Reviewing Industry Life‐cycle Theory: Avenues for Future Research

This paper explicates the key mechanisms and research themes of industry life‐cycle theory and assesses the extent to which empirical evidence supports such an approach. It is based on a review of 216 industry life‐cycle studies. The review of the theory is organized around industry emergence and transition to industry maturity. The key research themes concern changes in industry structure, changes in the nature of innovation, and the determinants of survival. Three potential special cases, i.e. services, complex products and systems, and cultural industries, are identified, and five research questions for future enquiry are presented.     

Do executives’ aesthetic attributes matter to career and organizational outcomes? A critical review and theoretical integration

How do top executives’ aesthetic attributes, such as their physical (e.g., attractiveness) and vocal (e.g., voice pitch) features, shape their firms and their own careers? Whereas strategic leadership scholars mostly have focused on top executives’ cognitive, psychological, and affective attributes, researchers increasingly have focused on this research question as well. As a result, a substantial body of research has emerged, as evidenced by the sixty-five empirical studies we located. Our review of the literature indicates that aesthetic attributes are related to executives’ careers and organizational outcomes in important ways, including executive selection and firm strategy. There also appear to be important contingencies, such as other individual differences and cultural factors, that shape these relationships. However, we conclude that there are important theoretical and methodological shortcomings in this literature and that addressing these issues is critical to validating extant findings, establishing more legitimacy, and moving this literature forward.     

How follower traits and cultural values influence the effects of leadership

Follower traits and cultural values are important context variables that influence the effectiveness of leader behaviors. Understanding how these variables interact with leader behaviors has been an important scholarly pursuit for the past several decades. Yet, this research is dispersed, and there exist methodological and theoretical limitations within this line of inquiry. We seek to improve our collective understanding of the role of follower traits and cultural values in leadership behavior research. First, we provide a comprehensive review of the extant research on follower traits and cultural values as moderators of leader behaviors. Second, based on our review and analysis of prior research, we identify important patterns in the literature. Third, we highlight methodological shortcomings and solutions that should enhance the quality of future research in this area. We also offer up theoretical insights for future research that should increase our understanding of how follower traits influence leader behaviors.     

和谐管理理论及其应用述评

经过三十余年的发展,和谐管理理论已经被我国管理学者应用到深化管理学理论创新以及引领管理实践变革的各个方面。面对充满了不确定性、模糊性、复杂性以及快变性的商业管理环境,和谐管理理论逐渐体现出了其整合东西方管理智慧、与管理情境紧密结合以创造性地解决复杂问题的基本思想,以及在应用该理论过程中体现出了"动态"与"迭代"特征。本文通过对和谐管理理论相关应用研究进行述评,讨论了相关研究所存在的一系列问题和改进建议,有助于彰显和谐管理理论的应用价值,并加强和谐管理理论的研究和应用。为了使读者对和谐管理理论有更为深入及在一定程度上统一的认识,本文以介绍和谐管理理论基本思想与特点作为开头,并深入回顾了和谐管理理论在不同领域以及行业中的应用。同时,本文也发现和谐管理理论相关应用研究存在着分布不均、理论联系度较低、理论与实践关联度不足以及和谐耦合机制相关研究不足的问题,并提出从深化和谐管理理论本身、扩大理论影响力以及加强相关应用研究等方面入手的改进建议。     

Human-robot collaboration: A multilevel and integrated leadership framework

In an era of rapid advances in artificial intelligence, the deployment of robots in organizations is accelerating. Further, robotic capabilities are expanding to serve a broader range of leadership behaviors related to task accomplishment and relationship support. Despite the increasing use of robots in various roles across different industries, research on human-robot collaboration in the workplace is lagging behind. As such, the current research aims to provide a state-of-the-science review and directions for future work in this underdeveloped area. Drawing on current leadership paradigms, we review human-robot collaboration studies from four academic disciplines with a history of publishing such work (i.e., management, economics, psychology, engineering) and propose that the research trajectory of human-robot collaboration parallels the evolution of leadership research paradigms (i.e., leader centric, relational view, and follower centric). Given that leadership is an inherently multilevel phenomenon, we apply a levels-of-analysis framework to integrate and synthesize human-robot collaboration studies from cross-disciplinary research areas. Based on our findings, we offer suggestions for future research in terms of conceptualization, theory building and testing, practical implications, and ethical considerations.     

Increasing Returns and Social Contagion in Cultural Industries

A formal definition of cultural industries is developed following four distinct features of cultural goods: (a) oversupply, (b) quality uncertainty, (c) network effects and (d) demand reversal. Drawing on economic and socio-psychological notions of ‘network’, increasing returns and social contagion effects are distinguished. Increasing returns may govern the adoption of standards when choices are binary, social contagion explains the diffusion of cultural goods when choices are multiple. Together, the four structural features delineating cultural industries account for curious competitive dynamics prevalent in cultural markets, such as the notorious 10 : 90 proportionality (under which 10% of cultural goods account for 90% of the market), causal ambiguity about the reasons for success, and the formation of fashions. Six managerial recommendations are advanced, focusing on a criticial circulation point triggering self-sustaining diffusion patterns. Finally ‘project-based enterprises’ and ‘network forms of governance’ are identified as the organizational forms most suited to the dynamics of the cultural markets.     

The Culture–Performance Relationship in M&A: From Yes/No to How

Do cultural differences have an impact on the performance of M&A? Despite the widely accepted myth that they do, and in a negative way, a review of extant research provides contradictory findings. In this article, we explore reasons for this contradiction and propose solutions in the form of propositions and a theoretical framework. We begin with a brief overview of extant research on the culture‐performance relationship in M&A. In light of the contradictions emerging from this review, we move on to identifying three areas of complexity explaining this confusion, and for each one, we suggest propositions to guide future research. We then summarize our argument using a theoretical framework. Because of the long‐term and dynamic nature of the M&A process, we argue that instead of studying the simple performance impact of cultural differences in M&A, we should move on to thinking how cultural differences impact on the M&A process and its outcome.     

Operations in Financial Services—An Overview

We provide an overview of the state of the art in research on operations in financial services. We start by highlighting a number of specific operational features that differentiate financial services from other service industries, and discuss how these features affect the modeling of financial services. We then consider in more detail the various different research areas in financial services, namely systems design, performance analysis and productivity, forecasting, inventory and cash management, waiting line analysis for capacity planning, personnel scheduling, operational risk management, and pricing and revenue management. In the last section, we describe the most promising research directions for the near future.     

The interactive relationship of corporate culture and knowledge management: a review

Knowledge management and corporate culture are two managerial concepts that are often connected in articles, especially in knowledge management literature. It is, however, a rather complex relationship, as evidenced by the existence of various theoretical and empirical contributions as well as various implicit assumptions. This review therefore, aims at systemizing and clarifying different approaches towards the relationship between intraorganizational knowledge management and corporate culture. I identified three different perspectives on this topic. The first perspective regards cultural values as knowledge resources. The second approach deals with the characteristics of “knowledge cultures” that are regarded as a favorable antecedents for knowledge management. The third view assumes a different causal relationship because knowledge management initiatives can also modify cultural assumptions if employees are subject to positive experiences. This paper describes all three, discusses their underlying assumptions, and shows their implications for theory and practice. By comparing the three perspectives, this systematic review reveals that they are based on different theories and therefore, their results cannot be easily combined. Our conclusions show that being aware of these differences and providing a common theoretical basis opens up avenues for future research in this field.     

International Business and National Culture: A Literature Review and Research Agenda

This literature review analyzes leading international business and management journals from 2000 to 2012 in order to explore the role of national culture in international business research. Through the analysis of the 265 selected articles, the study thematically maps the field and identifies research challenges and opportunities. It reflects on avenues for future research related to both thematic and methodological issues, among them: research focused on the impact of the home/host national culture on internationalization processes (as existing literature mainly focuses on cultural distance); the role to be played by new theoretical frameworks; and the need to consider cultural positions and cultural friction rather than traditional cultural distance when analyzing internationalization decisions.     

"引进-模仿-改进-创新"模型与韩国企业技术学习的演进过程

韩国企业通过技术的引进-模仿-改进-创新,实现了自主创新和技术跨越,对我国现实发展阶段的创新型国家建设具有重要的启发和借鉴意义.本文以技术学习理论为研究基础,考察了韩国企业技术学习过程,分析了韩国半导体行业、汽车行业和电子行业的技术学习路径,构建了基于技术学习的知识创新过程模型,最后提出了值得中国企业研究和借鉴的地方.     

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.     

Sustainable Luxury Marketing: A Synthesis and Research Agenda

Sustainability has become a pervasive issue for the luxury sector, gaining traction with brand managers, scholars, policy‐makers, the media, and academia. The purpose of this paper is to examine the state of sustainable luxury research in marketing and consumer behaviour by critically reviewing and synthesizing the growing but fragmented body of scholarly work on sustainable‐luxury marketing. The paper critically assesses where, how and by whom research on sustainable luxury is being conducted, and it identifies gaps for future investigation. The paper reviews research published between 2007 and 2018 within major peer‐reviewed English‐language scholarly publications in business, marketing, ethics, fashion, food and tourism journals. The research is identified using the keywords sustainable luxury, green luxury, eco‐luxury and organic luxury. Three core themes emerge from this review: (1) consumer concerns and practices; (2) organizational concerns and practices; and (3) international and cross‐cultural issues. The review confirms that research on sustainable luxury is significantly underdeveloped. This paper provides the first critical and comprehensive assessment and categorization of the emergent literature streams on sustainable luxury. The authors argue for a broader, deeper and more critical research agenda on the relationship between sustainability and luxury. Potential avenues for future research on sustainable luxury are proposed, with calls for theoretical and cross‐cultural reflections that tackle broader systemic and institutional issues within the field.     

Let’s agree about nice leaders: A literature review and meta-analysis of agreeableness and its relationship with leadership outcomes

In this study, we draw from 22 years of research in leadership to investigate the ambiguous relationship between the personality trait agreeableness and leadership. First, we conduct a comprehensive review of the leadership literature to build a foundational understanding of leader agreeableness that includes providing a broad definition for agreeableness, identifying emerging trends, and proposing an agenda for future research. Second, using the literature review as our theoretical foundation, we conduct a meta-analysis from the same body of literature to quantitatively decompose the relationship between leader agreeableness and leadership emergence and effectiveness. We also hypothesize and test the contextual moderating effects for gender, leadership level, and cultural context (as reflected by individualism-collectivism). Collectively, our findings provide a framework for future research on leadership agreeableness and support the notion that nice (highly agreeable) leaders can emerge as effective leaders.     

Time,Space, Confucianism and Careers: A Contextualized Review of Careers Research in China – Current Knowledge and Future Research Agenda

Career studies attract significant attention, but most of the theories and concepts were developed and tested in Western contexts. Based on a systematic review and analysis of 95 articles published in the field of careers that focus on China in the period between 1991 and 2017, this paper identifies emerging trends and outlines a profile of the current development of careers research in the Chinese context. Using a time and space analytical framework, the review evaluates the theoretical and empirical career lenses embedded in the unique Chinese cultural, institutional and organizational contexts and confirms that research on Chinese careers is significantly underdeveloped. Through a theoretical lens of Confucianism, we propose a need to consider context‐specific factors, in particular time and space, when conducting Chinese careers research, and present implications for future research on careers in China.     

The Evolving Field of Risk Communication

The 40th Anniversary of the Society for Risk Analysis presents an apt time to step back and review the field of risk communication. In this review, we first evaluate recent debates over the field's current state and future directions. Our takeaway is that efforts to settle on a single, generic version of what constitutes risk communication will be less productive than an open-minded exploration of the multiple forms that comprise today's vibrant interdisciplinary field. We then review a selection of prominent cognitive, cultural, and social risk communication scholarship appearing in the published literature since 2010. Studies on trust in risk communication messengers continued to figure prominently, while new research directions emerged on the opportunities and critical challenges of enhancing transparency and using social media. Research on message attributes explored how conceptual insights particularly relating to framing, affective and emotional responses, and uncertainty might be operationalized to improve message effectiveness. Studies consistently demonstrated the importance of evaluation and how varying single attributes alone is unlikely to achieve desired results. Research on risk communication audiences advanced on risk perception and multiway engagement with notable interest in personal factors such as gender, race, age, and political orientation. We conclude by arguing that the field's interdisciplinary tradition should be further nurtured to drive the next evolutionary phase of risk communication research.     

Search and Recombination Process to Innovate: A Review of the Empirical Evidence and a Research Agenda

The view of innovation as a process of searching and recombining existing knowledge elements has been adopted in several industries. The innovation management literature has recognized the fundamental role that search and recombination play in innovation development. However, the relevant research has provided complex, fragmented and mixed results. The authors aim to identify areas of convergence and provide directions for future research by collecting empirical evidence regarding how firms conduct the search and recombination process. They conducted a systematic literature review of 87 empirical articles in the innovation management field. The review reveals differences among the solutions adopted both within and across organizational boundaries. Specifically, it shows that the variety and diversity of knowledge elements are critical in creating breakthrough innovations. Therefore, this paper discusses how to provide access to a variety of knowledge elements. It also highlights other fundamental questions calling for further investigation, such as how scientific knowledge elements are successfully recombined and how recombination and search dynamics occur in small and medium‐sized firms. The review concludes by summarizing the current state of affairs and suggests promising directions for future investigation.     

A national strategic planning model

Can nations choose among several possible futures, or is the future pre-determined on the basis of geographic, demographic, cultural, economic and political features? The author maintains that newly developing patterns may well change the traditional deterministic characteristics of society, and that it is possible for nations to be masters of their own future. This will depend on the development of sophisticated and democratic national planning processes.     

Leadership,creativity, and innovation: A critical review and practical recommendations

Leadership is a key predictor of employee, team, and organizational creativity and innovation. Research in this area holds great promise for the development of intriguing theory and impactful policy implications, but only if empirical studies are conducted rigorously. In the current paper, we report a comprehensive review of a large number of empirical studies (N?=?195) exploring leadership and workplace creativity and innovation. Using this article cache, we conducted a number of systematic analyses and built narrative arguments documenting observed trends in five areas. First, we review and offer improved definitions of creativity and innovation. Second, we conduct a systematic review of the main effects of leadership upon creativity and innovation and the variables assumed to moderate these effects. Third, we conduct a systematic review of mediating variables. Fourth, we examine whether the study designs commonly employed are suitable to estimate the causal models central to the field. Fifth, we conduct a critical review of the creativity and innovation measures used, noting that most are sub-optimal. Within these sections, we present a number of taxonomies that organize extant research, highlight understudied areas, and serve as a guide for future variable selection. We conclude by highlighting key suggestions for future research that we hope will reorient the field and improve the rigour of future research such that we can build more reliable and useful theories and policy recommendations.