Rein Van der Vegt, Leo F. Smyth and Roland Vandenberghe
Difficulties in implementing change in schools have been explained either by referring to the concerns of teachers or to the organizational dynamics of the school. This article…
Abstract
Difficulties in implementing change in schools have been explained either by referring to the concerns of teachers or to the organizational dynamics of the school. This article presents a framework in which these two sets of factors are linked. It is suggested that the school, in responding to major policy change, triggers specific organizational issues that in turn will arouse specific concerns on the part of the individual teacher. The implementation of major change is seen as the resolution of these issues and their related concerns. The framework maps the interplay of organizational issues and personal concerns; it serves as a reflection on the dynamics of change and on the management of “the implementing school”.
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Martin Albæk and Torben Juul Andersen
All firms operating in the global economy are exposed to a multitude of risks including financial crisis, cyberattack, social instability, governance failure, extreme weather…
Abstract
All firms operating in the global economy are exposed to a multitude of risks including financial crisis, cyberattack, social instability, governance failure, extreme weather events, etc. As a consequence, international organizations assume many (new and evolving) exposures that must be addressed, where some firms are able to adjust and thrive against these adverse odds, whereas many others fail. It appears like some (a few) firms are able to repeatedly outperform the market, where a great many of them struggle, and quite a few register negative returns every year. As a consequence, the authors typically observe leptokurtic negatively skewed distributions of financial returns with extreme negative tails of poor performing firms, where the performance data fall way beyond the requirements of a normal distribution. The authors investigate this phenomenon based on a comprehensive dataset of European firms retrieved from Compustat Global for the 25-year period 1995–2019. The analysis shows that there is indeed a consistent pattern of many underperforming firms across different industry classifications and time intervals and a few outperformers. This provides evidence of a regularly observed phenomenon that often is overlooked in mainstream management studies. The results have implications for academic research that often relies on assumptions of data normality in statistical analysis and for corporate management that has to deal with a risk-prone business environment.
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The global environments that surround contemporary business activities are uncertain, fast-changing, and frequently exposed to abrupt unexpected events with the potential to…
Abstract
The global environments that surround contemporary business activities are uncertain, fast-changing, and frequently exposed to abrupt unexpected events with the potential to inflict extreme impacts where the ability to respond and adapt the organization effectively becomes a primary strategic concern. However, various firms that operate across diverse industry contexts approach this adaptive challenge in distinct ways that lead to quite diverse outcomes with many negative performers and some high performers with positive risk features. The heterogeneous approaches appear to consistently form extreme left-tailed performance distributions with inverse risk-return features but we are not really able to explain why and how these regularly observed phenomena come about. Hence, we want to study these organizational artifacts by collecting an extensive updated dataset to test the proposed relationships, explore alternative explanations, and learn from the extreme exemplars often referred to as outliers. There are extensive literatures in (strategic) management and finance that have dealt with the distribution of firm returns from slightly different angles but with some emerging commonalities that can inspire further analyses of the performance data. As a precursor for this, we discuss the odds of effective strategic adaptation in complex dynamic environments and introduce resilience as a proper outcome when simple solutions are scarce, and consider conditions that may facilitate these aims. The premises for the ensuing analyses are laid out and the main contents of the following chapters are presented.
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The author introduces a strategic responsiveness model that reflects an organization’s ability to sense environmental changes and learn from emergent adaptive responses that…
Abstract
The author introduces a strategic responsiveness model that reflects an organization’s ability to sense environmental changes and learn from emergent adaptive responses that attempt to realign organizational activities and gain a better fit with the changing conditions. The author shows in computational simulations how superior strategic adaptation is associated with higher average returns and lower performance risk among firms that compete in the same industry contexts and generate negatively skewed outcome distributions consistent with empirical observations. The model is refined to incorporate an interactive strategy-making process, where experiential insights from decentralized initiatives update forward-looking projections in central planning. The ensuing analysis demonstrates how this adaptive strategy-making approach further enhances the favorable risk-return outcomes. The author discusses these findings and the implications for the study of dynamic adaptive strategy-making processes.
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Justin L. Davis, Andy Fodor, Michael E. Pfahl and Jason Stoner
The purpose of this paper is to empirically investigate the interactive effect of turnover and task interdependence on performance in work teams. Based on pervious research, the…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to empirically investigate the interactive effect of turnover and task interdependence on performance in work teams. Based on pervious research, the authors contend that turnover will have a negative effect on team performance and this effect will be more pronounced as teams perform highly interdependent tasks.
Design/methodology/approach
Using longitudinal data from the National Football League (NFL), the authors empirically examine the effect of player turnover on NFL team performance (i.e. wins and losses in the subsequent year), and the difference in team performance based on the high/low task interdependence of the work team.
Findings
Findings suggest a negative impact of turnover on organizational performance, regardless of the interdependent nature of work team tasks. In addition, the negative influence of turnover is enhanced by the task interdependence within a team.
Originality/value
This is one of the few studies that examine task interdependence as a moderating variable of the turnover – team performance relationship. More specifically, by examining an industry with high team member turnover (i.e. The NFL), the findings from this study give practicing managers a guide as to which work teams managers should attempt to minimize turnover.
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This chapter explores other theoretical explanations to the commonly observed phenomenon of negatively skewed performance outcomes and inverse risk-return relationships in…
Abstract
This chapter explores other theoretical explanations to the commonly observed phenomenon of negatively skewed performance outcomes and inverse risk-return relationships in empirical firm data. The analysis conducted in many prior studies have implicated direct causal dependencies between performance and risk, or vice versa, with the possibility of simultaneous two-way relationships that are harder to discern. It is also shown how spurious artifacts deriving from the arithmetic links between mean and variance associate left-skewed distributions with negative mean variance correlations. However, the heterogeneous display of response capabilities among firms that compete in the same industry contexts may provide an alternative explanation for the observed performance characteristics. This is expressed as strategic responsiveness where performance outcomes with high negative skewness and excess kurtosis derive from heterogeneous adaptive processes among firms as they respond to a dynamic environment with different degrees of success. We test these results in different simulated competitive contexts disrupted by major unexpected events and find robust results across different environmental scenarios. The analysis looks at two different response processes, one modeled as conventional adaptive planning following an annual budget cycle, and another modeled as interactive updating where executives have frequent informative budget discussions with operating managers in the firm. The computational simulations show that interactive updating generates outcomes with higher returns and lower performance risk for moderate learning levels and restructuring costs. However, the resulting performance distributions are not as left-skewed as those observed in the empirical data that show higher resemblance to the adaptive planning outcomes.
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Lifan Chen, Bowen Zheng, Hefu Liu and Manting Deng
Despite the growing use of social media in many organizations, managers face the challenges of how to effectively manage social media usage (SMU) in the workplace to ensure…
Abstract
Purpose
Despite the growing use of social media in many organizations, managers face the challenges of how to effectively manage social media usage (SMU) in the workplace to ensure employee creativity. This study combined task-technology fit theory and the interactional perspective of employee creativity to understand the three-way interaction of SMU, perceived task interdependence, and perceived participative leadership on employee creativity.
Design/methodology/approach
A questionnaire survey was designed to test our hypotheses. The sample consisted of employees who use social media in the workplace. A total of 402 valid questionnaires were used for the hierarchical regression analysis.
Findings
SMU had the strongest positive relationship with creativity when perceived task interdependence and perceived participative leadership were high. However, we did not find two-way interaction effects of SMU and perceived task interdependence on employee creativity.
Originality/value
Our findings are aligned with the emergent view that the benefits of SMU can be better realized when it coexists with a set of complementary team contextual factors. The current study helps extend the contingency perspective and related studies in social media literature and employee creativity research.
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Min-Ling Liu, Chieh-Peng Lin, Sheng-Wuu Joe and Kuang-Jung Chen
To deepen our understanding about the development of team performance, the purpose of this paper is to develop a model that explains how ambidexterity and ethical leadership…
Abstract
Purpose
To deepen our understanding about the development of team performance, the purpose of this paper is to develop a model that explains how ambidexterity and ethical leadership affect knowledge sharing and team performance through within-team competition.
Design/methodology/approach
This study demonstrates the applicability of ambidexterity and within-team competition by surveying 78 teams from the high-tech and banking industries. This study further presents a three-way interaction among ambidexterity, politics and job complexity.
Findings
This study finds that both ambidexterity and ethical leadership are positively related to knowledge sharing and team performance through the mediation of team development competition.
Originality/value
This study confirms that ambidexterity and ethical leadership play critical factors for improving knowledge sharing and team performance through the mediation of team development competition. Furthermore, the moderating effects of politics and job complexity are also confirmed in the research.
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Jason M. Riley, William A. Ellegood, Stanislaus Solomon and Jerrine Baker
This study aims to understand how mode of delivery, online versus face-to-face, affects comprehension when teaching operations management concepts via a simulation. Conceptually…
Abstract
Purpose
This study aims to understand how mode of delivery, online versus face-to-face, affects comprehension when teaching operations management concepts via a simulation. Conceptually, the aim is to identify factors that influence the students’ ability to learn and retain new concepts.
Design/methodology/approach
Leveraging Littlefield Technologies’ simulation, the study investigates how team interaction, team leadership, instructor’s guidance, simulation’s ease of use and previous software experience affects comprehension for both online and face-to-face teaching environments. Survey data were gathered from 514 undergraduate students. The data were then analyzed using structural equation modeling.
Findings
For the face-to-face population, this study found that team interaction, previous software experience, instructor’s guidance and simulation’s ease of use affected student comprehension. This differed from the online population who were only affected by the simulation’s ease of use and instructor’s guidance.
Originality/value
Understanding how the mode of delivery affects comprehension is important as educators develop new online teaching techniques and experiment with innovative technologies like simulation. As demand for online education grows, many instructors find they need to refine their methods to ensure students comprehend the concepts being taught regardless of modality.
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This paper aims to investigate the mediating effect of an individual’s satisfaction with the team between conflict and training motivation. This study provides understanding…
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to investigate the mediating effect of an individual’s satisfaction with the team between conflict and training motivation. This study provides understanding regarding how the type of conflict within a team can influence an individual’s team experience which can, in turn, influence that individual’s training motivation and impact future teams.
Design/methodology/approach
Data were collected from 498 upper-level business students engaged in a team project. Structural equation modeling examined the serial mediation relationship between perceived diversity, conflict (affective and cognitive), individual satisfaction with the team and training motivation (learning and transfer).
Findings
Individual satisfaction with the team partially mediates the relationship between affective conflict and both training motivation dimensions, and fully mediates the relationship between cognitive conflict and both training motivation dimensions.
Practical implications
To encourage future participation in teams, managers should explore ways to increase an individual’s satisfaction, such as increasing the cognitive conflict by incorporating diversity within teams and reducing the affective conflict within teams. Likewise, by increasing an individual’s satisfaction with the team, managers can increase both the motivation to learn and transfer new knowledge.
Originality/value
This paper illuminates the role that an individual’s satisfaction with the team has between conflict and training motivation. Moreover, this paper demonstrates that more research on an individual’s satisfaction with the team is needed.