Linda Rochford and Thomas R. Wotruba
Proposes an increasing role for the salesforce in the new productdevelopment process. Describes how the sales job itself has beenevolving toward one of relationship building with…
Abstract
Proposes an increasing role for the salesforce in the new product development process. Describes how the sales job itself has been evolving toward one of relationship building with customers, and how marketplace and economic changes such as globalization and large debt have caused firms to look much more carefully at the allocation of their resources, including expenditures on the new product development process. Argues that these and other factors, such as the disenchantment with marketing research and personnel downsizing, suggest that the salesforce might begin to play an expanded role in new product development. Discusses the pros and cons of this strategy, along with its implications for salesforce management.
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Ryan Raffaelli and Mary Ann Glynn
Leaders are important social actors in organizations, centrally involved in establishing and maintaining institutional values, a view that was articulated by Philip Selznick…
Abstract
Leaders are important social actors in organizations, centrally involved in establishing and maintaining institutional values, a view that was articulated by Philip Selznick (1957) nearly a half-century ago, but often overlooked in institutionalists’ accounts. Our objective is to build on Selznick’s seminal work to investigate the value proposition of leadership consistent with institutional theory. We examine public interview transcripts from 52 senior executives and discover that leaders’ conceptualizations of their entities align with the archetypes of organization (i.e., economic, hierarchical, and power oriented) and institution (i.e., ideological, creative and collectivist) and cohere around a set of relevant values. Extrapolating from this, we advance a theoretical framework of the process whereby leaders’ claims function as transformational mechanisms of value infusion in the institutionalization of organizations.
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In years past, when life seemed simpler and the Law much less complicated, jurists were fond of quoting the age‐old saying: “All men are equal before the Law.” It was never…
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In years past, when life seemed simpler and the Law much less complicated, jurists were fond of quoting the age‐old saying: “All men are equal before the Law.” It was never completely true; there were important exemptions when strict legal enforcement would have been against the public interests. A classic example was Crown immunity, evolved from the historical principle that “The King can do no wrong”. With the growth of government, the multiplicity of government agencies and the enormous amount of secondary legislation, the statutes being merely enabling Acts, this immunity revealed itself as being used largely against public interests. Statutory instruments were being drafted within Ministerial departments largely by as many as 300 officers of those departments authorized to sign such measures, affecting the rights of the people without any real Parliamentary control. Those who suffered and lost in their enforcement had no remedy; Crown immunity protected all those acting as servants of the Crown and the principle came to be an officials' charter with no connection whatever with the Crown. Parliament, custodian of the national conscience, removed much of this socially unacceptable privilege in the Crown Proceedings Act, 1947, which enabled injured parties within limit to sue central departments and their officers. The more recent system of Commissioners—Parliamentary, Local Authority, Health Service—with power to enquire into allegations of injustice, maladministration, malpractice to individuals extra‐legally, has extended the rights of the suffering citizen.
Government appointed and sponsored committees of every description—select, ad hoc, advisory, inquiry—such a prominent feature of the public scene since the last War, are…
Abstract
Government appointed and sponsored committees of every description—select, ad hoc, advisory, inquiry—such a prominent feature of the public scene since the last War, are understandable, even acceptable, reflect the urgency of the times in which we live. In the gathering gloom of more recent twilight years, they have flourished inordinately, especially in the socio‐political field, where most of their researches have been conducted. Usually embellished with the name of the figure‐head chairman, almost always expensively financed, they have one thing in common—an enormous output of words, telling us much of what we already know. So much of it seems dull, meaningless jargon, reflecting attitudes rather than sound, general principles.
The purpose of this paper is to provide insight into the capacities of social movement actors (SMAs) and interest groups to negotiate responsibility, heighten issues of…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to provide insight into the capacities of social movement actors (SMAs) and interest groups to negotiate responsibility, heighten issues of accountability and earn legitimacy from authorities and the wider public for the plight of dis-privileged Roma migrant berry pickers in the Swedish labour market.
Design/methodology/approach
The objective is guided by a multi-sited ethnographical approach to data collection and analysis, which theoretically anchors in social movement frame analysis.
Findings
The paper proposes that SMAs, in the face of incapacities of state and industry parties, generate the potentiality to leverage immediate humanitarian distress experienced by the workers and to accentuate their political and public visibility.
Research limitations/implications
Delimited by the internal organisational structure of a berry industry, partly operating behind informal employment schemes, future studies should devote closer attention in localising/identifying possible “back-stage” data-gathering settings.
Practical implications
Policy-makers and special-interest organisations concerned with internal EU labour migration, labour standards and living condition issues, may consider the social and humanitarian implications of persistent responsibility ambiguities.
Social implications
The paper raises issues of informal work and forms of labour exploitation.
Originality/value
The paper provides deeper insight into the societal nexus in which a “hard-to-reach group” of seasonal workers faces potential and actual exploitation.
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Yilin Zhang, Changyuan Gao and Jing Wang
This study aims to explore the relationship between financing constraints and the innovation performance of Internet enterprises in the cross-border innovation cooperation…
Abstract
Purpose
This study aims to explore the relationship between financing constraints and the innovation performance of Internet enterprises in the cross-border innovation cooperation network. The study also analyzes the moderating effect of the location of the cross-border innovation cooperation network.
Design/methodology/approach
The authors selected patent data, related transaction data and other data of A-share listed companies on Shanghai and Shenzhen stock exchanges from 2014 to 2019. The generalized moment estimation method of instrumental variables (IV-GMM) method was used to analyze the relationship between financing constraints and the innovation performance of Internet firms and the moderating effect of the cross-border innovation cooperation network location. The threshold value of the moderating effect of the network structure hole was calculated with the threshold model.
Findings
The empirical results show a significant inverted U-shaped relationship between financing constraints and the innovation performance in the cross-border innovation cooperation network of Internet enterprises. Network centrality positively moderates this relationship. There is a threshold for the adjustment effect of network-structural holes, and the adjustment intensity of structural holes changes before and after the threshold.
Originality/value
This study provides a new perspective for Internet firms in innovation cooperation networks to alleviate the negative impact of financing constraints on innovation performance. The inverted U-shaped relationship between financing constraints and the innovation performance of Internet enterprises is in two stages. The moderating range of network centrality and the structural hole besides the threshold of the moderating effect of a structural hole are detailed.
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The purpose of this paper is to explore the nature of dilemmas that emerge at the theoretical and practical interfaces of ethnographic fieldwork and feminist advocacy. This is…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to explore the nature of dilemmas that emerge at the theoretical and practical interfaces of ethnographic fieldwork and feminist advocacy. This is done by examining the researcher’s role in the field and the complex relationships between the researcher and the researched.
Design/methodology/approach
Critical self-reflections and autoethnographic analyses of fieldwork experiences in the author’s home country in South Asia are used to explore these dilemmas.
Findings
Using situated examples from a typical organisational setting involving both the oppressive and the oppressed, the researcher’s participant observation is found to be conflicted between critical participation and critical observation. Conscious and/or unconscious critical participation through enactment of feminist ethics by combining researcher and advocacy roles allows a route to assuage these conflicts. Practical strategies used to accomplish this are also discussed.
Research limitations/implications
Although the practical strategies discussed in this paper are culturally and organisationally specific and hence limited by them, it is hoped that suitable variants will emerge for readers from their discussion. Further research is needed to investigate the variety of ways in which the researcher-advocate positionality proposed in this paper can be strategically adopted conditional on cultural and organisational contexts, feminist research questions, and researchers’ abilities and constraints.
Practical implications
This paper seeks to shed light on the dilemmas of feminist ethics faced by critical feminist researchers conducting ethnographic fieldwork. It also discusses ways to enable researchers to circumvent these dilemmas in both epistemologically productive ways by collecting rich data and in ontologically enriching ways by allowing some enactment of feminist ethics. To this end, a positionality of the feminist researcher-advocate is conceptualised that does not enforce constraints of extreme positionalities of either a conventional ethnographer or an action researcher.
Social implications
Besides illustrating the need to stretch beyond traditional boundaries of participant observation, the researcher-advocate positionality also allows feminist researchers to make small, but directly tangible impact towards gender equality in their field setting. Implications for researchers’ emotional, and cognitive safety are also discussed especially when they identify with one or more minority identities.
Originality/value
This paper contributes to discussions on the theory of methods by highlighting the benefits of enacting feminist ethics as a way of critical participation in research settings.