Work–Life Balance and Parenthood: A Comparative Review of Definitions,Equity and Enrichment*

This review investigates the problems of definition and inequity with which the literature on parenthood and work–life balance is beset. It analyses research trajectories first within the established disciplines of organizational psychology and the sociologies of work and family practices, and then within the newer field of management studies. Gender, class and difference are singled out as troubling themes, especially in relation to fathers and impoverished parents. A tendency towards mono‐disciplinarity is observed within organizational psychology and sociologies of work and family practices. The review offers explanations for the historic but narrow definition within organizational psychology and sociologies of work and family practices of work–life balance as affecting mainly heterosexual dual‐career parent couples. The authors show how this narrow definition has led to inequities within research. They further identify as limiting the definition of work–life balance to be always ‘problematic’, rather than enriching, among employed parents. Consequently, a three‐factor framework is recommended, through which future studies may address the problems of definition and equity in work–life balance literature, including: a broader definition of work–life balance to include marginalized parents; the defining of parenting and employment as potentially life‐enriching; and a commendation of the transdisciplinary approach within management studies as poised to move debate forward.     

Accelerating the Innovation Process: A Systematic Review and Realist Synthesis of the Research Literature

There is continued interest among academics, practitioners and policy‐makers in methods to achieve accelerated innovation. Academic studies of this complex phenomenon have succeeded in reaching a high degree of consensus on the antecedents of innovation speed. The aim in this review is to elucidate further the mechanisms underlying management interventions to promote speed. The review adopts a theory‐led, realist synthesis of innovation speed research – the first example of this methodology in management studies. The authors develop a new time‐based framework for categorizing the innovation‐speed literature. The framework has a CIMO logic, and is built by invoking the organizational studies literature on time. The authors contextualize the innovation‐speed literature in relation to the three generic temporal challenges faced by all organizations: reducing temporal uncertainty; resolving temporal conflicts over activities; and allocating resources amid conditions of temporal scarcity. They problematize extant explanations of innovation speed as not taking account of different temporal orientations (temporal dichotomies) within innovation work, and thereby neglecting a potential barrier to achieving accelerated innovation outcomes. They further draw on the literature on time in organizations to suggest new avenues of research, and methodological approaches new to the study of innovation speed. The principal contribution of this review is to offer a new conceptual perspective on the complex empirical research examining how innovation projects may be accelerated from original idea to launch.     

Managing the Maternal Body: A Comprehensive Review and Transdisciplinary Analysis

This paper comprehensively reviews transdisciplinary and critical perspectives on the employed maternal (pregnant and post‐birth) body in the context of management studies. It highlights the disparities between equal opportunities policies and everyday management practices in relation to pregnancy and new motherhood. In so doing, the review examines the contradictions between equal opportunities policies aimed at protecting pregnant and newly maternal employees and the discouraging treatment that such women receive in practice at work. In analysing the disparity between policy and practice, the review identifies gaps within the field of research on the employed maternal body. It then shows how perceptions about the pregnant and newly maternal body are based more on myth than on evidence. In keeping with policies encouraging family friendly working practices and aimed at enhancing parental health, the paper argues that research on the maternal body is integral to management studies.     

Strategies for Knowledge Creation in Firms *

We extend the knowledge‐based view by providing an explanation of how firms develop the capability to create knowledge. We take the view that firms are distributed knowledge systems composed of individuals who embody knowledge, and theoretically identify and empirically test the existence and effectiveness of two strategies – organization and project team – that promote their interactions to develop this capability. On the one hand, building on what we call the organization‐level innovation literature, we identify the organization strategy, which suggests investment in organization‐level integrative management practices to facilitate interactions to create knowledge among individuals situated in different parts of the system, independently of when a knowledge‐creation task is established and individuals are organized to create knowledge. On the other hand, building on what we call the team‐level innovation literature, we identify the project team strategy, which suggests investment in project team‐level integrative management practices to facilitate interactions to create knowledge among individuals once a knowledge‐creation task is defined and individuals are placed into teams to create knowledge. The two strategies are substitute approaches for the development of the capability, although the organization strategy appears to better predict outcomes of the capability. However, this approach might be more costly, so not all managers will choose to follow it.     

Intermediaries in the relevance-gap debate: A systematic review of consulting roles

A highly contested issue in management science is its relevance to practice. Despite third parties’ potentially significant role in changing the interaction between divided parties, the long-standing literature on the relevance gap has paid third parties little systematic attention. Drawing on a boundary-spanning perspective, and the concept of brokerage in particular, we review how the consultant role is discussed as an intermediary third party between management science and management practice. Based on a systematic literature review of 133 articles, we identify different intermediary consultant roles linking management science to management practice. Our findings detail how the practices associated with intermediary consultant roles performed by academics or practitioners relate to several key relevance criteria, how management knowledge flows when including intermediaries and how intermediaries in different roles relate to different audiences. Based on the findings, we develop a third-party model of intermediary consultant roles and knowledge flows. The model indicates the theoretical significance of third parties in shaping the interaction and knowledge flows between management science and management practice and has theoretical implications for understanding the persistence of the relevance gap. Regarding practical implications, we suggest how management scientists could target third parties as new key practitioner audiences. Considering third parties, and thus moving away from a two-party view, opens up promising directions for further research on the roles and role shifts of various intermediary actors and on how different intermediary audiences may appreciate different types of academic knowledge.     

Gapping the Relevance Bridge: Fashions Meet Fundamentals in Management Research

The much lamented 'relevance gap' is as much a product of practitioners wedded to gurus and fads as it is of academics wedded to abstractions and fundamentals. The gap persists because practitioners forget that 'the' real world is actually 'a' world that is idiosyncratic, egocentric and unique to each person complaining about relevance. Greater attention to the conceptual underpinnings of fads and egocentric perception suggest the existence of more fundamental barriers to effectiveness such as ceilings on improvement, weak situations, ambiguous signals, non-obvious adaptive forms and preoccupation with vision. Joint practitioner-academic effort devoted to questions of how events come to be seen as 'real' could re-bridge a gap whose nature has been misidentified.     

Corporate Portfolio Analysis Tools Revisited: Assessing Causes that May Explain Their Scholarly Disdain

While prominent corporate portfolio analysis tools such as the BCG Growth–Share Matrix took centre stage in the field of strategic management from the 1960s to the mid‐1980s, this review of the literature shows that they have since then largely disappeared from the academic agenda, despite their practical relevance and widespread application. There may be two independent reasons for this apparent scholarly disdain: corporate portfolio analysis tools (a) may have been recognized as unsuitable owing to inherent flaws or superior alternative concepts or (b) may have become obsolete because of proof that corporate diversification is inferior to market diversification. Thus, this assessment is based on an extensive review of the most relevant academic literature on corporate portfolio analysis tools and on the constitutive diversification–performance link published in leading management journals over the past five decades. The review reveals that research to date has not produced advanced tools based on an objective criticism of the original matrices, nor has corporate diversification – as a precondition for corporate portfolio analysis – proved to be inferior to market‐based co‐ordination mechanisms. Thus, this literature review constitutes a call for further academic research in the field of corporate portfolio analysis tools as well as corporate diversification.     

How Independent,Competent and Incentivized Should Non‐executive Directors Be? An Empirical Investigation of Good Governance Codes

There is a commonly held conviction among governance scholars and practitioners that increasing the number of non‐executive directors may have beneficial effects on board practices. This view has gained momentum after each wave of scandals. Given the relevance of the issue in governance studies and practices, the aim of this paper is to investigate how independent, competent and incentivized non‐executive directors should be according to governance scholars and board best practices. To answer this question, we conducted a review of the literature on non‐executive directors. We then collected corporate governance codes developed worldwide at the end of 2005, and made a comparative analysis of their recommendations about the independence, the competencies and the incentives of non‐executive directors. Our results show that (i) non‐executive directors' independence is a commonly recommended governance practice, the meaning of which differs widely among countries; (ii) non‐executive directors' competencies and incentives are not considered a governance issue to be regulated in detail; (iii) agency theory and the search for appropriate board demography tend to dominate the recommendations of governance literature and codes. Our findings have implications for both research and practice.     

Sustainability‐oriented Innovation: A Systematic Review

This paper is intended as a contribution to the ongoing conceptual development of sustainability‐oriented innovation (SOI) and provides initial guidance on becoming and being sustainable. The authors organize and integrate the diverse body of empirical literature relating to SOI and, in doing so, develop a synthesized conceptual framework onto which SOI practices and processes can be mapped. Sustainability‐oriented innovation involves making intentional changes to an organization's philosophy and values, as well as to its products, processes or practices to serve the specific purpose of creating and realizing social and environmental value in addition to economic returns. A critical reading of previous literature relating to environmental management and sustainability reveals how little attention has been paid to SOI, and what exists is only partial. In a review of 100 scholarly articles and 27 grey sources drawn from the period of the three Earth Summits (1992, 2002 and 2012), the authors address four specific deficiencies that have given rise to these limitations: the meaning of SOI; how it has been conceptualized; its treatment as a dichotomous phenomenon; and a general failure to reflect more contemporary practices. The authors adopt a framework synthesis approach involving first constructing an initial architecture of the landscape grounded in previous studies, which is subsequently iteratively tested, shaped, refined and reinforced into a model of SOI with data drawn from included studies: so advancing theoretical development in the field of SOI.     

The multifaceted nature of social practices: A review of the perspectives on practice-based theory building about organizations

A vibrant body of literature on social practices has developed rapidly in recent years. However, a systematic analysis of the underlying perspectives that shape the way practice-based scholars contribute to theory building about organizational phenomena has escaped scholarly attention. It is of pivotal importance to examine the multifaceted nature of social practices and understand the process by which new practice-based knowledge is developed. Our study addresses this gap by disentangling how researchers have adopted the knowledge, materiality, ethics, and politics perspectives that – as past influential work has informed us – are particularly relevant to practice-based theory building. In so doing, we categorize the body of literature into themes that correspond to the organizational phenomena examined by social practice scholars: practice boundaries and coordination of work, technology at work, strategy formation, local particulars structuring everyday work, and transformation of work practices. By uncovering how scholars adopt the four perspectives within each theme, our review shows that scholars (i) predominantly adopt the knowledge perspective, (ii) neglect the politics perspective when looking ‘inside’ a social practice, (iii) strikingly de-emphasize the ethics perspective, and (iv) isolate each of the four perspectives used in theory building. We then examine in detail the implications of our work for future research on social practices and conclude with a number of theoretical and methodological suggestions.     

Strategy-as-Practice: Taking Social Practices Seriously

This article reviews research in Strategy-as-Practice (SAP) and suggests directions for its development. The power of this perspective lies in its ability to explain how strategy-making is enabled and constrained by prevailing organizational and societal practices. Our review shows how SAP research has helped to advance social theories in strategic management, offered alternatives to performance-dominated analyzes, broadened the scope in terms of organizations studied and promoted new methodologies. In particular, it has provided important insights into the tools and methods of strategy-making (practices), how strategy work takes place (praxis), and the role and identity of the actors involved (practitioners). However, we argue that there is a need to go further in the analysis of social practices to unleash the full potential of this perspective. Hence, we outline five directions for the further development of the practice perspective: placing agency in a web of practices, recognizing the macro-institutional nature of practices, focusing attention on emergence in strategy-making, exploring how the material matters, and promoting critical analysis.     

Shades of Grey: Guidelines for Working with the Grey Literature in Systematic Reviews for Management and Organizational Studies

This paper suggests how the ‘grey literature’, the diverse and heterogeneous body of material that is made public outside, and not subject to, traditional academic peer‐review processes, can be used to increase the relevance and impact of management and organization studies (MOS). The authors clarify the possibilities by reviewing 140 systematic reviews published in academic and practitioner outlets to answer the following three questions: (i) Why is grey literature excluded from/included in systematic reviews in MOS? (ii) What types of grey material have been included in systematic reviews since guidelines for practice were first established in this discipline? (iii) How is the grey literature treated currently to advance management and organization scholarship and knowledge? This investigation updates previous guidelines for more inclusive systematic reviews that respond to criticisms of current review practices and the needs of evidence‐based management.     

Diagnosing Customer Value: Integrating the Value Process and Relationship Marketing

The concept of value and, more specifically, customer value is of increasing interest to both academics and practitioners. This paper undertakes a substantial review of past and current literature on value and categorizes this considerable body of research into nine streams of literature. Building on the emerging relationship marketing paradigm, it then proposes a framework for relationship value management. Nine core streams of value literature are identified and discussed: consumer values and consumer value; the augmented product concept; customer satisfaction and service quality; the value chain; creating and delivering superior customer value; the customer's value to the firm; customer‐perceived value; customer value and shareholder value; and relationship value. To date, the core focus of most of this literature has been on the nature of value from the perspective of the organization and its customers – the customer–supplier relationship. However, it is argued that the emergence of the relationship marketing paradigm has emphasized the role of other stakeholders in building relationships. An existing multiple stakeholder model of relationship marketing, the six markets model, is introduced and is integrated with key concepts from the value literature to produce a conceptual framework for relationship value management.     

Ubiquitous yet Ambiguous: An Integrative Review of Unpaid Work

The expansion of participation in unpaid work such as internships, volunteering and educationally focused work placements may constitute evidence of deleterious changes to labour markets increasingly characterized by competition, precarious work and prolonged transitions to secure employment. Unpaid work, although under‐researched, is increasingly relevant in times of ubiquitous unpaid internships and the use of volunteers in roles that would have been previously paid. Yet there remains a lack of clarity in terminology and focus across studies of unpaid work. This review article addresses this concern through two primary aims. First, we review the available literature around unpaid work setting out five themes: characterizations of unpaid work; the prevalence and underlying drivers of unpaid work; the apparent benefits of participation; the costs of participation; and regulatory and structural responses to unpaid work. Together, these themes set out a holistic interpretation of the accumulated state of knowledge in this area of inquiry including the implications for organizations, employers, higher education institutions, policy makers and unpaid workers. The second aim is to synthesise the current and emerging insights arising from the review as a matrix which delineates four distinct forms of unpaid work along two dimensions – purpose of participation and level of participatory discretion. The review and resulting matrix provides conceptual clarity around unpaid work practices that informs future research. It also raises pragmatic implications for institutional and managerial decision‐making which is cognisant of the range of risks, costs, benefits and ethical issues associated with unpaid work.     

Human Resource Management–Performance Research: Is Everyone Really on the Same Page on Employee Involvement?

Differences in the treatment of involvement in the human resource management (HRM)–performance research stream have been underplayed, as commentaries concentrate on showing that HRM produces a performance premium, and more recently on exploring the mechanisms explaining this. This paper first identifies the two initial concerns of the research stream – the value of employee involvement and the holistic treatment of HRM – and the way these are joined to present a unified view of the area. It then reviews the studies, confirming that involvement has been underplayed or neglected completely, and is only prioritized in a minority. A divide is identified between HRM as an orientation towards fostering employee involvement – seen as a managerial philosophy – and as a technology – a set of practices constituting high‐performance work systems. The paper then argues that acknowledgement of this divide matters, and concludes by drawing out some implications for how we should progress the research stream.     

Fuzziness in Action: What Consequences Has the Linguistic Ambiguity of the Core Competence Concept for Organizational Usage?

Linguistic ambiguity is one of the most prominent characteristics of management fashions. Using the example of one of the most popular management concepts in the 1990s, the core competence approach, we analyse the consequences of linguistic ambiguity on the level of organizational usage. We pursue an in‐depth case study of a German corporation which can be seen as a ‘heavy adopter’ of the core competence concept. A central implication of our study is that the term ‘ambiguity’ itself has several meanings depending on the level of analysis. On a general level the managers interpreted the core competence concept relatively homogeneously. They simplified and generalized it to an organizational principle and perceived it as guiding action. At the same time, each manager defined his or her own set of core competences. Thus, underneath a seeming consensus, a large variety of practices may hide. This novel kind of ‘contextual ambiguity’ does not originate from the linguistic ambiguity of the management fashion but from the plurality of local contexts in which the concept is interpreted. The managers' pragmatic attitude to the core competence ‘principle’ contributed to the high contextual ambiguity and the – compared to the media discourse – high longevity of the fashion within the case company. Our findings urge management fashion scholars to pay more attention to the distributed and polyphonic character of organizations and the organizational nature of the ‘consumption’ of ambiguous management knowledge.     

The Management of Workplace Conflict: Contrasting Pathways in the HRM Literature

This paper reviews the human resource management literature on the management of workplace conflict. It suggests that workplace conflict is commonly viewed in the literature as a symptom of management failure: the notion that conflict may be intrinsic to the nature of work because employees and managers have hard‐to‐reconcile competing interests is given short‐shrift. At the same time, the paper identifies important differences in the literature, which the authors call ‘pathways’, about the best methods to manage problems at the workplace. It is argued that four contrasting pathways can be detected in the literature with regard to how organizations approach workplace conflict management practices. Each pathway is examined fully and their respective strengths and weaknesses are assessed.     

Performance Appraisal,Performance Management,and Firm-Level Performance: A Review,a Proposed Model,and New Directions for Future Research

Abstract

There has been a long history in management and industrial/organizational psychology of studying methods to improve performance at work. These efforts have traditionally been concerned with individual-level performance (with some attention paid to team performance as well); even when research began to more broadly consider the topic of performance management instead of just performance appraisal. However, the often unstated assumption was that, if an organization could effectively improve the performance of individual employees, this would accrue to improvements in firm-level performance as well. A review of the literature suggested that this link had never really been established in a direct way. Instead, we found considerable support for relating “bundles” of human resource (HR) practices to firm-level performance, and several models for how these practices could create the transformation from individual-level to firm-level performance. We drew upon several of these models, from somewhat diverse literatures, to propose a model whereby bundles of HR practices, when aligned with the strategic goals of the organization, can be used to create a climate for performance that could transform generic knowledges, skills, and abilities (KSAs) into specific KSAs needed to improve firm-level performance.     

The Impact of Alliance Management Capabilities on Alliance Attributes and Performance: A Literature Review

The literature on alliances has identified a variety of inter‐firm antecedents of performance, including information and knowledge sharing between partners, shared partner understanding, and a focus on collective objectives. Recent studies have focused on alliance management capabilities (AMC) – firms' abilities to capture, share, store and apply alliance management knowledge – as an important antecedent of performance. This paper reviews 90 studies on AMC and makes two important contributions to the literature. First, the review provides an overview of and classification scheme for the different types of AMC to better organise the diverse empirical findings that have been presented in the literature. The novel classification distinguishes between general and partner‐specific AMC and between AMC stored within the firm and within the alliance. Second, consistent with the dynamic capabilities perspective, this paper offers a more detailed understanding of why AMC improve performance, by highlighting the intermediate impact of AMC on alliance attributes. In particular, the review demonstrates how the different categories of AMC influence alliances in terms of information and knowledge‐sharing between partners, shared partner understanding and the pursuit of collective goals. The review also demonstrates that these attributes improve performance. The authors note promising avenues for future empirical research that involve combining the classification scheme with research on the impact of AMC on alliance attributes and performance.     

Leadership theory and practice: Fostering an effective symbiosis

Leadership theory has not lived up to its promise of helping practitioners resolve the challenges and problematics that occur in organizational leadership. Many current theories and models are not contextualized, nor do the dynamic and critical issues facing leaders drive their construction. Alternatively, practitioners too often approach leadership problems using trial and error tactics derived more from anecdotes and popular fads than validated scientific data and models. Yet, while this gap between theory and research has bedeviled the leadership community for much of its history, there have been few if any systematic examinations of its causes. In this review, we have sought to highlight the particular barriers on the leadership practice and theory-building/testing constituencies, respectively, that constrain efforts to integrate them. We also offer a number of propositions and guidelines that we hope can break through these barriers and help stakeholders create a more effective leadership theory and practice symbiosis (LTPS). Finally, we have offered two cases of effective LTPS as examples and models for such integrative research efforts.