Marcu Handte, Christian Becker and Kurt Rothermel
Pervasive computing envisions seamless support for user tasks through cooperating devices that are present in an environment. Fluctuating availability of devices, induced by…
Abstract
Pervasive computing envisions seamless support for user tasks through cooperating devices that are present in an environment. Fluctuating availability of devices, induced by mobility and failures, requires mechanisms and algorithms that allow applications to adapt to their ever‐changing execution environments without user intervention. To ease the development of adaptive applications, Becker et al. (3) have proposed the peer‐based component system PCOM. This system provides fundamental mechanisms to support the automated composition of applications at runtime. In this article, we discuss the requirements on algorithms that enable automatic configuration of pervasive applications. Furthermore, we show how finding a configuration can be interpreted as Distributed Constraint Satisfaction Problem. Based on this, we present an algorithm that is capable of finding an application configuration in the presence of strictly limited resources. To show the feasibility of this algorithm, we present an evaluation based on simulations and real‐world measurements and we compare the results with a simple greedy approximation.
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This paper aims to present a systematic method to implement a single‐source content management system for optimized data flow for standardized documentation and reporting. A…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to present a systematic method to implement a single‐source content management system for optimized data flow for standardized documentation and reporting. A historical background in production efficiency is also provided.
Design/methodology/approach
A systematic deployment strategy is provided for identifying, collecting, securing, standardizing, automating, and globalizing key information. The approach incorporates lean elements from 5S, standardized work instructions, and lean visioning.
Findings
It was found that the reallocation of time management from operators, management, and support groups has increased compliancy and throughputs, while driving down extraneous costs.
Research limitations/implications
Some implications associated with the inability to initiate a full single‐source content management system are discussed.
Originality/value
This paper provides tools for improving the quality and productivity of data flow. Both long‐term and short‐term trends can be observed and yield improvement opportunities.
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Jingxuan Li, Yong Ye and Runmei Luo
Labor-related risks resulting from layoffs may pique auditors’ scrutiny. Although previous research has enriched the understanding of the economic consequences of layoffs, the…
Abstract
Purpose
Labor-related risks resulting from layoffs may pique auditors’ scrutiny. Although previous research has enriched the understanding of the economic consequences of layoffs, the authors know relatively little about the relationship between layoffs and audit fees. This study aims to investigate whether auditors are concerned about corporate layoff events and their pricing decisions under the influence of the events.
Design/methodology/approach
This study examines the effect of layoff storms on audit fees using news reports from mainstream financial and economic media in China about layoffs in listed companies. Based on whether the company is reported to have layoffs by the media in a fiscal year, this study collects data on 204 layoff storms in A-share listed companies from 2008 to 2022. Then, this study uses propensity score matching to reduce the interference of basic company characteristics.
Findings
This study finds that audit fees are higher after firms experience layoff storms. Higher internal control quality and pay advantage in the industry weaken the positive relationship between layoff storms and audit fees, while higher political uncertainty strengthens this positive relationship. Further tests show that companies with proactive layoffs, persistent layoffs and media disclosures of layoff numbers face more audit fees, but the type of corporate response to the layoff does not influence audit pricing.
Originality/value
This study contributes to the literature on audit pricing and the economic consequences of layoffs by emphasizing the impact of labor-related risks on audit fees.
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Haifen Lin, Mengya Chen and Jingqin Su
The purpose of this paper is to address how management innovations are implemented deeply at the most micro level of organizations, namely, organizational routines, or to…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to address how management innovations are implemented deeply at the most micro level of organizations, namely, organizational routines, or to investigate the process through which organizational routines evolve in implementing management innovations, with existing routines overturned and new routines created and solidified.
Design/methodology/approach
This paper adopts an interpretive and exploratory case study on the case of Day-Definite (DD) innovation which has successfully brought Arima World Group Company Limited (HOAU) into a new value-added arena, in terms of timing, security and high service quality. Considering that DD innovation reflects a systematic innovation of the whole organization, this paper focuses on it to explore the complex implementation mechanism of management innovation. Multiple approaches were utilized during data collection to meet criteria for trustworthiness, including semi-structured interviews, archival data and observation; and the data analysis went through a five-step process.
Findings
The results confirm management innovation as a complex project concerning organizational routines which represent a central and fundamental element of organizations. Also, it finds that organizational routines evolve in innovation implementation through a three-phase process consisting of the existing-routine-domination phase, the new-routine-creation phase and -solidification phases, each exhibiting different innovation activities and characteristics of participants’ cognition and behaviors; recreation of new routines is the key for routine evolution, thus for success of management innovations.
Research limitations/implications
This research is constrained by several limitations. The set-up framework of organizational routine evolution in innovation implementation needs a further confirmation in more organizations; other elements, such as cognition of managers, resource orchestration, environmental elements or organizational culture, should be considered for the success of innovation implementation; and more attention should be paid to the potential power asymmetries among participants and its potential influence on forming shared schemata and subsequent new routines, besides interactions and role taking.
Originality/value
The findings offer some valuable insights for further research on management innovation and organizational routines and hold important implications for management practices. This research extends research on management innovation and the Kurt Lewin Change Theory and Change Model to explore innovation implementation at a most micro level; furthers research on organizational routines, especially routine dynamic theory, by holding the two-component view and exploring the process through which organizational routines evolve; and contributes to research on the relationship between organizational routines and innovations by taking an organizational routines’ perspective. It reminds managers of the depth and complication of innovation implementation.
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The purpose of this paper is to illustrate the contribution offered by Wolff’s sociology of knowledge to organizational ethnography and to enrich the lexicon of practice-based…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to illustrate the contribution offered by Wolff’s sociology of knowledge to organizational ethnography and to enrich the lexicon of practice-based studies with the concept of surrender-and-catch.
Design/methodology/approach
Drawing on Wolff’s writing, the surrender-and-catch perspective is introduced and how to be inspired by it is illustrated in relation to three working practices.
Findings
The centrality of the body and of sensible knowledge for doing ethnographies of working practices is affirmed and the surrender-and-catch perspective is interpreted as an art of seeing connections.
Practical implications
Surrender-to may be included in the methodology for studying knowing-in-practice and it may help students to get prepared to conduct an organizational ethnography.
Originality/value
A contribution to frame the legacy of a sociologist of knowledge little known in organization studies. Its contribution stresses the importance of a plurality of forms of knowing alongside the rational-analytic one. Therefore Kurt Wolff’s work becomes relevant within the practice-based studies.
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Purpose – The purpose of this chapter is to develop a framework for understanding deviant genres of music. Although it seems destructive, deviant music has…
Abstract
Purpose – The purpose of this chapter is to develop a framework for understanding deviant genres of music. Although it seems destructive, deviant music has positive effects, and can encourage greater socialization into the larger society.
Design/methodology/approach – By looking at deviant music of the past, it is possible to see more clearly why such music was created, and what functions it has in society. Three main functions were identified: social criticism, spreading the news, and public catharsis of outstanding events.
Findings – These three functions are found in deviant music today. But there are differences. Heavy metal, a counter culture, uses offensive language and images to repel unwanted outsiders and thus avoids commercialization. Grunge, music of a drop out culture, became popular and lost some of its alternative identity. Rap started as a legitimate African American youth art form but was hijacked by the music industry and has expanded beyond a meaningful art world. This has left both artists and listeners vulnerable to a distorted image.
Originality – The real value of deviant music is its historical record of the inner world of subcultures.
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Mike Zundel, Anders La Cour and Ghita Dragsdahl Lauritzen
George Spencer Brown is best known for his book Laws of Form, which elaborates a primary algebra of distinctions and forms capable of dealing with self-referential equations…
Abstract
George Spencer Brown is best known for his book Laws of Form, which elaborates a primary algebra of distinctions and forms capable of dealing with self-referential equations reflective of paradoxes in logic. The book has received little attention in mathematics, but it has greatly influenced cybernetics, communications, and ecological theories. But Spencer Brown also published poetry and stories, often under different names, and he practiced as a psychotherapist. Our chapter elaborates the utility of Laws of Form relating to organizational paradox before considering Spencer Brown’s other works in relation to his mathematics. Invoking philosophy, psychoanalysis and art, we suggest that these indicate a further distinction that sets all forms against the “nothing”: a wholeness or unity from out of which all distinctions, all words, meaning and life – but also all silence, nonsense and death – emerge in paradoxical opposition. Reading Spencer Brown not through the prism of mathematics, but as an evocative invitation to engage with the fissures that animate art and human life, highlights the paradoxical interplay of organization and violence; and how tragedy, suffering, sympathy and love should be more prominent in organizational research.
Kara D. Rutowski, Jeffery K. Guiler and Kurt E. Schimmel
The purpose of this paper is to examine organizational commitment within nonprofit organizations and demonstrate the effectiveness of benchmarking attitudinal constructs.
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to examine organizational commitment within nonprofit organizations and demonstrate the effectiveness of benchmarking attitudinal constructs.
Design/methodology/approach
A web based 21 question survey was conducted utilizing a professional organization's membership list. The survey was then analyzed to determine if differences could be found in a local market compared to the larger (geographic) sample. Manova was used to examine mean differences across the variables.
Findings
The results revealed six constructs where attitudinal differences occurred. The differences allow management to determine if they are even with, above or below the average for the larger region and adjust management practices accordingly to increase organizational commitment.
Research limitations/implications
Because of the chosen research approach, the research results may lack generalisability. Therefore, researchers are encouraged to test the proposed propositions further with a larger national sample.
Practical implications
Benchmarking organizational commitment allows management to adjust practices to improve and retain employees. Retaining employees saves the cost of training and ensures continued delivery of services.
Originality/value
This paper fulfils an identified need to demonstrate the utility of benchmarking against a sample of peer organizations in the realm of organizational behavior and human resources constructs. This also extends the literature in the area of nonprofit management.
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Kurt Rachlitz, Benjamin Grossmann-Hensel and Ronja Friedl
In this paper, the authors aim to clarify the relationship between organization and society. They argue that the proliferation of organization in modernity has not yet been…
Abstract
Purpose
In this paper, the authors aim to clarify the relationship between organization and society. They argue that the proliferation of organization in modernity has not yet been properly understood in light of the absence of organization in premodern times. The authors therefore ask: Why do organizations proliferate? Why do they proliferate in such manifold organizational forms? And how can these heterogeneous forms nevertheless be related to a common problem to which organizations provide a solution? A comparative historical analysis based on the theory of social systems reveals that organizations fill a gap which the decline of morality as an integrative success medium created.
Design/methodology/approach
The paper develops a conceptual framework focusing on the theory of media within Luhmann’s theory of social systems as a point of departure. The authors discuss the concept of “interpenetration” to assess the relation between morality and organization. They raise several follow-up questions for future empirical research, most prominently pertaining to the relationship between organization and digitalization.
Findings
The main finding is that morality can be conceptualized as a specific success medium (alongside religion and symbolically generalized communication media) which used to structure premodern societies by means of social and interhuman interpenetration at once. Modern society instead employs two differentiated forms of interpenetration: Social interpretation through organizations and interhuman interpenetration through love relationships. These centripetal counterforces help to mediate the centrifugal forces unleashed by the full development of modern success media. Modern society critically depends on the proliferation of organizations.
Originality/value
This paper examines the relationship between morality and organization not from the perspective of interaction or organization, but from the perspective of society. This approach provides novel insights in that it opens up promising avenues of comparison between organization and other social forms. Understanding the distinctively modern “success story” of organization as a social form makes it possible to ask about corresponding potentials and limitations, but also alternative possibilities. In doing so, the authors depart from most studies of organizations grounded in social systems theory as the authors primarily focus on Luhmann’s theory of media (as opposed to the theory of differentiation).
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With shifting student demographics in Turkey, which will include many more international higher education students, together with increasing refugee migration to the country…
Abstract
With shifting student demographics in Turkey, which will include many more international higher education students, together with increasing refugee migration to the country, professional development intended to assist teachers to move toward intercultural competency is becoming increasingly important. In this chapter, local in-service teacher educator initiatives and associated cultural adaptation facilitation tools are explored as a means to find ways to build cultural dialogue in the Turkish higher education environment, and, practically, for teachers in the field. While this chapter draws on an in-service teacher education case, much of what is presented is applicable to preservice settings as well. The chapter concludes with a look at changes in Turkish higher education, particularly in the facilitation of cultural convergence transferable to different educational environments and their applicability to international situations.