Dynamic Organizations: Achieving Marketplace Agility Through Workforce Scalability

Dynamic organizations (DOs) operate in business environments characterized by frequent and discontinuous change, They compete on the basis of marketplace agility; that is on their ability to generate a steady stream of both large and small innovations in products, services, solutions, business models, and even internal processes that enable them to leapfrog and outmaneuver current and would-be competitors and thus eke out a series of temporary competitive advantages that might, with luck, add up to sustained success over time. Marketplace agility requires the ongoing reallocation of resources, including human resources. We use the term workforce scalability to capture the capacity of an organization to keep its human resources aligned with business needs by transitioning quickly and easily from one human resource configuration to another and another, ad infinitum. We argue that marketplace agility is enhanced by workforce agility because it is likely to meet the four necessary and sufficient conditions postulated by the resource based view (RBV) of the firm – valuable, rare, inimitable, and non-substitutable – if it can be attained. Our analysis therefore concludes by focusing on the two dimensions of workforce scalability – alignment and fluidity – and postulating a number of principles that might be used to guide the design of an HR strategy that enhances both. Throughout the paper, key concepts are illustrated using the experiences of Google, the well-known Internet search firm. Because the analysis is speculative and intended primarily to pique the interest of researchers and practitioners, the paper ends with a number of important questions that remain to be clarified

Entrepreneurial Management: Essays on (corporate) venture creation and business model innovation

This publication-based dissertation examines (corporate) venturing and business model innovation intending to derive implications for entrepreneurial management in firms. To achieve this, four self-contained research papers have been developed which are the core of this dissertation. The first section serves as a general introduction, outlines the motivation for each of the research topics, and presents a summary of the research papers and their publication status. The first research paper (Section 2) is a systematic literature review that summarizes and structures three decades of research on the field of success measurement of corporate venturing activities. It identifies three structural dimensions which allow the creation of nine meaning clusters by which the existing measurement approaches can be grouped and compared. Additionally, the review reveals the heterogeneity of these approaches and the unique measurement items which they include. The third section is an empirical study on new venture creation activities in the early stage, based on 112 interviews with novice and experienced entrepreneurs. It defines three dimensions of entrepreneurial activity, namely, Entrepreneurial Alignment, Resource Enhancement, and Value Generation, and finds 67 actions, which differ across these groups in type and sequence. Section four is a single case study in business model innovation that investigates the recent rebranding of “Facebook” to “Meta”. It finds that, despite the strong communication efforts and the resulting internal and external signaling effects, this change does not correspond to a radical business innovation pattern. The fourth research study (Section 5) is a conceptual study that develops an integrated framework for business model innovation in service industries, based on research on the tourism industry. It highlights the limitations of siloed approaches under the influence of internal and external challenges such as industry dynamics and resource constraints. Section six summarizes the dissertation, highlighting the overall contributions for research and practice, and discusses the limitations and directions for future research

Aligning a Service Provisioning Model of a Service-Oriented System with the ITIL v.3 Life Cycle

Bringing together the ICT and the business layer of a service-oriented system (SoS) remains a great challenge. Few papers tackle the management of SoS from the business and organizational point of view. One solution is to use the well-known ITIL v.3 framework. The latter enables to transform the organization into a service-oriented organizational which focuses on the value provided to the service customers. In this paper, we align the steps of the service provisioning model with the ITIL v.3 processes. The alignment proposed should help organizations and IT teams to integrate their ICT layer, represented by the SoS, and their business layer, represented by ITIL v.3. One main advantage of this combined use of ITIL and a SoS is the full service orientation of the company.Comment: This document is the technical work of a conference paper submitted to the International Conference on Exploring Service Science 1.5 (IESS 2015

Aligning Employees Through \u3ci\u3eLine of Sight\u3c/i\u3e

Aligning employees with the firm’s larger strategic goals is critical if organizations hope to manage their human capital effectively and ultimately attain strategic success. An important component of attaining and sustaining this alignment is whether employees have “line of sight” to the organization’s strategic objectives. We illustrate how the translation of strategic goals into tangible results requires that employees not only understand the organization’s strategy, they must accurately understand what actions are aligned with realizing that strategy. Using recent empirical evidence, theoretical insights, and tangible examples of exemplary firm practices, we provide thought-leaders with a comprehensive view of LOS, how it is created, how it can be enhanced or stifled, and how it can be effectively managed. We integrate LOS with current thinking on employee alignment to help managers more effectively benefit from understanding human capital potential

Agency Theory Implications for Strategic Human Resource Management: Effects of CEO Ownership, Administrative HRM, and Incentive Alignment on Firm Performance

Agency theory is used to expand the research in strategic human resource management (SHRM) by viewing the construct underlying SHRM as control over all employees. We develop hypotheses on the effects of CEO ownership, administrative HRM, and incentive stock ownership on firm performance. The results indicate that administrative HRM has a negative effect on stock price. Incentive alignment via stock ownership has a positive effect on stock price and productivity. CEO ownership has a positive effect on sales but a negative impact on productivity. Implications for theory and practice are discussed

Negotiation in strategy making teams : group support systems and the process of cognitive change

This paper reports on the use of a Group Support System (GSS) to explore at a micro level some of the processes manifested when a group is negotiating strategy-processes of social and psychological negotiation. It is based on data from a series of interventions with senior management teams of three operating companies comprising a multi-national organization, and with a joint meeting subsequently involving all of the previous participants. The meetings were concerned with negotiating a new strategy for the global organization. The research involved the analysis of detailed time series data logs that exist as a result of using a GSS that is a reflection of cognitive theory

CAHRS hrSpectrum (November - December 2005)

HRSpec04_12.pdf: 163 downloads, before Oct. 1, 2020