Mapping strategic consensus within and between teams

Organisational scholars have been aware for some time that achieving a high degree of shared understanding about the strategy within the enterprise is extremely valuable. However, until now, managers have had few good tools for monitoring shifts in opinion at a granular level – and without that, most executives have had to simply reiterate the same messages again and again

Aspiration formation and attention rules

Research Summary: The behavioral theory of the firm (BTOF) proposes that firm behavior is goal-directed and that organizational aspirations are a function of prior historical aspirations, past performance, and the performance of others. Despite the centrality of aspirations in the BTOF, little is known about aspiration formation and why firms favor one aspiration type over others, that is, attention rules. Drawing on the attention-based view, we posit that attention rules are shaped by environmental volatility over time and vary by locus of attention across firms. Data from US manufacturing firms managing their toxic chemical waste provide evidence for attention-rule adaptation. Managerial Summary: Firms must set aspirations, measure, and improve their toxic waste levels to avoid costly economic, regulatory, and environmental hazards. Although aspirations play a vital role in driving firm behavior, we still have limited understanding of how managers allocate their attention to various performance feedback during aspiration formation. We argue that attention allocation differs for managers across organizational hierarchy exposed to varying degrees of environmental volatility. Greater volatility of the business environment steers managerial attention from the performance of others toward their own historical aspirations. We also suggest that the attention of managers at higher levels of the organizational structure are directed from their own historical aspirations toward performance of others. We find corroborating evidence for our conjectures.</p

Affective Leadership in Agile Teams

Agile management prescribes a set of structures and processes to help teams respond to change. This article presents an in-depth case study examining how high- and low-agility nursing teams differed in their response to the COVID-19 pandemic, organizational restructuring, and floods. It unveils the crucial role of “affective leaders” in high-agility teams during those crises. These leaders constructed positive emotional experiences for their teams to successfully respond to adversity. The findings remind scholars and practitioners that agile management’s founding tenet of “valuing individuals and interactions” implies understanding, working with, and actively recalibrating emotions

Negative Spillovers Across Partnerships for Responsible Innovation: Evidence from the 2014 Ebola Outbreak

Humanity faces ongoing and contemporaneous grand challenges. Occasionally, abrupt shocks escalate a grand challenge’s salience over others. Prior research has advocated forming partnerships to address grand challenges via responsible innovation. Yet, it remains unclear how temporal changes in the salience of a grand challenge impact innovation performances of partnerships. We address this research gap by bridging the literature on issue salience, responsible innovation and interorganizational relationships. We argue that shocks either aid or harm the performance of partnerships for responsible innovation depending on whether their domains are directly or indirectly affected. The Ebola outbreak in 2014 sets the empirical context to test our theory. We find that while the innovation performance of Ebola partnerships formed after the outbreak rose eleven-fold, the performance of partnerships treating Influenza fell by 84.9 percent. Our theory and findings have immediate implications for today’s COVID-19 outbreak, cautioning against salience shifts among concurrent grand challenges

Buffer optimization and robust design studies in asynchronous assembly systems using design of experiments approach

This research concentrates on the buffer specification problem of the design of asynchronous assembly systems (AAS). The objectives of the research are to determine an optimal area of buffers and to design AAS that are robust to noise factors. In order to determine an optimal area of buffers in which the throughput yields to maximum, the design of experiments (DoE) approach and discrete-event simulation are used, and appropriate buffer levels are identified accordingly. Studies indicated that determining an optimal area provided the design engineer the much needed flexibility to choose the buffer sizes within a range. The DoE approach also offered substantial information on the AAS that can serve the design engineer as an invaluable guideline and enable one to design the AAS with a better understanding. Furthermore, the use of DoE approach as an optimization tool is proposed, principally in cases where little known on the AAS that will be designed. Case studies using the DoE approach as a heuristic optimization method are presented. Additionally, in an attempt to study its effect, in some studies, the number of pallets has been considered as a decision variable. Studies conducted throughout this research indicated that the DoE approach to be an effective methodology. Robust design study is essential to design AAS that are insensitive to uncontrollable factors. Several systems have been investigated and analyses revealed the necessity of robust design study in AAS. Future research areas are suggested

Antibacterial activities of Allium vineale, Chaerophyllum macropodum and Prangos ferulacea

Allium vineale L., Chaerophyllum macropodum Boiss. and Prangos ferulacea (L.) Lindl. have been used for cheese production in Turkiye for many centuries. In addition, it is traditionally believed by localpeople that these plants have antibacterial activity. The purpose of this study was to evaluate the antibacterial activity of these plants. Four solvent extracts (in methanol, ethanol, n-hexane and water) ofthe plants were investigated against Bacillus cereus, Bacillus subtilis, Micrococcus luteus, Staphylococcus aureus, Escherichia coli, Klebsiella pneumoniae, Proteus mirabilis, Salmonella enteritidis and Salmonella typhimurium by using disc diffusion method. The methanol, ethanol and nhexane extracts of all the plants showed antibacterial activity against B. cereus, B. subtilis, M. luteus and S. aureus, while the methanol extract of Allium vineale was also active against P. mirabilis.However, the water extracts of these plants had no antibacterial activity against any of the bacteria tested. The methanol extracts had the higher activity followed by the extracts of ethanol and n-hexane.A. vineale showed the higher antibacterial activity as compared with C. macropodum and P. ferulacea. As a result, organic solvent extracts (especially methanol and ethanol extracts) of these plants can beused as natural antibacterial additives for incorporation in cheese and various food products

Improving the Productivity and Energy Efficiency by a Heat Treatment Method Applied to Aluminum Forged Parts

In industrial applications, hot forging of AA6082 alloy is carried at 480°C. After the hot forging operation parts are cooled down to room temperature and heated again up to 540°C for solution heat treatment and artificially aged. Heating-cooling-heating cycles leads to energy and time loss in production, and have long-termenvironmental and economic impacts. Mass production of aluminum parts for applications in various industries (automotive, aerospace etc.) requires a process with higher productivity. The aim of this study was to provide time and energy efficiency by combining hot forging and solution treatment processes into a single operation. AA6082 billets were forged at 540°C for 7.5, 15 and 30 minutes in order to achieve simultaneous solution treatment. Billets were then water quenched and artificially aged. Mechanical properties (hardness, tensile strength) as well as microstructure of samples were investigated. Required mechanical properties were achieved on the samples forged and treated at 540°C for 15 and 30 minutes

Orchestrating coordination among humanitarian organizations

Disasters mobilize hundreds of organizations, but coordination among them remains a challenge. This is why the United Nations has formed clusters to facilitate information and resource exchange among humanitarian organizations. Yet, coordination failures in prior disasters raise questions as to the effectiveness of the cluster approach in coordinating relief efforts. To better understand barriers to coordination, we developed a grounded theory and augmented the theory with an agent-based simulation. Our theory discerns a cluster lead's roles of facilitating coordination, but also investing in its own ground operations. We find that specifically serving such a dual role impairs swift trust and consequent coordination among cluster members. The additional simulation findings generalize the detrimental effect of the cluster lead's dual role versus a pure facilitator role and specify it against various boundary conditions

Do disruptive visions pay off?

Entrepreneurs often articulate a vision for their venture that purports to fundamentally change, disturb, or re-order the ways in which organizations, markets, and ecosystems operate. We call these visions disruptive visions. Neglected in both the disruption and the impression management literature, disruptive visions are widespread in business practice. We integrate real options and impression management theories to hypothesize that articulating a disruptive vision raises expectations of extraordinary returns, which in turn increases the likelihood of receiving funding, but reduces the amount of funding obtained. A novel dataset of Israeli start-ups shows that a standard deviation increase in disruptive vision communication increases the odds of receiving a first round of funding by 22 percent, but reduces amounts of funds received by 24 percent. A randomized online experiment corroborates these findings and further shows expectation of extraordinary returns as the key mechanism driving investors’ sensemaking