I can do that alone…or not? How idea generators juggle between the pros and cons of teamwork

Peer Reviewedhttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/142333/1/smj2696_am.pdfhttps://deepblue.lib.umich.edu/bitstream/2027.42/142333/2/smj2696.pd

The Effects of Business Failure Experience on Successive Entrepreneurial Engagements: An Evolutionary Phase Model

This study draws insights from the literatures on entrepreneurial learning from failure and organizational imprinting to develop an evolutionary phase model to explain how prior business failure experience influences successive newly started businesses. Using multiple case studies of entrepreneurs located in an institutionally developing society in Sub-Sahara Africa, we uncover four distinctive phases of post-entrepreneurial business failure: grief and despair, transition, formation and legacy phases. We find that while the grieving and transition phases entailed processes of reflecting and learning lessons from the business failure experiences, the formation and legacy phases involve processes of imprinting entrepreneurs’ experiential knowledge on their successive new start-up firms. We conclude by outlining a number of fruitful avenues for future research

Operationalising learning from rare events: framework for middle humanitarian operations managers

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the learning from rare events and the knowledge management processinvolved, which presents a significant challenge to many organizations. This is primarily attributed to the inability tointerpret these events in a systematic and “rich” manner, which this paper seeks to address. We start by summarizing therelevant literature on humanitarian operations management (HOM), outlining the evolution of the socio-technical disasterlifecycle and its relationship with humanitarian operations, using a supply chain resilience theoretical lens. We then out-line theories of organizational learning (and unlearning) from disasters and the impact on humanitarian operations. Subse-quently, we theorize the role of middle managers in humanitarian operations, which is the main focus of our paper. Themain methodology incorporates a hybrid of two techniques for root cause analysis, applied to two related case studies.The cases were specifically selected as, despite occurring twenty years apart, there are many similarities in the chain ofcausation and supporting factors, potentially suggesting that adequate learning from experience and failures is not occur-ring. This provides a novel learning experience within the HOM paradigm. Hence, the proposed approach is based on amultilevel structure that facilitates the operationalization of learning from rare events in humanitarian operations. Theresults show that we are able to provide an environment for multiple interpretations and effective learning, with emphasison middle managers within a humanitarian operations and crisis/disaster management context

Congenital anomalies in low- and middle-income countries: the unborn child of global surgery.

Surgically correctable congenital anomalies cause a substantial burden of global morbidity and mortality. These anomalies disproportionately affect children in low- and middle-income countries (LMICs) due to sociocultural, economic, and structural factors that limit the accessibility and quality of pediatric surgery. While data from LMICs are sparse, available evidence suggests that the true human and financial cost of congenital anomalies is grossly underestimated and that pediatric surgery is a cost-effective intervention with the potential to avert significant premature mortality and lifelong disability

Planned Marketing Adaptation and Multinationals' Choices Between Acquisitions and Greenfields

International marketing studies have extensively examined the antecedents of firms' marketing standardization/ adaptation decisions. However, it is unclear whether such decisions, once planned, codetermine the choice between buying and building foreign subsidiaries. Analyzing a sample of 150 foreign entries by Dutch firms, the authors find that the level of marketing adaptation planned for a wholly owned subsidiary is positively related to the likelihood that the subsidiary will be established through an acquisition rather than through a greenfield investment. Moreover, the authors find substantial evidence that this positive relationship is stronger for firms that (1) are establishing relatively larger subsidiaries, (2) have less experience with the industry entered, or (3) are entering less developed countries. The findings show that firms pursuing higher levels of marketing adaptation assign more value to the marketing adaptation advantages of acquisitions over greenfields, especially if the risks associated with implementing the planned adaptation level are high. In addition, firms typically strive for a fit between their international marketing strategy and their mode of foreign establishment. (authors' abstract

Trust Building in Electronic Markets: Relative Importance and Interaction Effects of Trust Building Mechanisms

We examine the relative and complementary effectiveness of trust-building strategies in online environments. While prior research has examined various antecedents to trust, we investigated two trust-building mechanisms more in depth: Web site trust and vendor reputation. We tried to understand the relative effectiveness of these two important mechanisms to provide online businesses with a clear recommendation of how to establish trust in an effective and efficient manner. Drawing from the literature on trust, we proposed vendor reputation to be more effective than Web site trust. Moreover, we examined a potential complementary effect of these mechanisms so as to provide online businesses with a deeper understanding of how to derive superior trust. We hypothesize a small such effect. The study proposes a laboratory experiment to test the model

Rules versus Discretion in Committee Decision Making: An Application to the 2001 RAE for UK Economics Departments

The question of rules versus discretion has generated a great deal of debate in many areas of the social sciences. Recently, much of the discussion among academics and stakeholders about the assessment of research in UK higher education institutions has focused on the means that should be used to determine research quality. We present a model of committee decision-making when both rules and discretion are available. Some of the predictions of the model are tested empirically using the UK RAE 2001 results

Powers of Romance: The Liminal Challenges of Managing Organizational Intimacy

© The Author(s) 2014 Problematic organizational relationships have recently been at the core of highly visible media coverage. Most analyses of sexual relations in organizations have been, however, simplistic and unidimensional, and have placed insufficient systematic emphasis on the role of governmentality in the social construction of organizational romance. In this article, we proceed in two theoretical steps. First, we elaborate a typology of organizational romance that covers different manifestations of this nuanced process. We think of these as organizational strategies of governmentality. Second, we elaborate and identify liminal cases that fall into the interstices of the four predominant ways of managing sexual relationships in organizations. We think of these as vases of liquid love and life that evade the border controls of regulation by governmentality. Finally, we relate these issues to debates about the nature of the civilizational process and suggest hypotheses for future research

Structuring reality through the faultlines lens: the effects of structure, fairness, and status conflict on the activated faultlines-performance relationship

We investigate how activated team faultlines represent an informal sensemaking structure through which teammates interpret their social reality. Constructed from inter-subgroup comparisons, activated faultlines likely result in status perceptions that are ambiguous or illegitimate. Thus, activated faultlines threaten the justice climate within the team, which drives status conflict, impairing team performance. We explore the effects of team structure clarity in providing certainty or legitimacy around status and structure, ameliorating the negative effect of activated faultlines on team justice climate. We tested our model using a multi-source (three sources), multi-wave cross-lagged design (four waves) on a sample of 271 employees and 41 leaders in 41 teams. We found that the negative relationship between activated faultlines and team performance was mediated by the team justice climate—status conflict causal chain. We also found that team structure clarity reduced activated faultlines negative effect on team justice climate. The results highlight the value of using team faultlines, the social identity approach, and justice theories to understand how diverse teams interpret their social reality that influences their performance. Furthermore, our research provides practical guidance to managers in building clear team structures that minimize the harmful effects of activated faultlines on justice perceptions and team performance.info:eu-repo/semantics/acceptedVersio

Risk propensity in the foreign direct investment location decision of emerging multinationals

A distinguishing feature of emerging economy multinationals is their apparent tolerance for host country institutional risk. Employing behavioral decision theory and quasi-experimental data, we find that managers’ domestic experience satisfaction increases their relative risk propensity regarding controllable risk (legally protectable loss), but decreases their tendency to accept non-controllable risk (e.g., political instability). In contrast, firms’ potential slack reduces relative risk propensity regarding controllable risk, yet amplifies the tendency to take non-controllable risk. We suggest that these counterbalancing effects might help explain observation that risk-taking in FDI location decisions is influenced by firm experience and context. The study provides a new understanding of why firms exhibit heterogeneous responses to host country risks, and the varying effects of institutions