The role of GPS-enabled information in transforming operational decision making: an exploratory study

Although the impact of ICT-enabled information on firm performance has been well documented in the business value of IT literature, our understanding of how Global Positioning System (GPS) adoption can transform operational decision making and foster differential firm performance is limited. In response, we conduct an exploratory comparative case study of three transport firms that have implemented the same GPS during the same year in their operations. Our results highlight that increased use of GPS-enabled information can enhance information quality and make operational decision making more fact-based and collaborative. We also find that such transformations in operational decision making, driven by increased use of GPS-enabled information, can foster differential performance impacts. However, we warn scholars and practitioners that a firm’s information management capability (in terms of availability of quality information in decision making, software tools for connectivity and access to information, IT systems integration post-GPS adoption and adaptability of the infrastructure to emerging business needs) and organizational factors (such as top management support, project management of GPS implementation, financial support, end-user involvement, rewarding, training and employee resistance) can facilitate (or inhibit) effective use of GPS-enabled information in operational decision making, and thus moderate differential performance benefits of GPS adoption

Lessons from a creative culture

Lunar Design has a talent for translating innovative thinking into successful business strategies. In their research, Constantine Andriopoulos and Manto Gotsi identify four principles that support this impressive track record: a collaborative approach to management; a no-fear work environment; an emphasis on moving beyond the comfort zone; and a practice that celebrates individuality and encourages diversity

Staying poor: unpacking the process of barefoot institutional entrepreneurship failure

Research on barefoot entrepreneurship is growing, yet we still know little about the potential limits of institutional entrepreneurship in the context of extreme poverty. Challenging institutional entrepreneurship theory’s agency-centric assumptions, we seek to understand how barefoot institutional entrepreneurship efforts fail amidst resistance from powerful actors in the institutional context. Our qualitative study of marginalized waste pickers in Colombia sheds light on the role of power in barefoot institutional entrepreneurship failure. We unpack a paradox of inclusion: the more marginalized barefoot entrepreneurs push for and gain regulatory legitimacy for their market inclusion, the more this accentuates overt and covert power mechanisms that work to suppress the diffusion of institutional change, aggravating barefoot entrepreneurs’ market exclusion. Our study shows that while regulatory change is necessary to enhance barefoot entrepreneurs’ market inclusion, on its own it is not sufficient, without normative and cognitive support from powerful actors in the institutional field

Creativity and entrepreneurial intention in young people: empirical insights from business school students

The authors examine the link between creativity and entrepreneurial intention in young people and the roles that family and education may play in encouraging this link. The results from a survey of 180 undergraduate business school students show that the more creative young people consider themselves to be, the higher are their entrepreneurial intentions. Students' creativity also fully mediates the effect of family support for creativity on their entrepreneurial intention. Support for creativity in the university is found to have no effect on their creativity or on their entrepreneurial intention. Entrepreneurship course attendance moderates the effect of individual creativity on entrepreneurial intention

Managing creatives: paradoxical approaches to identity regulation

Creative workers often experience identity tensions. On the one hand, ‘creatives’ desire to see themselves as distinctive in their artistry, passion, and self-expression, nurturing an identity that energizes their innovative efforts. Yet daily pressures to meet budgets, deadlines and market demands encourage a more business-like identity that supports firm performance. Through a comparative case study of New Product Design (NPD) consultancies, we explicate the potential management of such identity tensions. Case evidence illustrates overarching, paradoxical approaches to identity regulation as the firms emphasized both differentiation and integration strategies. Differentiation practices promoted disparate identities by segregating related roles in time and space, while integration efforts encouraged a more synergistic meta-identity as ‘practical artists’. Leveraging paradox literature, we discuss how these strategies may accommodate creative workers’ needs to cope with multiple identities, as well as their aversion to sanctioned subjectivities

is b j Exploring the potential impact of colonialism on national patterns of entrepreneurial networking

Abstract This study emphasizes the concept of variform universality and considers whether colonialism may be one of the cultural drivers of such divergence. We use a well-established methodology to explore the personal entrepreneurial networks of Cypriots with those of their Greek and English counterparts. We suggest that entrepreneurial networking exhibits variform universality, whereby patterns obtain across nations, moderated by culture. We conclude by relating these tentative findings to other work suggesting that power-related phenomena may be important in shaping variform universality in entrepreneurial networks. We recommend post-colonial theory as a promising path to explore these in-between social spaces where the entrepreneurship of the dominated is enacted

A paradox approach to organizational tensions during the pandemic crisis

The COVID-19 pandemic is a massive exogenous shock that reverberated around the world, forcing all types of organizations to change overnight—from the local coffee shop to the international airline. As we try to make sense of the events surrounding the pandemic, one question that has perplexed both scholars and managers alike has been the extent to which this experience is qualitatively different from others. One area of research to turn to is research on organizational paradoxes, as the organizational paradox literature has focused extensively on how organizations experience change (e.g., Jay, 2013; Lüscher & Lewis, 2008; Smith & Tracey, 2016). According to the paradox literature, major exogenous change impacts organizations by increasing the saliency of organizational tensions (Smith & Lewis, 2011), such as tensions between exploration and exploitation (e.g., Smith, 2014), cooperation and competition (e.g., Raza-Ullah et al., 2014), or control and collaboration (e.g., Sundaramurthy & Lewis, 2003). The increased salience of tensions is critical for understanding organizations undergoing major change because tensions are both multi-level and multi-faceted, impacting actors ranging from the CEO to the front-line employee (Jarzabkowski et al., 2013) and involving responses that are cognitive (e.g., Miron-Spektor et al., 2018), emotional (e.g., Vince & Broussine, 1996), and material (e.g., Knight & Paroutis, 2017). By focusing attention on the tensions that organizations experience during the pandemic and their responses, the paradox literature can provide shards of clarity to this otherwise incomprehensible event. At the same time, unpacking the pandemic experience through a paradox lens can reveal new insights on organizational tensions, enabling scholars to gain sense of future, seemingly, senseless events