A stakeholder perspective on process improvement behaviours: delivering the triple bottom line in SMEs

Abstract

The primary focus of operations management is to add value through operational processes. Considerable attention has been given to using process improvement (PI) techniques to reduce costs and time, in order to develop a competitive advantage for the wider organization. However, this narrow definition of value at times overlooks the triple bottom line (TBL) which can result in a number of unintended consequences, specifically issues related to environmental and social measures of performance. To address this, a stakeholder theory lens will be used to analyze PI activities within the context of small and medium-sized enterprises. The TBL will be used to complement the stakeholder perspective, to interpret the benefits that are realized from PI activities. This article highlights both the direct benefits from PI as well as more indirect benefits realized by involving a selection of salient stakeholders in PI. It will show how a developed view of PI can provide an important mechanism for delivering improvements to a firm’s TBL. The work concludes by highlighting the contributions made to both PI practice and stakeholder theory, while acknowledging the need for more research on PI, both from a stakeholder perspective and how it impacts a firm’s TBL.     

Pluralism in Organizations: Learning from Unconventional Forms of Organizations

The bureaucratic organization is still regarded as the conventional organizational form, but is ill‐suited to an increasingly pluralistic world. Research on the variety of organizational forms has increased dramatically over the past three decades and offers the potential to understand better how pluralism is manifested and managed within organizations. However, this research remains fragmented. The purpose of this paper is to review and synthesize research on unconventional organizations to explore how organizations resolve or attenuate the tensions related to pluralism. Drawing from research in leading management journals, it covers seven distinct literatures: ‘referent organization’, ‘temporary organization’, ‘pluralistic organization’, ‘meta‐organization’, ‘bridging organization’, ‘hybrid organization’ and ‘field‐configuring event’. For each literature, the authors trace the genealogy of the key concepts and review their distinct insights regarding organizational pluralism. They then synthesize and discuss their collective contributions and conclude with avenues of research for pluralism in organizations.     

Exploring the Impact of Social Axioms on Firm Reputation: A Stakeholder Perspective

This study proposes a model of how deeply held beliefs, known as ‘social axioms, moderate the interaction between reputation, its causes and consequences with stakeholders. It contributes to the stakeholder relational field of reputation theory by explaining why the same organizational stimuli lead to different individual stakeholder responses. The study provides a shift in reputation research from organizational‐level stimuli as the root causes of stakeholder responses to exploring the interaction between individual beliefs and organizational stimuli in determining reputational consequences. Building on a conceptual model that incorporates product/service quality and social responsibility as key reputational dimensions, the authors test empirically for moderating influences, in the form of social axioms, between reputation‐related antecedents and consequences, using component‐based structural equation modelling (n = 204). In several model paths, significant differences are found between responses of individuals identified as either high or low on social cynicism, fate control and religiosity. The results suggest that stakeholder responses to reputation‐related stimuli can be systematically predicted as a function of the interactions between the deeply held beliefs of individuals and these stimuli. The authors offer recommendations on how strategic reputation management can be approached within and across stakeholder groups at a time when firms grapple with effective management of diverse stakeholder expectations.     

Taking (and Sharing Power): How Boards of Directors Can Bring About Greater Fairness for Dependent Stakeholders

One of the ways in which scholars have sought to broaden the discussion of the social responsibilities of corporations and their managers is through the development of the stakeholder concept. The primacy of shareholder interests in corporate‐governance processes and managerial action is, however, a myth that justifies all sorts of managerial self‐interest seeking and exploitation of particular stakeholder groups. What makes this myth particularly problematic—from the standpoint of fairness and corporate governance—is that not all nonshareholder stakeholders are equally situated with regard to their ability to secure fair treatment. In this article, I explore the ethical dimensions of board responsibilities to dependent stakeholder groups by first describing the differences between shareholders and nonshareholder stakeholders with regard to risk, examining why dependent stakeholders (stakeholders with legitimate and urgent claims, but no power) are particularly important from the standpoint of stakeholder risk, and discussing how stakeholder consultation might provide a partial fix to such problems. I will conclude with proposals for how boards can more faithfully discharge their ethical responsibilities to dependent stakeholder groups, and in so doing facilitate stakeholder involvement in corporate governance in ways that promote fairness in organization–stakeholder relationships.     

Beyond trust: towards a practice-based understanding of governing ‘network organizations’

In recent past the concept of the ‘network’ or ‘network organization’ has emerged as one of the most prominent concepts for thinking, understanding and conceptualizing the coordination of ‘productive activities’. In the literature on network organizations, ‘trust’ is commonly understood to be the main coordinating mechanism of this organizational form. Highlighting the problematics involved in this prime focus on trust, this study combines practice-based theory (Schatzki in Social practices: a Wittgensteinian approach to human activity and the social, Cambridge University Press, Cambridge, 2008) and a Foucauldian understanding of governing to contribute to a more differentiated understanding of the coordination of everyday activities in network organizations. By focusing on how the ‘network organization’ and its subjects are ‘produced’ in power-infused practices, this study provides insights into the complexity of mechanisms involved in such organizations. Empirically this is illustrated at the example of a consulting company which describes itself—internally and externally—as ‘network organization’. Based on an ethnographic participant observation and in-depth semi-structured interviews, the analysis of the case questions the centrality of trust as coordinating mechanism and provides deep insights into the constitution of this specific ‘network organization’.     

Analyzing relational sources of power at the interorganizational communication system

Based on the critical theory of communication, managing stakeholder relations is significant to achieve more democratic decisions that reconcile diverse interests of various stakeholders. However, power inequalities among stakeholders might inhibit to achieve finely balanced decisions. More interestingly, these inequalities might emerge from the nature of communication among organizations. Conceptualizing interorganizational relations (IORs) as the relations of an organization with its stakeholders, the current study attempts to analyze the relational sources of power. Following a graph theoretical methodology, the frequency of interaction and trust were analyzed as the relational sources of power on a sample of 76 logistics firms. The findings of the study reveal that an organization’s frequency of interaction and level of trustworthiness affect its power over other organizations.     

Cognitive Mapping Tools: Review and Risk Management Needs

Risk managers are increasingly interested in incorporating stakeholder beliefs and other human factors into the planning process. Effective risk assessment and management requires understanding perceptions and beliefs of involved stakeholders, and how these beliefs give rise to actions that influence risk management decisions. Formal analyses of risk manager and stakeholder cognitions represent an important first step. Techniques for diagramming stakeholder mental models provide one tool for risk managers to better understand stakeholder beliefs and perceptions concerning risk, and to leverage this new understanding in developing risk management strategies. This article reviews three methodologies for assessing and diagramming stakeholder mental models—decision‐analysis‐based mental modeling, concept mapping, and semantic web analysis—and assesses them with regard to their ability to address risk manager needs.     

Introduction: Knowledge Construction and Creation in Organizations*

While adopting a knowledge‐based perspective on organizations has been valuable, since, among other things, it enables us to see links between organizational learning and a firm's competitive advantage through the development of idiosyncratic capabilities, it has nonetheless tended to treat organizational knowledge as ‘given’, exploring how it is related to other ‘given’ variables. The focus of this special issue is to unpack the notion of organizational knowledge by exploring the processes and practices through which knowledge is constructed and created in organizations. A constructivist perspective assumes that ‘knowledge’ presupposes work and seeks to explore how what comes to be considered as organizational knowledge is established and validated (or fails to do so). By seeing organizational knowledge as work we can further probe into how knowledge is shaped by organizational strategies and incentives and, more radically, how power and politics influence the struggle between competing bodies of knowledge in organizations.     

The Dark Side of Stakeholder Reactions to Corporate Social Responsibility: Tensions and Micro‐level Undesirable Outcomes

With a review of literature on corporate social responsibility (CSR) and its micro‐level impacts, this paper proposes an integrative framework to map undesirable relational outcomes of CSR activities on internal (employees) and external (customers) stakeholders. By adopting a paradox‐based perspective, the authors determine that unexpected, adverse stakeholder reactions to CSR are driven primarily by either performing or belonging tensions, related to exchange‐ and identity‐based stakeholder concerns, respectively. Specifically, contextual and personal influences can trigger and explain undesirable relational outcomes of CSR. On this basis, this paper offers a research agenda for developing a more refined understanding of CSR‐related tensions and a more nuanced perspective on the business case for CSR.     

When Can Scientific Studies Promote Consensus Among Conflicting Stakeholders?

While scientific studies may help conflicting stakeholders come to agreement on a best management option or policy, often they do not. We review the factors affecting trust in the efficacy and objectivity of scientific studies in an analytical‐deliberative process where conflict is present, and show how they may be incorporated in an extension to the traditional Bayesian decision model. The extended framework considers stakeholders who differ in their prior beliefs regarding the probability of possible outcomes (in particular, whether a proposed technology is hazardous), differ in their valuations of these outcomes, and differ in their assessment of the ability of a proposed study to resolve the uncertainty in the outcomes and their hazards—as measured by their perceived false positive and false negative rates for the study. The Bayesian model predicts stakeholder‐specific preposterior probabilities of consensus, as well as pathways for increasing these probabilities, providing important insights into the value of scientific information in an analytic‐deliberative decision process where agreement is sought. It also helps to identify the interactions among perceived risk and benefit allocations, scientific beliefs, and trust in proposed scientific studies when determining whether a consensus can be achieved. The article provides examples to illustrate the method, including an adaptation of a recent decision analysis for managing the health risks of electromagnetic fields from high voltage transmission lines.     

The Influence of Feelings While Driving Regular Cars on the Perception and Acceptance of Self‐Driving Cars

Self‐driving vehicles will affect the future of transportation, but factors that underlie perception and acceptance of self‐driving cars are yet unclear. Research on feelings as information and the affect heuristic has suggested that feelings are an important source of information, especially in situations of complexity and uncertainty. In this study (N = 1,484), we investigated how feelings related to traditional driving affect risk perception, benefit perception, and trust related to self‐driving cars as well as people's acceptance of the technology. Due to limited experiences with and knowledge of self‐driving cars, we expected that feelings related to a similar experience, namely, driving regular cars, would influence judgments of self‐driving cars. Our results support this assumption. While positive feelings of enjoyment predicted higher benefit perception and trust, negative affect predicted higher risk and higher benefit perception of self‐driving cars. Feelings of control were inversely related to risk and benefit perception, which is in line with research on the affect heuristic. Furthermore, negative affect was an important source of information for judgments of use and acceptance. Interest in using a self‐driving car was also predicted by lower risk perception, higher benefit perception, and higher levels of trust in the technology. Although people's individual experiences with advanced vehicle technologies and knowledge were associated with perceptions and acceptance, many simply have never been exposed to the technology and know little about it. In the absence of this experience or knowledge, all that is left is the knowledge, experience, and feelings they have related to regular driving.     

The Learning Organization: Adult Learning and Organizational Transformation

The concept of the ‘learning organization’, with its roots in self-development and action-learning, has recently caught the imagination of many organizations and researchers. However, emerging definitions are creating ambiguity. There is, therefore, a need to add substance to them, and widen our understanding of what the concept means, by concentrating on what is meant by ‘learning’, and focusing on exactly how adults learn. Understanding and facilitating adult learning in organizations is, by and large, a confused activity that fails to connect with an individual's other experiences and needs, and with what modern psychology and research have to teach us. In particular, learning and skills need to be linked to the questioning of purpose and value in an organization.     

The Employment Relationship and Inequality: How and Why Changes in Employment Practices are Reshaping Rewards in Organizations

We review the literature on recent changes to US employment relationships, focusing on the causes of those changes and their consequences for inequality. The US employment model has moved from a closed, internal system to one more open to external markets and institutional pressures. We describe the growth of short-term employment relationships, contingent work, outsourcing, and performance pay as well as the success of social identity movements in shaping employment benefits. In doing so, we address the role of organizations as sites of conflict within and between stakeholder groups, examining how struggles among stakeholders have contributed to reorganizing employment relationships. We also examine how these changes have affected inequality by (i) influencing the distribution of rewards within organizations (via changes in the determination of pay and benefits and in the allocation of workers to jobs) and (ii) altering, on a macro level, how rewards are distributed among different stakeholders. In closing, we identify areas where future work is urgently needed.     

Where do I belong? High-intensity teleworkers’ experience of organizational belonging

Despite the noted benefits of telework, concerns about distance, employees’ lack of presence, and how individuals remain connected to the organization and its members continue to surface. This is noteworthy because a sense of connectedness and feelings of belonging at work have been linked to engagement, productivity, and performance. The aim of this phenomenological study was to describe and understand the essence of high-intensity teleworkers’ experience of organizational belonging. Notions of identity fulfilment surface as central to how organizational belonging is experienced by high-intensity teleworkers. Expressions of organizational belonging included experiences that reflected self and other awareness, personal and professional fulfilment, support from others and participation. Not belonging was apparent where there was a lack of credibility, conflict, a loss of stability and exclusion from ownership. A definition of organizational belonging is offered, and recommendations for further research and practical suggestions for organizations employing high-intensity teleworkers are highlighted.     

Collective Intuition: Implications for Improved Decision Making and Organizational Learning

This article establishes the foundation for research on collective intuition through a study of decision making and organizational learning processes in police senior management teams. We conceptualize collective intuition as independently formed judgement based on domain‐specific knowledge, experience and cognitive ability, shared and interpreted collectively. We contribute to intuition research, which has tended to focus its attention at the individual level, by studying intuition collectively in team settings. From a dual‐process perspective, we investigate how expert intuition and deliberation affect decision making and learning at various levels of the organization. Furthermore, we contribute to organizational learning research by offering an empirically derived elaboration of the foundational 4I framework, identifying additional ‘feed‐forward’ and ‘feedback’ loop processes, and thereby providing a more complete account of this organizational learning model. Bridging a variety of relevant but previously unconnected literatures via our focal concept of collective intuition, our research provides a foundation for future studies of this vitally important but under‐researched organizational phenomenon. We offer theoretical and practical implications whereby expert intuitions can be developed and leveraged collectively as valuable sources of organizational knowledge and learning, and contribute to improved decision making in organizations.     

Human resource development (HRD) resilience: a new ‘success element’ of organizational resilience?

ABSTRACT

Endlessly changing business and economic landscapes urge organizations to become resilient to ensure business survival and growth. Yet, in many cases, business world is becoming turbulent faster than organizations are becoming resilient. Relevant research indicates the ways through which organizations could respond to unforeseen events, mainly through suggesting that individual and group resilience could lead to an organizational one. However, research is nascent on how particularly human resource development (HRD) resilience could be built, and thus to contribute to organizational resilience as well. Within today’s business uncertainty and complexity, HRD resilience comes in line with the developmental strategies of organizations. Therefore, the purpose of this perspective article is to set the foundations of the term (HRD resilience) in order to initiate a dialogue around its ability to make a substantial contribution to organizational practice, and thus to be seen as a new ‘success element’ of organizational resilience.     

Getting New Staff to Stay: The Mediating Role of Organizational Identification

Newcomer turnover is a major cost to organizations, and the quality of new employees' experiences in the first few months is critical in determining whether they decide to stay or leave. In a study that focused on the first stage of newcomer socialization, we investigate the impact of perceptions of social validation from the team and the team leader, and perceived fairness of treatment on newcomers' identification with their work team and the organization, specifically measuring the group self‐investment components of identification. The mediating role of these levels of group self‐investment and of the imbalance (i.e. difference) between levels of self‐investment on turnover intentions was also tested. New staff (N=569) joining a large public‐sector organization completed a questionnaire about their socialization experiences in their first 6 months of their employment. Structural equation modelling revealed that social validation by the team and team leaders, and fairness of treatment, predict increased investment with the organization and with the team. Organizational‐level self‐investment and an imbalance in favour of investment with the organization over that of the team mediated decreases in turnover intentions. We conclude that organizations should provide newcomers with validation that promotes identification with their organization during this critical stage of socialization.     

Stakeholder Actions and Their Impact on the Organizational Cultures of Two Tobacco Companies

We link the behaviors of executives and lawyers in two tobacco companies, in defending their tobacco products to the actions of stakeholders (e.g., the U.S. Government and Congress, medical researchers, consumers, public‐health organizations, tobacco‐control advocates, and insiders who have spoken out). Included in our analysis, which is based on publicly available documents spanning over a period of almost six decades, are critical incidents in which moral disengagement tactics were applied in the decision‐making process. We infer that the disengagement tactics applied by tobacco decision makers are indicative of what Schein and other organizational scientists describe as organizational culture. We equate the critical incidents to the espoused beliefs and values and underlying assumptions which comprise organizational culture and explain that the cultures of these two tobacco companies are not consistent with the stakeholder theory of management. We conclude that the critical incidents we analyze were immoral and the representatives were indeed accountable for these behaviors. From an organizational change perspective, we discuss how analyzing these critical incidents can serve to assess the extent to which an organizational culture is ethical. Furthermore, these critical incidents can be fed back to organizational decision makers and can then be used to initiate organizational changes.     

The Effect of Single Rater Bias in Multi‐Stakeholder Research: A Methodological Evaluation of Buyer‐Supplier Relationships

As the global competitive landscape intensifies, firms have looked to their supply chain organizations to improve cost, visibility, and cycle time performance across functions, products, and markets. As a result, the scope of supply chain related operations have increasingly cut across organizational boundaries. To understand and capture such cross‐organizational activities, researchers have broadened the focus of their studies and included multiple stakeholders in their analysis (e.g., integration, sustainability, and buyer‐supplier relationships). However, multi‐stakeholder research has also increased the complexity and effort required to conduct studies across organizational boundaries. Unfortunately, many studies that use multi‐stakeholder constructs fail to fully address their multi‐sided nature during both construct conceptualization and data collection. Several studies suggest that neglecting the multi‐sided nature of certain constructs can affect the research validity and reliability and may invalidate research inferences and results, although such concerns have not been empirically demonstrated. The current study addresses this gap by performing a series of tests using data from 105 matched pairs of buyers and their suppliers to illustrate key methodological considerations for conducting multi‐stakeholder research. This study also offers practical guidance regarding assumptions routinely made in single rater research and proposes when single rater data may be appropriate for multi‐stakeholder research.     

The Multilevel Nature of Customer Experience Research: An Integrative Review and Research Agenda

Over the last three decades, customer experience (CE) has developed from a burgeoning concept to a widely recognized phenomenon in terms of both research and practice. To account for the complexity of consumption decisions, the CE literature encompasses both the rational information processing approach to consumer decision‐making and the experiential approach, which includes emotions, feelings and sub‐consciousness. The authors classify and examine CE research on two levels. Studies on static CE analyze experiences during touchpoints at one point in time, while studies on dynamic CE assess how experiences evolve over time. Furthermore, both static and dynamic CE research take place from two distinct theoretical perspectives: the organization and the consumer. As both theoretical perspectives essentially deal with the same phenomenon – the organizational perspective with the creation of CEs and the consumer perspective with the perception of customer experiences – there is potential for a productive symbiosis between them. The authors propose that connecting insights from both perspectives can contribute to a better understanding of what constitutes a CE for consumers and how firms can effectively manage it. First, the authors discuss the development of CE and argue that it has evolved into a broad and fragmented ‘umbrella construct’. Second, after distinguishing and defining static and dynamic CE, they systematically evaluate the state of knowledge in both the organizational and consumer perspectives. Finally, they develop an agenda for future research that integrates the consumer perspective into organizational CE research.