287,572 research outputs found
Value creation and change in social structures: the role of entrepreneurial innovation from an emergence perspective
Aim:
Our aim is to develop a more complete understanding of how processes that entrepreneurs perform interact with wider society and the causal effects of society on entrepreneurial behaviour and vice versa. We aim to show how entrepreneurial agency is put into effect in relation to the disruption of social structure and social change. This has implications for innovation and entrepreneurship policy and practice, and for entrepreneurship theory. We also investigate the role of ‘value’ in these processes.
Contribution to the literature
Our central argument is that emergent forms (or ‘emergents’) may be short lived (ephemeral) but have causal power on the performance of the actors in the system of inter-relationships in the innovation ecosystem. The emphasis on inter-related social processes and ontological stratification provides theoretical development of extant entrepreneurship theory on new venture creation (by explaining process), effectuation (by linking individualism and holism) and opportunity recognition (by deconstructing opportunity into anticipation, ontology and process).
Methodology
The paper takes an 'emergence' perspective as a way to understand entrepreneurial processes that give rise to innovation. The anticipation of value and the inter-relationship with social and organisational structures are fundamental to this perspective. A longitudinal analysis of a case study of the development of a new business model within an entrepreneurial firm is described. The case is followed through seven phases in which the relationship between process and emergent ontological status is shown to have destabilising and stabilising effects which produce emergent properties.
Results and Implications
One methodological contribution is framing how to conceptualise the empirical evidence. Emergents have causal effects on the anticipations of value inherent in their particular system of innovation. This causality is manifest as the attraction of resource in the firm; the stabilisation of the emergent constitutes strategy in the enterprise. A key role of the entrepreneurs in our case study was the creation and maintenance of evolving ontological materiality, as meaningful to themselves and to those with whom they interacted. In simple terms, they made things meaningful to people who mattered
Reconciling structure and agency in strategy -as-practice research: Towards a strong- structuration theory approach
An overwhelming focus of research on the micro agency of strategic actors has led to the literature being characterized as demonstrating a micro-myopia, resulting in a micro-isolationism. This means we know little about how the micro interrelates with the macro in strategy work. We address this problem in our conceptual article which adopts a structurationist stance to explicate how strategy-as-practice (SaP) research could be enhanced and extended by paying equal attention to both agency and structure. Specifically, we advance strong structuration theory (SST), a promising development from Giddens’ seminal work on structuration theory, to show how strategic activity can be understood as an ongoing process of structuration unfolding over time. We argue for the use of both types of methodological bracketing (context and conduct analysis), advocating systematic attention to the interplay between macro-societal and micro-local levels of analysis. Our discussion concludes with guidance for researchers inviting them to undertake empirical fieldwork that overcomes SaP’s current micro-myopia, creating a more balanced corpus of work
The Role of Corporate HR Functions In Multinational Corporations: The Interplay Between Corporate, Regional/National And Plant Level
The HR literature has been abundant in providing typologies of the roles of HR professionals in their organisation. These typologies are largely related to the changing nature of HRM over time, and the context in which empirical work was carried out. In this paper we focus on the context of the increasing internationalisation of firms and how this has an effect upon modern-day typologies of HR roles. We explore these roles by focusing on the way in which HRM practices come about. Especially in a MNC setting of increasing internationalisation of firms the issues of coordination, shared learning and standardisation versus leeway for adapting to the local context (customisation) are prominent. These issues present themselves both at the corporate and regional level and at the national and local (plant) level. On all these levels HR practitioners are active and find themselves amidst the interplay of both (de-)centralisation and standardisation versus customisation processes. This paper thus explores the way in which HR practices come into being and how they are implemented and coordinated. These insights help us understand further the roles of international corporate HR functions that are being identified. Our data is based on 65 interviews, which were held (as part of larger study of HR-function excellence) with HR managers, line managers and senior executives of six multinational companies in eight countries from September to December 2004. This data reveals new classifications of processes by which HR activities are developed, implemented and coordinated, both in terms of who is involved and how these processes are carried out
Toward A Model of International Compensation and Rewards: Learning From how Managers Respond to Variations in Local Host Contexts
Managers and researchers recognize that the tensions created by the interplay of globalization and national environments influence the behaviors of multinational enterprises (MNEs). In order to develop a model that is useful for understanding the effects of the global and local host environments on managerial compensation, we undertook a grounded theory building study of managers in several multinationals. We use the information gained to extend two contemporary perspectives of IHRM: national culture, and strategic alignment. We develop the idea that it is the relative degree of variation (flexibility) within the local host context that is critical to understanding managers\u27 ICRS decisions. We present a different, pragmatic experimentation view of managers\u27 ICRS decision making, which we believe offers insights into the effects of the interplay of the MNE pressures to create integrated global systems and the pressures generated within the local host environments
The Role of Corporate HR Funcitons in MNCs: The Interplay Between Corporate, Regional/National and Plant Level
The HR literature has been abundant in providing typologies of the roles of HR professionals in their organisation. These typologies are largely related to the changing nature of HRM over time, and the context in which empirical work was carried out. In this paper we focus on the context of the increasing internationalisation of firms and how this has an effect upon modern-day typologies of HR roles. We explore these roles by focusing on the way in which HRM practices come about. Especially in a MNC setting of increasing internationalisation of firms the issues of coordination, shared learning and standardisation versus leeway for adapting to the local context (customisation) are prominent. These issues present themselves both at the corporate and regional level and at the national and local (plant) level. On all these levels HR practitioners are active and find themselves amidst the interplay of both (de-)centralisation and standardisation versus customisation processes. This paper thus explores the way in which HR practices come into being and how they are implemented and coordinated. These insights help us understand further the roles of international corporate HR functions that are being identified. Our data is based on 65 interviews, which were held (as part of larger study of HR-function excellence) with HR managers, line managers and senior executives of six multinational companies in eight countries from September to December 2004. This data reveals new classifications of processes by which HR activities are developed, implemented and coordinated, both in terms of who is involved and how these processes are carried out
On Resilient Behaviors in Computational Systems and Environments
The present article introduces a reference framework for discussing
resilience of computational systems. Rather than a property that may or may not
be exhibited by a system, resilience is interpreted here as the emerging result
of a dynamic process. Said process represents the dynamic interplay between the
behaviors exercised by a system and those of the environment it is set to
operate in. As a result of this interpretation, coherent definitions of several
aspects of resilience can be derived and proposed, including elasticity, change
tolerance, and antifragility. Definitions are also provided for measures of the
risk of unresilience as well as for the optimal match of a given resilient
design with respect to the current environmental conditions. Finally, a
resilience strategy based on our model is exemplified through a simple
scenario.Comment: The final publication is available at Springer via
http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s40860-015-0002-6 The paper considerably extends
the results of two conference papers that are available at http://ow.ly/KWfkj
and http://ow.ly/KWfgO. Text and formalism in those papers has been used or
adapted in the herewith submitted pape
What's in a crowd? Analysis of face-to-face behavioral networks
The availability of new data sources on human mobility is opening new avenues
for investigating the interplay of social networks, human mobility and
dynamical processes such as epidemic spreading. Here we analyze data on the
time-resolved face-to-face proximity of individuals in large-scale real-world
scenarios. We compare two settings with very different properties, a scientific
conference and a long-running museum exhibition. We track the behavioral
networks of face-to-face proximity, and characterize them from both a static
and a dynamic point of view, exposing important differences as well as striking
similarities. We use our data to investigate the dynamics of a
susceptible-infected model for epidemic spreading that unfolds on the dynamical
networks of human proximity. The spreading patterns are markedly different for
the conference and the museum case, and they are strongly impacted by the
causal structure of the network data. A deeper study of the spreading paths
shows that the mere knowledge of static aggregated networks would lead to
erroneous conclusions about the transmission paths on the dynamical networks
Mapping knowledge management and organizational learning in support of organizational memory
The normative literature within the field of Knowledge Management has concentrated on techniques and methodologies for allowing knowledge to be codified and made available to individuals and groups within organizations. The literature on Organizational Learning however, has tended to focus on aspects of knowledge that are pertinent at the macro-organizational level (i.e. the overall business). The authors attempt in this paper to address a relative void in the literature, aiming to demonstrate the inter-locking factors within an enterprise information system that relate knowledge management and organizational learning, via a model that highlights key factors within such an inter-relationship. This is achieved by extrapolating data from a manufacturing organization using a case study, with these data then modeled using a cognitive mapping technique (Fuzzy Cognitive Mapping, FCM). The empirical enquiry explores an interpretivist view of knowledge, within an Information Systems Evaluation (ISE) process, through the associated classification of structural, interpretive and evaluative knowledge. This is achieved by visualizng inter-relationships within the ISE decision-making approach in the case organization. A number of decision paths within the cognitive map are then identified such that a greater understanding of ISE can be sought. The authors therefore present a model that defines a relationship between Knowledge Management (KM) and Organisational Learning (OL), and highlights factors that can lead a firm to develop itself towards a learning organization
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