Taking successful cooperation in industry as its starting point, this article looks at the key areas where, if the agreed objective of strengthening international competitivness…
Abstract
Taking successful cooperation in industry as its starting point, this article looks at the key areas where, if the agreed objective of strengthening international competitivness is to be achieved, cooperation among those involved in tourism will be of the greatest importance. Switzerland is about to implent a federal government decree aimed at promoting innovation and cooperation in tourism for this very purpose. It offers financial incentives for innovative projects designed to improve cooperation in Swiss tourism.
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Introduction Economics has been defined and re‐defined several times in the past, and even within the dominant scientific orientation of the discipline, there are currently a…
Abstract
Introduction Economics has been defined and re‐defined several times in the past, and even within the dominant scientific orientation of the discipline, there are currently a number of alternative definitions. One of the definitions, which has been gaining increasing popularity in recent years is “economics as the science of choices.” This definition focuses on the fundamental objective of the discipline as currently formulated, namely, the optimum allocation of resources through appropriate choices, or in other words, the development of economic engineering based on science. We will use the concept of choices as the convenient point of entry into the exploration of the nature of economic reality, or its ontology.
Pingqing Liu, Yunyun Yuan, Lifeng Yang, Bin Liu and Shuang Xu
The aim of this study is to examine the relationships between taking charge, bootlegging innovation and innovative job performance, and to explore the moderating roles of felt…
Abstract
Purpose
The aim of this study is to examine the relationships between taking charge, bootlegging innovation and innovative job performance, and to explore the moderating roles of felt responsibility for constructive change (FRCC) and creative self-efficacy (CSE).
Design/methodology/approach
Data for this research was collected from 503 employees working in a chain company. Through a longitudinal study design, a three-wave survey with 397 valid data provided support for the proposed theoretical model.
Findings
The results maintain a positive association between taking charge, bootlegging innovation and innovative job performance, indicating the mediating effect of bootlegging innovation. Additionally, both the FRCC and CSE facilitate the indirect effect of taking charge on innovative job performance through bootlegging innovation. Furthermore, the integrated moderated mediation model analysis suggested that FRCC is more vital in improving employees' innovative job performance.
Originality/value
This research aims to break the black box between taking charge and innovative job performance, which has been relatively unexplored. Drawing from self-determination theory (SDT) and the proactive motivation model, the authors verify the bridge-building role of bootlegging innovation and the dual-facilitating effects of FRCC and CSE while employees conduct taking charge. This study’s results provide new insight for managers to foster, encourage and support employees' proactive behavior.
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– The purpose of this paper is to investigate who rules the world. The hypothesis is that it is the 0.1 per cent of owners and controllers of capital.
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to investigate who rules the world. The hypothesis is that it is the 0.1 per cent of owners and controllers of capital.
Design/methodology/approach
This study used secondary sources including the Bureau Van Dyk and The World Top Incomes database to look at distributions of income and wealth (stock ownership). This is supplemented with a secondary source analysis and with some interviews.
Findings
The top point one per centers, the wealthy, those on the top incomes and transnational capitalist class are all distinct but overlapping categories that describe the (white) men and (few) women who hold power through their ownership and/or control of capital and who are thereby directly or indirectly able to act hegemonically on an emerging global basis.
Research limitations/implications
Theorists of the global school of capitalism Alveredo et al., 2013 argue that there has been a qualitatively new twenty-first century transnational capitalism in the process of emerging (see Robinson, 2012a). This paper tests this assumption and relates it to the work by Hamm 2010.
Social implications
The flip side of this progressively widening concentration of income and wealth into fewer (0.1 per cent) hands brings new lows to the polarisation of class, exploitation and domination. All of these have intensified since the 1980s with the end of the Keynesian Compromise. This north/south accentuated division has implications for social justice.
Originality/value
This seeks to identify empirical evidence to support the theory of an emerging transnational capitalist class.
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The concept of positioning is fundamental to how a company approaches and succeeds in a market. Despite a growing body of literature on positioning, existing research has focused…
Abstract
Purpose
The concept of positioning is fundamental to how a company approaches and succeeds in a market. Despite a growing body of literature on positioning, existing research has focused mainly on larger companies and brands. This paper aims to apply the concept of positioning to small- and medium-sized enterprises (SME) companies to explore how SME entrepreneurs understand and approach the positioning of their company, and what differences exist compared to large companies and brands.
Design/methodology/approach
Using a qualitative research approach, this study is based on focus groups involving 13 SME entrepreneurs. The data were analyzed using a qualitative structuring content analysis, which resulted in a newly developed and empirically based typology of SME positioning strategies.
Findings
The results indicate that SME entrepreneurs view positioning as highly relevant but differ from larger companies in terms of market and brand orientation. Building on the interviews, an empirical matrix of four positioning strategies was developed which SME entrepreneurs typically use: specialization, differentiation, conviction and opposition.
Practical implications
Based on the developed positioning typology, this study proposes a two-step approach for SME entrepreneurs: gaining clarity on the basic positioning dimensions and exploring four strategic fields of action.
Originality/value
Overall, the findings contribute to a better understanding of SME entrepreneurs' positioning strategies as important building blocks for market and brand success. The new positioning typology provides a conceptual contribution for further research in the marketing/entrepreneurship interface.
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Jana Groß Ophoff and Colin Cramer
The German evidence-based model of educational governance is bureaucratically regulated, but teachers and schools are autonomous in their way of implementing requirements in…
Abstract
The German evidence-based model of educational governance is bureaucratically regulated, but teachers and schools are autonomous in their way of implementing requirements in schools. Accountability is ensured by regularly monitoring educational outcomes with reference to national educational standards, e.g. in the form of mandatory comparative performance tests. In this context, it is worth determining the process stages of research engagement with which the available data or evidence is associated and which purposes they can serve in teacher education and practice. Building on that, an overview is provided of the state of (mainly German) research on teachers' and school leaders' research engagement and influencing factors. This research field has flourished in the wake of the Empirical Shift in German education. By now the understanding has emerged that ultimately the depth of inferential processes is vital for sustainable development and this in turn is influenced by data, context and user characteristics. On the individual level, in particular, positive affective-motivational dispositions and research literacy are deemed important, whereas the feeling of being controlled has detrimental effects. On the school level, school culture and leadership are of impact, whereas a certain continuity of measures on the governance level proves meaningful for the engagement with data and evidence in educational practice. With regard to the German experience, it is concluded that more (funded) dialogue opportunities between different actors and professional groups in education are needed and that initial and further training should strive even more to impart a meta-reflective stance or enquiry habit of mind.
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Donald H. Kluemper, Arjun Mitra and Siting Wang
Over the past decade, the rapid evolution of social media has impacted the field of human resource management in numerous ways. In response, scholars and practitioners have sought…
Abstract
Over the past decade, the rapid evolution of social media has impacted the field of human resource management in numerous ways. In response, scholars and practitioners have sought to begin an investigation of the myriad of ways that social media impacts organizations. To date, research evidence on a range of HR-related topics are just beginning to emerge, but are scattered across a range of diverse literatures. The principal aim of this chapter is to review the current literature on the study of social media in HRM and to integrate these disparate emerging literatures. During our review, we discuss the existent research, describe the theoretical foundations of such work, and summarize key research findings and themes into a coherent social media framework relevant to HRM. Finally, we offer recommendations for future work that can enhance knowledge of social media’s impact in organizations.
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The Soweto revolt of 1976 was mounted by black students in South Africa mobilized under the banner of the Black Consciousness (BC) ideology. However, when thousands of these…
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The Soweto revolt of 1976 was mounted by black students in South Africa mobilized under the banner of the Black Consciousness (BC) ideology. However, when thousands of these youths were driven into exile by state repression, they joined the African National Congress (ANC) or its military wing. When hundreds of them returned as guerrillas after 1978, some were arrested and tried, while others were involved in spectacular shootouts with the police. The resulting press coverage began to revive ANC ideology in popular consciousness. With further publicity in 1980 from a Free Mandela campaign, and from luridly successful sabotage attacks, popular support for the ANC soared, shaping political events for the rest of the decade. The only other noteworthy tendency among blacks was the Zulu‐based Inkatha movement led by Chief Gatsha Buthelezi, whose support among young people was slight because of his hostile stance to both BC and the ANC.
David M. Boje and Grace Ann Rosile
South African scholars, like most scholars in the developing world, have sold the idea that social constructivism is the gold standard of qualitative management research. In this…
Abstract
South African scholars, like most scholars in the developing world, have sold the idea that social constructivism is the gold standard of qualitative management research. In this chapter, we caution against this subordination to unquestioned conventions and offer a process relational ontology as an alternative to social constructivism that is often punted by most qualitative research programmes and textbooks. We also debunk the idea that ‘grounded theory’ exists by delving into epistemology and showing how science is ‘self-correcting’ rather than ‘tabula rasa’. Instead of boxing business ethics knowledge, as has been done by the case study gurus, we encourage business and organisational ethicists to own their indigenous heritage through storytelling science based on the self-correcting method underpinned by Popperian and Peircian epistemological thought. This chapter encourages business management researchers to move towards more profound ethical knowledge by refuting and falsifying false assumptions in each phase of the study, in a sequence of self-correcting storytelling phases. This is what Karl Popper called trial and error, and what C.S. Peirce called self-correcting by the triadic of Abduction–Induction–Deduction. We offer a novel method for accomplishing this aim that we call ‘Conversational Interviews’ that are based on antenarrative storytelling sciences. Our chapter aims to evoking the transformative power of indigenous ontological antenarratives in authentic conversation in order to solve immediate local problems ad fill the many institutional voids that plague the South(ern)-/African context.
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David Cooperrider, David Cooperrider and Suresh Srivastva
It’s been thirty years since the original articulation of “Appreciative Inquiry in Organizational Life” was written in collaboration with my remarkable mentor Suresh Srivastva…
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It’s been thirty years since the original articulation of “Appreciative Inquiry in Organizational Life” was written in collaboration with my remarkable mentor Suresh Srivastva (Cooperrider & Srivastva, 1987). That article – first published in Research in Organization Development and Change – generated more experimentation in the field, more academic excitement, and more innovation than anything we had ever written. As the passage of time has enabled me to look more closely at what was written, I feel both a deep satisfaction with the seed vision and scholarly logic offered for Appreciative Inquiry, as well as well as the enormous impact and continuing reverberation. Following the tradition of authors such as Carl Rogers who have re-issued their favorite works but have also added brief reflections on key points of emphasis, clarification, or editorial commentary I am presenting the article by David Cooperrider (myself) and the late Suresh Srivastva in its entirety, but also with new horizon insights. In particular I write with excitement and anticipation of a new OD – what my colleagues and I are calling the next “IPOD” that is, innovation-inspired positive OD that brings AI’s gift of new eyes together in common cause with several other movements in the human sciences: the strengths revolution in management; the positive pscyhology and positive organizational scholarship movements; the design thinking explosion; and the biomimicry field which is all about an appreciative eye toward billions of years of nature’s wisdom and innovation inspired by life.
This article presents a conceptual refigurationy of action-research based on a “sociorationalist” view of science. The position that is developed can be summarized as follows: For action-research to reach its potential as a vehicle for social innovation it needs to begin advancing theoretical knowledge of consequence; that good theory may be one of the best means human beings have for affecting change in a postindustrial world; that the discipline’s steadfast commitment to a problem solving view of the world acts as a primary constraint on its imagination and contribution to knowledge; that appreciative inquiry represents a viable complement to conventional forms of action-research; and finally, that through our assumptions and choice of method we largely create the world we later discover.