Terry Beckman, Anshuman Khare and Maggie Matear
The purpose of this paper is to review a possible link between the theory of stakeholder identity and salience (TSIS) and environmental justice and suggest a possible resolution.
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to review a possible link between the theory of stakeholder identity and salience (TSIS) and environmental justice and suggest a possible resolution.
Design/methodology/approach
This is a conceptual paper which also uses examples from industry.
Findings
The TSIS is a common management approach that helps companies determine stakeholders’ priority in building relationships and making decisions. The weakness of this theory is that it suggests that stakeholders lacking power, legitimacy and urgency be de-prioritized. This can lead to vulnerable populations’ interests being subjugated to those of more powerful stakeholders, leading at times to environmental injustice. This occurrence can jeopardize a company’s social license to operate. Therefore, it is suggested that TSIS be embedded in a situational analysis where the legitimacy and urgency criteria are applied beyond just stakeholders.
Research limitations/implications
Further research should look at the results of modifying the TSIS such that vulnerable populations are not de-prioritized.
Practical implications
This paper provides a way for organizations to be more cognizant of vulnerable populations and include them in decision-making to help avoid situations of environmental injustice.
Social implications
If organizations can recognize the impact of their decisions on vulnerable populations and include them in the decision-making process, situations of environmental injustice might not occur.
Originality/value
This paper brings to light one weak aspect of a commonly used and well accepted theory and suggests a way to mitigate potential harm that at times may arise in the form of environmental injustice.
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To review and provide a new perspective on how Wroe Alderson contributed to marketing theory, and rekindle interest in his lines of research and the further development of…
Abstract
Purpose
To review and provide a new perspective on how Wroe Alderson contributed to marketing theory, and rekindle interest in his lines of research and the further development of marketing theory.
Design/methodology/approach
A metaphor is woven into the paper to provide a new way of thinking about Alderson and his work. This provides an alternative to the more traditional analyses and comparison of Alderson's work that suggests new linkages and ways of looking at his theories, constructs and concepts.
Findings
Alderson was a creative, hard working, practical marketing theorist with a drive to develop a theory of marketing. He challenged underlying assumptions of marketing, and set the discipline on a new course. Alderson himself worked on a general theory of marketing, and also inspired others to work on marketing theories. His approach and ideas still have value to today's marketing scholars.
Practical implications
Marketing scholars will benefit by taking up Alderson's work where he left off, as well as integrating the research completed since his death with his theory of marketing.
Originality/value
This paper uses a unique method to look at one of the key influencers of marketing; a metaphor encourages one to look at how Alderson was able to significantly impact the field of marketing, and suggests that there is still value in his work to today's marketing scholars. It also evokes ways that marketing theory can be further developed.
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The PMI Risk Framework (PRF) is introduced as a guide to classifying and identifying risks which can be the source of post-merger integration (PMI) failure — commonly referred to…
Abstract
The PMI Risk Framework (PRF) is introduced as a guide to classifying and identifying risks which can be the source of post-merger integration (PMI) failure — commonly referred to as “culture clash.” To provide managers with actionably insight, PRF dissects PMI risk into specific relationship-oriented phenomena, critical to outcomes and which should be addressed during PMI. This framework is a conceptual and theory-grounded integration of numerous perspectives, such as organizational psychology, group dynamics, social networks, transformational change, and nonlinear dynamics. These concepts are unified and can be acted upon by integration managers. Literary resources for further exploration into the underlying aspects of the framework are provided. The PRF places emphasis on critical facets of PMI, particularly those which are relational in nature, pose an exceptionally high degree of risk, and are recurrent sources of PMI failure. The chapter delves into relationship-oriented points of failure that managers face when overseeing PMI by introducing a relationship-based, PMI risk framework. Managers are often not fully cognizant of these risks, thus fail to manage them judiciously. These risks do not naturally abide by common scholarly classifications and cross disciplinary boundaries; they do not go unrecognized by scholars, but until the introduction of PRF the risks have not been assimilated into a unifying framework. This chapter presents a model of PMI risk by differentiating and specifying numerous types of underlying human-relationship-oriented risks, rather than considering PMI cultural conflict as a monolithic construct.
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While prior alliance literature has focused on how firms exploit alliance strategies to enhance performance and innovation, little is known about whether market uncertainty…
Abstract
Purpose
While prior alliance literature has focused on how firms exploit alliance strategies to enhance performance and innovation, little is known about whether market uncertainty increases, decreases or has no effect on innovation outcomes of firms involved in alliances, and under what conditions these firms promote innovation in an uncertain market through alliances. Relatedly, innovation research has examined the impact of environmental uncertainty on innovation; however, this line of research does not answer the question in the alliance context.
Design/methodology/approach
Using data of firms engaged in alliances in the US pharmaceutical and biotechnical industries between 1990 and 2015, the authors examine firms' alliance partner characteristics and innovation outputs in terms of innovation quantity and exploratory innovation.
Findings
We find that market uncertainty hampers innovation quantity and exploratory innovation of firms involved in alliances, because in this environment, relational risks and coordination challenges outweigh the benefits of knowledge sharing from partners. However, the authors find that alliance partners' characteristics such as a different industry and different country origins mitigate the negative effect of market uncertainty on these firms' innovation by offering new business opportunities and enhancing their learning capability.
Originality/value
This study contributes to the alliance literature by addressing a significant question of whether and how market uncertainty matters in the innovation output of firms involved in alliances and how these firms address the environmental challenges and promote innovation. The study also contributes to innovation research by delineating the nature of market uncertainty and its impact on innovation in an alliance context.
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Debbie Keeling, Amna Khan and Terry Newholm
Internet forums are an important arena for information exchange between consumers. Despite healthcare being one of the most accessed information categories on the internet…
Abstract
Purpose
Internet forums are an important arena for information exchange between consumers. Despite healthcare being one of the most accessed information categories on the internet, knowledge of exchange between patients in online communities remains limited. Specifically, little is known about how patients negotiate knowledge in online forums to understand and manage their diseases. This paper aims to illustrate this by presenting data that demonstrate the construction of tacit knowledge within online health communities, and how consumers exercise their “voice” within complex professional services.
Design/methodology/approach
This paper reports an exploratory single case study of an online discussion forum for breast cancer sufferers, in which participants discuss their experience with healthcare services and related pharmaceutical products. Textual data were collected and analysed from the forum retrospectively from an 11-month period, entailing contributions from 252 participants.
Findings
The paper challenges prevalent managerial and professional perspectives that evaluate online health information in terms of its correspondence with conventional medical information. In the absence of normative assumptions that broadly guide health service encounters, forum participants negotiate their understandings in the context of their personal experience.
Practical implications
This novel culture offers potential for developing rich and sometimes more appropriate understandings of health than available from the medical establishment. It discusses how service providers can exploit such opportunities towards improving service provision, facilitating the consumer voice within a complex service.
Originality/value
Re-evaluating the value of online forums, the paper identifies the mechanisms through which health consumers co-create knowledge within online communities, and how these mechanisms can inform and complement future service provision.
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Yi-Ying Chang, Che-Yuan Chang, Chung-Wen Chen, Y.C.K. Chen and Shu-Ying Chang
The purpose of this paper is to examine if personal identification could explicate the black box between participative leadership and employee ambidexterity. Also, the authors aim…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to examine if personal identification could explicate the black box between participative leadership and employee ambidexterity. Also, the authors aim to explore how and why the top-down effects of higher-level leadership styles affect lower-level outcomes.
Design/methodology/approach
The authors collected multilevel and multisource data from top manager teams, and unit managers and employees of research and development, marketing and sales, and operations from Taiwanese technology firms.
Findings
The results revealed that individual-level personal identification partially mediated the relationship between firm-level participative leadership and individual-level employee ambidexterity, and individual-level coworker social support moderated the effect of firm-level participative leadership on individual-level employee ambidexterity through individual-level personal identification.
Originality/value
This paper demonstrated the importance of participative leadership and personal identification. It contributed to profound comprehension for potential mechanisms of individual-level personal identification and an enhancer of individual-level coworker social support why and how affects firm-level participative leadership on individual-level employee ambidexterity.
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Linlin Chai, Jin Li, Thomas Clauss and Chanchai Tangpong
The purpose of this study is to investigate the antecedents and the conditions of coopetition at the inter-organizational level.
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this study is to investigate the antecedents and the conditions of coopetition at the inter-organizational level.
Design/methodology/approach
This study is based on survey research methodology and analyzes the data from 138 companies regarding the antecedents and the conditions of their coopetition.
Findings
The results indicate that the interdependence between partners (i.e. the antecedent) positively affects interfirm coopetition, and that this relationship is contingent on the joint occurrence of opportunism (a behavioral condition) and technology uncertainty (a contextual condition). Specifically, highly interdependent firms are more likely to be involved in a coopetitive relationship when both opportunism and technology uncertainty are high. Interestingly, the authors’ data also show that opportunism or technology uncertainty alone may not be adequate in moderating the interdependence–coopetition relationship.
Research limitations/implications
This study contributes to the current literature in two meaningful ways. First, it empirically examines interdependence as a potential antecedent of interfirm coopetition. Second, it improves our understanding of the behavioral and contextual conditions that facilitate the formation of coopetitive relationships by examining the moderating roles of opportunisms and technology uncertainty in the relationship between interdependence and interfirm coopetition. The limitations of this study lie in its confined method of cross-sectional survey from the focal firm’s perspective. Future research may advance beyond this study through experimental and/or longitudinal research designs.
Practical implications
This study provides managers with two important practical insights in coopetition management. First, the findings suggest a two-step approach to help a firm assess and manage the level of coopetition in its relationship with a business partner. In addition, the findings provide a counterintuitive suggestion to managers that the joint conditions of high opportunism and high technology uncertainty indeed prime the relationship for the rise of coopetition, provided that managerial efforts are made to somewhat increase the level of interdependence in the relationship.
Originality/value
Despite the growing number of studies on coopetition, research still lacks knowledge about the antecedents and the conditions of inter-organizational coopetition, and this study aims to fill this gap.