Perceived technological turbulence and individual ambidexterity – The moderating role of formalization

Today's turbulent environment, with fast and unpredictable technological changes, requires employees to increasingly act ambidextrously, i.e., to simultaneously incorporate exploitative and explorative tasks in their work roles. To improve our understanding of how to foster individual ambidexterity in technologically turbulent environments, we draw on organizational management theories by arguing (1) that perceived technological turbulence directly affects individual ambidexterity in a positive way and (2) that organizations can strengthen this effect by providing employees with internal stability in these times of external changes through high degrees of formalization. Using data collected in a three-wave online survey of 739 German employees, this study demonstrates that employees who perceive high degrees of technological turbulence in their organization's environment show high degrees of ambidexterity in their work. In addition, we show that formalization in the form of written rules, procedures, and instructions positively moderates this relationship so that employees' ambidexterity is highest when both perceptions of technological turbulence and formalization are high. We conclude by discussing the implications of these findings for the ambidexterity literature, for future research and managerial practice.     

具有公平感的零售商订购决策研究

供应链系统中,零售商的公平感知会对其订购决策产生影响。将公平感细分为四类：过程双边公平、结果双边公平、过程单边公平和结果单边公平,研究了具有不同公平感类型的零售商在批发价合同下的订购决策。第一,在批发价合同中,具有过程或结果双边公平感的零售商,其订购量各不相同,与不考虑公平感的零售商的相对大小关系取决于系统参数;并且,零售商的公平感无法协调系统,但在某些条件下,可以改善其在系统中的相对收益。第二,在批发价合同中,具有过程或结果单边公平感的零售商,若零售商关注过程单边公平,其订购量总小于不具有公平感的零售商的;若零售商关注结果单边公平,在某些条件下,其订购量大于不具有公平感的零售商的;并且,零售商的公平感无法协调系统,但在某些条件下,可以改善其在系统中的相对收益。     

Strengthening Safety Compliance in Nuclear Power Operations: A Role‐Based Approach

Safety compliance is of paramount importance in guaranteeing the safe running of nuclear power plants. However, it depends mostly on procedures that do not always involve the safest outcomes. This article introduces an empirical model based on the organizational role theory to analyze the influence of legitimate sources of expectations (procedures formalization and leadership) on workers’ compliance behaviors. The sample was composed of 495 employees from two Spanish nuclear power plants. Structural equation analysis showed that, in spite of some problematic effects of proceduralization (such as role conflict and role ambiguity), procedure formalization along with an empowering leadership style lead to safety compliance by clarifying a worker's role in safety. Implications of these findings for safety research are outlined, as well as their practical implications.     

行为控制对威客持续参与意愿的影响:被调节的中介模型

威客的持续参与意愿是维持众包平台可持续性发展的关键因素。在众包参与过程中,平台实施的控制机制是否会影响持续参与意愿还缺乏系统的理论分析和实证研究。基于感知组织支持理论,本文构建了被调节的中介模型和相关假设,探讨行为控制如何通过归属感的中介作用影响持续参与意愿,以及在不同的程序公平水平下,行为控制通过归属感提升持续参与意愿的机制会有怎样的变化。基于“猪八戒网”搜集的290份样本数据,对模型进行实证检验。结果表明,归属感在行为控制影响持续参与意愿的关系中起部分中介作用;同时,程序公平正向调节上述中介作用,即程序公平越高,归属感在行为控制与持续参与意愿关系间的中介作用越容易实现。研究结果丰富、扩展了已有的众包理论研究,并为众包实践提供了管理启示与指导。     

Informality and Formality in Medium‐sized Companies: Contestation and Synchronization

Accounts of managerial practice in small and medium‐sized firms frequently draw upon notions of formality and informality. In this paper, we explore the relationship between these concepts through an analysis of managerial approaches to employment relations practice in six growing, medium‐sized organizations. Drawing on recent conceptual work on informality and formality, we argue that the use of the terms in previous analyses tends to neglect the co‐dependency of both the concepts and managerial approaches to the employment relationship. We present an alternative conceptualization of formalization and informalization processes that emphasizes synchronization through interactional practices. Through this analysis, we suggest that debate in this area can be reframed through thinking of informality and formality as a dualism rather than a dichotomy, and challenge the notion that small firms must, should or inevitably do move from informality to formality. From this, we construct an inclusive model of formality and informality that better reflects practice and enables further analytical development.     

A hole in the ladder: How to reconcile the benefits of equality with the merits of hierarchy

During recent decades, many researchers have advocated the benefits of equality over hierarchy. These scholars, for example, have argued that income should be uniform across the organization, layers of management should be dismantled, and that employees should be granted opportunities to participate in decisions that affect their lives. Yet, many complications of equality have also been unearthed. For instance, variability in income is sometimes positively associated with performance, employees tend to prefer organizations that are characterized by many tiers of management, and employee participation in all key decisions can undermine efficiency. Managers, therefore, must introduce measures that temper these complications. To identify suitable measures, managers need to understand how different dimensions of equality impinge on the determinants of wellbeing and performance. To fulfill this need, this paper first distinguishes three dimensions of equality: participation, authority, and income. Next, this paper invokes a variety of theories—from compensatory control to dominance complementarity—to understand how each dimension of equality affects the core needs of individuals, as defined by self-determination theory. Equality of authority tends to impede all three needs: relatedness, autonomy, and competence. Equality of participation and equality of income, however, foster all three needs. One exception is that equality of income may diminish competence on tasks that demand the application of established principles rather than intuition. This framework clarifies the designs and practices of organizations that may optimize wellbeing and enhance performance.     

Assessing fairness of selfish revenue sharing mechanisms for airline alliances

Airline alliances offer flights including flight legs operated by different airlines. A major problem is how to share the revenue obtained through selling a flight ticket among the airlines in a fair way. Recently, Kimms and Çetiner [1] have proposed fair revenue allocations based on the solution concept nucleolus, which assumes that the decisions of the alliance are given centrally. However, in an alliance, each airline has a selfish behavior and tries to maximize its own revenue. The contribution of this paper is twofold. First, we provide a method to evaluate the fairness of revenue sharing mechanisms applied in a selfish setting. The method includes a simulation model for the booking process of the alliance and uses the nucleolus-based allocations as benchmark. Second, we develop a revenue sharing mechanism based on the transfer of dual prices. The fairness of the new mechanism and several other existing approaches is assessed through a numerical study.     

A multi-criteria approach to fair and efficient bandwidth allocation

In systems which serve many users there is a need to respect some fairness rules while looking for the overall efficiency. This applies among others to network design where a central issue is how to allocate bandwidth to flows efficiently and fairly. The so-called max–min fairness is widely used to meet these goals. However, allocating the bandwidth to optimize the worst performance may cause a large worsening of the overall throughput of the network. In this paper we show how the concepts of mult-criteria equitable optimization can effectively be used to generate various fair and efficient allocation schemes. We introduce a multi-criteria model equivalent to equitable optimization and we develop a corresponding reference point procedure to generate fair and efficient bandwidth allocations. Our analysis is focused on the nominal network design for elastic traffic that is currently the most significant traffic of IP networks. The procedure is tested on a sample network dimensioning problem for elastic traffic and its abilities to model various preferences are demonstrated.     

Men Doing and Undoing Gender at Work: A Review and Research Agenda

While research on gender in organizations has not only documented sustained gender inequality, it has also offered an understanding of how gender is enacted through doing and undoing gender. An underexplored aspect concerns how men can do and undo gender to support or hinder gender equality processes in organizations. Doing gender is then understood as creating gender difference while undoing gender would conversely mean to reduce gender difference. The former is supporting gender inequality while the latter means moving toward gender equality. This article therefore provides a systematic review of empirical articles that discuss how men are doing and undoing gender within an organizational context. It is shown that undoing gender practices of men in organizations are under‐researched and a research agenda of how men can undo gender at work is thus developed. This article makes a two‐fold contribution: first it offers a refinement of doing and undoing gender approaches and second, it develops a research agenda for exploring how men can undo gender at work.     

Importance of fairness in humanitarian relief distribution

Abstract

This article is inspired by some of the challenges faced by non-governmental organizations in the distribution of humanitarian relief to vulnerable rural communities. A major concern of these organizations is to warrant that relief is distributed in an impartial and transparent way, which gives rise to the notion of fairness. This article thus discusses the importance of fairness in relief distribution and how it can be defined, especially in a context where delivery of vital items must be ensured periodically. We also propose some performance indicators to measure fairness, which can be useful to organizations that are held accountable for the impartiality of their decisions. Finally, an empirical study of an academic case, inspired by a rural aid distribution problem, is used to analyse how different mathematical formulations may contribute in helping crisis managers integrate fairness or equity in their decisions.     

Evaluating the benefits of formal planning systems

While empirical studies indicate that formal planning influences corporate effectiveness, no systemic understanding exists regarding how and why formalization of the planning activity affects corporate performance. This article proposes a framework for analyzing the impact of formalization on the quality of the planning exercise.It is suggested that by formalizing the planning activity, certain benefits accrue which cannot result from informal planning. Also, the intrinsic purposes of planning are furthered in several ways by formalization. However, there are also disadvantages resulting from formalization, some inherent and some arising from faulty design. The consequences of formalization with respect to the generally accepted purposes of planning are examined and a checklist intended to help designers develop more effective formal planning systems is proposed.     

Measuring unfairness feeling in allocation problems

In this paper, we introduce a new measure of social fairness based on unfairness feelings of the players involved in an allocation problem, e.g., cake-cutting problem or shift scheduling. We only require that each player be described by a von Neumann–Morgenstern utility function. Next, we propose a social normalization of each player׳s utility function, based on how each player sees the other players׳ shares through her own utility function. Further, we extend this normalization idea to a setting where the players are represented by a weighted oriented graph, where the weights assess the relatedness of (or similarities between) the agents. Among other results, we establish some links between our measures of fairness and those classically used in the cake-cutting-problem literature.     

Diversity Management and Fairness in Public Organizations

Diversity management was initially adopted in the pursuit of fairness and equality and the promotion of an inclusive workforce by public organizations. However, previous studies regarding diversity management have focused on job performance or job satisfaction. Thus, in this article, we attempt to examine whether diversity management advances organizational fairness in public organizations. By examining data from the 2013 Federal Employee Viewpoint Survey (FEVS), we find that diversity management is positively related to the perception of organizational fairness in the federal workplace. In addition, we also find that female and minority employees perceive diversity management in terms of fairness differently.     

FAIRNESS IN COST ALLOCATIONS AND COOPERATIVE GAMES

In an economic environment where there is a conflict of interest among several parties, the job of an adjudicator is to devise a “solution” to this conflict that is “fair” or at least acceptable to all parties. For example, a cost accountant may have to allocate the cost of a research and development division or of a common power facility to several departments—each of which makes some use of the facility. Perhaps, several firms responsible for the pollution of a lake or river may be under a court order to clean up the lake, and he must decide how to distribute this cost among the several firms. The purpose of this paper is to illustrate through the above two examples how the theory of cooperative games may be of service to such an adjudicator. However, there are several different notions of “fairness,” and the decision as to which notion of “fairness” is appropriate to which conflict situation is a decision that at this point is beyond the theory of cooperative games. By examining these different notions of fairness, a person may find himself able to distinguish features of various solution proposals which make one solution “fairer” than another.     

互动公平、委员会决策程序公平与员工决策承诺:基于公平启发理论与不确定管理理论的实证研究

借助层级团队形式制定决策,决策者能激发员工的决策承诺,确保决策的有效执行。以委员会作为决策者的层级团队为例,本文探讨了以下问题:当存在个体对自身胜任力的自信、专用性人力资本投资这两个因素的影响时,互动公平与委员会决策程序公平效应及它们之间的交互效应会发生什么变化?引入公平启发理论与不确定管理理论,本文假设并检验了上述四个因素如何交互作用于员工决策承诺。以两家大型商业银行信贷业务人员为研究对象,实证研究表明:(1)自信和专用性人力资本投资对委员会决策程序公平效应有着显著调节作用,但它们对互动公平效应的调节作用不显著;(2)当存在自信和专用性人力资本投资的影响时,较强的互动公平与委员会决策程序公平之间的交互效应更稳定一些,而较低的互动公平感知与程序公平之间的交互效应在方向上发生变化。本文有助于管理者理解"公平何时能引致员工合作"这一问题,帮助其更好地把握决策过程以获得员工对其决策的支持。本研究的假设完全基于公平启发理论(FHT)和不确定管理理论(UMT)的理论逻辑做出,实证结果与FHT和UMT的理论预测以及已有实证研究结果相一致,这意味着本研究具有较高可信性和可靠性,能为进一步理论探索提供了比较坚实的基础。     

模糊需求下考虑公平关切的收益共享契约与协调

针对供应链收益分配过程中零售商往往表现出公平关切行为,研究了模糊需求环境下两级供应链的收益共享契约与协调问题。在给出模糊市场需求环境下的收益共享契约基本模型的基础上,构建了考虑零售商公平关切的收益共享契约模型,并通过模型推导及数值实验分析了零售商公平关切对收益共享契约协调供应链的影响。研究结果表明,模糊需求下考虑零售商公平关切的收益共享契约仍然可以实现供应链协调,然而零售商的公平关切行为对收益共享契约的协调策略会产生影响。本文的研究成果可为供应链成员优化收益共享契约提供参考价值。     

多目标条件下企业碳配额分配和政府公平——基于(p,α)比例公平的视角

本文在企业和政府主从博弈框架下,研究政府兼顾社会福利和减排成本的多目标条件下企业最优碳配额分配方式,并采用（p,α）比例公平建立了最优分配与政府公平态度之间的对应关系,进一步分析企业间减排效率差异对碳配额最优分配以及政府所持公平态度的影响。采用遗传算法模拟结果显示,在政府最大化社会福利和最小化减排总成本的多目标下,政府始终给予高效率减排企业更多的配额,在企业间减排效率差异较小和较大的行业,减排效率对最优配额分配和政府所持公平态度的影响是完全不同的。当行业内企业减排效率差异较小时,随减排效率差异的增加,低效率企业所得配额逐渐减少,政府公平性逐渐降低;当企业减排效率差异较大时,情况刚好相反,低效率企业的配额逐渐增加,政府变得越来越注重公平。除此之外,政府公平性并不意味着低效率企业得到更多的碳配额,当企业间减排效率差异增加到某一区间,随减排效率差异的增加,低效率企业所得配额逐渐减小,而政府公平逐渐增加。我们的结论为相关部门多目标下的最优碳配额分配决策以及分析政府的公平性提供了有益参考。     

Ethnic Minority Women in the Scottish Labour Market: Employers' Perceptions

This paper contributes to an under‐researched area through investigating employers' perceptions of ethnic minority women in the Scottish labour market. Adopting a social constructionist approach which acknowledges agency and structure and incorporates insights relating to organizational and social group culture, the study highlights the influence of individual (micro), organizational (meso) and contextual (macro) factors on ethnic minority women's participation in the labour market. The paper is based on qualitative research involving Scottish employers in the public and private sectors to examine perceptions and practices related to the employment of ethnic minority women. Institutional commitment to equality issues is questioned, although individual instances of engagement with key equality issues were sometimes evident. Proactive recruitment strategies and career support for ethnic minority women and men were not in evidence, and there was low awareness of the unique position of ethnic minority women in employment and society. We argue that these findings call for a multi‐level approach to advancing human resources management policy, practice and research within a wider socio‐political environment in which the responsibilities and duties of public sector organizations are clarified and more support is provided for organizational promotion of equal opportunities.     

Building cultural intelligence: insights from project management job advertisements

This paper examines how organisations that conduct worldwide recruitment of project management professionals can derive insight from the cultural preferences stated within project management job advertisements. Drawing on project management practitioner job advertisements placed by 2040 organisations across seven countries and seven industries, we employ Hofstede’s national cultural framework to categorise cultural preferences which the organisations persistently replicate in their specifications of desired candidate project management practitioner competency. To map global trends and national variations, data analysis is undertaking and utilising exploratory data analysis, Poisson regression and negative binomial regression are used. The paper finds that specific national cultural dimensions – ‘Collectivism’, ‘Uncertainty Avoidance’ and, to a lesser extent, ‘Power Distance’ – are the most salient cultural denominators for advertised project management positions, while this is not the case with ‘Masculinity’ and ‘Individualism’. The findings raise issues about which organisations should seek to become more culturally intelligent, and which relate to the adaptiveness of the cultural preferences that they articulate through their job advertisements, both to project tasks and to cultural contexts for projects.     

Recalibrating Management: Feminist Activism to Achieve Equality in an Evolving University

In this paper we examine the process of incorporating gender equality into a higher education institution as it evolves into a managerial university. The case illustrates the ongoing processes between structure, activism and features of gender equality, and provides insights into how activists adapt to changes in governance and influence managerial responses to equality. Tracing the interaction of employee activism with new managerialism over nearly two decades, four phases of change are identified. These provide a basis for generating two concepts – managerial recalibration and individual activism – while challenging the social abeyance hypothesis of social movements.