This article assesses gender‐related differences in rural enterprises and examines implications for development of economic policy and services in a rural district of Sweden. The…
Abstract
This article assesses gender‐related differences in rural enterprises and examines implications for development of economic policy and services in a rural district of Sweden. The article focuses on female owned micro enterprises. A quantitative and qualitative survey of 32 micro enterprise owners was carried out. Focus was on owner attitudes toward local governmental policies and programmes. There were not strong differences between genders for items using multiple‐choice responses. Where qualitative, written responses were solicited there were some differences in perceptions and attitudes. The female respondents tended to write more and respond in ways that suggest that they tend to reflect more upon the future and new possibilites. Differences in style of operation were evident; others have reported this. Written responses from female participants described in greater detail and more clearly the ongoing need for governmental support of networking activities and other programmes that promote cooperation and resource pooling (regardless of gender).
Details
Keywords
Hakan P. Sundberg and Karl W. Sandberg
The purpose of this paper is to look at process initiatives in the Swedish social insurance administration, focusing on the problems of crossing functional boundaries…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to look at process initiatives in the Swedish social insurance administration, focusing on the problems of crossing functional boundaries, co‐ordinating processes over inter‐organisational boundaries and the issue of whether to aim for radical or incremental change.
Design/methodology/approach
The survey involved data collection including a study of internal documents and 16 individual personal interviews.
Findings
The organisation experiences collaboration problems when cross‐functional work and processes collide with the traditional and hierarchical command and control structures. These are not easily dismantled, meaning intensive work to change the culture and break functional mind‐sets. Furthermore the administration struggles with and can benefit from co‐ordination of processes over the inter‐organisational boundaries. Changes in the customer front‐line affect the rest of the organisation and its processes. The study has shown that both functional units and support processes deep inside the organisation, like the systems development process, are affected, and that deficiencies in the underlying structure and organisation are revealed. The process efforts so far are scattered, but it may be more important for organisations to deploy process change, as a continuous strategic initiative, rather than embarking on huge radical redesign programmes.
Originality/value
Little information regarding processes and the public sector exists, and problems likely to be encountered by other public organisations are pointed out. The survey also puts light on support processes – not only business processes – required for e‐government.
Details
Keywords
Karl-Emanuel Dionne and Paul Carlile
Innovation challenges are increasingly complex, cutting across distributed actors from different disciplines, organizations, and fields. Solving such challenges requires creating…
Abstract
Innovation challenges are increasingly complex, cutting across distributed actors from different disciplines, organizations, and fields. Solving such challenges requires creating the capacities of opening up for innovation to access and develop a greater amount and variety of knowledge and resources. Perspectives on open source, open innovation, and interorganizational collaboration have explored such capacities, but from different origins and scopes of analysis. Our practice-based integrative framework of “opening innovation” helps highlight these differences and connect their relative strengths. Through a critical literature review paired with an analysis of different empirical cases from Hacking Health, a non-profit organization helping drive digital health innovation, the authors reveal the user-centric, firm-centric, and field-centric approaches to opening innovation that progressively connect a greater variety of actors and resources. The authors show how specific new relational practices they produce address the new relational dynamics these connections bring to accumulate more resources for innovation to keep progressing.
Details
Keywords
This paper proposes to rethink the concepts of relevance and usefulness and their relation to the theory–practice gap in management research.
Abstract
Purpose
This paper proposes to rethink the concepts of relevance and usefulness and their relation to the theory–practice gap in management research.
Methodology/approach
On the basis of the cognitive-linguistic relevance theory or inferential pragmatics, supplemented by insights from information science, we define relevance as a general conceptual category, while reserving usefulness for the instrumental application in a particular case.
Findings
There is no reason to hold onto the difference between theoretical and practical relevance, nor to distinguish between instrumental and conceptual relevance.
Originality/value
This novel approach will help to clarify the confusion in the field and contribute to a better understanding of the added value of management research.
Details
Keywords
Anna-Greta Nyström and Karl-Jacob Mickelsson
Previous research on advertising in digital contexts has emphasized its persuasive and information processing roles for the customer. This paper aims to problematize this point of…
Abstract
Purpose
Previous research on advertising in digital contexts has emphasized its persuasive and information processing roles for the customer. This paper aims to problematize this point of view and argues that the converged and interactive nature of digital media makes all advertising content into potential points of engagement in a digital media journey.
Design/methodology/approach
The paper is conceptual in nature and applies service logic (SL) and customer engagement to reconceptualize digital advertising and selling.
Findings
The authors present digital advertisements and digital media content as elements that contribute to a digital media journey, which ideally leads to a purchase. Advertising content is regarded as a resource used by consumers in their underlying value-creating processes. Thus, the digital advertising process is conceptualized as a customer-driven process of engaging with digital media content, where a purchase is incorporated in (and naturally follows from) the theme of engagement.
Research limitations/implications
The paper introduces the concept of contextually embedded selling, which refers to a process where digital advertising content is thematically congruent with the surrounding editorial content, so that both contribute to the same consumer journey. Otherwise, consumers experience a contextual jump – a disconnect in theme, place or time during the consumer’s process of engagement with the digital content.
Originality/value
The paper contributes to advertising theory on advertising, engagement and the emerging research on consumer journey design by presenting an approach based on SL, namely, contextually embedded digital selling.
Details
Keywords
The following bibliography focuses mainly on programs which can run on IBM microcomputers and compatibles under the operating system PC DOS/MS DOS, and which can be used in online…
Abstract
The following bibliography focuses mainly on programs which can run on IBM microcomputers and compatibles under the operating system PC DOS/MS DOS, and which can be used in online information and documentation work. They fall into the following categories:
Martin Spraggon and Virginia Bodolica
The purpose of this paper is to seek to contribute to the field of workplace play by introducing the notion of social ludic activities (SLAs) as a specific form of play in…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to seek to contribute to the field of workplace play by introducing the notion of social ludic activities (SLAs) as a specific form of play in organizations.
Design/methodology/approach
The conceptualization of SLAs is built upon insights from the practice and organizational play literatures.
Findings
SLAs can be deployed not only for productively engaging with work but also as an instrument to resist authority, boycott work or challenge firm contingencies. The particular enactments of SLAs may be influenced by how employees perceive and interpret the organizational climate (i.e. corporate culture, management style, job design and task complexity, and intra-firm interactions) in which they are embedded.
Practical implications
The recognition that emergent forms of play may be conducive to the generation of valuable outcomes without managerial intervention can save managers’ time and efforts required for dealing with potential employees’ resistance. Taking advantage from spontaneous manifestations of play implies understanding the logic of players and creating favorable corporate contexts for the emergence of SLAs rather than attempting to interfere in the natural experiences of flow.
Originality/value
SLAs are conceived as an alternative form of organizational play that is a priori unselfconscious and emergent, inherits autotelic and rational dimensions from prior views of play, draws upon practice insights, and represents the employee perspective.
Details
Keywords
Robin Holt and Jörgen Sandberg
Phenomena are what we as researchers begin with, and to study phenomena is to appreciate how any determination of things and events always relates back to the context in which…
Abstract
Phenomena are what we as researchers begin with, and to study phenomena is to appreciate how any determination of things and events always relates back to the context in which they appeared. Phenomenology is the study of such relations of appearance and the conditions of such relations. Appearance is an active rather than superficial condition, a constant bringing together of experiencing beings and experienced things (including sentient beings), in what the modern “father” of phenomenology Edmund Husserl called conditions of intentionality, and what his errant, one-time student Martin Heidegger called conditions of thrownness and projection. This chapter delves into the philosophical background of this mode of study, before opening up into consideration of, first, where phenomenology has been influential in organization studies, and, second, the potential of the approach. In so doing, we suggest much can be made of reorienting research in organization studies away from an entitative epistemology in which things are seen in increasingly causally linked, detailed isolation, and toward a relational epistemology in which what exists is understood in terms of its being experienced within everyday lives.
Details
Keywords
Avant‐propos sous les auspices de l'Institut international de Coopération intellectuelle, paraissait en 1934 le t. I, consacré à l'Europe, du Guide international des Archives. Le…
Abstract
Avant‐propos sous les auspices de l'Institut international de Coopération intellectuelle, paraissait en 1934 le t. I, consacré à l'Europe, du Guide international des Archives. Le questionnaire envoyé à tous les États européens comportait sous les points 4 et 6 les questions suivantes: ‘Existe‐t‐il un guide général pour les diverses catégories d'Archives ou des guides particuliers pour l'une ou l'autre d'entre elles?’ et ‘Existe‐t‐il des catalogues imprimés, des publications tant officielles que privées, susceptibles de constituer un instrument complet de référence pour tout ou partie importante des fonds d'archives?’ Les réponses des divers pays à ces questions, malgré leur caractère très inégal, ont fait du Guide international un bon instrument d'information générale sur les Archives. Malheureusement les circonstances ont empêché la publication du volume consacré aux États non européens, tandis que le temps qui s'écoulait tendait à rendre périmés les renseignements fournis sur les Archives européennes.