How to build social capital with leadership development: Lessons from an explorative case study of a multibusiness firm

The organizational impact of leadership development practices is still not fully understood. Research confirms that in some cases effects can be found and in others not. Most of these attempts search for contribution to a company's human capital. A contribution to social capital development remains an unexplored source of variance in understanding how leadership development impacts organizational performance. This paper therefore explores—from a strategic management perspective—how leadership development practices may contribute to social capital development. We chose the strategic context of a large multibusiness firm in which social capital across business units play an important role for competitive advantage. The exploratory case study reveals that: 1) Social capital differs regarding its intensity and develops through stages characterized by contact, assimilation, and identification experiences. 2) Leadership development practices differ in their potential contribution to social capital development stages and should therefore be designed accordingly.     

Influence of Social Identity on Negative Perceptions in Global Virtual Teams

The paper combines insights from social identity theory and organizational network theory to specify the conditions under which social capital can induce negative attitudes in global virtual teams. The structural configuration of social capital has crucial implications for the sociocognitive processes causing individuals to adopt negative attitudes to out-group members. The paper evaluates both the negative implications of structural configurations on out-group perceptions, which are important precursors to successful intergroup interaction in global virtual teams. We collected data from 160 actors across 40 global virtual teams embedded within three separate organizations. 34 social identity groups were detected and ties between and within the groups were investigated. Our analyses provide insights on the roles of social identity groupings and social capital as well as in-group brokerage and interactions on (negative) perceptions of other group members in global virtual teams.     

An Examination of a Theory of Embodied Social Presence in Virtual Worlds*

In this article, we discuss and empirically examine the importance of embodiment, context, and spatial proximity as they pertain to collaborative interaction and task completion in virtual environments. Specifically, we introduce the embodied social presence (ESP) theory as a framework to account for a higher level of perceptual engagement that users experience as they engage in activity‐based social interaction in virtual environments. The ESP theory builds on the analysis of reflection data from Second Life users to explain the process by which perceptions of ESP are realized. We proceed to describe implications of ESP for collaboration and other organizational functions.     

Organizational Identification During a Merger: Determinants of Employees' Expected Identification With the New Organization*

In order to investigate the development of organizational identification during a merger, a quasi‐experimental case study was conducted on a pending merger of police organizations. The research was conducted among employees who would be directly involved in the merger and among indirectly involved employees. In contrast to earlier studies, organizational identification was measured as the expected identification prior to the merger. Five determinants were used to explain the employees' expected identification: (a) identification with the pre‐merger organization, (b) sense of continuity, (c) expected utility of the merger, (d) communication climate before the merger and (e) communication about the merger. The five determinants appeared to explain a considerable proportion of the variance of expected organizational identification. Results suggest that in order to obtain a strong identification with the soon‐to‐be‐merged organization, managers should pay extra attention to current departments with weaker social bonds as these are expected to identify the least with the new organization. The role of the communication variables differed between the two employee groups: communication about the merger only contributed to the organizational identification of directly involved employees; and communication climate only affected the identification of indirectly involved employees.     

The Identity‐Matching Principle: Corporate and Organizational Identification in a Franchising System*

This paper examines corporate and organizational identification in franchisee organizations from the perspective of the social identity approach. We propose the identity‐matching principle (IMP) as a heuristic for understanding and predicting the different effects of nested identifications. According to the IMP, when identifications and relevant behavioural or attitudinal outcomes address the same level of categorization, their relationship will be stronger. A study is presented with employees (n=281) matched to managers (n=101). Supporting the IMP, organizational identification (but not corporate identification) predicted customer‐oriented behaviour on the level of the local organization, whereas corporate identification (but not organizational identification) predicted attitude toward corporate citizenship behaviour. Furthermore, multilevel analyses showed that these relationships were enhanced in organizations where managers displayed the respective behaviours themselves to a greater extent. Implications for theorizing about leadership and organizational attachments are discussed alongside recommendations for organizational practitioners.     

Social capital or strong culture?

Organization scientists have recently introduced the concept of social capital to explain how the fabric of social connections among organization members leads to superior organizational performance. In this paper, I argue that the typical formulations of social capital sound remarkably similar to familiar conceptions of organizational culture, especially those features that indicate tightly coupled and deeply embedded social relations. I identify the common strands in the concepts of social capital and organizational culture. I propose that, without further efforts of conceptual clarification and empirical verification, the wholesale adoption by human resource development practitioners of the most popular features of the social capital concept is risky and likely to lead to disillusionment.     

New Product Development Decision‐Making Effectiveness: Comparing Individuals,Face‐To‐Face Teams,and Virtual Teams*

A total of 411 subjects participated in two decision‐making experiments in order to examine the effectiveness of new product development project continuation decisions. Using escalation of commitment theory, in Study 1, individual versus face‐to‐face team decision‐making effectiveness was compared. Study 2, an extension of Study 1, compared the new product development decision‐making effectiveness of individuals, face‐to‐face teams, and virtual teams. A virtual team is a geographically and temporally dispersed and electronically communicating work group. In Study 2, the virtual teams communicated asynchronously via groupware technology. Our findings suggest that teams make more effective decisions than individuals, and virtual teams make the most effective decisions.     

Subnational Location Capital: The Role of Subnational Institutional Actors and Socio‐spatial Factors on Firm Location

Firms do not simply locate, but rather seek to accrue location‐based advantages such as knowledge, market insidership and resource utilization. Adopting the lens of social capital, this paper explores how subnational institutional actors facilitate location capital for firms. Using qualitative case study analysis of six multinational companies (MNCs), we highlight the important role of subnational institutional actors in fostering three dimensions of subnational location capital – structural, relational and cognitive. We show that subnational location capital, defined as the economic and social assets accessible through relationships within a subnational location, enable firms to derive advantages via subnational engagement. These findings contribute to the growing literature on the dynamic interaction of firms with subnational location, particularly the nuanced role of subnational institutional actors with MNCs.     

社会资本和公司企业家精神与绩效的关系:组织学习的中介作用——江苏与广东新兴企业的实证研究

近年来,社会资本和企业家精神被认为是新兴企业取得竞争优势的关键因素。虽然很多学者认为组织学习在社会资本和公司企业家精神与组织绩效之间起了中介作用,但了解“如何发生作用”的知识要远远难于“是什么”,并且极少有研究给出实证结果。在转型经济中类似的研究更是缺乏。本文以中国江苏和广东两省的676家新兴企业为被试对象,对社会资本和公司企业家精神是否以及如何通过组织学习影响组织的绩效进行实证研究。结果表明组织学习在社会资本和公司企业家精神—组织学习—组织绩效链中起到了至关重要的作用,是通过社会资本和公司企业家精神提升组织绩效的瓶颈。     

Enriching Absorptive Capacity through Social Interaction

Absorptive capacity is frequently highlighted as a key determinant of knowledge transfer within multinational enterprises. But how individual behaviour translates into absorptive capacity at the subsidiary level, and how this is contingent on subsidiaries' social context, remains under‐addressed. This not only limits our understanding of the relationship between individual‐ and organizational‐level absorptive capacity, but also hampers further research on potentially relevant managerial and organizational antecedents, and limits the implications we can draw for practitioners who seek to increase their organization's capacity to put new knowledge to use. To address this shortcoming we conduct an in‐depth comparative case study of a headquarters‐initiated knowledge transfer at two subsidiaries of the same multinational enterprise. The findings demonstrate that social interaction is a prerequisite for subsidiary absorptive capacity as it enables employees to participate in the transformation of new knowledge to the local context and the development of local applications. The findings also illustrate how organizational conditions at the subsidiary level can impact subsidiary absorptive capacity by enabling or constraining local interaction patterns. These insights contribute to the absorptive capacity literature by demonstrating the scale and scope of social interaction as a key link between individual‐ and organizational‐level absorptive capacity.     

Allocation of Rights and the Organization of Transactions: Elements of a Generative Approach to Organizing

This paper is an attempt to articulate in a systematicfashion how different patterns or forms of organizingare achieved and how one can talk about the variety inand the transformation of these forms. The paperargues that one way to address this fundamentalquestion is to look at how resources and rules can beused in transactions to develop a generative grammarof organizational forms. The theoretical perspectivedeveloped in the paper incorporates the nature ofinterdependencies among social actors in definingtheir relationships and the nature of resources beingtransacted in these relations. As a social system, anyorganizational form that involves regularizedrelations of interdependence between social actors,requires resources in some form or another. Whetherthey are characterized as goods transacted in anexchange situation, human or social capital of actorsin a productive act, or collective control ofproductive skills, they are the necessary componentsof organizing because they give the social actors thecapability to develop their strategic conduct. Inaddition to resources, any organizational form mustalso possess a set of rules that define the nature ofthe transaction among the social agents.The first part of the paper introduces the logic andthe elements of the generative grammar fororganizational forms. The second part applies theseideas to organizational governance structuresespecially the relationship between the owners and themanagers in order to show how different forms ofgovernance structures can be generated based on theallocation of rights among various parties involved. The paper concludes with the suggestion that marketsversus hierarchic governance are very grosscategorization that cannot satisfactorily show thediversity of variations in forms of governance inorganizations.     

Modular Network Design: Using Information and Communication Technology to Allocate Production Tasks in a Virtual Organization*

The increased interest in customer service and the trend towards customization gives rise to new organizational forms such as the virtual organization. This paper introduces the Modular Network Design (MND) approach to complement Mowshowitz' (1997) theory of virtual organization. This theory focuses on metamanagement of the virtual organization and consists of four activities: (1) determine and analyze customer requirements, (2) track the possibilities for satisfying these requirements, (3) develop and allocate production tasks among the members of the virtual organization, and (4) assess and adjust tasks and allocation procedures. The MND approach elaborates on this theory by breaking down both the requirements and the production tasks into modular entities, and by measuring the performance of the resulting virtual network in terms of operating costs and throughput time. The major contribution of the MND approach lies in its ability to support the assessment of alternative allocations of production tasks among the members of a virtual organization, using Information and Communication Technology (ICT) as enabler. The assessment of such alternative designs is illustrated by an application of MND in the air cargo industry. The results show how the virtual organization and its members can realize significant improvements in operating costs and throughput times when applying ICT to link and reallocate their modular production tasks in response to customized orders.     

Discovering and Managing Interdependence with Customer‐Entrepreneurs

Research on inter‐organizational relationships has largely focused on the interdependence between formal organizations. In recent years, firms have encountered a new logic in which interdependent parties are not formal organizations but platform‐based ‘customer‐entrepreneurs’ that create value through illegal means. Drawing on a 5‐year‐long qualitative study, we examine how firms recognize and instantiate this new logic and, consequently, respond to their interdependencies with customer‐entrepreneurs. Viewed through the lens of institutional logic, we find that, with the benefit of hindsight, firms recognize the existence of the logic of customer entrepreneurship, which triggers organizational sensemaking that is made up of three elements: interpretation of legitimacy compatibility; interpretation of efficiency compatibility; and integration of stakeholder perspectives. This sensemaking results in either a determined account concluding on the compatibility calculus in a top‐down manner, or an open‐ended account avoiding the construction of a resolute, synthesized view. A determined account leads to a defiance strategy, by which firms attempt to remove the source of interdependencies with customer‐entrepreneurs, whereas an open‐ended account guides firms to espouse a decoupling strategy, whereby firms covertly resort to efficiency maximization enabled by the interdependence. Our results offer implications for the research on inter‐organizational relationships and institutional logic.     

Should I Stay or Should I Go? Explaining Turnover Intentions with Organizational Identification and Job Satisfaction*

The social identity approach is a powerful theoretical framework for the understanding of individuals' behaviour. The main argument is that individuals think and act on behalf of the group they belong to because this group membership adds to their social identity, which partly determines one's self‐esteem. In the organizational world, social identity and self‐categorization theories state that a strong organizational identification is associated with low turnover intentions. Because identification is the more general perception of shared fate between employee and organization, we propose that the relationship between identification and turnover will be mediated by job satisfaction as the more specific evaluation of one's task and working conditions. In four samples we found organizational identification feeding into job satisfaction, which in turn predicts turnover intentions.     

Working Under a Black Cloud: How to Sustain Organizational Identification after a Merger*

This article argues against the merger folklore that maintains that a merger negatively affects well‐being and work attitudes primarily through the threat of job insecurity. We hold that the workplace is not only a resource for fulfilling a person's financial needs, but that it is an important component of the self‐concept in terms of identification with the organization, as explained by social identity theory. We unravel the key concepts of the social identity approach relevant to the analysis of mergers and review evidence from previous studies. Then, we present a study conducted during a merger to substantiate our ideas about the effects of post‐merger organizational identification above and beyond the effects of perceived job insecurity. We recommend that managers should account for these psychological effects through the provision of continuity and specific types of communication.     

Perceptions of demotion decisions: A social capital perspective

This article examines how demotees and co-workers understand involuntary demotion decisions, using a social capital lens. Drawing on data based on semi-structured in-depth interviews from 23 demotees and 46 co-workers (two co-workers of each demoted worker), we find that the likelihood of being demoted is determined by several factors. The personal characteristics of the demotee influence three aspects of social capital: 1) the quality of the employee-management relationship, 2) the ability to socialise with other organizational members and 3) visibility in the organization. Our findings contribute to the relational embeddedness perspective of social capital as well the growing body of literature on the dark side of social capital in organizations by showing how a lack of social capital impacts on demotion decisions. Relevant implications for organizations and HR practitioners for utilizing demotion as a HR tool are discussed.     

Mechanisms for Managing Ambidexterity: A Review and Research Agenda

Ambidexterity is of central importance to the competitive advantage of the firm, yet to date there is limited understanding of how it is managed. The theorization of ambidexterity is inadequate for complex, practical realities and, in turn, this hinders the way in which it can aid the management of ambidexterity in practice. This paper asks: What are the mechanisms for achieving ambidexterity? The authors use a systematic review to develop a research framework which integrates intellectual capital resources (organizational, social and human capital) across various levels of analysis (organization, group and individual). This review extends understanding of the generic mechanisms (i.e. temporal, structural and contextual ambidexterity) that dominate the literature. This allows for a more fine‐grained understanding of how ambidexterity is achieved and enables avenues for further research to be identified.     

Exploring the Impact of Social Axioms on Firm Reputation: A Stakeholder Perspective

This study proposes a model of how deeply held beliefs, known as ‘social axioms, moderate the interaction between reputation, its causes and consequences with stakeholders. It contributes to the stakeholder relational field of reputation theory by explaining why the same organizational stimuli lead to different individual stakeholder responses. The study provides a shift in reputation research from organizational‐level stimuli as the root causes of stakeholder responses to exploring the interaction between individual beliefs and organizational stimuli in determining reputational consequences. Building on a conceptual model that incorporates product/service quality and social responsibility as key reputational dimensions, the authors test empirically for moderating influences, in the form of social axioms, between reputation‐related antecedents and consequences, using component‐based structural equation modelling (n = 204). In several model paths, significant differences are found between responses of individuals identified as either high or low on social cynicism, fate control and religiosity. The results suggest that stakeholder responses to reputation‐related stimuli can be systematically predicted as a function of the interactions between the deeply held beliefs of individuals and these stimuli. The authors offer recommendations on how strategic reputation management can be approached within and across stakeholder groups at a time when firms grapple with effective management of diverse stakeholder expectations.     

Team‐Level Antecedents of Individuals' Knowledge Networks*

Individuals' knowledge networks are widely considered to contribute substantially to the effectiveness and efficiency of organizations. While the positive effects of knowledge networks as a primary driver of social capital have recently received considerable research attention, potential determinants of individuals' network building have not yet been adequately addressed. In this study, we investigate how certain team‐level properties affect team members' development of knowledge networks through the course of a team project. Using data from 430 team leaders and team members pertaining to 145 software development projects, we test cross‐level hypotheses using hierarchical linear modeling (HLM). The results indicate that the team's perception of the organizational knowledge‐sharing climate, the team's networking preference, and the team's perceived importance of networking for project success positively affect individuals' network building. Furthermore, a team's perception of the adequacy of its technical competency and a team's perception of the adequacy of its material resources inhibit team members' individual network development. Theoretical and managerial implications are discussed.     

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.