Crafting business models for conflicting goals: Lessons from creative service firms

The business model construct has become attractive to both managers and academics. It reflects how the most important organization's strategic and tactical choices regarding the allocation of resources interact in order to create and capture value. Yet with the growing entrepreneurial complexity, managers often end up pursuing conflicting and even paradoxical strategic goals, thus rendering the business modelling processes more complex, too. Well-known examples are profit versus social value, stakeholder versus company interests, exploration versus exploitation and environmental sustainability versus economic returns. The academic business model literature so far has provided limited insights on how to implement business models beyond a single goal and focused mainly on the initial strategic choice of a business model, ignoring that such salient tensions are often persistent and resurface within the business practice. In this study we leverage paradox theory to investigate how managers of creative firms make tactical choices to accommodate (not solve) salient tensions within their business models, focusing on the domains like services provided, choice of clients, networking and resourcing practices, revenue models and new venture creation. Based on qualitative case study research, we found four integrating and three differentiating decision-making tactics that managers deploy to create both economic and creative value through their business models. Adding to the business model theory, we show how business models are crafted in managerial practices by making tactical decisions to solve conflicts and paradoxes. The results equally enrich the paradox literature by providing for tactical-level approaches toward working through the paradox.     

Job resources and emotional exhaustion: The mediating role of learning opportunities

The Job Demands-Resources model predicts that job demands increase and job resources decrease emotional exhaustion in employees. In this study, we investigated one possible mechanism for this, in order to provide a deeper insight into the role of job resources in this energy-depletion process. We assumed that job resources (autonomy and task variety) reduce emotional exhaustion through the promotion of opportunities for personal growth and development, especially workplace learning. Moreover, we expected that job demands (workload, cognitive and emotional demands) would be positively related to work-related learning opportunities. Our research model was tested in a large and heterogeneous sample out of the Dutch working population (N = 4589), following a cross-validation procedure. Multi-group structural equation modelling revealed that autonomy and task variety promoted learning opportunities, which in turn partially mediated between these job resources and emotional exhaustion. With respect to job demands, our study showed mixed results: cognitive demands promoted learning opportunities, workload frustrated such opportunities, and emotional demands were not significantly related to learning opportunities. Our results contribute to a better understanding of the interplay between job demands, job resources and learning opportunities in the energy-depletion process, and support the need for the promotion of learning opportunities in the workplace.     

Decision latitude,job demands,and employee well-being

Abstract

Karasek (1979) drew attention to the possibilities that job characteristics may be non-linearly associated with employee well-being, and that they may combine interactively in relation to well-being. This paper examines those issues, and finds that both linear and non-linear components are present in relationships between job features and well-being. However, there is no evidence for a synergistic interaction between decision latitude and job demands. Those job features are differentially predictive of two aspects of well-being: job-related depression-enthusiasm and anxiety-contentment.     

Regulations,policies and practices concerning work stress in five European countries

Abstract

A comparative inventory of regulations, policies and practices in The Netherlands, Sweden, UK, Germany and France with regard to the prevention of work stress was carried out. In each country data were collected by means of interviews with key informants and through exploring relevant documents and literature. It was found that Sweden, The Netherlands and the UK—those countries with framework legislation in the field of health and safety—recognize stress as an important health and safety topic, whereas Germany and France do not yet recognize stress as an important policy issue. However, even in the first group of countries less attention is being paid towards psychosocial work characteristics when compared with traditional health and safety issues, such as noise, machine safety and toxic agents. There is a clear lack of well-documented (national) ‘examples of good preventive practice’, even in Sweden and The Netherlands. Recommendations are being formulated concerning type of legislation, guidance and information, monitoring and risk assessment, costs and benefits, examples of good practice and European networking.     

A 14-h night-shift in the control room of a fire brigade

Abstract

All 29 operators in the control room of a fire brigade performed test sessions during work and leisure time at 2-h intervals on a day with a 14-h night-shift, a day off and a day with a 10-h morning shift. The test sessions consisted of a visual search choice reaction time test and two Sternberg memory search tests (1 or 5 letters had to be memorized). Furthermore, the operators recorded their oral temperature and their subjective alertness before each test session. The subject also kept a diary of work and sleep times for 14 days. The circadian rhythm of body temperature was hardly changed by a single night-shift. Parallel to the body temperature, the subjective alertness fell significantly during the night-shift reaching a minimum value at 06:00 h. The mean reaction times increased non-significantly at the end of the night-shift and the results of the two Sternberg memory search tests showed no significant trends. The sleep of the operators after the night-shift was on average reduced to 5 hs 34 min. The results of subjective rating of alertness and reaction time test are interpreted as effects of the combined influences of circadian rhythmicity, sleep loss and time on professional task. Most results support the conclusion that a 14-h night-shift without extensive breaks is not acceptable.     

Build-operate-transfer Outsourcing Contracts in Services – Boon or Bane to Emerging Market Vendor Firms?

Build-operate-transfer (BOT) contracting has been widely used in the engineering and construction industry and has recently spread into the service industry domains. Notably, service provider firms from emerging markets, India in particular, are now offering BOT outsourcing contracts in which the client firms are allotted call options, i.e. the right, but not the obligation, to transfer pre-specified assets from the service provider. As such, BOT outsourcing contracts seems to be an interesting contractual novelty that combines the advantages of outsourced and captive offshoring operations. In this paper we investigate under which circumstances a BOT outsourcing contract (i.e. a contract where the client firm exercises its call option) is beneficial, or the opposite, to the emerging market vendor firm. Whether BOT outsourcing contracts are boon or bane to an emerging market vendor basically hinges, we submit, on its internal diffusion of client-specific knowledge and capabilities prior to the execution of the call option.     

A descriptive study of some organizational-behavior dimensions at work in the Dominican Republic: implications for management development and training

Based in identity theory and the depletion hypothesis in the work-life literature, this study investigated dimensions of the meaning of work and work stress among mid-level managers in the United States, Brazil, and Korea. Findings include a high salience of work as a central life concern but a primacy of family involvement in each country. The importance of religious involvement, leisure activities, and community involvement was rated low. Intrinsic and extrinsic orientations to working were related to increased levels of work stress, but in each country the dimensions of work stress were associated with meaning of work aspects in different combinations and affected different demographic groups in different ways. The theoretical and practical implications of the findings imply the need for a differentiated understanding of the meaning of work dimensions in international settings and the awareness that increased levels of work stress can results from higher levels of work centrality and intrinsic and economic work orientations.     

Technical rationality and professional artistry in HRD practice

Abstract

This paper outlines the limitations of a technical rationalist approach to HRD practice without seeking to negate it. It then offers a complementary view based on Schon's notion of the reflective practitioner which exhorts HRD practitioners to embrace complexity and reflection. We outline, first, a number of dimensions of diversity which confer complexity upon HRD practice, and, second, a series of suggested questions that may aid the framing of practical problems in a more effective way than might be the case with a purely technical rationalist approach. We urge novice (and expert) HRD practitioners to adopt a mind set that is contemplative of the diversities that they may encounter in practice and which is conjectural with regard to how these diversities may impact upon problems and their solutions.