Electronic Data Interchange: Research Review and Future Directions*

For nearly two decades, electronic data interchange (EDI) has been widely viewed as a technology pivotal to supply chain management that has also provided benefits to firms on multiple levels. Despite a substantial body of literature, there are a number of conflicting and inconclusive research results in this field. In this study, we synthesize the diverse body of research in EDI by organizing the literature into an initial theoretical framework. Based on a meta‐analysis of results from the empirical literature, we seek to clarify conflicting results from the literature in order to develop a more unified theoretical framework of contextual variables associated with EDI adoption factors and outcomes. From a managerial standpoint, our literature‐based framework offers a set of guidelines for making successful EDI adoption and implementation decisions.     

Capacity Management in Health Care Services: Review and Future Research Directions*

Health care has undergone a number of radical changes during the past five years. These include increased competition, fixed-rate reimbursement systems, declining hospital occupancy rates, and growth in health maintenance organizations and preferred provider organizations. Given these changes in the manner in which health care is provided, contracted, and paid for, it is appropriate to review the past research on capacity management and to determine its relevance to the changing industry. This paper provides a review, classification, and analysis of the literature on this topic. In addition, future research needs are discussed and specific problem areas not dealt with in the previous literature are targeted.     

Current Directions in Risk Research: New Developments in Psychology and Sociology

This article reviews the main approaches to risk in psychology and sociology and considers recent developments. It shows that research continues from a wide range of perspectives. Some developments in psychological thinking have recently acknowledged the importance of the cultural framing of risk perceptions and responses and the positive power of emotions to manage uncertainties, while some streams of work in sociology have moved toward more individualist approaches. These converging processes open opportunities for cross-fertilization and for using insights from both disciplines in the development of research.     

A Review of Political Skill: Current Research Trend and Directions for Future Research

This paper reviews theoretical and empirical research on the use of political skill in organizations and proposes some agendas for future research. Although political skill is a relatively new construct in organizational politics research, a large number of theoretical and empirical studies have been conducted. Five major themes were identified in previous research. These are: (a) definition and measurement of political skill; (b) political skill and stress management; (c) political skill and career success; (d) political skill and individual performance; and (e) political skill and leadership effectiveness. This review critically examines previous empirical studies in light of this theoretical background and points out that, although previous empirical studies support the theoretically assumed effects of political skills, they fail to confirm how and why these skills bring about these effects. Based on this examination, the author suggests the examination of mediators and dimensional differences derived from theory that can lead to more effective exploration of the impact of political skill. In addition, several issues for future research are proposed, which may provide useful insights for both literature and practice.     

社会网络分析在组织管理研究中的应用与展望

试图从社会网络分析的3个重要概念出发,探究社会网络分析范式、社会网络分析法以及社会网络理论三者的区别与联系,以助于学者们更好地理解社会网络分析的本质。在此基础上,比较社会网络理论与管理学经典理论,指出社会网络理论不是对管理学理论的批判与取代,而是一种建设性的深化与补充。最后,总结了社会网络分析在组织管理中的研究现状,分析了国内研究的不足,并提出了建议与展望。     

Dynamic Capabilities: Current Debates and Future Directions

The field of dynamic capabilities has developed very rapidly over the last ten years. In this paper we discuss the evolution of the concept, and identify two major current debates around the nature of dynamic capabilities and their consequences. We then review recent progress as background to identifying the contributions of the seven papers in this special issue, and discuss the relative merits of qualitative and quantitative studies for investigating dynamic capabilities. We conclude with recommendations for future research arguing for more longitudinal studies which can examine the processes of dynamic abilities over time, and for studies in diverse industries and national contexts.     

Dynamic Capabilities: Current Debates and Future Directions

The field of dynamic capabilities has developed very rapidly over the last ten years. In this paper we discuss the evolution of the concept, and identify two major current debates around the nature of dynamic capabilities and their consequences. We then review recent progress as background to identifying the contributions of the seven papers in this special issue, and discuss the relative merits of qualitative and quantitative studies for investigating dynamic capabilities. We conclude with recommendations for future research arguing for more longitudinal studies which can examine the processes of dynamic abilities over time, and for studies in diverse industries and national contexts.     

Introduction: Knowledge Construction and Creation in Organizations*

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

Knowledge Life Cycle,Knowledge Inventory,and Knowledge Acquisition Strategies*

For a knowledge‐ and skill‐centric organization, the process of knowledge management encompasses three important and closely related elements: (i) task assignments, (ii) knowledge acquisition through training, and (iii) maintaining a proper level of knowledge inventory among the existing workforce. Trade‐off on choices between profit maximization in the short run and agility and flexibility in the long term is a vexing problem in knowledge management. In this study, we examine the effects of different training strategies on short‐term operational efficiency and long‐term workforce flexibility. We address our research objective by developing a computational model for task and training assignment in a dynamic knowledge environment consisting of multiple distinct knowledge dimensions. Overall, we find that organizational slack is an important variable in determining the effectiveness of training strategies. Training strategies focused on the most recent skills are found to be the preferred option in most of the considered scenarios. Interestingly, increased efficiencies in training can actually create preference conflict between employees and the firm. Our findings indicate that firms facing longer knowledge life cycles, higher slack in workforce capacity, and better training efficiencies actually face more difficult challenges in knowledge management.     

Religion and Organization: A Critical Review of Current Trends and Future Directions

Given the profound role that religion continues to play in contemporary societies, it is surprising that management researchers have not explored the intersection between religion and organization in a more meaningful and determined way. This may be because religion is considered too far removed from the commercial organizations that form the empirical focus of much work in the discipline, or simply because it is deemed too sensitive. Whatever the reason, the upshot is that we know relatively little about the dynamics of religious organizational forms or the influence of these forms (and the values and practices that underpin them) on broader social processes and other kinds of organization. This paper is designed to highlight the potential of religion as a domain of study in management and to provide concrete suggestions for taking forward research in this area. The paper consists of three parts. I begin by reviewing some of the key literature in the sociology of religion and religious organizations. I then evaluate the existing literature on religion and organization, noting the salient contributions to date and highlighting some of the issues raised by this body of work. In the third and final main section, I suggest promising directions for future research.     

Plan Evaluation: Challenges and Directions for Future Research

Plan evaluation is a well-established part of the planning canon. While this subject has received considerable attention from planning scholars in recent years, plan evaluation methods are not commonly used in practice. This paper examines the factors that contribute to the underuse of plan outcome evaluation in local government planning practice. The concept of evaluation is explained, and the relationship that exists between program evaluation and plan evaluation is explored.     

品牌和单品忠诚对在线消费者选择行为的影响研究

不同消费者对于不同品牌特性有不同的偏好和忠诚度,如果不考虑不同类型的偏好,不在消费者品牌选择模型中引入消费者的品牌忠诚或单品忠诚行为,将不能很好地刻画消费者购买行为的异质性和动态性,难以提高模型的解释力度。文章通过构建动态多项Logit离散选择模型,研究和鉴别在线渠道每一个消费者品牌忠诚因子和单品忠诚因子。研究发现,在线环境下消费者在可乐产品的选择上,不同的忠诚特性对在线消费者品牌选择的影响强度是不同的,其中单品忠诚对在线消费者品牌选择的影响最为显著,这不仅刻画了消费者购买概率的异质性,而且提高了模型的解释力度;不同的属性虽然会对在线消费者的品牌选择行为产生影响,但这种影响并不是孤立存在的,而是会受到其他属性或忠诚变量的影响而产生相应变化。     

Rethinking Knowledge: A Bergsonian Critique of the Notion of Tacit Knowledge*

The recent focus on the intangible resources of the organization in general, and specifically the notion of knowledge, has problematized the notion of organization. Rather than seeing organizations as systems that integrate the use of all kinds of physical, financial and human resources, the knowledge‐based view (KBV) of the firm and knowledge management literature emphasize the organization as a site for the development, use of and dissemination of knowledge and other forms of intellectual resources and assets. KBV and knowledge management literature also address the notion of knowledge as such; is knowledge what can be represented by concepts, figures, and statistics, or are there qualities inherent in knowledge that cannot easily be described, disseminated, or procured? The notion of tacit knowledge has been used to denote all forms of knowledge that cannot be represented: knowledge that cannot be fully articulated, expressed in formulas or described in documents. This paper aims to provide a critique of the notion of tacit knowledge as it is used in KBV and knowledge management literature. It examines the notion of tacit knowledge through the philosophy of Henri Bergson and concludes that the notion of tacit knowledge is little more than an umbrella term for unrepresentable knowledge. Thus, the notion of tacit knowledge should be used with care rather than being a residual category of knowledge.     

Employee Voice Behavior: Integration and Directions for Future Research

Within organizations, employees continually confront situations that put them face to face with the decision of whether to speak up (i.e., voice) or remain silent when they have potentially useful information or ideas. In recent years, there has been a rapidly growing body of conceptual and empirical research focused on better understanding the motives underlying voice, individual, and situational factors that increase employee voice behavior, and the implications of voice and silence for employees, work groups, and organizations. Yet this literature has notable gaps and unresolved issues, and it is not entirely clear where future scholarship should be directed. This article, therefore, is an attempt to review and integrate the existing literature on employee voice and also to provide some direction for future research.     

Service(s) Marketing Research: Developments and Directions

This paper outlines the development of research in the domain of service(s) marketing from its birth as an area of academic study in the 1960s/1970s to the current time. It identifies four phases of development. Phases 1–3 relate to the period before 2004, which focuses on the development of service(s) marketing. In Phase 4, a greater focus on the concept of service (singular) – defined as the application of knowledge and skills – has resulted in developments and directions in service research that offer a different perspective through which to view more general marketing. This different perspective has explicit implications also for wider business and management research. The paper summarizes current research in this domain, which coalesces around three broad perspectives, namely, the service‐dominant logic of marketing, technology and service, and transformative service research. It concludes by outlining likely trends for service research into the future. Three interrelated directions are suggested: research on service in a changing context; research responding to academic schools of thought; and research responding to consumer trends.     

客户忠诚度提升决策研究

首先阐述了客户忠诚度对企业的重要价值,然后提出了几种提升客户忠诚的方法,在此基础上运用Petri网建立了客户忠诚的提升模型,最后通过一演算实例说明了模型的适用性.     

New Directions in Revenue Management Research

Research in revenue management is rapidly changing as the environment in which firms operate changes. The Internet, the adoption of new information technologies, and other market forces are driving a new wave of research in revenue management. At the same time, more and more industries are adapting the tools of revenue management to their needs. Promising research directions are more sophisticated models of consumer behavior, more general models and understanding of rivalry, and more general pricing mechanisms. These are important issues for today's revenue managers and promising areas for both theoretical and empirical research.     

企业管理情境下生态系统理论框架与未来研究方向

鉴于目前尚缺乏具有广泛影响力的“生态系统”理论基础,包括缺乏具有广泛影响力的概念定义及内在因果逻辑的机理解释,基于复杂系统理论和生命周期视角,研究认为,企业管理情境下的生态系统具备自组织、相互依赖、基础设施和竞合过程四大核心特征,而这些特征构成生态系统理论框架的四大维度,其间的“统一性”揭示了生态系统的复杂性和动态性本质。进一步地,高绩效、高韧性的生态系统得益于:①由于缺乏核心控制者,众多异质性成员之间充分频繁互动,不断产生多元系统价值主张;②系统成员间具备“半结构化”的相互依赖,使生态系统能更具弹性,更有效地面对多变、不确定、复杂和模糊的情境;③多样化的赋能设施产生于并最终赋能异质性生态系统成员;④成员间通过竞合机制共创和共取价值,促使生态系统持续演进。