The changing professional organization: A review of competing archetypes

The aim of this paper is to summarize literature relevant to the professional organization and to present a contemporary analysis of the archetype concept in this field. In order to understand recent and ongoing changes in professional organizations, the paper begins with a review of how the professional archetype evolved from the 1960s to 1990. Then, with examples from contemporary accounting, health care and law organizations, it considers the processes by which an institutionalized archetype can change. Forces for change – such as deregulation, competition, technology and globalization – can challenge the interpretive scheme and eventually delegitimize the existing archetype. At the same time, significant environmental changes can override isomorphic pressures and de‐institutionalize the long‐accepted structures. Thus we herald the emergence a new professional archetype – or perhaps several competing archetypes. Finally, the paper reviews the evolving field of professional organization as a whole, and understands the extant archetypes. A typology of professional organizations is proposed that currently seems to have three clusters of organizations – possibly three competing archetypes – namely, the traditional professional partnership, the specialized ‘Star’ form and the corporate global professional network, or GPN.     

Consumer trust in B2C e-Commerce and the importance of social presence: experiments in e-Products and e-Services

Reducing social uncertainty—understanding, predicting, and controlling the behavior of other people—is a central motivating force of human behavior. When rules and customs are not sufficient, people rely on trust and familiarity as primary mechanisms to reduce social uncertainty. The relative paucity of regulations and customs on the Internet makes consumer familiarity and trust especially important in the case of e-Commerce. Yet the lack of an interpersonal exchange and the one-time nature of the typical business transaction on the Internet make this kind of consumer trust unique, because trust relates to other people and is nourished through interactions with them.This study validates a four-dimensional scale of trust in the context of e-Products and revalidates it in the context of e-Services. The study then shows the influence of social presence on these dimensions of this trust, especially benevolence, and its ultimate contribution to online purchase intentions.     

Beyond Planning:: Strategies for Successfully Implementing Strategic Decisions

This article brings strategy back to managers and their organizations. It argues and demonstrates empirically that what managers do, and the kind of organization they lead, matter in terms of achieving stated objectives. Managerial action involves a set of activities from assessing the problem to prioritising action, and takes place within an organizational context which has two important elements for decision-making. First, organizations have an accumulated stock of experience, and the more managers can access and utilise this experience base the better. Secondly, the culture and structure of an organization may exhibit more or less readiness for the changes that decisions bring about, and contexts less ready for change pose problems for managers in the implementation of decisions.This long-term study of 55 decisions in UK firms shows that careful managerial planning does not of itself guarantee successful outcomes: the organizational context is crucial in framing actions and influencing achievement, and decisions may send a firm on a trajectory beyond the point at which it can plan with confidence. Where experience and readiness are strong, decisions achieve stated objectives—where both are lacking, decisions tend to fail. But, as examination of two illustrative cases indicates, strength in either domain may be enough: sound experience may win out in comparatively unreceptive situations, and decisions may still succeed where experience is lacking but the organization is ready for change. The article closes with some implications for managers.     

为中国人民服务

我来自加拿大安大略省的多伦多市,相信大家对这个地方并不陌生,它是大山的家乡,白求恩医生也在此出生并接受医疗培训。我所在的约克大学就有一个本科生学院是以白求恩医生的名字命名的。白求恩医生的事迹感召着我们．我们每一位获奖外国专家都将永远为我们有机会“为人民服务”,为中国人民服务而心存感激,这是我们无上的荣耀。     

A mathematical model and genetic algorithm-based approach for parallel two-sided assembly line balancing problem

Assembly lines are usually constructed as the last stage of the entire production system and efficiency of an assembly line is one of the most important factors which affect the performance of a complex production system. The main purpose of this paper is to mathematically formulate and to provide an insight for modelling the parallel two-sided assembly line balancing problem, where two or more two-sided assembly lines are constructed in parallel to each other. We also propose a new genetic algorithm (GA)-based approach in alternatively to the existing only solution approach in the literature, which is a tabu search algorithm. To the best of our knowledge, this is the first formal presentation of the problem as well as the proposed algorithm is the first attempt to solve the problem with a GA-based approach in the literature. The proposed approach is illustrated with an example to explain the procedures of the algorithm. Test problems are solved and promising results are obtained. Statistical tests are designed to analyse the advantage of line parallelisation in two-sided assembly lines through obtained test results. The response of the overall system to the changes in the cycle times of the parallel lines is also analysed through test problems for the first time in the literature.     

Principles of Good Practice for the Use of Monte Carlo Techniques in Human Health and Ecological Risk Assessments

We propose 14 principles of good practice to assist people in performing and reviewing probabilistic or Monte Carlo risk assessments, especially in the context of the federal and state statutes concerning chemicals in the environment. Monte Carlo risk assessments for hazardous waste sites that follow these principles will be easier to understand, will explicitly distinguish assumptions from data, and will consider and quantify effects that could otherwise lead to misinterpretation of the results. The proposed principles are neither mutually exclusive nor collectively exhaustive. We think and hope that these principles will evolve as new ideas arise and come into practice.     

Consumer Awareness, Understanding and Usage of Unit Pricing

The debate continues over whether prescribed quantities or unit pricing offers the best method to enable consumers to make value-for-money comparisons. In theory, the 'informed' consumer should benefit from being given unit-price information to identify optimum purchases; in practice, however, it would appear that many consumers do not use the data. Although unit pricing can reduce the level of confusion caused by large product ranges and large numbers of unique size–price combinations, results of a survey of over 1000 people showed that: 31% of the sample did not understand how unit pricing was meant to help them compare products; 35% could not be bothered to look at unit prices and 28% stated that unit pricing was too difficult to use. Those least likely to look at unit prices are women, the least educated and consumers aged 18–34. The research investigated why consumers do not use unit-price information and found: some consumers do not possess the cognitive ability to process the information and feel unit pricing is too complicated to use; some products are not comparable, which makes unit prices misleading; many shops do not provide unit-price information; unit-price information was felt unnecessary when evaluating products with few or no alternative sizes or brands; unit-price comparisons take too much time; consumers use simpler strategies for getting value for money, e.g. volume discount heuristic, own brands, special offers, x% free, reward points, etc. The paper explores policy and retailer implications for unit pricing and examines recommendations for government.     

Are sponsors blamed for edging off? Consumer reactions to sponsorship terminations

Firms regularly terminate sponsorships, even without publicly known misconduct by the sponsee such as athlete doping. Consumer reactions to these sponsorship terminations by firms have not been studied despite being a regular occurrence. Using a set of experimental studies, this paper analyzes consumer reactions to these sponsorship terminations (i.e., early and non-renewal) that were not caused by a sponsee’s misconduct, the underlying process that causes the reactions, and the role of several moderating factors (trust, power balance, and locus of control). Our findings reveal that sponsorship terminations have a negative effect on sponsors’ brand images—particularly early terminations that occur before the end of a contract—because consumers perceive these sponsorship terminations as unfair. The results also suggest that a termination is particularly harmful for the sponsor’s perceived fairness if the sponsor is powerful and if the termination decision is under the sponsor’s control. Further, the termination effect is particularly strong for firms that consumers trust.     

Constructing Trustworthy Historical Narratives: Criteria,Principles and Techniques

Organizational scholars increasingly recognize the value of employing historical research. Yet the fields of history and organization studies struggle to reconcile. In this paper, the authors contend that a closer connection between these two fields is possible if organizational historians bring their role in the construction of historical narratives to the fore and open up their research decisions for discussion. They provide guidelines to support this endeavor, drawing on four criteria that are prevalent within interpretive organization studies for developing the trustworthiness of research: credibility; confirmability; dependability; and transferability. In contrast to the traditional use of trustworthiness criteria to evaluate the quality of research, the authors advance the criteria to encourage historians to generate more transparent narratives. Such transparency allows others to comprehend and comment on the construction of narratives, thereby building trust and understanding. Each criterion is converted into a set of guiding principles to enhance the trustworthiness of historical research, pairing each principle with a practical technique gleaned from a range of disciplines within the social sciences to provide practical guidance.     

Communicating with the Public About Marauding Terrorist Firearms Attacks: Results from a Survey Experiment on Factors Influencing Intention to “Run,Hide, Tell” in the United Kingdom and Denmark

Effective risk communication is an integral part of responding to terrorism, but until recently, there has been very little pre‐event communication in a European context to provide advice to the public on how to protect themselves during an attack. Following terrorist attacks involving mass shootings in Paris, France, in November 2015, the U.K. National Police Chiefs’ Council released a Stay Safe film and leaflet that advises the public to “run,” “hide,” and “tell” in the event of a firearms or weapons attack. However, other countries, including Denmark, do not provide preparedness information of this kind, in large part because of concern about scaring the public. In this survey experiment, 3,003 U.K. and Danish participants were randomly assigned to one of three conditions: no information, a leaflet intervention, and a film intervention to examine the impact of “Run, Hide, Tell” advice on perceptions about terrorism, the security services, and intended responses to a hypothetical terrorist firearms attack. Results demonstrate important benefits of pre‐event communication in relation to enhancing trust, encouraging protective health behaviors, and discouraging potentially dangerous actions. However, these findings also suggest that future communications should address perceived response costs and target specific problem behaviors. Cross‐national similarities in response suggest this advice is suitable for adaptation in other countries.