Alex Tawse, Leanne Atwater, Dusya Vera and Steve Werner
Strategy implementation is a critical component of firm performance and middle managers play a key role in the implementation process. This study was conducted to enhance the…
Abstract
Purpose
Strategy implementation is a critical component of firm performance and middle managers play a key role in the implementation process. This study was conducted to enhance the authors’ understanding of how middle managers influence strategy implementation (SI) effectiveness by investigating the impact of leadership and work team coordination.
Design/methodology/approach
A field study was conducted using interviews and survey data gathered from executive managers, middle managers and work team members within a large municipal organization undergoing a major strategic change.
Findings
Middle manager transformational and instrumental leadership have a direct positive impact on work team SI effectiveness. Additionally, middle manager transformational leadership has an indirect positive effect on work team SI effectiveness through coordination.
Practical implications
The study offers insights into managers and practitioners seeking to improve SI effectiveness by highlighting the importance of middle manager leadership development and the coordination of interdependent tasks within work teams.
Originality/value
The study provides valuable insight into an important but previously unstudied relationship between middle manager leadership and SI effectiveness. The work also helps bridge the chasm between leadership research and strategy research by linking leadership behavior to SI effectiveness – a key ingredient of firm performance.
Details
Keywords
Juanne Greene, Neal Mero and Steve Werner
The purpose of this paper is to explore the boundary conditions of job embeddedness (JE), considering whether certain conditions of high embeddedness may have a potential dark…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to explore the boundary conditions of job embeddedness (JE), considering whether certain conditions of high embeddedness may have a potential dark side leading to lower employee performance.
Design/methodology/approach
Hierarchical moderated regression was used to test the interactions between JE, economic exchange, and social exchange.
Findings
Results indicate that under certain exchange conditions, JE can have negative implications for performance.
Practical implications
Consideration should be given to how management interventions come together to motivate employees and impact performance.
Originality/value
This study speaks to the possible negative side of JE and provides support for its potential to produce adverse consequences for organizations under certain contexts.
Details
Keywords
Hwanwoo Lee, Steve Werner and Tae-Yeol Kim
The purpose of this paper is to test the effect of human resource systems on organization attraction. Furthermore, the authors theorize and test how the vocational interests of…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to test the effect of human resource systems on organization attraction. Furthermore, the authors theorize and test how the vocational interests of prospective employees can serve as boundary conditions that affect the relationship between high-performance work systems (HPWS) and organization attraction.
Design/methodology/approach
To achieve these ends, this study conducts a scenario-based experiment with prospective employees to examine the effects of HPWS and vocational interests on organization attraction.
Findings
The authors demonstrated that HPWS is an important feature for organization attraction. Despite the generally positive linkage between HPWS and organization attraction, the most important implication of the findings is that job applicants also have an important role in responding to the features being used by a firm to attract applicants through HPWS. For example, potential job applicants with higher (rather than lower) social vocational interests are more likely to be attracted to the HPWS of firms.
Research limitations/implications
This study has limitations that must be considered. In particular, the authors treated HPWS as a unidimensional construct. Given the study design, it is unclear whether the attraction effects are driven by HPWS as a whole or whether they are being driven by any single or multiple component(s) of the system. Future research needs to consider examining how specific practices are matched with specific vocational interests by using multiple scenarios where they bundle different high-performance work practices. Doing so would further the understanding of which specific practices affect attraction and for whom.
Originality/value
This study contributes to the authors’ knowledge of the effects of HPWS on organization attraction. In addition, job applicants’ social vocational interest plays an important role in strengthening the relationship between HPWS and organization attraction.
Details
Keywords
Joon Hyung Park, Je’Anna Lea Abbott and Steve Werner
– The purpose of this paper is to propose a model that explains how proactive cognitive processes, such as perspective-taking, relates to expatriates’ effectiveness.
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to propose a model that explains how proactive cognitive processes, such as perspective-taking, relates to expatriates’ effectiveness.
Design/methodology/approach
This conceptual paper presents the model that is based on the perspective-taking models developed by Parker et al. (2008) and applies them to the expatriate context.
Findings
The authors present a framework that delineates how the perspective-taking process leads to an expatriate’s effectiveness. The authors provide propositions about which factors motivate expatriates to engage in perspective-taking and which factors influence higher accuracy of understanding of the host country nationals’ (HCN) perspective.
Practical implications
Guidance is provided for the training of expatriate to develop perspective-taking.
Originality/value
The paper expands the expatriate research by incorporating the perspective-taking model to identify which factors may motivate expatriates to see the HCN view point. Also, the paper contributes to the literature by identifying how resources such as expatriates’ psychological capital may promote the degree of accuracy or comprehension with respect to the HCN thoughts and feelings.
Details
Keywords
Kam C. Chan, Hung‐Gay Fung and Wai K. Leung
We examine the citations from four international business (IB) journals over 2000‐2004 to show the areas, the journals, and the institutions that impact IB research. The leading…
Abstract
We examine the citations from four international business (IB) journals over 2000‐2004 to show the areas, the journals, and the institutions that impact IB research. The leading works that influence IB research are primarily management journals, scholarly books, and IB journals. IB research is published in non‐IB journals, as well and this has influenced the recent research in IB journals. U.S. and non‐U.S. academic institutions and non‐academic organizations are among the top 100 institutions that impact IB research, indicating that this research is a truly global endeavor. Finally, recent IB research is influenced more by recent published research than by past research. Scholarly books have become less influential, while the economics, finance, and marketing journals show no change in the influence on IB research over time.
Details
Keywords
The purpose of this paper is to systematically assess the empirical support for central relationships in the empirical literature on foreign market entry mode. The reviewing…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to systematically assess the empirical support for central relationships in the empirical literature on foreign market entry mode. The reviewing method overcomes methodological limitations in past reviews.
Design/methodology/approach
This review provides a systematic assessment of empirical support through a simple quantitative procedure using transparent criteria for article selection. In total, 1,217 statistical tests from 119 studies published in 44 different scientific journals in the period 1997-2013 are examined across a range of dimensions.
Findings
Findings question the frequent use of commonly used measures (e.g. advertising intensity) and control variables (e.g. firm size) and suggest that statements about the importance of mode choice for subsidiary performance may be premature. Methodologically, this study identifies critical issues with regard to interpretation of interactions and the entry mode choice set.
Research limitations/implications
This study limits itself to study the direction of relationships and does not analyze effect sizes. Further, future research may benefit from broadening the entry mode choice by extending the use of multiple outcome models as well as implementing the correct interpretational tools when investigating interactions.
Originality/value
The review is relevant to researchers seeking an overview over the research literature or practitioners interested in the link between mode choice and subsidiary performance.
Details
Keywords
Jianhong Zhang, Jan P.A.M. Jacobs and Arjen van Witteloostuijn
Multinational enterprises (MNEs) play a dominant role in the international business (IB) literature. Traditionally, by far the majority of IB studies deal with issues at the micro…
Abstract
Multinational enterprises (MNEs) play a dominant role in the international business (IB) literature. Traditionally, by far the majority of IB studies deal with issues at the micro level of the individual MNE, or at the meso level of a sample of individual MNEs in industries. This paper focuses on the impact of MNE behavior through foreign direct investment (FDI) on a country’s international trade, and vice versa. In so doing, this study responds to a recent plea for more macro‐level studies in IB into the effect of MNE behavior on the macroeconomic performance of countries as a whole, particularly developing and emerging economies. In the current study, we focus on the largest developing or emerging economy of all: China. Applying sophisticated econometric techniques, we unravel the causality and direction of FDI‐trade linkages for the Chinese economy in the 1980‐2003 period.
Details
Keywords
Economic ideas are the product of contemplation, but also of our economic lives. In the history of ideas, Gérard Debreu’s shining book of 1959, Theory of Value, represents the…
Abstract
Economic ideas are the product of contemplation, but also of our economic lives. In the history of ideas, Gérard Debreu’s shining book of 1959, Theory of Value, represents the pinnacle of purity in contemplating economic life. Rather than contextualizing this oeuvre through his intellectual life, as is usually done, this essay describes his axiomatic analysis by contextualizing it through his economic life. What do we learn about Debreu’s axioms on consumption when thinking of his own consumption? What do we learn about his theory of value when thinking of his own values? Historiographically, this approach permits the use of a widely neglected source in the history of economics: anecdotes. Epistemologically, blending axioms and anecdotes offers a description of how axioms regulate an economic discourse. Finally, this essay offers a language for the material dimensions of economic life that are so underexposed in Debreu’s own work.