Business Commons^™

The Decline Of Global Market Leaders, Xiaowen Tian, John Slocum

Xiaowen Tian

Integrating capability-based and institution-based views in a multilevel framework, we argue that managerial capability to acquire loans to finance business expansion has an inverted U-shaped relationship with global market leadership. The negative effect on global market leadership of excessive loan-acquiring capability is amplified under business-friendly market institutions that ease access to credit. Managerial capability to utilize resources productively positively moderates the relationship between loan-acquiring capability and global market leadership. The role of resource-utilizing capability is attenuated under business-friendly market institutions that facilitate overinvestment. The study helps explain recent decline of global market leaders in advanced market economies.

Leader-Follower Congruence And Transformational Leadership: A Test Using Response Surface Modeling, George Hrivnak, Tjai Nielsen

George Hrivnak

Using polynomial regression and response surface modeling in a lagged field study, we examine relationships among leader and follower extraversion fit and follower ratings of transformational leadership. This paper builds on prior research investigating the influence that leader and follower personality factors have on follower perceptions of leadership. Data from a sample of 117 Naval Midshipmen dyads suggest that leader-follower extraversion congruence at Time 1 was positively related to higher follower ratings of transformational leadership at Time 2. The implications of these findings are discussed with respect to perceptions and attributions of leadership, the potential role that extraversion congruence may …

Embracing The "Two-Body Problem": The Case Of Partnered Academics, Cynthia Fisher

Cynthia D. Fisher

Extract: The focal article has given examples of children, other relatives, and friends as potential beneficiaries of preferential treatment and has discussed the counterbalancing likelihood of organizational gain from(properly) employing individuals who already share social connections. Surprisingly, there is minimal mention of spouses or domestic partners. From the 1970s through the 1990s, a number of articles were published on the legal and practical issues of applying antinepotism policies to spouses, but since 2000, the literature has been almost entirely silent. This is surprising given that, in 2013, the Bureau of Labor Statistics reported that 47.4% of U.S. families involve husbands …

Project Management And Organizational Change, Lynn Crawford, Alicia Aitken, Anat Hassner-Nahmias

Lynn Crawford

Extract: Organizational changes have become recognized as a distinct type of project or program, and it may be argued that the majority of projects involve some degree of organizational and behavioral change. The degree of this change can be expected to be greater in projects where the purpose is to achieve organizational change, but even where the focus is on other outcomes, achievement of desired benefits may require structural changes and will generally involve some change in the way people do things. However, while project managers claim to be implementers of change, current project management standards focus on change control …

Review: John S. Ahlquist And Margaret Levi, 'In The Interest Of Others: Organizations And Social Activism" (Princeton & Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2013), Rowan Cahill

Rowan Cahill

Review of the comparative study of trade union organizational behaviour by John S. Ahlquist and Margaret Levi, 'In the Interest of Others: Organizations and Social Activism" (Princeton & Oxford: Princeton University Press, 2013), which involves a target group of US and Australian trade unions.

Everything Gardens And Other Stories: Growing Transition Culture, Luigi Russi

Luigi Russi

The Transition movement is more than an instrumental strategy to address climate change and fossil fuel shortage. It is a collective form of life. Against the tendency to reduce social movements to mission statements and policy solutions, this book insists on de-strategising the development of Transition. It argues that the flourishing of its distinctive culture is open to both uncertainty and paradox, and resistant to prediction and mapping. Everything Gardens and Other Stories focuses instead on the body as the site where politics begins, engaging with the disquiets and anxieties that instigate the development of Transition practices: from Inner Transition, …

What Determines Mnc Subsidiary Performance? Evidence From China, Xiaowen Tian, John Slocum

Xiaowen Tian

The paper challenges the view that MNC dictates a subsidiary’s business strategy and operations in accordance with the integration-responsiveness (IR) framework. The paper integrates the IR framework with contingency theory to argue that a subsidiary needs discretion to craft its own effective business strategy in light of the environmental exigencies facing the subsidiary in the host country. It may do so at variance with the MNC’s strategy. Evidence from China supports that subsidiary managers should take strategic initiatives in response to specific host country environment.

Destructive Leader Behaviour: A Study Of Iranian Leaders Using The Destructive Leadership Questionnaire, Ben Shaw, Anthony Erickson, Farzaneh Nassirzadeh

Anthony Erickson

This study examines destructive leader behaviours among a sample of Iranian leaders. Destructive leader behaviour was measured using the Destructive Leadership Questionnaire (DLQ) developed by Shaw et al. (2011). Data from 700 Iranian subordinates who completed the DLQ were used to identify the dimensions of destructive leadership using principle components factor analysis. The factor analytic data were used to develop an Iranian version of the DLQ. Behavioural scale scores were then used to identify a typology of destructive leaders in the Iranian sample.

The Retention Of Chinese Managers: The Chinese Puzzle Box, Xiaowen Tian, Michael Harvey, John Slocum

Xiaowen Tian

Extract:

Chinese Puzzle Box: a box that can only be opened through some obscure or complicated series of manipulations. Some puzzle boxes may require only a simple squeeze in the right spot, whereas others may require the subtle movement of several small parts, to open the box.

Once entering an emerging market like China, foreign multinational enterprises (hereafter MNEs) are confronted with fierce competition almost in every key functional area, including marketing, production and supply chains, finance, human resources and information technology. Yet there is one area where many Western managers do not anticipate facing keen competition and that …

Seeing The Forest (And Your Tree): Envisioning Motivation And Performance In Work Design, Karen Eboch

Karen Eboch

Behavioral operations management explores the interaction of human behaviors and operational systems and processes. ....Specifically, the study of behavioral operations management has the goal of identifying ways in which human psychology and sociological phenomena impact operational performance, as well as identifying the ways in which operations policies impact such behavior. The learning activity in focus in this chapter is designed to help develop an understanding of job design and process improvements by drawing from personal experience and observation. Concepts related to work and process flows are integrated across a range of areas within Operations Management (OM) including quality, lean systems, …

An Investigation Of Authentic Leadership's Individual And Group Influences On Follower Responses, Carol Gill, Arran Caza

Carol Gill

In this study, we investigated and clarified aspects of the multilevel nature of Authentic Leadership (AL) and its effects on followers. Specifically, we hypothesized that AL would have distinct effects through both personalized AL (P_AL), which is a leader’s direct effect on a follower, and through generalized AL (G_AL), which is a leader’s indirect or group-based effect on a follower as a result of leadership effects among the follower’s coworkers. These hypotheses were consistent with a complete review of the empirical literature on AL’s effects and the results from a sample of leaders and followers working in a large multinational …