Business Commons^™

Ethical Issues In Knowledge Management: Conflict Of Knowledge Ownership, Isabel D. W. Rechberg, Jawad Syed

Publications and Research

Purpose: This paper reviews ethical issues inherent in the theorisation and practice of knowledge management (KM) with specific attention to the conflict of knowledge ownership between organisations and individual employees.

Design/methodology/approach: Relevant literature was identified and reviewed via EBSCO host and ISIWeb.

Findings: The paper notes that knowledge, although rooted in individuals, is often claimed or treated as owned by organisations, creating a conflict of knowledge ownership. The paper argues that such an approach to appropriation and management of knowledge leads to tension in knowledge processes between organisations and individuals, and also among individuals. This situation may, in turn, jeopardise …

Masters Of The Universe: How Power And Accountability Influence Self-Serving Decisions Under Moral Hazard, Marko Pitesa, Stefan Thau

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

This article provides an answer to the question of why agents make self-serving decisions under moral hazard and how their self-serving decisions can be kept in check through institutional arrangements. Our theoretical model predicts that the agents' power and the manner in which they are held accountable jointly determine their propensity to make self-serving decisions. We test our theory in the context of financial investment decisions made under moral hazard using others' funds. Across 3 studies, using different decision-making tasks, different manipulations of power and accountability, and different samples, we show that agents' power makes them more likely to behave …

Re-Theorizing The “Structure–Agency” Relationship: Figurational Theory, Organizational Change And The Gaelic Athletic Association, John Connolly, Paddy Dolan

Articles

This article illustrates how the figurational sociology associated with Norbert Elias provides an alternative theoretical framework for explaining the relationship between, ‘individualorganization- society’ and organizational change, and in so doing transverses what is conceived as a false dichotomy between structure and agency. Through an historical case study of the Gaelic Athletic Association in Ireland, the ‘individual-organization-society’ relationship is conceptualized as overlapping figurations and organizational change is explained as figurational dynamics—the shifting social interdependencies between the individuals and groups comprising an organization, between that organization and other organizations, between social groups on a higher level of integration and competition. In tandem …

Maybe It’S Right, Maybe It’S Wrong: Structural And Social Determinants Of Deception In Negotiation, Mara Olekalns, Chris Horan, Philip Smith

Mara Olekalns

Context shapes negotiators’ actions, including their willingness to act unethically. Focusing on negotiators use of deception, we used a simulated two-party negotiation to test how three contextual variables - regulatory focus, power, and trustworthiness - interacted to shift negotiators’ ethical thresholds. We demonstrated that these three variables interact to either inhibit or activate deception, providing support for an interactionist model of ethical decision-making. Three patterns emerged from our analyses. First, low power inhibited and high power activated deception. Second, promotion-focused negotiators favored sins of omission whereas prevention-focused negotiators favored sins of commission. Third, low cognition-based trust influenced deception when negotiators …

Maybe It’S Right, Maybe It’S Wrong: Structural And Social Determinants Of Deception In Negotiation, Mara Olekalns

Mara Olekalns

Context shapes negotiators’ actions, including their willingness to act unethically. Focusing on negotiators use of deception, we used a simulated two-party negotiation to test how three contextual variables - regulatory focus, power, and trustworthiness - interacted to shift negotiators’ ethical thresholds. We demonstrated that these three variables interact to either inhibit or activate deception, providing support for an interactionist model of ethical decision-making. Three patterns emerged from our analyses. First, low power inhibited and high power activated deception. Second, promotion-focused negotiators favored sins of omission whereas prevention-focused negotiators favored sins of commission. Third, low cognition-based trust influenced deception when negotiators …

An Ethnographic Account Of Leadership, Power And Change, Ray Gordon

Ray Gordon

The paper provides a genealogical account of a police organization’s attempt to implement what senior officers in its behavioural change division described as a dispersed leadership (Bryman, 1996; Gordon, 2002) strategy. I describe the organization and provide a detailed account of the dynamics that emerge as groups and individuals who historically held positions of power found themselves reporting to one of many designated leaders. The account depicts how the organization’s dispersion of leadership, while on the surface represents a new and successful endeavour, is rendered problematic by the organization’s historical constitution of power.

The Power Process And Emotion, Edward J. Lawler

Edward J Lawler

[Excerpt] Power is a crucial phenomenon in organizations, both pervasive and somewhat elusive. The study of power in organizations has a long tradition (Crozier 1964), yet the literature on power is fragmented and has been a central focus only intermittently over time. Fundamental assumptions about the role of power vary widely. On the one hand, power can be construed broadly as a negative and divisive force in relations, groups, and organizations. It enables those having power to exert influence over or command the compliance of others through coercion, force, and threats. This is the punitive, manipulative face of power (Deutsch …

Power, Language And Context: A Sociolinguistic Reading Of Bill Clinton’S Between Hope And History, Uzoechi Nwagbara

Dr Uzoechi Nwagbara

A sociolinguistic reading of Between Hope and History unpacks the thrusts of the book that are couched in Bill Clinton’s overall political and ideological philosophy as well as the achievements of his first tenure of office as President of the United States of America. The book also states the hallmarks of his campaign manifestoes for his second term through the use of apt linguistic and sociolinguistic elements. The acknowledgement of language as a medium for acquiring power is integral in all communicative situations aimed at rhetorical or sociolinguistic value. An outstanding feature of Bill Clinton’s Between Hope and History: Meeting …

Living Large: The Powerful Overestimate Their Own Height, Michelle M. Duguid, Jack A. Goncalo

Jack Goncalo

Three experiments tested the prediction that individuals’ experience of power influences perceptions of their own height. Power decreased judgments of an object’s height relative to the self (Study 1), made participants overestimate their own height (Study 2) and caused participants to choose a taller avatar to represent them in a second-life game (Study 3). These results emerged regardless of whether power was experientially primed (Study 1 and 3) or manipulated through roles (Study 2). Although a great deal of research has shown that physically imposing individuals are more likely to acquire power, this work is the first to show that …

Organizational Centralization As Figurational Dynamics: Movements And Counter-Movements In The Gaelic Athletic Association, John Connolly, Paddy Dolan

Articles

In this paper we develop aspects of Elias’s figurational approach within organisational studies by using some of the core theoretical constructs as a model to explain organi­sational change through an empirical investigation of the dynamics of centralisation–decentralisation processes in an Irish sports organisation. Based on historical analysis, the paper documents the expanding interdependencies, figurational dynamics and shifting power balances which led to a gradual, non-linear movement towards greater integration and centralisation within the organisation.

The Myth Of Endless Accumulation: A Feminist Inquiry Into Globalization, Growth, And Social Change, Martha Freymann Miser

Antioch University Full-Text Dissertations & Theses

This theoretical dissertation examines the concept of growth and its core assumption—that the continual accumulation of wealth is both socially wise and ecologically sustainable. The study challenges and offers alternatives to the myth of endless accumulation, suggesting new directions for leadership and social change. The central question posed in this inquiry: Can we craft a more ethical form of capitalism? To answer this question, the study examines conventional and critical globalization studies; feminist scholarship on standpoint, political economy, and power; and the Enlightenment notions of progress and modernism, drawing on a number of works, including Aristotle on the three intelligences, …

Business As Usual : The Nonprofit Sector In The U.S. National Elite Network, Scott Vincent Dolan

Legacy Theses & Dissertations (2009 - 2024)

Research on the structure and distribution of power in the United States has focused mostly on the relative power of business, and has largely neglected the nonprofit sector. This is despite evidence that points to the emergence and growth of large-scale, bureaucratic, and elite-led nonprofit organizations. When the political role of the nonprofit sector has been examined, it has come predominantly from two sets of literature: the civic engagement/social capital tradition or the interest group tradition. I argue that both sets of literature, however, start with faulty assumptions about the nature of power and politics, and thereby fail to situate …

When Language Means Power: A Sociolinguistic Study Of Bill Clinton’S Between Hope And History: Meeting America’S Challenges For The 21 St Centur, Uzoechi Nwagbara

Dr Uzoechi Nwagbara

The acknowledgement of language as a medium for acquiring power is integral in all communicative situations aimed at rhetorical or sociolinguistic effectiveness. Every sociolinguistic setting operates with disparate set of linguistic rules in order to maximise power in such instance. Thus, the kernel of this study is to interrogate how power is exerted and couched in political languages or speeches that take as their primacy the social arrangement of the people being addressed. Studies abound regarding sociolinguistic strategies that are employed to gain power through well crafted linguistic pieces that pay attention to target audience’s social, political and cultural configurations. …

Embedded Ethics: Discourse And Power In The New South Wales Police Service, Ray Gordon, Stewart Clegg, Martin Kornberger

Ray Gordon

In this paper we report an ethnographic research study conducted in one of the world's largest police organizations, the New South Wales Police Service. Our research question was, `How do forms of power shape organizational members' ethical practices?' We look at existing theories that propose the deployment of two interrelated arguments: that ethics are embedded in organizational practices and discourse at a micro-level of everyday organizational life, which is contrasted with a focus on the macro-organizational, institutional forces that are seen to have an impact on ethics. Resisting this distinction between the `micro' and the `macro', we build on these …

Power, Rationality And Legitimacy In Public Organizations, Ray Gordon, Martin Kornberger, Stewart Clegg

Ray Gordon

In this paper we propose answers to the research question: how does power shape the construction of legitimacy in the context of public organizations? We suggest that while organizational structures of dominancy will be embedded, not all structures of dominancy align with those that are normatively presented as legitimate and authoritative. Such situations make the creation and sustenance of legitimacy problematic for organizational action. This paper advances our understanding of the relation between power, rationality and legitimacy by showing how structures of domination recursively constitute, and are constituted by, legitimacy that may not be authoritative. We show, empirically, how these …

Power And Legitimacy: From Weber To Contemporary Theory, Ray Gordon

Ray Gordon

The chapter provides a comparative review of literature pertinent to power and legitimacy in social systems. The review will trace a specific path from the work of Max Weber to contemporary times. A comprehensive assessment of all contributions to the literature is outside the scope of the review. Instead, the focus is restricted to the comparison of three key bodies of literature, namely, mainstream functionalist approaches, critical approaches, and pragmatic approaches. A small sample of contemporary work that specifically centres on power and the construction of legitimacy in organizations will also be reviewed.

Exercising Control At Sports Rehab Network, Mark Mensch, Barry Armandi, Herbert Sherman

Organization Management Journal

This is a field-based disguised case describing how an entrepreneur who develops a successful rehabilitation business now must operate within the confines of a bureaucratic hospital setting. The CEO of the hospital who had ordered him not to seek any new ventures given the hospital’s cash flow problems was stymieing his entrepreneurial orientation. The case has a difficulty level appropriate for a junior level course in small business management and entrepreneurship. The case is designed to be taught in one class period (may vary from sixty minutes to one hundred minutes depending upon the course structure and the instructional approach …

Exercising Control At Sports Rehab Network, Mark Mensch, Barry Armandi, Herbert Sherman

Organization Management Journal

This is a field-based disguised case describing how an entrepreneur who develops a successful rehabilitation business now must operate within the confines of a bureaucratic hospital setting. The CEO of the hospital who had ordered him not to seek any new ventures given the hospital’s cash flow problems was stymieing his entrepreneurial orientation. The case has a difficulty level appropriate for a junior level course in small business management and entrepreneurship. The case is designed to be taught in one class period (may vary from sixty minutes to one hundred minutes depending upon the course structure and the instructional approach …

An Empirical Investigation Into The Power Behind Empowerment, Raymond D. Gordon

Organization Management Journal

Using the four dimensional frame that Hardy and Leiba-O’Sullivan (1998) developed to conceptually explore the “power behind empowerment” the study empirically illustrates how a police organization’s reform program, which was designed to empower lower level officers, foundered on its own innocence. The reform program adopts a resources dependency approach to power, which resonates with the first of the four dimensional frames of power; unobtrusive forms of power embedded at a deeper level of the organizations social system, which are consistent with the third and fourth dimensional frames, remain unaccounted for. A research and methodological framework is developed to bring the …

An Empirical Investigation Into The Power Behind Empowerment, Raymond D. Gordon

Organization Management Journal

Using the four dimensional frame that Hardy and Leiba-O’Sullivan (1998) developed to conceptually explore the “power behind empowerment” the study empirically illustrates how a police organization’s reform program, which was designed to empower lower level officers, foundered on its own innocence. The reform program adopts a resources dependency approach to power, which resonates with the first of the four dimensional frames of power; unobtrusive forms of power embedded at a deeper level of the organizations social system, which are consistent with the third and fourth dimensional frames, remain unaccounted for. A research and methodological framework is developed to bring the …

Do Suppliers Benefit From Collaborative Relationships With Large Retailers? An Empirical Investigation Of Efficient Consumer Response Adoption, Daniel Corsten, Nirmalya Kumar

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Collaborative manufacturer-retailer relationships based on efficient consumer response (ECR) have become ubiquitous over the past decade. Yet academic studies of ECR adoption and its impact on marketing relationships are relatively scarce. Inspired by the relational view of competitive advantage, the authors empirically investigate whether the extent to which suppliers of a major retailer adopt ECR has a beneficial impact on their outcomes. The results demonstrate that whereas ECR adoption has a positive impact on supplier economic performance and capability development, it also generates greater perceptions of negative inequity on the part of the supplier. However, retailer capabilities and supplier trust …

Should Critical Management Studies And Organization Development Collaborate? Invitation To A Contemplation, Maxim Voronov

Organization Management Journal

In this article, the author argues that despite important differences between Critical Management Studies (CMS) and Organization Development (OD), there is enough common ground to make a dialogue worthwhile for both fields and for management practice. The author outlines some major "objectives" of each field, noting some important but frequently overlooked similarities and complementarities between them. Power and empowerment are offered as examples of focal topics around which the two disciplines could have a productive discussion, suggesting that such an exchange would help CMS’ important insights about power to have more of an impact on organizational practice while enhancing OD's …

Stereotype Reactance At The Bargaining Table: The Effect Of Stereotype Activation And Power On Claiming And Creating Value, Laura J. Kray, Jochen Reb, Adam D. Galinsky, Leigh Thompson

Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business

Two experiments explored the hypothesis that the impact of activating gender stereotypes on negotiated agreements in mixed-gender negotiations depends on the manner in which the stereo-type is activated (explicitly vs. implicitly) and the content of the stereotype (linking negotiation performance to stereotypically male vs. stereotypically female traits). Specifically, two experiments investigated the generality and limits of stereotype reactance. The results of Experiment 1 suggest that negotiated outcomes become more one-sided in favor of the high power negotiator when masculine traits are explicitly linked to negotiator effectiveness. In contrast, the results of Experiment 2 suggest that negotiated outcomes are more integrative …

Identifying Critical Knowledge For Projects, Timothy Kotnour, Rafael Landaeta

Engineering Management & Systems Engineering Faculty Publications

This article is the result of an investigation of the challenge faced by project managers in identifying critical knowledge for projects. Five major areas of project knowledge are identified. The literature defines knowledge as information that has been given meaning.

The critical knowledge for projects was identified through the literature and by our experience as applied researchers. Managers of multi-project organizations can use this article as a guide for identifying the critical knowledge that is vital for their projects.