Irene M. Gordon and Lawrence A. Boland
The conclusion of this paper is that market prices fail to reflect the information required to provide meaningful accounting measurements that are used in real‐life decision…
Abstract
The conclusion of this paper is that market prices fail to reflect the information required to provide meaningful accounting measurements that are used in real‐life decision making. This failure is due to the employment of an “ideal” economic world’s assumptions that do not, and cannot, fit the real world of business. The argument in the paper begins with a discussion of the ideal market as envisioned by the Chicago School and outlined in Tisdell (1995). From this ideal market characterization, it is argued that even Adam Smith recognized the existence of external effects resulting from certain social undertakings. In addition to externalities, two other market failures are discussed: the use of efficiency measures while ignoring effectiveness measures; and the emphasis on the short‐term time horizon at the expense of the longer term.
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Shannon E. Finn Connell and Ramkrishnan V. Tenkasi
Organizations facing issues related to growth, innovation, and strategy are embracing design thinking, a problem-solving process. This study explores 40 design thinking…
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Organizations facing issues related to growth, innovation, and strategy are embracing design thinking, a problem-solving process. This study explores 40 design thinking initiatives and identifies operational practices emerge and empirical categories across various contexts. Quantitative analyses of the initiatives and qualitative interview data are used to distinguish four configurations of action analogous to races: training, emphasizing learning-by-doing; marathons, capturing personal reflection over a long project; relays, highlighting team collaboration; and sprints, reflecting fast-paced product innovation. The initiatives are differentiated as designer-led versus team-driven and, low-urgency versus high-urgency. Implications of practicing design thinking in Organization Development and Change are discussed.
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Mark P. Healey, Gerard P. Hodgkinson and Sebastiano Massaro
In response to recent calls to better understand the brain’s role in organizational behavior, we propose a series of theoretical tests to examine the question “can brains manage?”…
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In response to recent calls to better understand the brain’s role in organizational behavior, we propose a series of theoretical tests to examine the question “can brains manage?” Our tests ask whether brains can manage without bodies and without extracranial resources, whether they can manage in social isolation, and whether brains are the ultimate controllers of emotional and cognitive aspects of organizational behavior. Our analysis shows that, to accomplish work-related tasks in organizations, the brain relies on and closely interfaces with the body, interpersonal and social dynamics, and cognitive and emotional processes that are distributed across persons and artifacts. The results of this “thought experiment” suggest that the brain is more appropriately conceived as a regulatory organ that integrates top-down (i.e., social, artifactual and environmental) and bottom-up (i.e., neural) influences on organizational behavior, rather than the sole cause of that behavior. Drawing on a socially situated perspective, our analysis develops a framework that connects brain, body and mind to social, cultural, and environmental forces, as significant components of complex emotional and cognitive organizational systems. We discuss the implications for the emerging field of organizational cognitive neuroscience and for conceptualizing the interaction between the brain, cognition and emotion in organizations.
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Computer based accounting information systems (AIS) have been a major force behind the current wave of corporate downsizing and reengineering (Deloitte & Touche LLP, 1996). While…
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Computer based accounting information systems (AIS) have been a major force behind the current wave of corporate downsizing and reengineering (Deloitte & Touche LLP, 1996). While greater economy and competitiveness is typically associated with these changes, conventional AIS literature usually eschews a counter‐hypothesis: that this new technology may also degrade both the quality and quantity of work, and therefore people’s working lives. The advent of Accounting, Management, and Information Technologies in 1991, with an espoused aim of “critically analyzing the relationships among our information systems designs, the qualities of our social and economic life, and our practices of management and control” (Boland and O’Leary, 1991, p. 2) presents a major opportunity to redress this deficiency. This paper reviews the journal’s inaugural issue and ancillary literature to assess its likely contribution. This literature is found to lack a sufficient appreciation of the social and historical context of AIS developments and thus compromises the new journal’s ability to achieve its espoused aims. The paper calls for a better understanding of the upheavals currently under way in the accounting workplace and ways in which AIS technology (and ethnographers) may compound these instabilities. A different kind of ethnographic research is called for: one capable of recognizing the dysfunctionalities of AIS‐induced downsizing and restructuring, and more politically and socially self‐aware of AIS agency in social and technological change.
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Riitta Katila, Raymond E. Levitt and Dana Sheffer
The authors provide new quantitative evidence of the relationship between technologies and organizational design in the context of complex one-off products. The systems that…
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The authors provide new quantitative evidence of the relationship between technologies and organizational design in the context of complex one-off products. The systems that produce complex, one-off products in mature, fragmented industries such as construction lack many of the typical organizational features that researchers have deemed critical to product development success (e.g., team familiarity, frequent communication, and strong leadership). In contrast, the complexity of these products requires a diverse knowledge base that is rarely found within a single firm. The one-off nature of construction’s products further requires improvization and development by a distributed network of highly specialized teams. And because the product is complex, significant innovations in the end product require systemic shifts in the product architecture. Riitta Katila, Raymond E. Levitt and Dana Sheffer use an original, hand-collected dataset of the design and construction of 112 energy-efficient “green” buildings in the United States, combined with in-depth fieldwork, to study these questions. A key conclusion is that the mature US construction industry, with its particularly fragmented supply chain, is not well suited to implementing “systemic innovations” that require coordination across trades or stages of the project. However, project integration across specialists with the highest levels of interdependence (i.e., craft, contract integration) mitigates the knowledge and coordination problems. There are implications for research on how technology shapes organizations (and particularly how organizations shape technology), and on the supply chain configuration strategies of firms in the construction industry as well as building owners who are seeking to build the best buildings possible within their budgets.
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The purpose of this chapter is to examine the budgeting process in a local church from a social capital perspective. The social capital provides novel insights into the…
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The purpose of this chapter is to examine the budgeting process in a local church from a social capital perspective. The social capital provides novel insights into the construction of budgets and its social aspects. A qualitative case study was adopted, with an interpretive methodology. Semi-structured interviews were used to interview 14 managers involved in the budgeting process at a local independent church. The interview data were supplemented by documentary evidence. Nahapiet and Ghoshal (1998) framework of social capital was used to analyse the data. The main finding was that budgeting was found to be a social process – that can best be explained by social capital theory. There may be an element of self-selection, as the church agreed to participate in the study and chose to allow a researcher to examine social aspects of its budgeting process. The chapter contributes to both social capital theory and church literature. Social capital provides novel insights into the construction of budgets and its social aspects. In addition, contemporary budgeting practices are studied in a church in a denomination and country not previously studied.
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Ramkrishnan V. Tenkasi and Richard J. Boland
The emerging global economy is characterized increasingly by knowledge intensive firms which require that diverse, specialized knowledge workers develop unique knowledge…
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The emerging global economy is characterized increasingly by knowledge intensive firms which require that diverse, specialized knowledge workers develop unique knowledge competences, and also collaborate in ways to create new knowledge that enhances the performance of the organization. Information technologies are increasingly playing an integrative role in knowledge intensive firms as a way of achieving mutual learning. However, the information systems field has predominantly been driven by the notion of integration as a rational design process and an end state to be achieved through a static incorporation of knowledge domains. It has failed to consider the interpretive dynamics associated with the integration of differentiated knowledge and expertise. Argues a new role for information technology, one that supports the exploration of differentiated theories of meaning and knowledge and facilitates the conduct of dialogue among highly differentiated experts as a basis for integration.