Search results

The purpose of this paper is to demonstrate how top managers seek to provide the necessary leadership inside an organisation when sustainability is a primary strategic objective, and the paper seeks to ask to what extent it is possible to influence sustainability at the operational level by contemporary management control systems as it proposes to integrate the perspective of organizational culture.

The paper is based on a single case study of Novo Nordisk A/S.

The paper concludes by asking questions to managerial practice as well as to theory, concerning to what extent sustainability practices are measured by concurrent management control systems, and to what extent organizational culture perspective is a necessary prerequisite to manage and control sustainable leadership practice.

Future research should engage in exploring informal and organizational cultural aspects of how managers control the integration of sustainability into business practice.

The paper is based on a single case study of a company internationally known for its high standards of sustainable leadership practice, and the conclusions therefore provide guidelines for other managers considering ways of integrating sustainability.

The paper brings new attention to the appropriateness of existing management control systems when managers attempt to control sustainability practices and it suggests the importance of organizational culture in an original case study of Novo Nordisk A/S.

This study investigates, on the basis of a unique combination of two large‐scale data sets, how rent sharing interacts with the gender wage gap in the Belgian private sector. Empirical findings show that individual gross hourly wages are significantly and positively related to firm profits‐per‐employee even when controlling for group effects in the residuals, individual and firm characteristics, industry wage differentials and endogeneity of profits. Our instrumented wage‐profit elasticity is of the magnitude 0.06 and it is not significantly different for men and women. Of the overall gender wage gap (on average women earn 23.7 per cent less than men), results show that around 14 per cent can be explained by the fact that on average women are employed in firms where profits‐per‐employee are lower. Thus, findings suggest that a substantial part of the gender wage gap is attributable to the segregation of women in less profitable firms.

The purpose of this Guest editorial is to introduce a much needed special issue on leadership and sustainability/CSR, and to provide a road‐map for readers as to focus and content. And, last but not least, it seeks to present an opportunity for the Guest editor to thank the many kind people who gave of their time to review the many papers submitted for this special issue. If it were not for their help and wisdom, the project would not have been possible.

The Guest editorial begins by reviewing some of the key issues facing leaders in organizations operating in a context of both serious global social problems and looming environmental crises.

It was found that, while books and articles focusing on CSR abound, there is very little that addresses the leadership aspect, and even less that is based on sound empirical research.

The introduction provides a brief overview of the articles contained in the special issue and a summary of what each contributes to the field.

The purpose of this paper is to critique and extend contemporary scholarship on information and communication technologies (ICTs). This paper argues that the focus on the selection and use of a single communication medium limits the understanding of current ICT use in organizations. A combinatorial perspective is needed to capture the complexities of multiple ICTs use for achieving communication goals and completing tasks.

This paper addresses the trending phenomenon of combinatorial use of ICTs by offering a critical review of the theoretical studies and empirical research in scholarly books and journals and deriving novel theoretical research questions that set the stage for future studies.

This paper identifies how combinatorial ICT use as a perspective that uniquely elucidates ICT use in organizations, clarifies key terms used in previous research and proposes theoretical and operational recommendations for researchers and corporate practitioners who are interested in studying the combinatorial use of ICTs.

This paper highlights that understanding the combinatorial use ICTs in complex work environments could have significant implications for productivity and efficiency of individuals and corporations. This paper serves as a catalyst for on-going research conversations regarding combinatorial ICT use, while assisting organizational communication researchers and practitioners in describing, theorizing and advancing ICT implementation, use and outcomes.

We explore how absolute and relative incomes affect an individual's propensity to start a new business as a pure or hybrid entrepreneur. Using a sample of 12,686 individuals from the National Longitudinal Survey of Youth, 1979 cohort (NLSY79) in our empirical analyses, we find that individuals with high absolute income are generally less likely to engage in entrepreneurship. However, once absolute income is controlled, those with above-average relative income are more likely to become an entrepreneur, particularly in pure form as opposed to a hybrid one. Our findings provide more nuanced understanding on the differences between absolute and relative income levels influencing an individual's decision to become an entrepreneur, and if so, whether to engage in pure or hybrid form.

In addressing positive general education teaching practices for use with students with or at risk for emotional and behavioral disorders (EBD), the chapter emphasizes teacher behavior change research that has been informed by applied behavior analytic (ABA) principles. Its central theme is that general education teachers can access research informed by ABA in developing prosocial instructional and management practices. Highlighted teaching practices include fostering correct academic responses from students, increasing active student response, and using contingent praise with regularity. The chapter also discusses functional behavioral assessment, positive behavioral interventions and supports, and controversial behavior change issues surrounding seclusion and restraints and medication, topics related to teaching students with or at risk for EBD in general education settings.

The purpose of this paper is to focus on the role of unions for job flow rates.

The author uses a longitudinal data set emphasizing the importance of the time dimension.

Using the fixed effects estimator, the author finds that unions decrease the job separation rate and the job finding rate.

The findings support that the implications of the insider-outsider model by Lindbeck and Snower (1986): unions are beneficial for insiders but harm outsiders.

Evaluating the effectiveness of an internationally-developed civic education curriculum, this study randomly sampled 1,015 students to assess student learning about democracy in Ukraine. Statistically significant differences were found between male and female Ukrainian students who participated in the course. While this analysis discerns that boys seem to benefit more from the curriculum than girls, it also finds these differences to be minor. More importantly, the study verifies that while both boys and girls improve their knowledge of democratic content, they show no statistically significant difference in their improvement. Thus, the curriculum seems to have a positive effect on democratic attitudes among all of the students and, in particular, those of the male student population.

In this chapter, we propose a theoretical assessment of the relationship between unions and investments. We develop a simple model where a firm chooses its investment level anticipating the employee's effort choice and the outcome of wage bargaining. First, and consistently with the holdup view, we find that the union's bargaining power has a negative effect on the accumulation of fixed capital. Second, we show that this negative effect is mitigated by the voice ability of unions to ease the displeasure of exerting effort. Hence, when the voice ability of unions is strong vis-à-vis their bargaining power, the holdup view does not necessarily survive, and unionized firms invest more than their nonunionized competitors.