Conflicts at the bottom of the pyramid: profitability, poverty alleviation, and neoliberal governmentality

This article adopts the concept of neoliberal governmentality to critically analyze public policy failures in a bottom-of-the-pyramid (BOP) marketing initiative. This research shows that e-Choupal, an Indian BOP initiative, is hampered by a divide between poverty alleviation and profit seeking, which is inadequately reconciled by the neoliberal government policies that dominate contemporary India. The initiative sounds good, even noble, but becomes mired in divergent discourses and practices that ultimately fail to help the poor whom it targets. This research helps explicate the problems with BOP policy interventions that encourage profit seeking as a way to alleviate poverty

Workplace humiliation and the organization of domestic work

This study of domestic workers and employers in Kolkata (India) examines the significance of workplace humiliation as an important yet neglected concept for organization studies. It identifies practices of symbolic, sexual and physical workplace humiliation that shape corporeality and subjectivity in such a way that workers feel inferior, fearful and docile. Practices of workplace humiliation serve the purpose of social reproduction by stabilizing the existing skewed power relations between workers and employers, and making workers comply inexpensively with the harsh requirements of highly exploitative workplaces. In foregrounding humiliation as a key organizational mechanism, this study furthers understanding of workplace humiliation, oppression, caste and exploitation in organization studies

Absorbing customer knowledge: how customer involvement enables service design success

Customers are a knowledge resource outside of the firm that can be utilized for new service success by involving them in the design process. However, existing research on the impact of customer involvement (CI) is inconclusive. Knowledge about customers’ needs and on how best to serve these needs (articulated in the service concept) is best obtained from customers themselves. However, codesign runs the risk of losing control of the service concept. This research argues that of the processes of external knowledge, acquisition (via CI), customer knowledge assimilation, and concept transformation form a capability that enables the firm to exploit customer knowledge in the form of a successful new service. Data from a survey of 126 new service projects show that the impact of CI on new service success is fully mediated by customer knowledge assimilation (the deep understanding of customers’ latent needs) and concept transformation (the modification of the service concept due to customer insights). However, its impact is more nuanced. CI exhibits an “∩”-shaped relationship with transformation, indicating there is a limit to the beneficial effect of CI. Its relationship with assimilation is “U” shaped, suggesting a problem with cognitive inertia where initial learnings are ignored. Customer knowledge assimilation directly impacts success, while concept transformation only helps success in the presence of resource slack. An evolving new service design is only beneficial if the firm has the flexibility to adapt to change

Customer Interaction and Innovation in Hybrid Offerings:Investigating Moderation and Mediation Effects for Goods and Services Innovation

Hybrid offerings are bundles of goods and services offerings provided by the same firm. Bundling value offerings affects how firms innovate, interact with customers, and customize their goods and services. However, it remains unclear how customer interaction might drive the innovation performance of various bundled components. Therefore, this study investigates the effects of customer interactions and service customization on both goods and services innovations in a hybrid offering context, using a unique data set of 146 information technology and manufacturing firms. Customer interaction appears beneficial to both goods and services innovation in a hybrid offerings context, but service customization has different direct effects on goods versus services innovation. As a potential mediator, customer knowledge mobilization resources exert different effects on the goods and services elements of hybrid offerings. Furthermore, for high-interaction customers, medium levels of technical modularity lead to most favorable innovation outcomes for services innovation. The results thus suggest that providers of hybrid offerings should foster customer interactions, to drive the innovation performance of the good and service components, while still making sure to implement service customization strategies. These findings have notable implications for service innovation research

Kvalitetsidén möter praktiken : institutionalisering, meningsskapande och organisationskultur

In the new millennium the ideas of New Public Management (NPM) have become more and more popular within the public sector and its health care. NPM is a management philosophy that, among other things, aims at making public organizations more business like. The study explores the encounter between the organizational practice and an NPM idea, the idea of quality, at Landstinget in Värmland (LiV). More precisely the study aims at contributing to the discourse on effects of institutionalization as well as to knowledge on the process of local institutionalization. Another purpose of the study is to contribute to quality development in organizations. In order to do this, a project of quality (LiV 2002) at LiV is followed in time and space. In the empirical section three actor groups are identified, the new management, the old officials and the health care personnel. Between the old officials and the new management, and between the health care personnel and the new management conflicts burst out. The reason for these conflicts is, among other things, the actor groups’ diverging cultural conceptions. In the conclusion the idea of quality is, to a certain extent, found to be institutionalized in the formal structure of LiV. But the greater part of the actors’ action and thought schemes are unaffected. However, the actors at LiV are not fully unaffected by the idea of quality. It is argued that the cultural conceptions of the old officials and the health care personnel are reproduced during the work on quality. In the discussion concerning contributions, a model for studying local institutionalization from the perspective of sensemaking is put forward. It is argued that the model enables students of local institutionalization to focus on the cognitive micro processes of institutionalization. In the discussion on quality development, the focus is on difficulties and obstacles with quality development. These are found to be cultural conceptions, preservative sensemaking, processes of translation and that most public organizations are arena organizations

Co-creation and co-destruction: : A practice-theory based study of interactive value formation

Drawing on an empirical study of public transport, this paper studies interactive value formation at the provider—customer interface, from a practice—theory perspective. In contrast to the bulk of previous research, it argues that interactive value formation is not only associated with value co-creation but also with value co-destruction. In addition, the paper also identifies five interaction value practices — informing, greeting, delivering, charging, and helping — and theorizes how interactive value formation takes place as well as how value is intersubjectively assessed by actors at the provider—customer interface. Furthermore, the paper also distinguishes between four types of interactive value formation praxis corresponding with four subject positions which practitioners step into when engaging in interactive value formation