Establishing best practice university research funding strategies using mixed-mode modelling

This paper develops a model representing the university research funding problem under a performance based research funding (PBRF) scheme during the ‘lead-up period’ using a mixed-mode modelling approach (involving soft and hard models) and suggests a solution heuristic. The resultant model facilitates the development of ‘best practice’ strategies to assist in raising the level of research quality and participation, thus placing the university (or academic unit) in the best possible position for facing the final hurdle, the formal research assessment process. This assessment process constitutes the ‘positioning problem’, for which models already exist to assist individual universities to adopt the most favourable strategy. However, the ultimate position of the university depends on the results from the lead-up period. The suggested model facilitates ‘research enhancement’ strategy formulation, evaluation and revision and actively involves the researchers themselves. Benchmarking, an Expert Panel (operating on panel consensus) and subjective strategy impact evaluation are the key tools used. The suggested methodology relies on the knowledge, wisdom and experience of the researchers themselves and will hopefully facilitate the achievement of an academic unit's research goals over the lead-up period preparing them for the ‘positioning problem’. The paper also offers some suggestions as to how to establish and obtain maximum usefulness from the expert panel. Lastly, the suggested solution to the suggested model is user friendly, requiring no more than the use of a spreadsheet.     

Strategizing in an Unpredictable Climate: Exploring Corporate Strategies to Cope with Regulatory Uncertainty

Government regulation of business activities is increasing rapidly, exposing firms to considerable uncertainty and requiring managers to decide on appropriate strategic postures. To help managers make informed decisions, this study compiles a comprehensive overview of strategies to cope with regulatory uncertainty and illustrates their interdependencies and how they can be combined into overall coping postures, as well as offering management guidelines on deciding which to adopt. A literature review identifies a considerable variety of coping strategies, and we apply unique data from a worldwide cross-industry survey to categorize each into one of three types - offensive, defensive or passive. We find that firms aiming to cope with the uncertainty associated with post-Kyoto regulation typically adopt one of four strategic postures, each characterized by a specific combination of these types: ‘daredevils’ rely solely on offensive strategies; ‘coordinators’ combine them with defensive ones, ‘hedgers’ pursue strategies from all three categories while ‘gamblers’ choose not to specifically cope with uncertainty at all. We exemplify the strategies characteristic of each posture, and illustrate their interdependencies by means of case studies in the European airline industry. We identify two main factors managers should consider particularly when deciding on their firm’s strategic posture: the level of regulatory uncertainty they perceive and the firm’s exposure to future regulations, and find that the higher the level of uncertainty, the broader the range of strategies applied, and the more future regulation seems likely to affect a firm, the more actively it seeks to cope with the associated uncertainty.     

Peripheral Vision: Sensing and Acting on Weak Signals: Making Meaning out of Apparent Noise: The Need for a New Managerial Framework

Doing business in the face of constant change requires a shift from a ‘make-and-sell’ to a ‘sense-and-respond’ framework. This in turn requires four new competencies which require intense attention to what would have been considered the periphery of the traditional make-and-sell company—the customers and environment. The paper concludes by saying it is important to invest in expanding an organisation’s peripheral vision because it will make meaning out of apparent noise; it will extend the number and types of signals that can be sensed; it will drive the development of an ability to transform new signals into meaning; and it enables role-specific management.     

Bridging Scholarship in Management: Epistemological Reflections

If the relevance gap in management research is to be narrowed, management scholars must identify and adopt processes of inquiry that simultaneously achieve high rigour and high relevance. Research approaches that strive for relevance emphasize the particular at the expense of the general and approaches that strive for rigour emphasize the general over the particular. Inquiry that attains both rigour and relevance can be found in approaches to knowledge that involve a reasoned relationship between the particular and the general. Prominent among these are the works of Ikujiro Nonaka and John Dewey. Their epistemological foundations indicate the potential for a philosophy of science and a process of inquiry that crosses epistemological lines by synthesizing the particular and the general and by utilizing experience and theory, the implicit and the explicit, and induction and deduction. These epistemologies point to characteristics of a bridging scholarship that is problem-initiated and rests on expanded standards of validity. The present epistemological reflections are in search of new communities of knowing toward the production of relevant and rigorous management knowledge.     

The individualized corporation: An interview with Sumantra Ghoshal

Sumantra Ghoshal discusses the main features of his and Christopher Bartlett's new book, The Individualized Corporation, leading on to some of his current thinking on management issues in multinational corporations.Much of the book is devoted to describing the new corporate model, and to suggesting how such a company can be built and managed. Ghoshal points out that the major challenge to an individualized corporation is to manage people. A successful firm has a ‘smell of the place’ which motivates and invigorates its people. It also is capable of joint learning and a transformation process that progressively involves rationalization, revitalization and continuous self-renewal: the last of these is called in the book ‘cooking sweet and sour’.Reflecting Ghoshal's evolving thinking, the book moves well beyond managerial specifics to the realm of corporate philosophy. Management doctrine is changing from the old model of strategy, structure and systems to one built on purpose, process and people - a doctrine which embodies a new moral contact with employees.Looking at the future, Ghoshal insists we need an institutional theory of the firm, which recognizes their role as social institutions and also the role of management in distinguishing the visible hand of companies from the invisible hand of markets. This, and an inquiry into the management of the process of change - at a managerial, micro-level of analysis - is his new personal intellectual challenge.     

How Co-operative is Co-operative Purchasing in Smaller Firms?: Evidence from UK Engineering SMEs

Most SMEs do not try to engage in co-operative purchasing arrangements, and even those that do don’t handle them very well. Examining a sample of SME engineering firms from the UK Midlands for signs of more advanced practice, the authors identify three types of behaviour: firms with deliberate strategies (where co-operative purchasing is a consciously-designed and long-term part of management policy); firms with close ties with their suppliers but which still operate fundamentally adversarial policies (where, despite some development of practice, defensive, short-term and ‘low-trust’ attitudes still predominate) and those whose strategies, maybe of long standing, ‘just happened’ and are described as still emergent. The article analyses these positions to yield lessons for managers, recognising that, as firms grow, emergent strategies will need replacing with something more codified.     

The Management of Innovation in Project-Based Firms

How relevant are traditional innovation ideas for project-based firms? This paper asks if project-based firms provide a context supportive of innovation or indeed if they view it as useful. Based on research in firms from a variety of sectors, including telecommunications, information systems, computers, financial services and engineering, procurement and construction, the paper reveals that the very project control systems around which the firms operate serve to stifle innovation. Project-based firms—regardless of sector—prioritise efficient management of projects, tolerating the use of slack resources only when absolutely necessary. Finally innovation is not seen as universally useful, but primarily as costly and dangerous. It concludes that the space at which ‘innovation’ and ‘projects’ comes together is still dominated by ideas on how to correctly manage projects, rather than how to effectively manage innovation. Innovation of ideas on managing innovation projects may be merited.     

Grey Advantage: New strategies for the old

With nearly one fifth of the population of the industrialized world soon to be beyond a traditional retirement age, businesses need to re-appraise their attitudes towards both older workers and older customers. Whilst some public and private sector organizations may have signalled such intentions, the gap between the rhetoric and reality of ‘third age’ employment and grey market development is still substantial. Analysing the ‘Age-Quake’, this article reviews current ageing population trends and associated business agendas. Using case study analysis, it then challenges three perceived ‘grey discontinuities’, as well as the traditional perception of simplistic step-change declines in physical and mental abilities and economic activity at the traditional retirement age. Deriving from this, the article challenges the older received wisdom by offering the individual assessment of ‘third-agers’ in terms of abilities as employees and tastes as customers as two generic strategies to assist managers in the strategic alignment of their organizations in pursuit of “grey advantage”.     

Risk and value at risk

Increasingly complicated tools known as financial derivatives have been introduced in recent times to manage the market risk arising from floating exchange rates. The rapid development of the derivatives markets has in turn introduced new risks into the business of finance - witness the highly-publicised trading losses at Metallgesellschaft and Procter and Gamble. A principal method for measuring and reporting market risk in the portfolios of banks and their clients is ‘value at risk’ (VaR).Fred Stambaugh explains the concept of ‘value at risk’ and describes three principal approaches to calculating it - correlation matrix, historical simulation and Monte Carlo simulation; they are alternatives, not competitors. As well as setting out their uses, he considers those situations that go beyond ‘value at risk’, i.e. dire events that lie beyond the confidence level of VaR. Techniques for portfolio stress testing are discussed.     

Pioneering Process Research: Andrew Pettigrew's Contribution to Management Scholarship, 1962–2014

This paper assesses Andrew Pettigrew's contribution to management scholarship. This review addresses the process, content, and context of his research career. Chronologically, the process will be subdivided into three distinct phases: the period leading up to the establishment of the Centre for Corporate Strategy and Change, Pettigrew's time with the Centre, and Pettigrew's research since leaving the Centre. The content of Pettigrew's research focussed on big problems and emerging phenomena such as decision‐making, organisational culture, organisation development, strategic change, human resource management, competitiveness, new public management, boards of directors, innovative forms of organising, high‐performing research teams, and business schools. His contextualist methodology for process research will be explicated. Pettigrew's contribution will be contextualised by comparing it with contemporary research. The paper concludes that there is still a need not only to examine big problems and emerging phenomena but also to provide a processual understanding of management reality. There is a need to further develop process research methodologies such as Pettigrew's contextualism, especially with respect to process research methods.     

Gender differences in entrepreneurial intentions: A TPB multi-group analysis at factor and indicator level

Previous research suggests that diverse factors predict gender differences in entrepreneurial intent. Our paper integrates and expands on previous findings using the Theory of Planned Behavior (TPB), including the deeper-level measurement model, allowing for a better understanding of the origin of differences. The results of a survey with business students indicate that the effect of gender on entrepreneurial intentions is mediated via personal attitudes and perceived behavioral control but not social norms. More precisely, vis-à-vis their male counterparts, women are more driven toward entrepreneurship by motives to ‘get organized’ (balance) that are less dominant in predicting personal attitude. Moreover, female students are somewhat less driven toward entrepreneurship by beliefs of internal control that are more dominant in predicting perceived control. Finally, while female students are also more motivated to comply with normative role models, this did not influence their entrepreneurial intentions over and above perceived behavioral control and personal attitude. We discuss both practical and theoretical implications of our findings.     

Impacts of government high-tech policy: a case study of CAD technology in China

Rapid growth of technology innovations promotes governments world-wide to actively explore the best way to realize its economic benefits. Likewise, Chinese government has positioned advances of high technology a driving-force to continued economic achievements, and launched various high-tech policies. This case study focuses on computer-aided design (CAD), a key field under policy support, discloses policy’s critical role. Interview/survey data from corporate and academic leaders were also collected and synthesized. The emergence of university–industry collaboration, capitalizing university intellectual property, and new modes in CAD innovation and technology diffusion are among those major findings. A Model is also proposed. The study provides new observations for debates to high-tech policy-makers and can benefit scholars and business managers seeking to understand the environment in China, and serve as a foundation for further policy and management research.     

Minimizing tardiness on a single processor with sequence-dependent setup times: a simulated annealing approach

In today's fast-paced Just-In-Time and mass customization manufacturing in a sequence-dependent setup environment, the challenge of making production schedules to meet due-date requirements is becoming a more complex problem. Unfortunately, much of the research on operations scheduling problems has either ignored setup times or assumed that setup times on each machine are independent of the job sequence. This paper considers the problem of minimizing tardiness, a common measure of due-date performance, in a sequence-dependent setup environment. Simulated annealing was used to solve the sequencing problem, and its performance was compared with random search. Our experimental results show that the algorithm can find a good solution fairly quickly, and thus can rework schedules frequently to react to variations in the schedule. The algorithm is invaluable for ‘on-line’ production scheduling and ‘last-minute’ changes to production schedule. The results of this research also suggest ways in which more complex and realistic job shop environments, such as multiple machines with a higher number of jobs in the sequence, and other scheduling objectives can be modeled. This research also investigates computational aspects of simulated annealing in solving complex scheduling problems.     

Globalisation, International Configurations and Strategic Implications: The Case of Retailing

In contrast to the old debate between national and more globally orientated strategies, recent typologies, as outlined by Calori and others in a recent issue of this journal, have begun to uncover subtler international strategies applicable to less patently global industries. This article investigates whether such typologies can be adapted to a service sector such as retailing and analyses performance differences across the whole set of these new categorisations, segregating some of the main sectors. Focusing on clothing where scale economies were lower, we present a case study demonstrating how this approach can still yield strategic insights and recommendations at an early stage in internationalisation, even for players located in more peripheral locations such as Norway. We confirm ‘continental leadership’ strategies (under consideration) can be associated with slightly better profitability for retailers more generally; but we warn that this is riskier for clothing retailers, for whom market share emerges as a less critical driver. The most profitable retail strategy configuration is the bold ‘global shaper’ strategy. However, taking into account the case company’s resource position within the clothing sector, our approach recommends consideration of the ‘quasi-global’ strategic configuration, associated with an improvement of just under 2% return on investment. This perspective also aids ‘strategic benchmarking’ (illustrated against high performers H&M and Zara), setting an agenda for operational improvements.     

Management Research and Literary Criticism

This paper is concerned with analysing the role of rhetoric and literary criticism in research and scholarship. It is argued that critical debate and dialogue are the hub of the process of research and scholarship and that social science and literature have more in common than is normally recognized. Most of these debates are carried out in writing and involve elaborate writing and reading of texts – or literature as we prefer to call it. We argue the case that management researchers may have something to learn from literary criticism. A model of literary criticism comprising four different modes of criticism – mimetic, expressive, pragmatic and objective – is described and the implications for management research are suggested. The paper concludes with a number of reflections on what can be gained from this type of analysis and on the role of reflexivity in the research process.     

Managing Culture at British Airways: Hype, Hope and Reality

Nearly twenty years after the publication of the (in)famous In Search of Excellence, the notion of ‘cultural change’ within organisations continues to excite attention. This is readily understandable, since cultural interventions offer practitioners the hope of a universal panacea to organisational ills and academics an explanatory framework that enjoys the virtues of being both partially true and gloriously simple. Such a combination is apparent in the way that many attempts to shape organisational culture are presented to the public: as simple stories with happy endings.¹ This article attempts to rescue a fairy-tale. The story of British Airways is one of the most widely used inspirational accounts of changing culture. Throughout the 1980s and 1990s it was used to demonstrate the necessary compatibility of pleasure and profits² in celebratory accounts where culture change is presented as the only explanation for the transformation that occurred. This corrective makes no attempt to deny the very substantial changes that took place in BA. Rather, it sets these in context noting the organisation’s environment at the time of the transformation, the structural changes that took place and observes the impact that such changes had over the long term. ^{[3], [4] and [5]}Today, nearly twenty years after the publication of the (in)famous In Search of Excellence, the notion of ‘cultural change’ within organisations continues to excite attention. This continuing attraction is readily understood, since cultural interventions offer practitioners the hope of a universal panacea to organisational ills and academics an explanatory framework that enjoys the virtues of being both partially true and gloriously simple. Such a combination is apparent in the way that many attempts to shape organisational culture are presented to the public: as simple stories with happy endings.To a certain extent, of course, any form of narration encourages a story, an ending, and, as a result, a simplification—and stories may be used to shed light on attitudes and understandings not otherwise easily available to the researcher. But there is a very significant difference between listening to the accounts that individuals tell in order to make sense of their lives and allowing the study of the workplace to become ‘fictionalised’. The former involves engaging with the ‘subjects’ of the research, attempting to understand their world view and allowing them a voice in the process they are participating in. The latter can mean a selective reading of the data with examples chosen because they illustrate pre-set conclusions.In management particularly the capacity of writers to turn case studies into celebratory fictions is worrying. As Marchington argues, too many texts focus on “fairy tales and magic wands”.⁶ Such an emphasis encourages the belief that what is important in the workplace is not context, structure, power, economics or industrial relations but whatever new initiative management have chosen to introduce (the “magic wands”). The form that this magic takes varies from intervention to intervention but the impact claimed for each is curiously similar, with unproductive workplaces turned around and reluctant employees transformed into enthusiasts. Any changes that take place are seen to be a direct result of the magic and most are exaggerated. As a result, research into management becomes research into a series of fads and fashions with Total Quality Management or Business Process Re-engineering or empowerment or culture vying for attention. Every intervention is presented as new, so academic understanding of the workplace starts afresh each time a guru develops a new magic wand. Lessons cannot be carried forward since BPR is not employee involvement and company culture is not TQM. Elements of the workplace that might have provided a crucial element of continuity are ignored or dismissed as unimportant since only change is magical. As a result, by relying on these accounts, we understand less and less about why organisations function in the way that they do and practitioners are encouraged to believe that each initiative starts with a blank sheet, entirely unconstrained by what has gone before.Accordingly, in this article we attempt to rescue a fairy-tale. The story of British Airways is one of the most widely used inspirational accounts of changing culture. Throughout the 80s and 90s it was used to demonstrate the necessary compatibility of pleasure and profits. In such celebratory accounts, culture change is presented as the only explanation for the transformation that occurred. This corrective makes no attempt to deny the very substantial changes that took place in BA. Rather, it sets these in context noting the organisation’s environment at the time of the transformation, the structural changes that took place and observing the impact that such changes had over the long term.⁷     

Netchising: The Next Global Wave?

Companies have long taken ‘going global’ to mean having a physical presence at locations everywhere. It has meant executives in transit and bricks-and-mortar facilities on the ground. Based on extensive field interviews with executives at 35 different MNCs, our research shows that an increasing number of companies are succeeding overseas without massive foreign investment by adopting the global business model we call netchising. This new business model relies on the Internet for procurement, sales, and maintaining customer relationships, and non-equity partnership arrangements to provide direct customer interfaces and local adaptation and delivery of products and services. Netchising offers potentially huge benefits over traditional exporting or foreign direct investment approaches to globalization.     

Invoking Cleopatra to examine the shifting ground of leadership

This essay argues that the understanding of leadership is not independent of the power relations within a given cultural context. These shape how ‘leadership’ comes to be ‘known’ — defined and identified. Drawing from cultural studies, it examines the interacting dynamics of power, difference and context in shaping our knowledge of leadership. So whereas we currently identify leadership in Cleopatra, this is due to shifts in the contemporary ground of knowledge that constitutes ‘leadership’. Specifically, the essay focuses on manifestations of gendered power that elicited changes in her appraisals. The analysis examines historical writing (Plutarch), literature (Shakespeare), art (Egyptian Revival) and film (Hollywood) to illustrate gendered paradoxes — criteria that had traditionally defined ‘leaders’ from ‘followers’, but which have become ambiguous. These include queen–lover (embodiment), public–domestic (sphere of work and influence), sage–child (intellect), white–black (racialized identity) and Rome–Egypt (international leadership). In closing, the essay reflects on the implications for leadership studies.     

Making the Business School More 'Critical': Reflexive Critique Based on Phronesis as a Foundation for Impact

This paper explores how the business school can become more critical by advancing the notion of reflexive critique . Drawing on diverse literatures propounding a critical perspective, this paper integrates the various interpretations of 'what it is to be critical' and proposes phronesis as a foundation for responding to and extending the relevance and rigour debate by articulating what it means for business schools to have a critical impact on management practice. A phronetic analysis of management education provides an innovative lens for understanding the power of critique in engaging academics and business practitioners in the co-creation of knowledge. This is illustrated by distilling the main insights from the experience of introducing an innovative course entitled 'Critical Thinking' offered to MBA students over a five-year period. The paper discusses the importance of critique in the business curriculum and explains the rationale for introducing the course and its objectives, as well as the learning and teaching techniques employed. The analysis considers how reflexive critique can be a platform for integrating a critical analysis of management informed by management research and academic thinking in relation to business practitioners' practical experiences of managing. The paper concludes with a review of the main lessons learned and the implications for future initiatives intended to foster engagement of theory and practice and the collaboration of academics and business practitioners.     

Rationalising inefficiency: Staff utilisation in branches of a large Canadian bank

In this paper we consider staffing decisions in branches of a large Canadian bank. The bank has well-developed staffing models and the branches work in a highly competitive environment. One would therefore expect limited ‘inefficiency’ in the sense of wasted resources and over-staffing. Using Data Envelopment Analysis (DEA) we nevertheless find considerable ‘inefficiency’ which raises the question whether this is best interpreted as waste or if the apparent inefficiency may serve other purposes. To investigate this, we invoke the theoretical framework of rational inefficiency (Bogetoft and Hougaard [8]).