A Computational Approach to Diagnosing Misfits, Inducing Requirements, and Delineating Transformations for Edge Organizations

Nominated for Best Paper Award

Understanding variation in managers' ambidexterity: Investigating direct and interaction effects of formal structural and personal coordination mechanisms

Previous research focuses on firm and business unit level ambidexterity. Therefore, conceptual and empirically validated understanding about ambidexterity at the individual level of analysis is very scarce. This paper addresses this gap in the literature by investigating managers' ambidexterity, delivering three contributions to theory and empirical research on ambidexterity: first, by proposing three related characteristics of ambidextrous managers; second, by developing a model and associated hypotheses on both the direct and interaction effects of formal structural and personal coordination mechanisms on managers' ambidexterity; and third, by testing the hypotheses based on a sample of 716 business unit level and operational level managers. Findings regarding the formal structural mechanisms indicate that a manager's decision-making authority positively relates to this manager's ambidexterity, whereas formalization of a manager's tasks has no significant relationship with this manager's ambidexterity. Regarding the personal coordination mechanisms, findings indicate that both the participation of a manager in cross-functional interfaces and the connectedness of a manager to other organization members positively relate to this manager's ambidexterity. Furthermore, results show positive interaction effects between the formal structural and personal coordination mechanisms on managers' ambidexterity. The paper's theoretical contributions and empirical results increase our understanding about managers' ambidexterity and about how different types and combinations of coordination mechanisms relate to variation in managers' ambidexterity

The Role of Human Resource and Organizational Factors in Ambidexterity

Ambidexterity is a growing field of management research. However, the role of human resources (HR) and organizational factors needs further exploration because of the fragmented nature of prior work and the subsequent lack of a unifying framework. Our review of 41 empirical studies identifies distinct research streams that relate to the effects of employee characteristics, leader characteristics, organizational structure, culture, social relationships, and organizational environment on ambidexterity. We discuss the most important findings within each stream, which contributes to the HR and ambidexterity literature by addressing the current state of our knowledge. To move forward research in this area, we identify important, yet underexplored areas in each stream. This contributes to the literature by highlighting specific gaps in our current knowledge that represent new avenues for future research. We also identify important interrelationships between different streams that need further clarification. We summarize our findings into an integrative model that elucidates the role of HR and organizational factors in ambidexterity. This contributes to a more comprehensive understanding of ambidexterity from the HR and organizational perspectives

The Cluster as Market Organization

The many competing schools of thought concerning themselves with industrial clusters have at least one thing in common: they all agree that clusters are real life phenomena characterized by the co-localization of separate economic entities, which are in some sense related, but not joined together by any common ownership or management. So hierarchies they are certainly not. Yet, it is usually taken for granted that clusters, almost regardless of how they are defined, all expatriate the 'swollen middle' of various hybrid 'forms of long-term contracting, reciprocal trading, regulation, franchising and the like' residing somewhere between hierarchies and markets. This fundamental (but usually implicit) assumption would, perhaps, be justified if markets could be reduced to events of exchange of property rights, between large numbers of price-taking anonymous buyers and sellers supplied with perfect information as they are commonly conceived in mainstream economics. One of the original attractions of Neoclassical price theory was precisely that it promised a way of analysing the economy in general and market exchange in particular independently of specific institutional settings. However, introducing transaction costs as more than fees paid to intermediaries leads inevitably to comparative institutional analysis and, not to be forgotten, to the perception of markets as institutions with specific characteristics of their own. Some sets of characteristics are so common that they represent a specific market organization or market form. The cluster is one such specific market organization that is structured along territorial lines because this enables the building of a set of institutions that are helpful in conducting certain kinds of economic activities. Supported by empirical illustrations the paper argues that clusters are markets where commodities, services and knowledge are traded in a notably efficient way among the insiders without restricting their abilities to build pipelines and to interact with suppliers and customers residing elsewhere. The institutions characterizing this market form help creating an environment among insiders that reduces the barriers to acquiring and utilising knowledge produced or used locally.Clusters, organisation, knowledge transfer, transaction costs

ON THE ROLE OF BENCHMARKING IN THE HIGHER EDUCATION QUALITY ASSESSMENT

Increasing competition, demands for accountability, and higher volumes ofavailable information are changing the methods of how institutions of higher educationoperate in nowadays. For higher education to enact substantial and sustainable changesin efficiency and productivity a new way of thinking or paradigm that builds efficiencyand a desire for continual learning must be integrated into institutional structures. Toolsare also being developed that measure or benchmark the progress and success of theseefforts. Among the improvement strategies and techniques, benchmarking has emerged asa useful, easily understood, and effective tool for staying competitive. This is why thepresent article aims to emphasize the importance of benchmarking in the highereducation quality assessment.benchmarking, higher education, quality, management

Regional Address Registries, Governance and Internet Freedom

Regional Internet Address Registries (RIRs) are private, nonprofit and transnational governance entities that evolved organically with the growth of the Internet to manage and coordinate Internet Protocol addresses. The RIR's management of Internet address resources is becoming more contentious and more central to global debates over Internet governance. This is happening because of two transformational problems: 1) the depletion of the IPv4 address space; and 2) the attempt to introduce more security into the Internet routing system. We call these problems "transformational" because they raise the stakes of the RIR's policy decisions, make RIR processes more formal and institutionalized, and have the potential to create new, more centralized control mechanisms over Internet service providers and users. A danger in this transition is that the higher stakes and centralized control mechanisms become magnets for political contention, just as ICANN's control of the DNS root did. In order to avoid a repeat of the problems of ICANN, we need to think carefully about the relationship between RIRs, governments, and Internet freedom. In particular, we need to shield RIRs from interference by national governments, and strengthen and institutionalize their status as neutral technical coordinators with limited influence over other areas of Internet governance