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1 – 10 of 592Kristopher Deming, Craig Wesley Carpenter and John Anders
Publicly available datasets in the USA present data suppression issues that limit the ability to investigate entrepreneurial subgroups like military veterans, which account for…
Abstract
Purpose
Publicly available datasets in the USA present data suppression issues that limit the ability to investigate entrepreneurial subgroups like military veterans, which account for about one in ten entrepreneurs in the USA. Thus, despite public desire to support veteran entrepreneurs (“vetrepreneurs”), there is a limited descriptive understanding on the relationship between veteran business owner demographics, such as gender and race, and their business survival and growth. We address this limited understanding in this article by providing descriptive evidence on veteran-owned business survival and growth, emphasizing variation across race and gender.
Design/methodology/approach
We use limited-access longitudinal microdata to provide descriptive evidence on the survival and growth of veteran-owned firms across race and gender.
Findings
Findings indicate statistically significant variation across demographic subgroups’ business survival and employment growth. For example, veteran-owned firms have high women ownership rates, greater employment, revenues and payrolls, but also lower employment and revenue growth. More generally we provide descriptive evidence that military experience or the military community help women overcome the gender gap in small business survival.
Originality/value
This type of descriptive research is common among entrepreneurial researchers, however, peer-reviewed research specific to US veterans is very limited. These descriptive results are useful for policymakers and for spurring future policy research related to veteran entrepreneurs.
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Sara Linderson, John Lars Anders Larsson, Seyoum Eshetu Birkie and Monica Bellgran
This study explores how industrial production companies adjust implementation strategies to deliver value with their company-specific production system (XPS) in a multi-site…
Abstract
Purpose
This study explores how industrial production companies adjust implementation strategies to deliver value with their company-specific production system (XPS) in a multi-site setting. Implementing an XPS is part of operations management and is supposed to mobilise employees resource-efficiently to increase operational performance.
Design/methodology/approach
Based on a multiple-case study, this study qualitatively explores the patterns of implementation decisions within and between five multi-site production companies. Conclusions were drawn on a mix of timely and retrospective data gathered through individual interviews with senior managers and joint workshops where they interacted and shared experiences.
Findings
This study identifies the fact that companies respond differently to non-unique implementation challenges, constituting various decision patterns when implementing their XPS. This paper identifies four implementation strategies (Education, Tool, Pragmatic and Culture Strategy) that explain various implementation setups. More experienced companies frequently shifted between strategies to return to previously de-prioritised implementation aspects.
Originality/value
This paper offers a dynamic model for XPS implementation in contrast to a simplified tool–system–culture sequence in literature today. Companies that deliberately shift implementation strategy by understanding the benefits and challenges of their decisions are more likely to keep momentum in the XPS implementation.
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John Johansen and Jens O. Riis
The article discusses the characteristics of the future industrial company, the so‐called interactive firm, and the challenges awaiting it down the road. To this end, a framework…
Abstract
Purpose
The article discusses the characteristics of the future industrial company, the so‐called interactive firm, and the challenges awaiting it down the road. To this end, a framework for the strategic positioning of tomorrow's industrial company is proposed.
Design/methodology/approach
In order to illustrate that the interactive firm may take on different forms, three archetypal, future‐oriented firms have been identified and tested in a panel of industrial managers to flesh out this framework.
Findings
The article provides a detailed picture of the strategic roles and functioning of the interactive firm.
Practical implications
Individual firms may use the framework as a guide to position themselves in the industrial climate of the future. The framework also includes five different strategic production roles that an industrial firm should consider.
Originality/value
The value of the article is that it triggers both scholars and practitioners to study and consider different forms as well as key characteristics of the industrial enterprise of the future.
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Office design can be a powerful agent in achieving organisational and cultural change; however, far too often office design is relegated to the side lines by supply side‐thinking…
Abstract
Office design can be a powerful agent in achieving organisational and cultural change; however, far too often office design is relegated to the side lines by supply side‐thinking in the property and construction industries (including architecture), and by ignorance and over delegation on the part of businesses. A wide gap separates supply and demand. Case studies are used to demonstrate what design has done for a handful of organisations who have been prepared to think strategically about office space in the current turbulent business environment. These case studies demonstrate that, if office space is to be used successfully to achieve business purposes, four essential factors must be in place: visionary leadership; integration of the design of the use of information technology (IT), human resources (HR), and office space; large scale user involvement in the process of change, ie change management; and, finally, systematic data collection to measure the relation between buildings and organisational purpose. With all four factors in place the gap that has been identified can be closed and a powerful managerial resource can be put purposefully to work.
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Randy Pitman, an eloquent critic of librarians' print bias, has publicly noted a fact that should be obvious: referring to audiovisual materials in terms of what they are not…
Abstract
Randy Pitman, an eloquent critic of librarians' print bias, has publicly noted a fact that should be obvious: referring to audiovisual materials in terms of what they are not (e.g., “non‐book materials”) automatically affords them second‐class status. Another media activist, Don Roberts, asserts that many selectors of multimedia library materials consider them to be “frivolous, secondary, or just plain negligible in content by comparison with printed materials.” In an article published twelve years ago which offered practical suggestions for overcoming “ingrained and inherent ‘printism,’” he listed alternative media producers and distributors, noted review sources outside the standard library literature, and provided other ideas for countering “the mistaken belief that you are required to leave your high‐fidelity, sensory‐aware self at home, or in your car, or at the concert hall, when you go to work at the library.” Today, he still finds “people who continue to specialize in formats, sentimentalize them, and try to perpetuate this or that medium as the pinnacle of consciousness…sometimes denying others access to formats which might be more appropriate to them in the process.” We are all multimedia beings, Roberts says: There is no way that books alone will enable us to “transform, inspire, and enliven.” Compiled with those thoughts in mind, the following annotated list of media producers and distributors which specialize in social issues—ethnicity, labor, peace, environment, and human rights, to name a few—primarily emphasizes independent and less well‐known media productions. Also worth noting are review sources like Angle—a publication covering work by women filmmakers (P.O. Box 11916, Milwaukee, Wl 53211, 414–963–8951; $20 individual, $30 institutional), Black Film Review (P.O. Box 18665, Washington, DC 20036; $12 individual, $24 institutional), and the lesbian/gay‐oriented Out in Video (Persona Press, Box 14022, San Francisco, CA 94114; $10).
This paper reviews and assesses the aim, substance, and impact of Simon Susen’s book, “The Postmodern Turn” in the Social Sciences.
Abstract
Purpose
This paper reviews and assesses the aim, substance, and impact of Simon Susen’s book, “The Postmodern Turn” in the Social Sciences.
Methodology/approach
The review follows the structure of Susen’s book, by description and by evaluation.
Findings
Susen’s book encompasses a very large volume of literature of the self-defined “postmodern,” then concludes that the covered material has contributed little that is new to the social sciences.
Originality/value
The review has not been previously published, does not replicate any prior assessment known to the author.
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The purpose of this paper is to critique the metaphor of “shadow organizing” in relation to researchers’ allegedly ontological commitment to processual metaphysics.
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to critique the metaphor of “shadow organizing” in relation to researchers’ allegedly ontological commitment to processual metaphysics.
Design/methodology/approach
The paper focuses on the association of “shadow organizing” with post-epistemologies that are grounded in process ontology. The investigation examines aspects of relational thinking and is guided by John Dewey and Arthur Bentley’s genealogical reconstruction of modes of inquiry.
Findings
Inquiry is construed in either substantialist or relational ways by researchers. By using the metaphor of “shadow organizing,” the relational aspects of organizational phenomena are prioritized for explorative purposes. Other research objectives are aided by substantialist modes of inquiry. It is the argument of the paper, however, that relational research approaches need not make commitment to process ontology, and that the relational ambitions imbued in the metaphor of shadow organizing are in fact better honored for their methodological virtues.
Originality/value
The paper’s original contribution consists in critiquing post-epistemological attempts to ground organization studies in ontological first principles of process metaphysics. The paper argues that the metaphor of “shadow organizing” is a promising concept that is better appreciated as a methodological move than an ontological commitment.
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