Complementary or Conflictual? Formal Participation, Informal Participation, and Organizational Performance

Most studies of worker participation examine either formal participatory structures or informal participation. Yet, increasingly, works councils and other formal participatory bodies are operating in parallel with collective bargaining or are filling the void left by its decline. Moreover, these bodies are sprouting in workplaces in which workers have long held a modicum of influence, authority, and production- or service-related information. This study leverages a case from the healthcare sector to examine the interaction between formal and informal worker participation. Seeking to determine whether or not these two forces—each independently shown to benefit production or service delivery—complement or undermine one another, we find evidence for the latter. In the case of the 27 primary care departments that we study, formal structures appeared to help less participatory departments improve their performance. However, these same structures also appeared to impede those departments with previously high levels of informal participation. While we remain cautious with respect to generalizability, the case serves as a warning to those seeking to institute participation in an environment in which some workers have long felt they had the requisite authority, influence, and information necessary to perform their jobs effectively

A Study of Competences and Indicators for Electronic Commerce Professional Managers

The objective of this research is to investigate the managerial competences for Electronic Commerce professional managers. Three research approaches have been adopted here: Focus Group, Fuzzy Delphi Method. The results indicated that professional skills and leadership competence are more important than other competences such as administrative skills and motivation. Comparing the competences of traditional managers and EC managers shows that the main difference is the emphasis on EC managers’ professional skills

The Role of IT Culture in IT Management: Searching for Individual Archetypal IT Cultural Profiles

This article presents findings from an ethnographic study aimed at developing a typology of IT users based upon their Individual IT Culture. Social Identity Theory and the existence of a Technologicvl Cwltural vayev in6eac~ anvividual are the two main underpinnings of this typology, which is approached in a holistic perspective of the concept of culture. This offers a new path to understanding IT adoption and diffusion in organizations, which is an alternative to traditional theories using Organizational Culture and National Culture as frameworks in IS research. Our typology, built upon users’ self identities, develops eight archetypal profiles of IT-users. Within these identities, IT-assumptions, IT-values and IT-practices compose what we present as the users’ technological cultural identities or profiles. This typology is then used to illustrate how individuals, depending on their Individual Technological Cultural Profiles, can play different roles in the socialization processes which are induced by the IT implementation projects

Centralized vs. decentralized computing : organizational considerations and management options

The long-standing debate over whether to centralize or decentralize computing is examined in terms of the fundamental organizational and economic factors at stake. The traditional debate is examined and found to focus predominantly on issues of efficiency vs. effectiveness, with solutions based on a rationalistic strategy of optimizing in this tradeoff. A more behavioralistic assessment suggests that the driving issues in the debate are the politics of organization and resources, centering on the issue of control. The economics of computing deployment decisions is presented as an important issue, but one that often serves as a field of argument that is based on more political concerns. The current situation facing managers of computing, given the advent of small and comparatively inexpensive computers, is examined in detail, and a set of management options for dealing with this persistent issue is presented

A Japanese fishing joint venture: worker experience and national development in the Solomon Islands

Tuna fisheries, Joint ventures, Fishery development, Sociological aspects, Solomon Islands, Japan,

“It’s the Secret to the Universe”: The Communicative Constitution and Routinization of a Dominant Authoritative Text within a UK Cosmetics Company

A gap in Organization and Management Theory exists regarding how, as a relational phenomenon, authority routinely makes a difference to the daily functioning of organization. A ‘Communication as Constitutive of Organization’ (CCO; e.g. Cooren et al., 2011) view of text (e.g. Taylor et al., 1996) is identified as holding unrealized potential to address this omission. A nine-month ethnography of a UK cosmetics company, followed by an abductive analysis (Alvesson and Kärreman, 2007, 2011) of fieldwork material focusing on ventriloquism (e.g. Cooren, 2012), aesthetics (e.g. Hancock, 2005) and practice theory (e.g. Schatzki, 2006), provides original insight into how authority routinely acts. The thesis’s main contribution to knowledge is the crafting of ‘dominant text’ which is defined as; a series of orchestrated texts which simultaneously exercise authority by routinizing the daily workings of organization. To elaborate, actors are instructed and taught to make sure a ventriloqual text routinely directs clients’ attention toward a particular course of action. At the same time, interventions are made to ensure aesthetic and practice texts routinely remind actors to represent a collective identity and disciplines how they act. While CCO studies show how texts periodically exercise authority (Fauré et al., 2010; Güney and Creswell, 2012; Holm and Fairhurst, 2017; Jordan et al., 2013; Koschmann, 2012; Spee and Jarzabkowski, 2011), a dominant text enhances knowledge about how authority routinely organizes activities which constitute and characterize organization. Theoretical insights are also generated that extend the CCO project of developing a communicational interpretation of organizing and organization