Coaching als Instrument zur Aufrechterhaltung der Machtstellung von Männern in Organisationen

The author discusses the question why the counseling format coaching was able to achieve such a dominant position in the market compared with other formats like supervision or organizational counseling. A point of view specific to power-and gender-related issues and the sociological concept of hegemonial masculinity (Connell) form the starting point to explore this question. Due to its origin from the field of competitive sport and based on its objective target as an instrument for human resources development (Schreyögg) the counseling format coaching serves values and role models typically attributed to men (successful, winner, potent) in an ideal way. Therefore it nourishes established models of hegemonial masculinity in organizations thus contributing to consolidate and safeguard the position of power of men, when it is used in an unreflective modality. With this in mind coaching acts in particular through segregation and as a place to reinsure masculine role models.     

Transnational Corporations and Human Rights: Silencing the Ontological Controversy

“Engines of development” or “tools of exploitation”? Both expressions have been used to describe the transnational corporation’s (TNC) activity in the developing world. In this paper, it will be argued that these extreme characterizations—each armed with their preferred method and unit of analysis—are merely assessing different aspects of the relationship in question. Moreover, theoretical issues can help shed some light on the Janus-faced nature of TNCs’ human rights’ effects. These issues suggest that FDI (Foreign Direct Investments) benefits are conditional and can help determine whether or not the presence of TNCs will be benign.

     

参与度、信任与合作效果的关系——基于中国非营利组织与企业合作的实证分析

非营利组织与企业合作共同解决社会问题,是非营利组织和企业共同关注的发展战略,也是和谐社会建设的重要方面。本文基于中国非营利组织与企业合作的现实,通过建立合作双方参与度、信任关系与合作效果的假设模型,根据230个合作项目样本数据,利用回归分析进行了检验。分析结论表明,高的参与程度会带来良好的合作效果;信任在参与度与合作效果关系中的中介作用不完全一致:在参与度影响合作的直接效果中起中介作用;在参与度影响知识创造效果中没有起中介作用;在参与度影响社会效果中起到一定的中介作用。这对改进非营利组织与企业合作管理实践,以及有目的和针对性地实现相应合作效果具有指导意义。     

International Strategy and Knowledge Creation: The Advantage of Foreignness and Liability of Concentration

International business scholars increasingly emphasize regional strategies based on an optimal location of downstream sales. There has been less scholarly attention, however, to the relationship between international strategy and upstream knowledge creation including R&D. Building on contemporary strategic management theory and the knowledge‐based view we remedy this. The viability of home‐regional or bi‐regional strategies is based on common assumptions that imply negative consequences of distance and foreignness for downstream sales and marketing and benefits from agglomeration for upstream knowledge creation activities including R&D. In contrast, we propose that upstream knowledge creation, radical innovation in particular, rather gains from distance and foreignness and from being dispersed, suggesting the effectiveness of a global strategy. Based on the resource‐based view and recent research on the economics of strategic opportunities and competitive advantage, we provide theoretical explanations for this. We demonstrate how a global multinational corporation is uniquely equipped with knowledge extensity including heterogeneous social‐identity frames in multiple sub‐units. Thanks to arbitrage advantages between the sub‐units’ separate and often locally embedded knowledge, a global multinational corporation can address complex interdependences and interactions between knowledge sets required for knowledge creation. This suggests that maximum exploration capabilities are made possible by a global rather than a home‐regional or bi‐regional strategy.     

How the Resource-based and the Dynamic Capability Views of the Firm Inform Corporate-level Strategy

This paper explains that the resource‐based view essentially addresses issues of competitive strategy, but by integrating some arguments from its evolutionary version, the dynamic capability view, it can be extended to inform our understanding of corporate‐level strategy. We concentrate on the issue of value creation from corporate centres and ask how the centre can possess or provide resources. The primary dynamic capabilities identified by Teece, Pisano and Shuen (1997) are elaborated into six distinct modes of resource creation. Each mode is considered in relation to a set of organizational design parameters. We then propose resource‐creating configurations that are congruent with respect to the modes and the required states of the design parameters. We point out areas of tension that are likely to arise if corporations try to combine different modes of resource creation. We conclude that corporate centres may possess resources but must display dynamic capabilities otherwise they will destroy shareholder value.     

Strategic planning in a turbulent international environment

What we have argued in this paper is that fundamental changes in the multinational corporate environment are taking place raising proaches to multinational environmental surveillance and multinational strategic management. We arenot offering this as a forecast of what the future will bring. Instead, we are proposing this framework to point to the need for greater environmental orientation and adaptation. MNCs are now in a double squeeze and managers must unlearn past models and criteria to understand problem. But the challenge is more than conventional corporate planning. The problematique can be decribed as one of multinational strategic management. In the area of environment we need research and learning to address three basic questions:What is the MCE? What concepts of the environment should be considered for strategic management? What parameters should be monitored? What are some consequences of the concept of interdependence and turbulence?What multinational environmental surveillance should be done? What methodologies are needed? How can these be made operational? How can the corporation be educated to behave in the new mode required in view of these changes?What new strategic issues and challenges lenges emerges from the MCE? What new demands must be factored into the multinational corporate planning processes? What new content does the changing environment procedure? How can the broadening field of opportunities and threats be systematically mapped and understood?     

Whose company is it? The concept of the corporation in Japan and the west

This article examines the differences in the concept of the corporation and their possible implications for corporate performance, between Japan on the one hand and the United States and Europe (Germany, UK and France) on the other. The Japanese concept is used as the standard against which the other models are compared. The concept of the corporation is defined here as the answer to the question: ‘In whose interest should the firm be managed?’¹ This is the foundation on which corporate governance and the monitoring system for the CEO is built. The analysis is focused on large publicly-held corporations with widely diffused ownership.     

A frame of reference for strategy development

Strategy development in today's volatile business environment demands increased management concern with fundamental issues which go beyond the balance sheet and the income statement to deal with the proper positioning of the corporation and its units to achieve long-term profitable survival. This is well understood. On the other hand, it is equally clear that management capacity—in terms of man hours of talent available—is the most important resource of any corporation and is also limited. In this article the authors set out to develop a frame of reference for analysing the corporation, its individual business and its competitors. Their objective is to provide management with the tools they need to deploy their creative entrepreneurial talent more efficiently by focusing on strategically relevant issues, using guidelines based on the ever-increasing body of research available today.     

How rival partners compete based on cooperation?

Prior studies of coopetition have explained the what, how and why of firms cooperating with competitors. Among these, examining the how question as to the stream of coopetition dynamics is the most challenging theme. Previous research has focused much more on the cooperation side. Less attention has been paid to the competition side to reveal what happens to competition after the competitors have collaborated. This study sheds light on the issue of cooperation-based competition by answering the question: while cooperating with competitors, how do rival partners compete based on cooperation? Linking the competitive dynamics perspective to coopetition, we conducted a single-case study to analyse the competition between two leading competitors in the Taiwanese bicycle industry. We collected the reported issues pertaining to the competition in the European market and supported by in-depth interviews. The analysis leads us to develop three propositions and a conceptual framework for illustrating the cooperation-based competition and addressing how cooperation may influence competition in a coopetition relationship. This study provides new insights into a theoretical issue of cooperation-based competition. The case also provides management implications while taking a coopetition strategy.     

Competitive advantage and the information technology industry

In this article, Timo Koski sets the stage by defining more clearly what is meant by “high technology”, and points out that it is by no means synonymous with the electronics industry.He then relates corporate management, corporate strategy and competitive advantage to the information technology industry in Finland. This competitive advantage can be summarized in three aspects: technological ability, product market fit and resource market fit. The dynamics of the information technology industry are also explored, and found to run parallel with business and product life cycles and the globalisation process.The article concludes with the view that information technology, as a business, requires fast-moving and fast-reacting management. However, it is also inextricably linked to global issues, and is prevented from becoming too hectic by being part of long-term corporate management.     

SME internationalisation process: Key issues and contributions,existing gaps and the future research agenda

The literature that studies internationalisation of small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), despite being only recent, has already become very extensive and fragmented, taking different approaches and contributing across diverse facets of internationalisation. There is also a need to analyse and systematise those issues that have received the attention in the field of SME internationalisation. This study aims to develop a systematic literature review on SME internationalisation. We correspondingly make recourse to the Web of Science and Scopus database, and analyse a total of 366 articles, spanning the period from 1995 to 2017, to identify the core issues and contributions made by the existing literature. The results enable the categorisation of the existing literature into three main areas of research: i) Internationalisation process, ii) Specific factors/variables influencing internationalisation; and iii) Internationalisation and performance. This structuring then establishes the grounds for grasping the gaps existing in the literature and to propose a future research agenda.     

Increasing the Governance Standards of Public-Private Partnerships in Healthcare. Evidence from Italy

Healthcare systems have changed rapidly in the past few decades due to increasing healthcare costs and decreasing governmental budgets. The structural complexity, huge numbers of actors and long-term relationships inherent to PPPs bring out several governance issues. Based on the principles of good governance for PPPs published by the United Nations Economic Commission for Europe (UNECE) in 2008, we try to answer the following research question: How can the governance standards of PPPs be increased? This paper aims to explore issues of governance, management and policy design as they apply to PPPs in healthcare services. The evidence from a single case-study (the New Mestre Hospital) is presented and discussed. The main findings are that, despite its great success, the analysed PPP does have some governance problems that need to be addressed. Concluding remarks and insights for future research directions are then presented.     

Knowledge transfer in MNCs: Examining how intrinsic motivations and knowledge sourcing impact individual centrality and performance

Studies investigating individual performance in knowledge-intensive work are finding that individual performance is a result, to some degree, of obtaining the right information to solve novel, challenging problems. Yet we know little about the role that the individual plays in the knowledge processes in multinationals and the relationship between individual knowledge sourcing activities and performance. Our expectation is that successful knowledge transfer will be based on an individual's intrinsic motivation, access to knowledge from explicit or tacit knowledge sources within and across firm boundaries, and position in the overall advice network of the multinational corporation. Using survey and social network data collected in one multinational consulting firm, we investigated the knowledge sourcing activities and informal advice networks for 1439 of the entire 1698 individuals in one multinational spread across 28 offices (84.7% response rate). Through hierarchical regression analysis we find that 1) intrinsic motivations are strongly related to creativity and efficiency and 2) MNCs should support individual level activities that include not only the use of internal knowledge sources but also the use of external knowledge sources. Research results also suggest that 3) there are different patterns of knowledge sourcing activities based on whether efficient or creative performance is the goal and 4) these differ significantly depending upon the functional group to which the individual belongs. Implications for theories of the knowledge-based view of the multinational corporation and practical implications for managers are discussed.     

Strategic planning could improve your share price

From a financial point of view the long-term ultimate goal of the firm is to maximize its stock price. A high P/E multiple keeps existing stockholders satisfied, reduces the chances that a corporate pirate will attempt to raid the company, and also facilitates the company's own acquisitions.Therefore, financial managers are especially interested in answers to the questions of if and how strategic planning can help to improve the price-earnings multiple. The results of the study summarized in this article answer the first question in the affirmative and give at least a partial answer to the second. Contrary to the conclusion of some other recent studies, this study finds a definite long-term financial payoff from strategic planning. Furthermore, it suggests that strategic planning may be more effective if it is conducted at the corporate rather than solely at the division level.If maximization of stock price is a corporate goal, delegation of strategic planning entirely to the division level may result in a high cost to stockholders.     

On the myth of believing that globalization is a myth: or the effects of misdirected responses on obsolescing an emergent substantive discourse

The December 2003 special issue of the Journal of International Management sought to initiate a dialogue on globalization and the role of the global corporation (Bird and Stevens, 2003). We attempt to carry that dialogue forward by responding to several objections that were raised by critics in that issue. Their comments prompted us to take a fresh look at our own perspective, as well as to critically examine theirs. In so doing, we find not only persuasive evidence that globalization is very much alive and well, but we also find that caution is warranted if readers wish to avoid misdirected responses that would otherwise obsolesce an emerging substantive discourse on the phenomenon of globalization. We are encouraged that the special issue has stimulated continued dialogue and invite others to join the conversation on this important phenomenon of globalization.     

How to identify liabilities of foreignness and assess their effects on multinational corporations

This article examines the liabilities of foreignness construct and discusses key methodological and research design issues facing liability of foreignness researchers. After reviewing past studies and more recent liabilities of foreignness research, I discuss definitional issues related to this construct. I then present a two-part research framework designed to first help identify a specific liability of foreignness in a focal country, and then help identify factors that minimize the effects of that specific liabilities of foreignness. I also discuss multinational management issues at the corporation level that likely affect liabilities of foreignness experienced at the foreign subsidiary level.     

Catholic social teaching and business ethics: A search for moral foundations

Do the social encyclicals, especially the 100-year old Rerum Novarum,have any relevance to business people and managers in the practice of their profession? To respond to this question, one must attempt to find a link between Catholic social teaching and business ethics. Establishing this relationship is the goal of this paper. It will discuss the notion of the social question, which is addressed in the social encyclicals; present the philosophical and theological foundations of the social teaching; and point to areas where the linkage between the social teaching and business ethics can be established. By reaching deep into the philosophical grounds of the social encyclicals, the analysis attempts to cut through the often muddled diversity of opinions on specific ethical issues which characterize most moral debates.     

Attracting and retaining talent: exploring human resources development trends in Australia

Drawing from the resource based view of the firm (RBV) the argument developed in the paper is that in an environment characterized by increasing levels of skilled labour shortages organisations need to design employment systems that prioritize human resource development to enable competitive advantage. The literature review examines the issues associated with the attraction, retention and development of human resources, and the major contextual issues and debates underpinning skill and labour shortages. A research question is then framed to capture the HR priorities of Australian organisations. We examine responses from 1372 Australian human resources (HR) professionals who participated in an online survey of a national HR professional association and results are interpreted with respect to HR efforts to attract, develop and retain talent.

Our findings suggest that employers are addressing issues related to attraction - recruitment and selection. However, in critical HR development areas associated with retention such as training, job design, skill development, careers management and team building, results indicate a lower level of resource allocation. We conclude that this lack of resource allocation is of concern for Australian organisations that are struggling to compete both domestically and internationally for skilled workers.     

Why trustworthiness in an IT vendor is important even after the vendor left: IT is accepting the message and not just the messenger that is important

Trustworthiness is the assessment that another person or others can be trusted because in the past they had shown adequate ability, integrity, and benevolence. Trust is the actual willingness to depend on the trusted party to fulfill its future obligations when there is risk that this trusted party might take undue advantage of the situation. In the current conceptualization of trust theory, trustworthiness is important because it leads to trust. Applied to the management of IT adoption and assessment, research has indeed shown that both trustworthiness and trust, often combined statistically, have a direct effect on IT adoption and assessment. There are circumstances, however, such as in this study, when the trusted party has left the scene, making its future actions and the risk of dependence on these actions irrelevant to the trusting party. The question arises whether trustworthiness still plays a role in such cases. Seemingly, at least based on the current conceptualization, this should make the trustworthiness of the trusted party an insignificant consideration. Logic is advanced why even in such a case trustworthiness may still be important, but should play an indirect role. The proposition suggested is that the trustworthiness of the messenger is important, as previously suggested, but what really counts is accepting the message this messenger conveyed. An argument is raised why in this case interpersonal justice increases trustworthiness and user acceptance of the message. The data support these propositions. Theory and managerial implications are discussed.