Current Topics in Management

Volume 10

Robert Golembiewski

• Publisher: Routledge
• Year: 2018
• Topic: Business
• eBook ISBN:
  9781351524162
• Subtopic: Business General
• Index: Business

This annual series presents basic research on the theory and practice of management and administration. Volume 10 includes both invited contributions and revised versions of papers presented at the 2004 International Conference on Advances in Management, held at Orlando, Florida. This volume exemplifies ICAM's comparative orientation, in its broad scope of management perspectives, in the diverse locations of its research as well as its application, and in its comparisons of findings, methodologies, and operational definitions.

The chapters in Part 1, "Knowledge Management, Learning, and Effectiveness," discuss the Effective Knowledge Organization; new frontiers to actionable knowledge; and reframing and engaging with organizational learning constraints. In Part 2, "Organization Change, Innovation, and Learning," chapters examine the new sciences and Organization Studies, and Exploratory Research on the Effect of Autonomous Learners to Team Learning within Healthcare Systems. In Part 3, "Performance, Social Capital, and Ethics," chapters elaborate on corporate performance cycles; the Marginal Temp Syndrome; the liabilities of social capital with respect to career development, third-party relationships, creativity generation, change, organizational and societal fragmentation, and collective wrongdoings; and ethics and the 2003 Mutual Fund Scandal. In Part 4, "International and Cross-cultural Management," chapters discuss selecting employees for global assignments; rethinking citizenship in public administration, and styles of handling interdepartmental conflict and effectiveness.

This volume will be of particular interest to corporate libraries, doctoral students in management and administration, economists, and labor studies specialists.

1

INTRODUCTION

M. Afzalur Rahim

We conceived the Series—Current Topics in Management—about eleven years ago; we are now in 2005 completing the tenth volume; and the challenge has now shifted from keeping the Series going to improving the quality of the content of each succeeding volume. How does this volume attempt to meet our resolve to do better as we move deeper into the Series? Overall, Volume 10 contains 13 contributions divided into four sections, which are identified below and also constitute the basic structure of this Introduction. The editors attempt to frame the volume with Chapter 1. The other chapters were the survivors of competitive reviews of 76 submissions to the eleventh annual International Conference on Advances in Management held at Orlando, Florida, during April 2004. Two reviewers evaluated the competitive papers, and several invited papers also were reviewed. During this review process, each chapter was revised two to three times to improve quality.

To accommodate to the desiderate of linkage, the chapters below also are sorted into four major sections: (1) Knowledge Management, Learning, and Effectiveness, (2) Organization Change, Innovation, and Learning, (3) Performance, Social Capital, and Ethics, and (4) International and Cross-Cultural Management. We provide a brief review of each chapter to help orient the readers.

Part 1: Knowledge Management, Learning, and Effectiveness

This first section contains three chapters that deal with organization for knowledge management, new frontiers in actionable knowledge, and organizational learning.

Chapter 2: The Effective Knowledge Organization by William R. King

This chapter provides a conceptual framework and an architecture for an effective knowledge organization (EKO) that emphasizes the important role of information processing in enabling the EKO and facilitating the creation of a dynamic knowledge capability, which is the essence of an EKO. The architecture links “core” knowledge management (KM), intellectual property management, organizational learning, and innovation modules with information processing as the hub, or linchpin.

The organization’s need to distinguish among these components of an EKO is argued by comparing and contrasting the conceptual bases, objectives, processes, systems, performance measures and culture of each module. This demonstrates the method to integrate the modules to create a dynamic knowledge capability. This viewpoint integrates many concepts and applications from various literatures, but it is somewhat contrary to the conventional wisdom that has tended to de-emphasize the significance of information technology in knowledge management.

Chapter 3: Knowledge of External Sources’ Knowledge: New Frontiers to Actionable Knowledge by Sajjad M. Jasimuddin

This chapter suggests that actionable knowledge is a strategic source of sustainable competitive advantage for an organization. Our understanding is that the kind of knowledge that seems to be important for an organization is the actionable knowledge. It is evident from the extant literature that emphasis on actionable knowledge is based on the assumption that organizational knowledge is catalyst for action. The chapter reviews the existing theories of knowledge and seeks to provide some valuable insights into actionable knowledge. To begin, knowledge to become actionable needs to take knowledge from other sources into account along with the knowledge that is created and available inside a firm. This perspective has been approached observing several researchers’ views on the importance of knowledge of external sources’ knowledge that makes organizational knowledge action-oriented. Building on contemporary theories of organizational knowledge, this paper suggests a working definition of knowledge, which may underpin new frontiers in knowledge management.

Chapter 4: Reframing and Engaging with Organizational Learning Constraints by Peter Y. T. Sun, John L. Scott, and David McKie

This chapter discusses how organizations can build learning capabilities suited to the existing environment of change and uncertainty through more focused and successful engagement with learning constraints. Current published research on organizational learning constraints is limited, and the sparse studies are primarily based on individual cases, which complicates generalization with diverse localized contexts peculiar to the case in view. Moreover, the existing body of literature tends to be dispersed and has not been collected into a coherent pattern.

This chapter addresses this gap in three ways: by synthesizing the scattered literature, by identifying key learning constraints systematically, and by designing a range of interventions to get around them. More specifically, this chapter theorizes about key learning constraints into the following five dimensions: intrapersonal, relational, cultural, structural, and societal.

Building on the knowledge of these dimensions, the chapter considers nine organizational interventions to tackle the learning constraints in multidimensional fashion across different levels. The specific organizational interventions discussed are: identifying, developing, and dispersing double-loop mastery, enabling constructive contradictions, creating a superordinate identity, building emotional intelligence, ambidextrous leadership, strategic support for experimentation, promoting systems doing, accessibility of valid information, and institutionalizing scanning across industry boundaries.

The chapter proposes that effective implementation of these nine interventions will provide organizational capability to maintain its alignment with a core ideology, whilst effectively adapting to the rapid changes in the external environment. This capability results in effective management of the exploitation–exploration tension by allowing leverage from successful existing routines whilst simultaneously searching for new alternatives. The successful implementation and continued use of the interventions brings peculiar organizational orientation.

Part II: Organization Change, Innovation, and Learning

This section contains three chapters that deal with: complexity, chaos, and related non-linear theories, referred to as new sciences; innovation in project management; and relationships between autonomous learners to team learning.

Chapter 5: The “New Sciences” and Organization Studies: Prospects, Challenges, and Guidelines by Henry Adobor

This chapter suggests that the core ideas from chaos and complexity theory have become popular in organizational thought, if less so than in research. Key concepts from both chaos and complexity theory have been used to explain important management phenomena such as change, strategic planning, leadership, and quality management, among others.

The emerging theories of complexity, chaos, and related nonlinear theories (often referred to as the new sciences) may hold some promise as a framework for enriching organization science research and practice. As a framework that focuses on nonlinear thinking, dynamism, and uncertainty, the new sciences may offer organization science useful metaphors and conceptual tools for understanding and managing some of the key challenges facing contemporary management. For example, high velocity change and uncertainty have been identified as major challenges facing contemporary management, and here the new sciences imply great promise. Notwithstanding this promise, some important challenges impede the widespread use of these theories. Also, for example, we need to integrate the new sciences into existing organization science research frameworks. This is important because some of the key claims of this emerging framework challenge some of our traditional ways of thinking.

A concerted program of conceptual development and empirical testing of the key claims of chaos and complexity theories thus seem multiply helpful. Research progress in this area will also be helped if researchers focus on conceptual clarity, delimit the extent to which these new theories are applicable to organizational phenomena, and demonstrate that chaos and complexity theory are not adversarial to existing normal science frameworks, but may complement them.

Chapter 6: Innovation, Project Management, and Six Sigma Method by Frank T. Anbari

This chapter suggests that only a few of the ideas generated in organizations ultimately create products and services that enhance the organization’s competitive advantage. It discusses strengthening the competitive position of the organization through continual improvement of its total system, and focuses on innovation and quality management.

The chapter maintains that an organization needs to carefully integrate two goals in the development and deployment of its strategy: (1) Introduction of new products, services, processes, and technologies, and (2) Improvement of its current products, services, processes, and technologies. The first goal is essential to enhancing organizational effectiveness, increasing market share, and attracting new customers. It can be pursued through research, radical innovation, new product development, and project management. The second goal is essential to delivering current products and services efficiently, and sustaining customer satisfaction. It can be pursued through business systems improvement initiatives, and the current quality strategy called the Six Sigma method.

Successful implementation and growing interest in project management and Six Sigma have been exploding in recent years, and competency in these areas is becoming an important career path requirement in many organizations. Understanding the key concepts, tools, obstacles, success factors, challenges, and barriers to successful implementation of these approaches provides important leadership opportunities to management professionals, and allows them to better support their organizations’ strategic direction, and increasing needs for coaching, mentoring, and training.

Chapter 7: Exploratory Research on the Effect of Autonomous Learners to Team Learning within Healthcare Systems by Patricia R. Goodman and Neal Chalofsky

This chapter discusses how an autonomous learner affects team learning. Historically, case studies have presented various examples of disasters that occurred when teams did not learn from failed missions in the military, airline industry, and healthcare system. However, the literature does not offer a flowchart for success to team learning, which begs one key question, among others. Does the key to team learning lie with the team member, the team as a collective unit, or the system?

Through an exploratory case study the authors seek to assess the impact of individual learning on team learning. The sample of the present study was selected on the basis of two criteria: a team learning process and the presence of at least one autonomous learner in a team. Data were collected through questionnaires, documentation, observations, and team member interviews at three healthcare clinic sites. Through triangulation of the data, the findings indicated three major themes describing how autonomous learners impact team learning. The autonomous learners demonstrated leadership skills, modeled a systematic learning process, and strengthened team mental models. A system emerged to explain the impact of the autonomous learner on the team learning process. The team learning system illustrates the interactions between the environment, the autonomous learner, and the team. From the practitioner’s point of view, autonomous learners can impact a team’s mental models and can energize team learning.

Part III: Performance, Social Capital, and Ethics

This section contains four chapters that deal with the changes in CEO power and its diverse effects. These impact, among other aspects, performance, job performance and behaviors of temporary workers, liabilities of social capital, and mutual fund scandal.

Chapter 8: CEO Power Cycles and Corporate Performance Cycles: An Examination of the Relationship Between Changes in Power and Changes in Performance by Rajeswararao [Raj] Chaganti, Fariborz Damanpour and John Mankelwicz

This chapter examines the relationship between changes in four dimensions of CEO power—structural, ownership, expert, and prestige—and changes in firm performance with data from 38 major U.S. corporations in seven industries over 12 years. While the authors generally expected that CEOs’ power cycle would parallel firm performance cycle over time, they instead found that the CEO’s power rises and falls within both upward and downward performance transitions. The study also found that the four dimensions of CEO power are not uniformly tied to performance transitions. More specifically, the findings suggest that differences exist between the early part and the late part of an upward or a downward performance cycle. The distinction between the early and late part is noteworthy because it raises the issue of the timing and nature of power shifts; and it also suggests that different power dimensions rise and fall at different times in the performance cycle. For example, shifts in ownership power seem to happen in the late part of upward transitions and in the early part of downward transitions. Shifts in expert power, on the other hand, seem to occur in the early part of both upward and downward transitions. And shifts in prestige power seem to go through a complete reversal (fall and rise) over the course of the early and late parts of each transition. The authors conclude that (1) each power dimension has a special role in driving the firm performance cycle, and (2) a distinction between the early and late parts of each transition cycle is necessary in future research.

Chapter 9: The Marginal Temp Syndrome: Predicting Job Performance and Counterproductive Behaviors by Richard A. Posthuma, Michael A. Campion, and Amber L. Vargas

This chapter identifies factors that predict productive and counterproductive performance by temporary workers employed at host worksites. Drawing from an ecology framework, the chapter shows how temporary workers are molded by interactions with their work environments. As a result of this process, they tend to fall into two groups: Marginal Temps and Satisfactory Temps that differ in their levels of work performance and counterproductive work behaviors. The Marginal Temps are affected by the Marginal Temp Syndrome, and as a result they have lower levels of work performance and higher levels of counterproductive behaviors. This syndrome can be predicted by work history factors such as the reason for leaving last job, length of job tenure, salary on prior jobs, education, and willingness to work on nights and weekends.

Useful applications suggest themselves. For example, data on these work history factors can be collected before temps are hired and can be used by temporary agencies and host employers to predict temporary worker job performance and counterproductive behaviors.

Chapter 10: The Liabilities of Social Capital with Respect to Career Development, Third-Party Relationships, Creativity Generation, Change, Organizational and Societal Fragmentation, and Collective Wrongdoings by Marjorie Chan

This chapter suggests that social capital is a popular research subject, and also that more research focuses on social capital’s benefits than on its liabilities. However, major liabilities of the research can be found at the individual, group, organizational, community, and world levels.

This chapter focuses on social capital’s drawbacks with respect to career development, third-party relationships, creativity generation, organizational change, organizational and societal fragmentation, as well as collective wrongdoings. These areas are essential to the progress of one or more of the following levels: individual, group, organization, and society. Furthermore, they shed light on how management can be improved.

To develop social capital for career development, discussion focuses on different strategies and contrary views with respect to early versus late mentoring. For third-party relationships, research pertaining to dense groups indicates that third party’s negative gossip has a greater amplification effect than third party’s positive gossip. As the more objective information from sparse groups can counteract the negative gossip from dense groups, it is advisable for an individual to develop contacts within both types of groups. Similarly, an examination of creativity relates to the appropriate number of contacts that one should have. That is, a manageable, as opposed to an excessive, number of ties tends to enhance creativity. The divergent viewpoints from an excessive number of ties tend to bring about conflict, stress and information overload. Very often, organizations initiate change to promote efficiency and effectiveness. Hence, basically, a major hurdle to organizational change revolves around the development of a new social capital network.

Various mechanisms can facilitate organizational and societal integration. The composition of teams, committees, and task forces should reflect the diversity of the organization’s workforce. Firms should invest in bridging capital to serve various ethnic communities. Turning to the area of ethics, collective corruption is rampant in the corporate world. Employees should be placed in positions to monitor the organization’s directives, policies, and practices.

Chapter 11: Ethics and the 2003 Mutual Fund Scandal by Stephen C. Carlson and Gerald F. Sullivan

This chapter discusses the recent mutual fund scandal, which is associated with issues in business ethics as well as compliance with law and securities regulations. Intriguingly, evidence presented in this chapter suggests that mutual fund management companies accused of unethical and illegal behaviors have poorer performance in terms of return on investment to the funds shareholders. Additional evidence finds that uns...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Half Title
• Title Page
• Copyright Page
• Table of Contents
• Preface
• 1. Introduction
• Part I: Knowledge Management, Learning, and Effectiveness
• Part II: Organization Change, Innovation, and Learning
• Part III: Performance, Social Capital, and Ethics
• Part IV: International and Cross-cultural Management
• About the Contributors