employees; it is also predominantly understood as a tool of management. A network perspective on organizing HRD is better able to guide organizational actors than other approaches can.

Originality/value

The study argues that organizing HRD needs to take into account learning experiences that employees can gain from participating in work and career development as well (besides formal training); moreover, that employees’ HRD strategies are at least as important as those used by line managers and HR practitioners.

Whom to blame and whom to praise

Increasing a company’s short-term profit seems to be still the primary responsibility of business leaders, but profit-oriented decision strategies may also elicit long-term side effects. While positive side effects might be considered as an additional benefit, negative side effects are a crucial problem calling for social responsibility. One central question is how the public evaluates managerial decisions based on an indifferent attitude toward potential side effects. This topical question becomes even more salient when focusing on multinational companies and cross-cultural differences in judgment tendencies. Thus, we explored effects of the boss–employee relationship on attributions of intentionality as well as blame and praise in the case of positive and negative side effects that derive from a solely profit-oriented measure of a company decided by its boss. With participants from Germany and the United Arab Emirates, we investigated whether the social role (boss vs. employee) influences these attributions and whether cross-cultural differences in the perception of social hierarchy moderate the effects. We used an adapted version of a paradigm developed by Knobe (2003), who discovered an asymmetry in the attribution of intentionality: While negative side effects are perceived as intentional and blameworthy, positive side effects do not cause the same intentionality attributions and do not appear as particularly praiseworthy. Across two studies, we were able to replicate the typical asymmetric attribution of blame/praise and intentionality for the boss in both cultures. Moreover, we also demonstrate moderating effects of the social role and the cultural background on these attributions. Overall, the results show that the boss–employee relationship is differently evaluated in different cultures, and this might explain some of the variance in perceived accountability within companies. Moreover, an indifferent attitude toward potential side effects leads to less lenient evaluations of managers and their subordinated employees. We discuss practical and theoretical implications.

Preventing chiefs from being chiefs: An ethnography of a co-operative sheet-metal factory

Knowledge of how democracy and equality are practically achieved within member-based organisations such as co-operatives remains underdeveloped in the literature. In order to investigate this question, this study is based on a piece of ethnographic work, namely, 1 year of participant observation as a factory worker, which I conducted within a French co-operative sheet-metal factory. Pondering the presence within the co-operative of seemingly powerless chiefs, I draw on the works of French anthropologist Pierre Clastres (1934–1977) on stateless societies in order to study co-operators in their ‘continual effort to prevent chiefs from being chiefs’. Three types of day-to-day practices appear to be central for members of the co-operative in circumventing the coalescence of power in the hands of their chiefs: a relentlessly voiced refusal of the divide between chiefs and lay members; a permanent requirement for accountability and endless overt critique towards chiefs; and the use of schoolboy humour. The case, as analysed through a Clastrian lens, evidences a novel avenue that is conducive to avoiding the fate of oligarchisation within democratic organisations. Indeed, it shows how power can be kept at bay by being named and then embodied in a figure, who is eventually – through mostly informal practices – stripped of all authority. In addition, it suggests that our understanding of co-operation could be greatly improved if researchers’ dominant focus on governance was complemented by studies anchored in the everyday experience of co-operators.

Deliberative Lobbying? Toward a Noncontradiction of Corporate Political Activities and Corporate Social Responsibility?

Recently, researchers have claimed that food and beverage corporations should be excluded from the development of public health policy because their lobbying activities strategically undermine the promotion of public health. At the same time, recent political corporate social responsibility (CSR) theory holds that corporations have a responsibility to help solve global public issues. We address this described misalignment and show that corporations may fulfill this “new political role” if they turn to novel forms of corporate political activity (CPA) establishing a minimal standard for not contradicting their CSR. Therefore, we put forward a normative concept called deliberative lobbying based on discourse, transparency, and accountability, which aims to resolve public issues and advance CPA. In three lobbying cases, we show misalignments and contradictions that harm both society and the corporation. We position deliberative lobbing as an argument to maintain self-regulation against critics claiming that corporations should be excluded from all political processes.

Subsidiary Initiative Taking in Multinational Corporations: The Relationship between Power and Issue Selling

This paper investigates the political maneuvering that accompanies subsidiary initiative taking in multinational corporations. On the basis of an explorative empirical investigation of subsidiary initiative taking in the French subsidiaries of six German MNCs, the paper explores the activities that subsidiaries undertake to sell their initiatives, and the relationships among issue selling, subsidiary power and headquarters’ hierarchical power. The findings suggest that the use of issue-selling tactics is common when subsidiaries engage in initiative taking. In addition, the paper demonstrates that a low degree of issue selling is needed to obtain approval of an initiative in less asymmetrical headquarters–subsidiary power relationships (i.e. relationships in which subsidiaries are relatively powerful). In cases where power relationships are highly asymmetrical, issue selling is a necessity, but it is hardly a sufficient condition for obtaining headquarters’ approval. This renders issue selling to a second-rank power in subsidiary initiative taking, as it only works in conjunction with subsidiary power.

Organizing for Individuation: Alternative Organizing, Politics and New Identities

Organization theorists have predominantly studied identity and organizing within the managed work organization. This frames organization as a structure within which identity work occurs, often as a means of managerial control. In our paper our contribution is to develop the concept of individuation pursued through prefigurative practices within alternative organizing to reframe this relation. We combine recent scholarship on alternative organizations and new social movements to provide a theoretical grounding for an ethnographic study of the prefigurative organizing practices and related identity work of an alternative group in a UK city. We argue that in such groups, identity, organizing and politics become a purposeful set of integrated processes aimed at the creation of new forms of life in the here and now, thus organizing is politics is identity. Our study presents a number of challenges and possibilities to scholars of organization, enabling them to extend their understanding of organization and identity in the contemporary world.

Work: Four Worlds and Ways of Seeing

Organizations are spaces and places of work. In this introductory essay to the Special Issue of Organization Studies dedicated to ‘Worlds of Work’, we lay out our vision for placing the study of work and workers back at the centre of organization studies. We advance four inter-related work-world metaphors or ways of seeing organizations: as physical worlds, as worlds of hierarchy, as spaces of innovation, and as fields of actors. Research that puts work at the centre of organizational analysis, and places organization within its context of economy, politics and society, will provide important new insights into the experience of work and nature of contemporary organization. Such an agenda will be founded on both a recognition of the socially constructed nature of these phenomena and their dialectics, tracing how these tensions play out in new and hybrid forms.