Does Japan Still Matter? Past Tendencies and Future Opportunities in the Study of Japanese Firms

This paper engages with the question ‘does Japan still matter’ by systematically reviewing publication patterns in peer‐reviewed academic journal articles addressing Japanese firms and their management practices, illustrating the academic discourse surrounding Japanese firms over four decades, and by identifying future research opportunities. Initially, particularly from the 1980s when Japanese firms came to prominence, these practices tended to be identified as ‘best practice’. However, at least in part due to socio‐economic changes, this tendency has become less prominent since the ‘bubble economy’ burst. Instead, three broader developments are observed: the examination of the continuity and change in the traditional Japanese model, a more complex approach that involves multiple themes of research, and leveraging new contexts to examine Japanese firms, including the long‐term recession, the rise of the East Asian economy, and the increasing importance of corporate social responsibility.     

‘Bureaucracy‐lite’ and Continuities in Managerial Work

This paper questions three frequently asserted, interrelated claims about developments in management: that centralized, regulated bureaucratic organizations characterized by hierarchy and rules are inevitably giving way to decentralized and empowered post‐bureaucratic organizations characterized by internal networks and an internal market; that, as a consequence, the traditional managerial role of command and control is being superseded by one of facilitation and coordination; and that, in turn, managerial work as routine administration of work processes is being supplanted by the ‘new managerial work’ of non‐routine leadership and entrepreneurship. It is argued that these claims often rest on caricatures of bureaucracy and network organization and are neither new nor well supported by evidence. Against these claims, the paper adduces case‐study evidence which shows that, despite claims about ‘decentralization’ and ‘empowerment’, organizational change may entail not a radical shift to network organization, but more limited change to a different form of bureaucracy in which hierarchy and rules have been retained but in an attenuated and sharper form –‘bureaucracy‐lite’. Consequently, managerial roles continue to be defined in terms of individual responsibility and vertical accountability for an organizational sub‐unit, and managerial work continues to be preoccupied with monitoring and maintaining work processes, routine direction and control of staff and processing information in order to deal with the ambiguities inherent in the dimensions of managerial ‘responsibility’.     

How does decision-making involvement affect perceptions of speed during post-merger integration?

This article offers an empirical demonstration of how different employees perceive the speed of change during the post-merger integration (PMI) process. As such, it adds to the growing body of literature on the speed of integration in the aftermath of a merger or acquisition (M&A). It broadens our understanding of the M&A integration process as it goes beyond binary recommendations of ‘fast’ or ‘slow’ integration by highlighting the relationship between an employee's involvement in the decision-making process and their perception of the speed of change.We conducted a multi-level longitudinal study over a two-and-a-half-year period. Our qualitative research on two not-for-profit, higher education institutions, employed multiple sources of process data. Building from this, our article thus provides not only novel theoretical insights into the PMI process, but equally offers valuable managerial advice on how staff morale, turnover and change resistance might be more efficiently managed during PMI.     

A Multi‐level Dialectical–Paradox Lens for Top Management Team Strategic Decision‐Making in a Corporate Venture

This paper aims to critique the process of corporate‐owned, high‐tech start‐up strategizing through an inductive, longitudinal, case study of ‘UK‐Research‐Tech’. Insights are given through the combined ‘dialectical–paradox’ concept, thereby focusing on where ‘dialectic’ and ‘paradox’ theorizing overlap. This linked iterative, ‘dialogical–dialectic’ research approach also reflects chief executive officer/top management team (CEO/TMT) start‐up dynamics over time. These foci fill important gaps that impede better understanding of dialectical, dialogical and paradoxical forces within strategic decision‐making. As an interpretative tool, they illuminate CEO/TMT strategizing and changing interrelationships affected by broader, volatile, techno‐economic contexts and parent‐company influences on ventures. In this case study, it was found that the CEO's relatively autocratic, parent‐framed approach combined with TMT members' contradictory reactions to create ‘dialectical–paradox’ oppositional forces, eventually only resolved through ‘eleventh hour’ business strategy changes to rescue the venture. This research contributes to more nuanced understandings of corporate‐constrained ventures during early business development from start‐up strategic decisions at parent‐company level to subsequent conditions of more independent dynamic equilibrium. The ‘dialectical–paradox’ conceptual lens contributes an innovative critique of processes affecting strategic decision‐making dynamics. Another important contribution is the empirically inspired conceptual model, developed for use both to guide subsequent case‐study research analyses and as a reflective tool for CEO/TMT strategic decision‐making, especially within corporate‐inspired start‐ups.     

Collective Wage Agreements and Firms’ Employment Policies

This paper provides evidence on the way collective wage agreements affect the adjustment of employment, working hours and other production factors when service‐sector firms are faced with demand shocks. The estimation results indicate that collective wage agreements significantly influence firms’ employment policies. It is shown that recruitment is a widespread instrument for service firms to cope with demand fluctuations which are negatively affected by collective wage agreements. The employment of freelance workers is also negatively affected by collective wage agreements, while their effect on using short‐term employment contracts as a reaction to demand shocks is positive.     

Phenomenology‐Based Ethnography for Management Studies and Organizational Analysis

This paper introduces phenomenology‐based ethnography as a novel ethnographic approach for research in management studies and organizational analysis and describes three methods that have been developed from this approach: life‐world analytical ethnography, focused ethnography and go‐along ethnography. Phenomenology‐based ethnography has emerged from developments in sociology that draw on ‘social phenomenology’ developed by Alfred Schütz. These developments involve the use of phenomenology‐based ethnographic methods that shift the focus of research onto participants’ subjective experiences of the field further than has been required by other ethnographic approaches. This paper uses a set of dimensions that allow a comparison of these phenomenology‐based methods’ aims, techniques of data collection and analysis, and required effort. These three methods are then compared with current ethnographic methods used in organizational research and management studies. The paper concludes with a discussion that explores and addresses the critique of how phenomenology‐based ethnography conceives the relationship between the researcher and the research subject.     

The strategic management of R & D. Part II—Organizing for integration

The possibility of the R & D activity integrating with the ‘physiology’ of the industrial enterprise depends on the model management adopts for structures, roles and human resources. Such a model should allow integration between R & D and the enterprise and encourage innovation. Two main roads lead to the attainment of the integration process. The author outlines them by observing the experience of research laboratories in the United States and in Europe. The two roads are the ‘managerial integration’ model and the ‘technological integration’ model, analytically described in the article.     

Strategic Integration and Devolvement of Human Resource Management in the UK Manufacturing Sector

This paper analyses the practices of ‘integration’ of HRM into the corporate strategy and ‘devolvement’ of responsibility for HRM to line managers in six British manufacturing industries. The findings are based on a questionnaire survey, in‐depth interviews and cognitive mapping methodologies. The results show that over 50% of the firms under study practise a high level of strategic integration. On the other hand, over 61% of the sample firms practise a low level of devolvement practices. Interestingly, both the practices of integration of HRM into the corporate strategy and devolvement of HRM to line managers are more determined by a number of organizational policies than traditional contingent variables. The adoption of the mixed methodology has been useful. The findings contribute to strategic HRM literature, and also have some key messages for policy‐makers in the field. The cognitive maps developed in the paper could be used to give feedback and training to managers.     

Problematizing ‘Relevance’ in the Business School: The Case of Leadership Studies

In recent years, the discourse of ‘relevance’ has risen to prominence in the university‐based business school. At the heart of this discourse is the suggestion that management researchers should align their research practices more closely with the needs of practitioners in external organizations. One important but under‐researched strand of this debate focuses on the way in which ‘relevance’ is pursued by business scholars via forms of practitioner engagement such as management consulting, corporate presentations, executive education and personal coaching. Drawing on extensive semi‐structured interviews, this paper explores the motivations, rewards and tensions experienced by leadership scholars in the process of engaging with practitioners. This study suggests that the pursuit of ‘relevance’ may come into conflict with norms of scholarly conduct, which in turn gives rise to a series of trade‐offs and compromises. Ultimately, the authors argue that the prevailing discourse of relevance provides an alibi for scholars to orient themselves towards practitioners in ways that contravene their academic identity and research ethos (whether post‐positivist, interpretivist or critical).     

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.     

‘Environment’ Submissions in the UK's Research Excellence Framework 2014

There has been much debate about university research assessment exercises. In the UK, a major element of the 2014 Research Excellence Framework (REF2014) has been the research environment. Here we analyse 98 REF2014 ‘environment’ submissions in Business and Management Studies. We explore whether there are distinctive language‐related differences between submissions of high and low ranked universities and conclude that submission writers have a strong incentive to exaggerate strengths and conceal problems. In addition, innate biases such as the ‘halo’ and ‘velcro’ effects may distract the attention of assessors from a submission's strengths and weaknesses, since they are likely to influence their pre‐existing impressions. We propose several changes to improve how environment is evaluated. We also argue that the research environment would be more likely to be enhanced if the number of outputs submitted in future was an average of two and a maximum of four per academic, rather than the maximum of five currently being considered.     

‘Masters of the Universe’: Demystifying Leadership in the Context of the 2008 Global Financial Crisis

There have been numerous explanations of the 2008 global financial crisis, ranging from the greed of the bankers to excessive deregulation due to neoliberalism and the financialization of everything. This paper argues that a discussion of parallels between the crisis and leadership discourses can generate new insights into both. Through an empirical study of the subjectivity of leaders in a UK building society, discourses around both leadership and the crisis are argued to reflect and reproduce similar taken‐for‐granted assumptions about subjectivity and representations of organizational and economic life. These are grounded in the belief that leaders are ‘Masters of the Universe’, who are able to predict and secure the future. The authors believe that these assumptions and representations contributed to the crisis and are now in danger of producing yet another bubble.     

Evidence‐based Management in Practice: Opening up the Decision Process,Decision‐maker and Context

Evidence‐based management (EBM) has been subject to a number of persuasive critiques in recent years. Concerns have been raised that: EBM over‐privileges rationality as a basis for decision‐making; ‘scientific’ evidence is insufficient and incomplete as a basis for management practice; understanding of how EBM actually plays out in practice is limited; and, although ideas were originally taken from evidence‐based medicine, individual‐situated expertise has been forgotten in the transfer. To address these concerns, the authors adopted an approach of ‘opening up’ the decision process, the decision‐maker and the context (Langley et al. ( 1995 ). ‘Opening up decision making: the view from the black stool’, Organization Science, 6, pp. 260–279). The empirical investigation focuses on an EBM decision process involving an operations management problem in a hospital emergency department in Australia. Based on interview and archival research, it describes how an EBM decision process was enacted by a physician manager. It identifies the role of ‘fit’ between the decision‐maker and the organizational context in enabling an evidence‐based process and develops insights for EBM theory and practice.     

‘Female Heroes’: Celebrity Executives as Postfeminist Role Models

This paper explores the significance of contemporary celebrity businesswomen as role models for women aspiring to leadership in business. We explore the kind of gendered ideals they model and promote to women through their autobiographical narratives, and analyse how these ideals map against a contemporary postfeminist sensibility to further understand the potential of these role models to redress the under‐representation of women in management and leadership. Our findings show that celebrity businesswomen present a role model that we call the ‘female hero’, a figure characterized by 3Cs: confidence to jump over gendered barriers; control in managing these barriers; and courage to push through them. We argue that the ‘female hero’ role model is deeply embedded in the contemporary postfeminist sensibility; it offers exclusively individualized solutions to inequality by calling on women to change themselves to succeed, and therefore has limited capacity to challenge the current gendered status quo in management and leadership. The paper contributes to current literature on role models by generating a more differentiated and socially situated understanding of distant female role models in business and extending our understanding of their potential to generate sustainable and long‐term change in advancing gendered change in management and leadership.     

Testing the Time‐Variancy of Explanatory Factors of Strategic Change1

The article proposes an empirical framework able to: (1) assess the relative validity of both adaptive and inertial views of strategic change and (2) verify the potential time‐ or context‐dependency by testing the structural stability of the empirical model, in Spanish banks, 1983–1997. Results offer inconclusive findings regarding (1) but strong evidence to answer (2). The assumption of structural stability is rejected and the effect of many explanatory factors considered in the empirical model varies over time as some factors show different effects and/or significance levels depending on the period considered. These findings suggest that explanatory models of strategic change should be viewed as ‘time‐’ or ‘context‐dependent’. The article provides a conceptual model in which alternative explanations operate in a sequential way. The results highlight, first, that inconclusive past findings about adaptive versus inertial views should be reviewed under this new evidence, and future empirical research must assure that its methods and interpretations are robust to potential structural breakdowns; and second, the limitations raised by the static approach offered by the available theories/models when approaching the dynamic and complex nature of strategic change. Theoretical developments and implications for managerial practice are suggested.     

Organisation structure,management style and company performance

This paper examines the relationship between organisation structure and management style and their influence on organisational effectiveness measured in both ‘human’ and financial terms. Account has also been taken of related contextual factors such as differences in task, size and environment of a company. Using information collected from a sample of fifty small and medium size printing and building firms the authors have elaborated a conceptual model involving the independent attributes; integration, control, task orientation and people orientation. The validity of this model has been operationally tested and examined against the background of evidence reported by other research workers on the contextual determinants of organisational structure and management style. Substantially different patterns of association between ‘organisation’ and ‘style’ and company performance are found for the two industries and an important outcome of the research has been to produce further evidence in favour of the contingency theory of organisation. The paper concludes with some implications for management practice and organisational design.     

Conflicting Subcultures in Mergers and Acquisitions: a Longitudinal Study of Integrating a Radical Internet Firm into a Bureaucratic Telecoms Firm

Media and telecommunications companies face the problem of how to integrate diametrically opposite radical internet firms after acquisition. Extant mergers and acquisitions (M&A) studies report that differences in the organizational culture are important in the cultural integration process. Frequently, M&A research assumes organizational cultures to be homogeneous and unified, but a large body of organizational literature suggests that organizations should be understood as heterogeneous living worlds in which employees construct their own subcultures. The paper focuses on the question of how such subcultures affect the long‐term cultural integration of merged firms. A 12‐year longitudinal field study in the Netherlands examined the integration of iPioneer into Telcom. The findings of the study show how three subcultures in iPioneer influenced the cultural integration process. The paper makes a contribution to the academic debate on cultural integration in domestic M&A by acknowledging that the numerous coexisting subcultures influence cultural integration in the complex process of post‐acquisition integration.     

In Search of ‘Managerial Work’: Past,Present and Future of an Analytical Category

Based on a comprehensive review of literature, the paper examines how ‘managerial work’ as a fluid analytical category has been approached methodologically, theoretically and empirically for more than 60 years. In particular, it highlights the existence of competing scholarly understandings regarding its nature, performance, meaning and politics. The authors suggest that subsequent empirical investigations have too often worked, methodologically and theoretically, to slot in, and thus effectively reduce, the term to a particular pre‐existing box, rather than exploring open‐endedly the what and how, but also the why of ‘managerial work’ as a distinct mode of situated ordering. Having represented the concept's past and present by identifying four distinct research approaches reflected in representative publications, the authors suggest that more attention should be devoted to a mode of analytical departure that promises to address directly the suggested shortcomings in the literature. Specifically, it is argued that much could be gained if contemporary notions of practice were brought into the study of managerial work. To this end, the authors outline the contours of a practice‐based approach as a sensitizing framework for understanding managerial work by highlighting the situated, relational, sociomaterial, meaning‐making and consequence‐oriented analytical foci the approach suggests, and suggesting a number of conjoint research questions, as well as acknowledging subsequent limitations.     

The Time Structure of Self‐Enforcing Agreements

A principal and an agent enter into a sequence of agreements. The principal faces an interim participation constraint at each date, but can commit to the current agreement; in contrast, the agent has the opportunity to renege on the current agreement. We study the time structure of agreement sequences that satisfy participation and no‐deviation constraints and are (constrained) efficient. We show that every such sequence must, after a finite number of dates, exhibit a continuation that maximizes the agent's payoff over all such efficient, self‐enforcing sequences. Additional results are provided for situations with transferable payoffs.     

When bubbles burst: Mimetic insights into minimising confidentiality breaches

This paper presents a theoretical model to help managers visualise and manage confidential situations more effectively. The model metaphorically likens a confidential setting to the properties of a soap bubble, e.g. elastic expansion or contraction, minimal surface area to contain a given volume, fragility, surface tension, pressure, stress, strain and the potential for bursting thereby releasing the contents to the external environment. We explore the conceptual developments in two phases. Firstly, looking at how a bubble and confidential scenario form and grow. Secondly, we consider how a bubble may burst and map these forces to ways in which confidentiality may be breached. Many attributes are mapped, the key ones being: the embedded value within the system, the criticality of maintaining confidentiality, increasing pressure, the corresponding stress/strain dynamics and the levels of trust between stakeholders. Key research propositions are derived from the model which aims to minimise the risk of a confidentiality breach.