Izumi Kubo and Ayse Saka
The knowledge base of companies is increasingly seen as underlying a firm’s performance, and the role of knowledge workers within this framework is seen as strongly associated…
Abstract
The knowledge base of companies is increasingly seen as underlying a firm’s performance, and the role of knowledge workers within this framework is seen as strongly associated with a firm’s competitive performance. This perspective views the effective management of knowledge workers as crucial in sustaining an organisation’s competitive advantage. The paper views the financial industry as a knowledge intensive sector which nurtures the idea that financial firms rely on specialists’ knowledge or expertise relating to a specific technical and functional domain. It is an exploratory study that aims to investigate the motivational needs of, and organisational environments best suited to, company analysts within the Japanese financial system. It identifies three key motivators as having an impact on the company analysts: monetary incentives; human resource development; and job autonomy. The paper concludes that the traditional Japanese management system is incompatible with the expectations of company analysts in the Japanese financial industry.
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Marielle G. Heijltjes, Ayse Saka-Helmhout and Arjen van Witteloostuijn
Ayse Saka‐Helmhout and Elif Karabulut
The paper aims to highlight the extent to which the institutional context of a country can inhibit entrepreneurial activity in clusters.
Abstract
Purpose
The paper aims to highlight the extent to which the institutional context of a country can inhibit entrepreneurial activity in clusters.
Design/methodology/approach
Case study method employing exploratory survey questionnaire and interviews administered to 78 firms in the Denizli textile cluster in Turkey.
Findings
Findings show that Denizli district firms nurture effectively only some of the features of an industrial district, that is flexibility, participative managerial structure and trust. However, there is limited availability of skilled workers, and limited co‐operation in the form of joint projects and investments for innovation owing to the weak institutional context in which these firms are embedded. Although this might be expected to discourage economic benefits, performance, particularly in terms of efficiency and relations with internal and external customers, is perceived to be high by the cluster firms.
Research limitations/implications
It is not adequate to argue that policy makers of developing countries should take particular systems of organizing, such as cluster formation, into consideration for their industrialization efforts. One needs to consider the wider institutional context in which entrepreneurial activity is embedded that can limit the degree to which clusters can stimulate economic development. This has implications for the applicability of a cluster approach to foreign contexts, particularly where global value chain governance is of a quasi‐hierarchical form.
Practical implications
Although district firms can strategize on the basis of their flexibility, trust relations and managerial structures within the confines of a state‐organized institutional environment and a quasi‐hierarchical global value chain, further improvements such as relocation of production and equity participation are needed to meet the global challenge.
Originality/value
This study shows that the institutional make‐up of a country can discourage actors from changing patterns of organizing for innovation. Although a substantial number of studies have been carried out for more than a decade on the internal structure and formation of clusters, these pertain predominantly to operations in developed nations and, by and large, ignore developing countries. The paper argues that clusters may not generate the same economic benefits when embedded in weak, state‐organized institutional settings as when operating in strong collaborative institutional contexts. The study is of value particularly to policy makers.
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Numerous studies have proliferated on the salient role of the subsidiary in multinational enterprise learning and innovative capability building. However, this role has not been…
Abstract
Purpose
Numerous studies have proliferated on the salient role of the subsidiary in multinational enterprise learning and innovative capability building. However, this role has not been considered outside the structural properties of the transnational or integrated network configuration. This paper aims to highlight the role of agency in learning beyond effective configurations.
Design/methodology/approach
The research is based on case studies that systematically compare the ways in which parent company knowledge embedded in a transnational and an international structure is transferred to subsidiaries in the European chemical industry.
Findings
The paper demonstrates that an international structure can also promote higher levels of learning, despite the absence of learning‐facilitating structural properties, when subsidiaries' orientation to enact acquired knowledge or their “effortful accomplishments” are considered.
Practical implications
The findings point to the significance of agency or adaptation to contexts that require either idiosyncratic or ongoing changes, where structural properties of a multinational enterprise are not conducive to higher levels of learning. In the absence of these structural properties, employees need to be guided to change their recognisable pattern of interdependent actions.
Originality/value
The learning implications of Bartlett and Ghoshal's MNE structures are fine‐tuned with the conceptualization of learning as practice. By adopting an agency‐based understanding of learning, the two aspects of learning are reconciled, i.e. knowledge transfer and the actor's orientation to acquired knowledge for a more refined understanding of the concept within the MNE context.
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Ayse Saka-Helmhout and Christopher J. Ibbott
This investigation provides an understanding of network orchestration as an impersonal, primordial driving force that challenges the view in organizational design that assigns…
Abstract
This investigation provides an understanding of network orchestration as an impersonal, primordial driving force that challenges the view in organizational design that assigns human choice and deliberate intention a central role. The study highlights the importance of emerging strategy and the unintended consequence in bringing about a desirable outcome in MNCs’ efforts to coordinate and integrate globally dispersed capabilities. It is based on a longitudinal action research that embraces a period of transformational change between Vodafone and Ericsson to achieve cash synergies in mobile network operations globally. The findings indicate that enabling knowledge mobility, appropriating knowledge, and fostering network stability contribute to a successful economic performance as interactive, self-governing processes of network orchestration. Accordingly, we conclude that the processes of network orchestration must be understood as driven by choice sets taken while creatively coping with change rather than as primarily choice sets deliberately taken in the sequential pursuit of goals.
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This paper aims to explore internationalisation strategies of service firms in sectors where markets become increasingly globalised while resource environments still remain…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to explore internationalisation strategies of service firms in sectors where markets become increasingly globalised while resource environments still remain distinctively shaped by national institutions.
Design/methodology/approach
A theoretical framework is proposed that suggests that the more firms expand their business activities across borders by building up offices abroad or merging with firms from other countries, the more likely they are to embrace recombinant strategies to blend elements of different societal legacies. Subsequently, a comparative case study of internationalisation strategies, governance modes and organisational forms of European and US law firms is presented to illustrate the value of the framework, followed by the analysis of a novel data set on multi‐jurisdictional qualifications of partners in these international law firms.
Findings
By virtue of their integrative organisational model and mobilisation of versatile legal competences, large pan‐European law firms are challenging the dominance of US law firms in international legal markets, while the latter in response are revising their own previous export‐oriented internationalisation strategy.
Research limitations/implications
The present study provides a starting point for further research on internationalisation in service industries.
Originality/value
The framework is useful to expand effect societal analysis to dynamic international environments.
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The central question in this article is: do recurring types of corporate lobbying strategies exist (in the same way as for generic strategies, for example)? The objective of this…
Abstract
Purpose
The central question in this article is: do recurring types of corporate lobbying strategies exist (in the same way as for generic strategies, for example)? The objective of this research is to define a typology of lobbying strategies implemented by French and UK firms, and then to discuss to what extent firms' political strategies are universal or country‐specific.
Design/methodology/approach
An empirical study examined 679 lobbying campaigns (also known as “political action”) of French and UK firms. They were grouped into categories and described using statistical data analysis techniques (multiple correspondence analysis and classification).
Findings
The results highlight a pattern in the corporate lobbying phenomenon: five types of lobbying strategy (that can be described and illustrated) exist for French firms, and four for UK firms. Tentative explanations can be put forward: implementation of lobbying strategies appears to depend on the type of issues addressed (which could be universal), but also on the country's political environment (which could be country specific). The study shows the interdependent influence of organisational resources, economic structures and the political environment (laws and the role of the state) on firms' lobbying strategies. Thus, societal effects theory could be applied to firms' political strategies, which are global and local at the same time.
Originality/value
Lobbying public decision makers is an increasingly widespread managerial practice, but has so far attracted little research attention in Europe.
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The vital importance of change management in today's competitive climate has been widely investigated. While the need for successful change management is intensively proclaimed by…
Abstract
The vital importance of change management in today's competitive climate has been widely investigated. While the need for successful change management is intensively proclaimed by “expert” consultants, the response for some time has been regarded as falling short of what is required. The heavy emphasis in the literature on a rational‐linear approach to understanding organisational change overlooks the significance of the cultural and political dimensions of organisational life. This article highlights a systemic‐multivariate view of change by investigating internal change agents’, that is managers’, accounts of the barriers to change management. It addresses the limitations of change management by attending to the perceptions of managers, that is those actors who generally determine organisational priorities and make crucial resource allocation decisions. This article illustrates the systemic line of thinking adopted by managers undergoing major restructuring efforts in their organisations. This line of thinking is shown to differ from the espoused values of managers that constitute the rational‐linear view of change management.
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Mara Brumana and Giuseppe Delmestri
This paper aims to unpack the organization of an multinational enterprise (MNE) and confront its meso‐level complexity of structures and strategies. It seeks to uncover how the…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to unpack the organization of an multinational enterprise (MNE) and confront its meso‐level complexity of structures and strategies. It seeks to uncover how the glocalization process unfolds, which are the mechanisms at its base and the outcomes in terms of stability, convergence or divergence in strategies and structures.
Design/methodology/approach
Through a case study research design, the paper investigates strategic change in an Italian MNE from 2005 to 2011. In 2008 and 2010, extensive data on organizational configurations were also collected. Overall, the paper analyses the glocalized blending of corporate and subsidiary strategies and organizational structures. Attention is also paid to the cognitive, political and institutional mechanisms that accounted for this process before and during the late‐2000 financial crisis.
Findings
Glocalization, largely interpreted as an in‐between process compromising between homogeneous global standards and heterogeneous local traditions, unfolds as a beyond process leading to divergent outcomes outside the poles of an imagined local‐global continuum. The mechanisms driving strategic change partly differ from those usually described in strategic change literature emphasizing managerial cognition. Sensegiving from the center is found to be proactive during economic expansion and reactive during economic downturn. Following change initiation, cognitive mechanisms are “taken over” by political and institutional ones. Paradoxically, local societal‐specific patterns of organization and strategy were preserved due to the actions of powerful central HQ actors.
Originality/value
A theory of institutional‐bound strategic change within MNEs is outlined.
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The purpose of this paper is to extend the understandingof how family logic is transferred through mundane practices across the subsidiaries of a Japanese multinational…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to extend the understandingof how family logic is transferred through mundane practices across the subsidiaries of a Japanese multinational corporation (MNC) in different national contexts.
Design/methodology/approach
In order to fulfil this purpose, a comparative qualitative case study was adopted with emphasis on actors’ interpretations.
Findings
Through qualitative data analysis, three findings and their theoretical significances can be summarised. First, it was found that the constellations of family, market and religion logics were transferred differently. This is significant for Japanese management scholars since it illuminates the importance of actors who perceive the (non-) necessity of logics in a Japanese MNC facing institutional dualities. Second, it was found that the family logic is enacted at different levels and with different boundaries. This is significant for both institutionalists and international business scholars since it highlights the strong influence of language and religion in the transfer of logics from one country to another. Third, it was found that the enactment of the family logic greatly affects the acceptability of Japanese management practices. This is significant for business managers since it further proposes an intimate relationship between Japanese management practices and the meanings attached to the family logic.
Originality/value
The originality of this work stems from an updated comparative qualitative study of the management of a Japanese MNCs’ subsidiaries across different countries, providing in-depth insights for international business, Japanese subsidiary management and institutional logics perspectives.