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The article presents reply from the author on views presented by G.R. Foxall and J.N. Gutmann on his article "On Freedom and Organization." The first complaint is that the author fails to draw upon the works of M. Friedman and B. Russell. The response is that the model presented in the paper is clear and complete for the purposes intended. Friedman's "Capitalism and Freedom" is essentially an economic work, whereas the paper is intended to embrace all organizations, not just economic ones. Furthermore, there are enough comments in the paper about oligopolies and monopolies to suggest that they are undesirable. The author failed to refer to the vast literature on organization theory because the paper is normative rather than behavioral in approach. For more than enough of the latter, he suggests Herbert Simon's Organizations. It will be clear after reading this work that only behaviorists lead the way to truth, and that those of us interested in normative models are daisy picking. The author also must confess that he is ignorant regarding the new radicals in sociology originating on the American West Coast.

This paper investigates the role of the organization structure in process-based organizations. We argue that companies cannot be designed upon organizational processes only or that process management can be simply imposed as an additional structural dimension on top of the existing functional or product dimension. It is more promising to consider process-based companies as organizations with a multidimensional structure with process ownership as a dominant dimension. The paper focuses on a number of consequences of the implementation of process-based organization structures. First, the complementary role of different types of processes is clarified. Second, we focus on the question how processes can be translated into the design of organizational units. Two key ideas underpin a process-based organizational structure. First, organizational units are organized around core processes. Second, other processes are added to these units minimizing the necessity of cross-unit coordination. This has several implications for planning and control activities and the way how process-based business units fit together to create a performing corporation. The latter can no longer be conceived within the traditional strategy-structure paradigm because of the fundamentally different role of middle and top managers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article is mainly based on articles in international professional journals forming the author's dissertation paper entitled ‘Informatics and Systems Science Applications for Analysis and Structural Improvement of a Municipal Organization’. The article may be seen as an attempt to relate certain concepts of LST (living systems theory) to the activities of a municipal organization mainly represented by the capital of Sweden. This article deals partly with concepts of indicators of fulfilment of an activity's desired outcome according to its main purpose and the difference between these concepts with consideration of a municipal organization. However, a most important part of the article is devoted to giving an example of the implementation of the critical subsystems in a restructuring and planning process where zero-base budgeting together with breakthrough thinking have vital roles to play. Thus, through a coupling of the principles of the critical subsystems to the principles of zero-base budgeting and using breakthrough thinking it could be possible to achieve an effective investigation of a municipal organization and its problems. The article also deals with certain paradigmic influences in society which also can influence a municipality. Copyright © 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Existing studies of housing markets assume that homebuilding is a homogeneous, perfectly competitive industry. This paper uses MSA-level data on the average size of homebuilder establishments and homebuilder market concentration to test the appropriateness of this paradigm. The data reveal a wide and systematic variation across metropolitan-area housing markets in both the average size of builders and the market share for the largest builders in an MSA. These results are more consistent with treating homebuilders as monopolistically competitive suppliers of a differentiated product than with treating them as perfectly competitive homogeneous firms. Builders are larger in more active housing markets and where there is a greater supply of readily developed land suitable for large developments. Builder size and concentration are sensitive to the type of regulating jurisdiction imposing land-use regulation. Both are lower when land-use regulations are imposed by smaller jurisdictions, and this is particularly true when the smaller jurisdictions impose more intense regulation. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The increased interest in customer service and the trend towards customization gives rise to new organizational forms such as the virtual organization. This paper introduces the Modular Network Design (MND) approach to complement Mowshowitz' (1997) theory of virtual organization. This theory focuses on metamanagement of the virtual organization and consists of four activities: (1) determine and analyze customer requirements, (2) track the possibilities for satisfying these requirements, (3) develop and allocate production tasks among the members of the virtual organization, and (4) assess and adjust tasks and allocation procedures. The MND approach elaborates on this theory by breaking down both the requirements and the production tasks into modular entities, and by measuring the performance of the resulting virtual network in terms of operating costs and throughput time. The major contribution of the MND approach lies in its ability to support the assessment of alternative allocations of production tasks among the members of a virtual organization, using Information and Communication Technology (ICT) as enabler. The assessment of such alternative designs is illustrated by an application of MND in the air cargo industry. The results show how the virtual organization and its members can realize significant improvements in operating costs and throughput times when applying ICT to link and reallocate their modular production tasks in response to customized orders. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines the intraorganizational mobility interests of production workers in manufacturing organizations. Substantial numbers of workers report not only being interested in mobility within their organizations, but many also claim to be actively pursuing that objective. The immediate supervisor is found to be a central figure in their goal achievement plans. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper deals with the choice of methodological approach within strategic network research. Network-oriented research approaches indicate a broader set of organizational and environmental variables. The issue of trust in network relations implicates contextual aspects such as the socio-cultural foundation of people's interaction. The striving toward more complex, multi-level models of strategy is seen to put a heavy burden on the development of adequate strategy research methods. The paper reports and interprets experience from a case study of inter-organizational exchange governance in small firms. The discussion suggests a need for more in-depth knowledge of cultural contexts, and of socio-economic relations of actors within strategic networks. The paper recommends a search for new methodological inputs from other academic disciplines more experienced with human interaction research. In particular, methodological tools found within the field of social anthropology are recommended. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We examine the interface between for-profit and publicly funded research in Pharmaceuticals. Firms access upstream basic research through investments in absorptive capacity in the form of in-house basic research and 'pro-publication' internal incentives. Some firms also maintain extensive connections to the wider scientific community, which we measure using data on coauthorship of scientific papers between pharmaceutical company scientists and publicly funded researchers. 'Connectedness' is significantly correlated with firms' internal organization, as well as their performance in drug discovery. The estimated impact of 'connectedness' on private research productivity implies a substantial return to public investments in basic research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper proposes the need to revise the traditional paradigm of measurement as it applies to organizations. It develops the notion that measurement in an organizational context must be viewed as a "psycho-technical system," a technology that is intended to influence behavior, including management decisions. It examines the functions of measurement as a psycho-technical system and presents proposed criteria consistent with this revised view of organizational measurement. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Poland is undergoing a major systemic shift from a centrally-planned toward a market economy. All dimensions of societal life are involved in the change. The paper discusses the current role of Polish managers against the background of what it used to be like under communism from a social constructivist perspective. The role is considered from the point of view of the actors; how they construct their role. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper proposes a competency-based view of careers, derived from competency- based models of employer firms. The implications for boundaryless careers are explored by reference to changing organizational, occupational and industry community contexts. All of these contexts are seen as likely to promote boundaryless career behaviors. Future research possibilities for each of three career competencies, and for interdependence among the competencies, are briefly examined. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Alan Fox is one of the most prolific and original British sociologists of industry and employment. Fox's largely derivative writings on macro-sociology have received considerable attention in the literature. In comparison his original micro-sociological theory of the role played by trust in organizational integration has been neglected. This paper presents a critical evaluation of Fox's microsociological theory of 'trust dynamics' in organizations. The paper identifies conceptual, theoretical and methodological weaknesses in Fox's complex argument and concludes that Fox's theory is invalid. The paper also suggests that trust in organizational life is probably more significant as an aspect of 'social integration' than, as Fox contends, as an aspect of' 'system integration'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The relationship between culture and organization has often been discussed, but rarely explored directly. This paper implements a cultural values instrument taken from Hofstede together with a behavioural instrument derived from Van de Ven to matched samples of British and French managers working on the Channel Tunnel project. The results largely replicate the findings of Hofstede regarding cultural values, but do not support the predicted implications for behaviour. In essence, the British were found to be more bureaucratic and more team-oriented than their French counterparts, who tended to be more fonceur and competitive. This indicates that the relationship between culture and behaviour might be more complicated than research to date suggests. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper suggests that the literature on organization control could benefit from more attention to 'disconnections', particularly those that take the form of extrusions and effacements from organization processes. Pointing out that current organization researchers depend almost exclusively on 'connections' for their theorizing on control, the paper illustrates the importance of disconnections in the form of gaps, breaks and absences in three field studies. The argument of the paper is that control is an effect that is enacted in practice by a distribution of connections alongside disconnections. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper attempts to debate and answer two questions: (1) Does multi-disciplinary research in management constitute a distinctive approach? To which the brief answer is `no', because multi-disciplinary research is not one approach among all those others which can also be applied when researching management. Multi-disciplinary research into management is, as it were, the only game in town. (2) Can we rationally choose multi-disciplinary research into management as such at all? To which the response is also `no', because management research and multi-disciplinarity are inseparable, by reason of the fad that management is, in its very essence, multi-disciplinary, rather than mono-disciplinary, in nature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper the transactions cost approach (TCA) is used to define organizations and to predict their forms under certain conditions. Next, Aaron Wildavsky's approach is used to define the policy process and to predict its form in particular organizations. Two assertions follow: namely, that the most efficient organizational form may be predicted from knowledge of underlying transactions costs, and that the form of the policy process in an organization can be predicted from knowledge of the organization's form (regardless of whether it is the most efficient form). Recent natural gas policy in the U.S.A. is used to illustrate these propositions, and several conclusions are offered about 1) the potential applicability of the TCA to the public sector and to the policy process and 2) about the potential applicability of Wildavsky's version of the policy process to differing organizational forms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper puts forward the proposition that modem self-help organizations are the progeny of an uneasy relationship between two ideologies: individualism and collectivism. Within this relationship individualism is the dominant partner. Using a case-study I examine the way in which these ideological influences can be seen to take concrete form in the history and activities of the National Ankylosing Spondylitis Society. I argue that certain characteristics of ankylosing spondylitis itself make it particularly amenable to self-help, but that under pressure from various social and cultural forces this tends to take the form of an emphasis on individual self-reliance rather than mutual aid. This tendency makes it difficult for the Society to respond in a meaningful way to social aspects of disablement. Although these interpretations are necessarily provisional, the paper concludes by suggesting that the tensions and equivocations revealed by the analysis have more general relevance to self-help groups, particularly those which are condition-specific and rely, to some extent, on the patronage of doctors and other health professionals. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper presents a model which elaborates the relationship between organization design and the product life-cycle. Consideration is given to the structural implications of corporations which have multiple products at differing phases in their life-cycles. This involves a theoretical synthesis of work on P.L.C. with that on degree of product diversification. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper uses a case study to explore a basic dilemma: can the people who control organizations develop ideologies which simultaneously facilitate stability and change? This dilemma is likely to become most apparent when people set out to improve an organization within its current ideological context but the consequences implicit in the improvements are poorly understood. The meaning and value of the improvements are then likely to be assessed differently by superiors and subordinates, and by loyal members and heretics. The case study illustrates how resources are mobilized to constrain improvement attempts in such a way that the consequences reconfirm the preexisting organizational ideologies and halt the improvement attempts [1]. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper describes research concerned with assisting groups in organizations handle their complex, ill-structured policy issues in ways which we believe are significantly different from many typical policy analysis projects. It is our belief that many systems research, operational research and management science projects have concentrated on 'objective', usually quantitative data at the expense of losing their clients' interest and commitment. Our work is concerned with taking account of intersubjectivity in policy analysis and evaluation. It is orientated to the construction of models that will be owned by our clients because they recognize as legitimate, and explicitly take account of, the subjective and particular knowledge of individuals within organizations. They also explicitly take account of the interaction of shared and individual knowledge as a group comes to define an intersubjective group issue. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the development of a conceptual framework of the context in which individuals work and expresses their orientation to work. It defines the concept of orientation to work' and comments on a need for a classification and measure of orientation allowing for non-exclusiveness and hierarchy. It comments on how there is no specific framework that exists to analyze organizations but that two frameworks, one based on decision-making and the other on models of group behavior, cover many aspects organizational analysts are interested in. It mentions that training and development have important roles in creating some degree of accommodation or adjustment between individuals' orientations and organizational expectations.

This paper analyses the impact of different organizational structures on the coordination problem of the multilevel organization. The two basic structures analysed is the U-form and the M-form within the framework of a price-directive coordination mechanism. Issues such as vertical and horizontal decomposition, the length of the planning period, the level of aggregation, etc., are discussed. The basis for the analysis is results from decomposing of linear programming models. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper addresses the issue of agent style--proactive and reactive--from a theoretical perspective. The results show that agent style, though often considered key in decision making, only affects the organization's performance when the organization is under moderate time pressure. Further, the effect of agent style depends on the type of training given to organizational agents and the internal condition under which the organization operates. This research suggests that, when resources are scarce, organizations should spend these resources on organizational design and on increasing the accuracy of incoming information rather than on altering the agents' style. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The theme of this paper is that access has to be discussed along a number of dimensions simultaneously, and that the language of discussion must discard the 'David and Goliath' metaphor of the individual versus the large organization. Access is a relationship which occurs systematically, not by chance. Its structural forms are determined by the formation and dissolution of social classes. Although access is more about power than rationality, to be examined more by reference to class struggle than culture, certain groups and classes are structurally unable through both processes to connect with alien criteria of resource allocation. At the same time the development of the bourgeois state and the transformation of rich peasants into rural capitalists cannot be completed without the incorporation of petty owners, tenants and labourers for the appropriation of their surplus value. This is maintained through the ideology of inclusion (populism) which presents access as an opportunity rather than a problem, and operates through the language of community, target groups, special programmes, extension and decentralization. The discussion in this paper is pursued in the context of material collected during fieldwork in the north-east of Bihar State, India where land reform, irrigation and intensive agricultural programmes have been undertaken since the early sixties. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

As noted in the literature, comparatively little research has examined either descriptive or prescriptive modeling of the planning process. A major reason for this lack of research appears to be the difficulty of comparing and testing planning methods within and across actual organizations. The purpose of this paper is to present a prescriptive planning model based on information-processing research and strategies. This model explicitly considers the linkages among the environment, the organization's adaptation to that environment, the type of planning, and information-processing strategies. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We all believe our jobs would be easier with the support of our managers. This paper presents an empirical study on this issue, specifically on managerial support for the use of scientific and technical information. The data support the belief that managers of high users of information give more encouragement for information use. The most important forms of influence are: (1) encouragement of interpersonal contacts outside the organization (visits, conferences, and courses), and (2) personal interest in specific pieces of information (as shown in routings, personal example, and assignments). Managers also encourage the use of information services and support information service budgets, but this encouragement is not given as systematically. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper seeks to improve the conceptualization and measure-merit of interorganizational fields and organization-environment relations. Cohesiveness of interorganizational fields and centrality of organizations vis-à-vis other units in their task environments are examined. Matrix algebra and sociograms are used to analyze data collected through interviews with the top administrator in 159 community development organizations. Cohesion of 16 interorganizational fields (counties) and centrality of 15 different types of organizations were determined using both high and low intensity of interaction measures. Three organizational coalitions were located and found to group around concerns about agriculture, social services, and natural environment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In a lecture Heinz von Foerster gave at the University of Bielefeld he confirmed that communication is a recursive process. That means, it can produce its components only by reference to past and future events of the same kind. We shall call this operational closure. The paper explores some consequences of recursivity and closure for a general theory of social systems, for organizations and for the economic systems. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article focuses on the research paper "An Inquiry Into Journal Circulation," by C.W. Hanson. The paper gives figures on the extent to which several member organizations of Aslib circulate journals within their organizations and some indication of the time required of library staffs for "controlled" and "uncontrolled" circulation.

Manpower planning is no novelty in the Royal Navy. It has been accepted as a necessity for many years. Its roots lie far back in history. It began as soon as there was a need - as soon as naval careers replaced a policy of 'hire and fire'. The transition to a career Navy began towards the end of the 17th century and was largely completed by about 1850. The need to plan increased yet more after 1850 as the technical complexity of the Navy grew, and the need was further reinforced after the 1939-45 War when new social and economic conditions brought a real risk that the Navy would not be able to recruit all the men needed. The ability to plan depended on the development of an appropriate organization, and the availability of appropriate expertise and resources. In the early days, officer-planning could be done reasonably adequately with a few Navy Lists, a quill-pen and a mathematical mind. This process is still good enough for a few very small groups of naval personnel, but for the Navy as a whole, all the techniques of social and management sciences need to be brought to bear, and geared into an organization for effective decision-making. This paper attempts to describe the main features of the organization for planning and decision-making as it exists today. Readers who are familiar with the organization will note omissions. For example, except in this paragraph, there is no mention of the Defence Council or the Admiralty Board, or of the Second Sea Lord who is responsible for all naval personnel matters. The fact that there are levels of responsibility above and alongside those described - including, of course. Parliament - must be taken as read. The paper describes only the essential core of organization. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

What explains presidential choices of management structures for economic policy making? The literature on the organization of the presidency has proposed two main answers: personality traits or institutional constraints. But management structures change less than expected from variation in presidential personalities, more than expected from institutional stability, and not necessarily triggered by crises. This paper offers an alternative, cognitive-based theory of presidential management choices. When economic crises are rare, presidents usually institutionalize collegial management structures; when crises are more frequent, they generally switch to hierarchical structures. The theory is tested by comparing management structures in Argentina and the United States. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Presents information on the journal "Papers in Regional Science. " Cooperation between the Regional Science Association International and publisher Springer; Changes in the organization; Rules in submitting manuscripts.

Editorial. Introduces articles published in the July 2003 issue of the periodical 'Information Systems Journal.' Multimethod research in information system; Organizational roles of the key stakeholders within four evaluation contexts; Innovation adoption decisions in three organizations.

We look at how an organization's level of resources interacts with its culture—that is, its shared beliefs and preferences. We consider an organization where workers exert effort to develop projects. These projects (a) have externalities for other members, (b) compete for funds when resources are scarce, and (c) can be implemented in various ways, which members have beliefs and preferences over. When resources are plenty, so that all feasible projects are funded, workers' efforts are independent of each other and a coherent culture is optimal. By contrast, when resources are scarce, competition across workers with diverging beliefs or preferences (competing cultures) can be optimal. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper focuses on the organization of design processes and the difficulty of simultaneously achieving control and exploration while aiming to achieve radical innovation. After a first generation of works that tended to oppose new product development ( NPD) processes (with controlled convergence and very limited exploration) to innovation processes (with poorly controlled convergence and random (uncontrolled) exploration), the new generation of works proposed ways to combine control and convergence either through concept shift or through stable architectures. Relying on a generic analytical framework (design space/value management), it appears that each model makes restrictive hypotheses (respectively smart leadership or stable architecture) to address two critical questions: How can one increase the efficiency of exploration? How can one ensure forms of cumulative convergence? Relying on the same analytical framework, we analyse two cases that explore the unknown in a controlled way and still do not correspond two either of the two models. We show that these two anomalies and the two models actually have two critical features in common: a focus on generative constraint and a logic of cumulative design rules. As a consequence, these two features might lead to several processes where teams have to explore the unknown and still have to keep a rigorous control of exploration and convergence. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The author comments on several criticisms made on his paper about the use of entropy as a measure of decentralization within an organization. Respectively, Horowitz and Horowitz criticized the use of a variety of entropic measures in business and economic applications specifically the failure to differentiate between dispersion among levels of an organization and the dispersion within levels of an organization. Murphy's application corresponds to the classical concept of decentralization which refers not merely to the dispersion of decision-making but specifically to dispersion in the hierarchical sense. The second criticism refers to the failure to distinguish between the importance of the various decisions being studied whereas the author's paper expounds upon the logic employed and the purpose was merely to illustrate the use of entropy as a measure of decentralization and that it has definite implications regarding organization theory.

This paper analyses how influence activities in the form of signal jamming affect the capital budgeting process of corporate organisations in Australia. Empirical results suggest that investment sensitivity (the relationship between investment in the smallest segment and its past performances) is positive for Australian firms. However, when influence problems within a firm become more severe, mixed evidence is obtained for different measures of influence activity. With an increase in the number of segments, influence activity becomes more severe and headquarters relies more on a public signal. In contrast, with the increase in relatedness across segments, the influence problem increases and headquarters relies more on private information from the manager of the large segment. Evidence suggests that Australian firms provide high short-term incentive payments to managers of large segments to mitigate the influence activity problems, and thus rely more on managerial recommendations for investing in the smallest segment. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Presents an abstract of the article ' International Congress of Libraries and Documentation Centers, Brussels, September 11-18, 1955,' published in the journal "Preliminary Reports." Program for the general sessions of the International Congress and also the programs of the Third International Congress of Libraries, the Fourth International Congress of Music Libraries, and the Twenty-second International Conference on Documentation; Discussion of the papers dealing with the topics of discussion that are submitted to the Congress Secretariat before May 31, 1955.

The article focuses on the research paper "Is Periodical Circulation Effective?," by C.E. Hewetson. Journal circulation is not economical as the sole method of exploiting this type of literature: the journals are seen by a fixed group of individuals regardless of the contents; each issue takes a considerable time to reach the last recipient; and the greater the circulation the less reading is done.

In many decision-making scenarios, people can benefit from knowing what other people’s opinions are. As more and more evaluative documents are posted on the Web, summarizing these useful resources becomes a critical task for many organizations and individuals. This paper presents a framework for summarizing a corpus of evaluative documents about a single entity by a natural language summary. We propose two summarizers: an extractive summarizer and an abstractive one As an additional contribution, we show how our abstractive summarizer can be modified to generate summaries tailored to a model of the user preferences that is solidly grounded in decision theory and can be effectively elicited from users. We have tested our framework in three user studies. In the first one, we compared the two summarizers. They performed equally well relative to each other quantitatively, while significantly outperforming a baseline standard approach to multidocument summarization. Trends while significantly outperforming results as well as qualitative comments from participants suggest that the summarizers have different strengths and weaknesses. After this initial user study, we realized that the diversity of opinions expressed in the corpus (i.e., its controversiality) might play a critical role in comparing abstraction versus extraction. To clearly pinpoint the role of controversiality, we ran a second user study in which we controlled for the degree of controversiality of the corpora that were summarized for the participants The outcome of this study indicates that for evaluative text abstraction tends to be more effective than extraction, particularly when the corpus is controversial. In the third user study we assessed the effectiveness of our user tailoring strategy. The results of this experiment confirm that user tailored summaries are more informative than untailored ones. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The notion of organizational identity was introduced in management studies in 1985. In the following 25 years, a vibrant debate about how to conceptualize organizational identities and related themes (multiple identities, identity change, interrelations between identity, image and culture) does not seem to have corresponded to explicit reflections about specific methodological issues. In this paper, the authors inductively review research methods adopted by studies of organizational identity published in top-level journals, with the purpose of deriving insights about the current status of research practices, uncovering their often tacit ontological and epistemological assumptions, and stimulating discussion about their possible evolution. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims to further the alignment among different theoretical approaches and future scholarship on the complex themes related to the micro-foundational processes characterizing the emergence and development of organizational routines and capabilities. It has been constructed with a typical Hegelian structure represented by a thesis, an antithesis and an attempt of a synthesis, each presented by different scholars, primed by a common set of questions related to the role of individual actors in shaping organizational change processes. The dialogue is introduced by Koen Heimeriks, followed by Sidney Winter proposing the 'thesis' for an evolutionary perspective on the problem, and an 'antithesis' is offered by Nicolai Foss with a number of critical points made from different economics and social science perspectives. Finally, Maurizio Zollo offers an attempt of a synthesis between the two positions with some proposals for conceptual and empirical advancement. The dialogue points to a convergence on the usefulness of evolutionary theory as a theoretical lens, but also on the need to add to the central notion of routinized behavior, other stable organizational traits of evolutionary relevance, such as the cognitive, motivational and identity-based antecedents to behavior, as well as key dimensions of intentionality and consciousness of change, which have been so far given either implicit or axiomatic roles. An overarching model of firm evolution that includes these micro-level factors in the context of more collective-level dynamics might help forging collaborative work across different schools of thought, as well as bridging the two levels of analysis in a way that is both theoretically well-grounded and empirically testable. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The aim of this paper is to examine the ways in which leadership at middle management level in the public realm is gendered. This is attempted largely through a consideration of academic literature, supported by some empirical findings from a research investigation into higher education and social work in Sweden and England and a review of literature that reveals varying types of leadership characterized as masculinist. Taking the position that context shapes social relationships and subject positions, and provides opportunities as well as constraints, we consider leadership in the public sector under the sway of new public management, framed by neo-liberalism and the valorization of competition, self-interested instrumentality, uncertainty and risk, operationalized in public sector organizations through performative regimes. It is argued that while some women and men are willing participants in the new regimes, others are antagonistic or ambivalent, finding themselves mired in neo-bureaucratic processes of surveillance and control, often stuck in occupational cul-de-sacs. It is contended that neo-liberalism and new public management are associated with masculinist forms of rationality that elevate individual winners and losers and divert attention from collective issues of gender. Rather than focus on gendered styles of leadership it is suggested that it is more important to look at their gendered performance and effects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper, we develop a theory and model of organizational founding and the emergence of collective beliefs and strategies. We explicate how collective beliefs, resulting in the formation of new organizations, emerge via three social mechanisms: sorting or matching, interaction, and selection. We specifically highlight how value homophily, social processes, and threshold effects contribute to the actualization (or not) of entrepreneurial beliefs and ideas. Our theory and model highlight not only the emergence of collective beliefs but also the socially interdependent nature of belief realization, choice, and strategy in nascent organizations. Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Employee's self-efficacy has been related with important outcomes for organizations, such as service quality and job performance. Thus, understanding the antecedents of self-efficacy can have important payoffs. Accordingly, this paper investigates how personal values interact with autonomy to affect employee's self-efficacy. The hypotheses are tested with a sample of bank employees. The results reveal that conservation is negatively related to self-efficacy and that both openness to change and self-enhancement values have a positive impact on self-efficacy. Autonomy is also positively associated with self-efficacy. Finally, autonomy mitigates the negative effects of conservation on self-efficacy, and strengthens the positive effects of self-enhancement on self-efficacy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this study was to investigate the frequency and antecedents of Chinese knowledge workers' counterproductive work behavior ( CWB) by using a self-developed indigenous scale. The paper consisted of two studies. Study 1 developed an indigenous measure of knowledge workers' CWB. Study 2 investigated the frequencies and antecedents of Chinese knowledge workers' CWB using the indigenous measure with a sample of 366 participants. The results showed that CWB among Chinese knowledge workers was rather prevalent. The results also showed that personality variables (i.e., agreeableness, conscientiousness, neuroticism, and locus of control) were more important than other variables (e.g., demographic and job characteristics) in predicting CWB. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper reports findings from a survey into applicant reactions of working adults in Saudi Arabia. A sample of 193 participants from four job functions was obtained, with measures of organizational attractiveness, core-self evaluation, and applicant reactions to four popular selection methods in the country - interviews, résumés, work sample tests, and references - being included. Findings indicate a notably similar pattern of preference reactions to previous studies in other ( Western) countries, affirming arguments for so-called reaction generalizability. Work sample tests were rated the most favorably followed by interviews, résumés, and references. For specific procedural dimensions, résumés were perceived as the most favorable, followed by work sample tests, interviews, and references. Several significant differences were found across job functions, mostly for interviews and résumés. Significant effects were found between reactions and organizational attractiveness, and between reactions and core-self evaluation, including some interaction effects. Implications for future research and for practice in employee selection are considered in the conclusion. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article offers information on the work of Cochrane Charity. Topics discussed include public disagreements within organizations that provide evidence‐informed advice; global organizations producing evidence‐informed advice on health care policy; and success and sustainability of the Collaboration depends on addressing; and developed a wider process theory of organization that focuses on continuous change and movement.