中层管理者多重角色行为对企业绩效影响的实证研究

中层管理者是企业管理中重要的一个环节.本文关注中层管理者多重角色行为对企业绩效的影响.首先,将中层管理者的多重角色划分为企业家、执行者、辅导者与协调者四个维度;其次,通过结构方程模型,实证性的验证了中层管理者多重角色行为模型及各个角色维度对组织财务绩效与运营绩效的不同影响.结论表明中层管理者企业家角色行为仅对企业财务绩效具有积极影响,其余三个角色行为仅对企业运营绩效具有积极影响.最后,分析讨论研究结论,并给出相应的对策和建议.     

The Influence of Middle Managers in the Business Planning Process: A Case Study in the UK NHS

The paper takes a processual approach (Mintzberg and Waters, 1985; Pettigrew, Ferlie and McKee, 1992) in conjunction with a typology of middle-management influence upon strategic change (Floyd and Wooldridge, 1992) to investigate the role of middle managers in business planning in the National Health Service (NHS). Over time, as the business planning process becomes increasingly one which adopts a top-down approach, the main influence middle managers have is upon the implementation of deliberate strategic change. Middle managers modify the implementation of deliberate strategy by contesting the performance indicators that form the basis of the business planning framework. In particular they draw upon features of inner and outer context of the organization to question the legitimacy of business planning. However, the findings also show, albeit to a limited extent, that middle managers are purveyors as well as recipients of change. That middle managers can have upward influence has important implications for policy-makers since potentially, middle managers can enjoy an enhanced role and add value to organizations, in this case to patient care. Therefore recent attacks upon their numbers and role may be misplaced. In addition a high degree of central intervention in the NHS generally may be inappropriate, since it militates against an enhanced role for middle managers.     

Constructing Interlocking Rationales in Top‐driven Strategic Renewal

Under top‐driven change, active involvement of middle managers in strategy‐making requires top and middle to find common ground. The paper offers inductive theoretical development of top managers’ role as enablers for the strategic contribution of the middle levels. Central to this role is the symbolic reorganization where the middle managers’ position is set. Next, middle managers’ operational efficiency allows their performance to be shown and increases their reputation. In consequence, the middle level can actively shape the role suggested by top management, which increases their power base. Finally, when these previous interactions escalate into a two‐way process where the middle and top management contribute to each other's efforts, interlocking rationales are achieved.     

Strategic intent in the management of the green environment within SMEs: An analysis of the UK screen-printing sector

What drives the environmental behaviour of companies is an under-researched and under-developed area of study, particularly in the context of small and medium enterprises (SMEs). This article investigates to what extent the responses by UK screen-printing companies to pressures to improve their environmental performance represented a deliberate attempt by senior managers to provide their organisations with a strategic competitive advantage.Using both a quantitative and qualitative approach, the research shows that the environmental responses of this sector tended to be reactive, defensive and driven by – and frequently limited to – legislative compliance. Even though companies accepted that there were potential commercial benefits to be gained from environmental action, there was very little evidence to indicate that managerial decisions were motivated by strategic intent or that managerial mindsets were tuned to the notion that a proactive environmental response could offer a competitive edge. The article discusses the management implications of this lack of strategic orientation and highlights how a more innovative response by companies could provide both demand and supply side benefits.     

Personal values and managerial decision-making: Evidence from a developing economy

This study attempts to investigate to what extent the personal values of managers from a developing economy affect their managerial decisions. Previous studies have suggested the relationship between values and managerial behavior. The purpose of the study was to examine this relationship in the context of a developing, less industrialized economy, identify peculiar issues given the context of the study, and discuss the managerial implications of the findings. The subjects studied were Nigerian managers, using the value survey designed by England. Results showed that values do affect behavior, but more significantly, that the cultural values of the managers play a significant role in their managerial decisions.     

A managerial interfaces perspective for competitive action research

Current theory acknowledges the central role of top managers in shaping the firm's overall pattern of competitive activity. But it gives short shrift to the multifaceted processes by which diverse participants affect the strategic work of analyzing, formulating, and implementing competitive actions. We propose managerial interfaces as a complementary perspective – one where interfaces among top managers, relevant stakeholders, and other strategic contributors both enable and constrain that strategic work. We advance propositions regarding how different properties of managerial interfaces give rise to specific competitive action patterns. We conclude with a range of implications for theory and directions for future research.     

From Blaming the Middle to Harnessing its Potential: Creating Change Intermediaries

Middle managers have been under attack as organizational downsizing and reengineering have reduced their number. They are also frequently portrayed as obstructive and resistant to change. However, recent research suggests that managers at middle levels in organizations may be able to make a strategic contribution. Data from research on how managers in an organization undergoing transformation experience change are used to build on this existing research to demonstrate that middle managers fulfil a complex 'change intermediary' position during implementation. The findings reveal that a key aspect of this position is the need for middle managers to engage in a range of activities to aid their interpretation of the change intent. This interpretation activity then informs the personal changes they attempt to undertake, how they help others through change, how they keep the business going during the transition and what changes they implement in their departments. The interpretation aspect of their role is often overlooked, leading to workload issues and role conflict. These findings offer an alternative perspective on perceived middle manager resistance and lead into suggestions for future research and organizational implications.     

The sense of it all: Framing and narratives in sensegiving about a strategic change

Managers leading strategic change processes have to be skilled language users in order to convince others of the necessity of change and to shape the interpretations of their followers in a preferred direction. This paper asks how and why managers employ certain forms of language in their sensegiving during strategic change, and when these managers are effective in their language use to change the sensemaking of others in the organization. On the basis of a longitudinal case study of a European multinational corporation, we find that effective sensegiving is about providing organizational members with a pragmatic form – a way of making sense rather than, as previous research suggests, about providing them with pre-packaged meanings. We extend prior research by distinguishing the effects that the different linguistic forms of managerial sensegiving have on organizational sensemaking. Furthermore, the managers we studied were effective in their sensegiving when they combined framing and narratives. These two forms of language supported each other by amplifying the overall effect on organizational sensemaking. This notion of a combined use of framing and narratives complements previous research, which has largely studied them separately.     

网络销售中退货担保与定价决策

本文采用退货担保期权综合完全退货策略与部分退货策略的优点,构建了网络销售中基于期权的退货与定价模型,以商品的价格、退货策略和退货担保期权价格为决策变量,讨论了存在退货期权和不存在退货期权两种情况下,最优决策存在的条件,求解出销售商最优价格、退货策略和退货担保期权价格,分析了各个市场参数变化对最优值的影响,通过对担保退货期权与退货策略同时存在和购买期权才能退货二种策略的比较,发现供应商最优策略是前者。算例验证了以上结论,做了敏感性分析,总结了相关管理启示与未来研究方向。所得结论对网络销售商开展网上销售有重要参考价值。     

Exploring team mental model dynamics during strategic change implementation in professional service organizations. A sensemaking perspective

The purpose of this paper is to provide a deeper process understanding of team mental model dynamics in a context of strategic change implementation. To do so, we adopt a change recipient sensemaking perspective with the objective to identify salient determinants of team mental model dynamics. We aim to contribute to the managerial and organizational cognition literature by identifying critical micro-foundations that shape team cognition and interpretation processes during strategic change implementation. This adds to the field’s understanding of the under-researched collective dimension of strategic processes in general and strategic change implementation more specifically. Through an explorative case study conducted at a professional service organization, we identified five determinants of team mental model dynamics: coherence between ostensive and performative aspects of organizational routines, equivocality of expectations, dominance of organizational discourse, shifts in organizational identification and cross-understanding between departmental thought worlds. Case findings reveal that implementation processes of strategic change become intricate and difficult if change recipient sensemaking is not effectively acted upon. The five determinants identified require adequate managerial attention in order to avoid slipping into organizational inertia. As a consequence, professional workers are unable to ‘drop their tools’ and fail to integrate the strategic change effort in updated team mental models.     

Flexibility, Hierarchy, Markets

The conclusion that organizations need to become more strategically flexible as a response to increasing environmental dynamism and uncertainty has been an important feature of recent contingency theories of organization design. In this literature organizations have been analysed from the perspective of the development of networks of organizations concentrating on their core competencies and contracting among themselves on a stable long-term basis. This model of inter-firm relationships provides an alternative mode of organizational structuring to that arising from vertical integration, which, by contrast, is seen as fostering strategic inflexibility. In the literature on corporate restructuring and changes in ownership form arising from the markets and hierarchies perspective, we see a similar emphasis on the dysfunctional consequences of large-scale bureaucratic organization. Changes in ownership form are seen as a major means of providing more effective managerial control. In this paper we argue that linking the literature on flexibility emanating from contingency theories of organizational design and the markets and hierarchies perspective provides important new insights into current and emerging forms of organization.     

Managerial commitment to the status quo and corporate divestiture: Can power motivate openness to change?

CEOs' commitment to the status quo (CSQ) is a prominent psychological factor leading to their resistance to organizational change. In this study we focus on the moderating role of managerial power, a central element in strategic choice, in the relationship between CEOs' CSQ and corporate divestiture activity. Drawing from the resource dependence perspective of power, we identify multiple aspects of power (structural, ownership, prestige/social, and expert power) that reduce CEOs' resistance to corporate change arising from CSQ. This study contributes to the strategic leadership and organizational change literatures by underscoring the importance of considering how different power bases shape the decision making of top managers who may have tendencies to hold onto firm assets when the situation warrants change. With a better understanding of how various power bases may uniquely influence strategic outcomes in the presence of managerial psychological bias, we can more accurately assess the impact of power on firms' strategic actions.     

Role stress among physician executives

On the one hand, physician executives are clinicians who place value on professional autonomy. As clinicians, the best interests of the patient drive their decision making and their value system. On the other hand, as managers, physician executives serve as agents of an organization. Because of the differences in the two cultures, some physicians have called the physician executive position a "no man's land" To address these issues and answer the questions that surround them, the authors developed a survey that was mailed to a random sample of the membership of the American College of Physician Executives. Parts of the survey served in other studies of role conflict and role ambiguity. Parts of the survey are new, developed specifically to analyze the physician executive role. The findings are reported in this article.     

The Myth of Restructuring, ‘Competent’ Managers and the Transition to a Market Economy: a Romanian Tale

A great deal of rhetoric surrounds the transformation from socialism to free-market capitalism. This paper explores to what extent the restructuring of Romanian companies has been an attempt to pay lip-service to prevailing rhetoric and to what extent it has been premised upon economic rationality. To restructure along structural, technological, financial but primarily managerial fronts has become a cultural value which is applauded, praised and heralded as the only way forward by the Romanian institutions of the transition. The companies under the study subscribe to such rhetoric only when they regard it as being embedded in economic rationality, as is the case with structural, financial and technological restructuring. Managerial restructuring, on the other hand, is not regarded as a technical necessity, given the view held by existing senior managers that skills and qualities acquired in the socialist regime are still appropriate to run a business successfully in the free-market economy.     

Solar energy: Where policy-makers and conservationists disagree

Solar energy policy-makers and solar energy advocates use significantly different scenarios upon which they perceive and evaluate the adoption of solar technologies. The differences between the two groups seem to be rooted in different hierarchies of values relating to solar energy policy. Policy-makers emphasize the economic and national security values of solar energy. On the other hand, solar energy advocates stress environmental, ethical and social values. Aside from understanding the different groups in the on-going energy debate better, the findings of the study have important implications for planners both in government and industry as they may help increase the effectiveness of their plans.     

Building Organizational and Scientific Platforms in the Pharmaceutical Industry: A Process Perspective on the Development of Dynamic Capabilities

In this paper, we examine the process of dynamic capability development in a large pharmaceutical firm. Using interviews with multiple managers at different organizational levels, we developed two narratives of the process of developing two separate dynamic capabilities in the same firm. We focus on three areas that prior research has shown to be critical in the early stages of the process of implementing new strategic initiatives: the cognitive orientations of key personnel, managerial action undertaken within the firm, and the firm's internal and external contexts. We provide evidence that managers undertake specific initiatives based on their own particular cognitive orientations , and that senior managers play a major role in the development of capabilities by imprinting the organization with their specific cognitive orientation and then orchestrating the multilevel organizational routines necessary for actualization of a capability. These replicable actions by senior management during the early stages of capability development can lead to the development of a capability that is not initially in the cognitive frames of lower level employees. Finally, we will show that internal and external contingencies have a profound impact on the decision to develop a capability, and to discontinue its development. Our findings thus suggest that the process of developing new capabilities shares common elements with other strategic initiatives.     

Impact of Retailers with Knowledge of Supplier's Inventory on Supply Chain Performance

We model a supply chain consisting of a supplier and multiple retailers facing deterministic demand. We denote some retailers as strategic in the sense that given the supplier inventory information, they will implement the optimal stocking policy by incorporating such information. On the other hand, some retailers are denoted as naïve in the sense that they ignore supply information and resort to a simplistic ordering policy. Naïve retailers learn the optimal policy over time and adjust their orders accordingly. We study the dynamics of this game and investigate the impact of such strategic and naïve retailers on the cost, ordering pattern and stocking policies of all parties. We analyze the supply chain under two scenarios: the centralized supply chain where the objective is to minimize the total supply chain cost, and the decentralized supply chain where each self‐interested player minimizes its own cost in a Stackelberg game setting. We fully characterize the optimal policies under both centralized and decentralized scenarios and show that, surprisingly, the supply chain might be better off by virtue of naïve retailers. The result is driven by the fact that strategic and naïve players’ decisions shift the positioning of inventory in the supply chain with its final impact being determined by the relative costs of different retailer‐types. Our results also offer managerial insights into how access to supply information can improve supply chain performance.     

Supplier integration and company performance: A configurational view

Supplier integration is considered a key managerial strategy for improving buyer performance. This study adopts a configurational approach to supplier integration, based on the interaction and complementarity between supply chain management practices. In this perspective, this study explores the impact of supplier integration and measures aimed at creating a fast supply network structure on buyer performance. This research also attempts to ascertain whether these practices can exert a synergic effect. After examining data from a sample of 186 manufacturing plants, we can conclude that while taken singly supplier integration and fast supply network structure practices have a markedly positive effect on the performance goals considered (i.e., efficiency, schedule attainment and flexibility); in addition, they interact to produce an additional synergic effect on efficiency and schedule attainment. The analyses also reveal that investing in FSNS or SI initiatives alone can be risky. On one hand, when companies fail to make any effort to structure their supply network in order to achieve fast lead times, the impact of supplier integration on efficiency and schedule attainment may be hindered and, in extreme cases, supplier integration might even have no impact at all. On the other hand, investing only in fast supply network structure initiatives, without striving to achieve an adequate level of supplier integration might well be useless: indeed, even detrimental to any improvement in performance. These findings provide useful guidelines for managers who must decide how to combine supplier integration and fast supply network structure initiatives in order to improve or maximize performance.     

Linking CIO–CMO Communication and Product Innovation via Virtual Customer Environment Engagement: A Moderated Mediation Study

Intuitively, we would expect that CIO–CMO communication plays a minimal role in product innovation performance, because product innovation is primarily driven by firms’ market orientation, knowledge of customer needs and cross-functional integration among marketing, R&D and operations management. In a sharp contrast to this perspective, we propose that CIO–CMO communication increases product innovation performance through enhancing virtual customer environment (VCE) engagement. Such proposed effects are supported by two studies with different samples (i.e. MBA alumni in Study 1 and a representative sample in Study 2) and different performance measures (i.e. subjective ratings in Study 1 and objective sales data in Study 2). Furthermore, the effect of CIO–CMO communication on product innovation performance via VCE engagement is contingent upon two situational factors, namely marketing–IT integration policy and market uncertainty. The effect of CIO–CMO communication on product innovation performance via VCE engagement is positive and significant when marketing–IT integration policy is strong or when market uncertainty is high, but not when marketing–IT integration policy is weak or when market uncertainty is low. Theoretical contributions and managerial implications of these findings are discussed, especially on how managers can capitalize on CIO–CMO communication and VCE engagement to enhance the success of new product innovation.     

Sources of differences between Chinese,Indian, and Caucasian scientists and engineers: Evaluations of managerial potential

This article proposes intrapersonal, interpersonal, and acculturation factors to help explain differences in evaluations of the managerial potential of Chinese, Indians, and U.S. Caucasians. Using data from 1658 scientists and engineers and their managers in 24 U.S. companies, we find that managers evaluate Indians (but not Chinese) to have less managerial potential and to be less effective at working with others than Caucasians. The absence of insecurity in Indians’ self-reported English fluency appears to be detrimental to the evaluation of their managerial potential. In contrast, Indians who report high managerial aspirations receive less harsh evaluations of their managerial potential. We discuss the implications of our findings for future research and practice.