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Nonprofit organizations frequently engage in partnerships with profit-oriented businesses to fulfill their goals and social mission. Although nonprofit-business partnerships can benefit both parties, they are a potential source of intra-organizational controversy and conflict, especially when social objectives clash with business interests. An increasingly recognized risk of nonprofit-business partnerships lies in organizational identity threats. Adopting a sensemaking perspective, we investigate how nonprofit members make sense of nonprofit-business partnerships and how these appraisal processes influence whether they perceive these inter-organizational partnerships as organizational identity threats. Our qualitative study draws on semi-structured interviews and shows that nonprofit members' evaluations of partnership congruence (i.e., the perceived fit of a partnership with members' organizational identity expectations) and partnership relevance (i.e., the perceived meaning of a partnership for an organization's identity) influence whether they perceive partnerships as organizational identity threats. In doing so, we extend research on organizational identity threats (and opportunities) of nonprofit-business partnerships. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How do employees respond to organizational identity threats? Despite its theoretical and practical importance, this question has had surprisingly little research devoted to it. In particular, evidence remains unclear as to whether organizational identity threats lead employees to disidentify with their organization (to protect their individual identities by distancing themselves from the organization) or, in contrast, whether they foster organizational identification and cohesion (to protect the identity of the organization as a whole by rallying around and defending the organization). Based on the integration of social identity theory and attribution theory, we develop a conceptual model that clarifies the process by which employees recognize organizational identity threats as challenging their individual identity, make sense of their underlying causes, and decide how to respond to them. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this study, we seek to provide new insights into the process of problemistic search by examining entrepreneurs' behavioral responses to failures. Using a comprehensive dataset of over 65,000 crowdfunding projects, we specifically explore how negative performance feedback influences entrepreneurs' search distance. Our results demonstrate that the severity and persistence of failure have a U-shaped and inverted U-shaped relationship with search distance, respectively. Moreover, greater temporal distance between an entrepreneur's failure experience and a subsequent crowdfunding project is not only associated with increases in search distance, but also attenuates the curvilinear main effects. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study aims to shed light on the implementation of HR practices as a key piece of the human resource management ( HRM)-performance puzzle. Although the literature suggests that discrepancies between the organization's intended and implemented HR practices are essential to understanding employees' perceptions of and reactions to HRM, little attention has been devoted to this issue. Drawing upon a multiple-case study of German health and social services organizations, we therefore explore the linkages (and potential gaps) between intended, implemented, and perceived HR practices. Our study provides new insights into the underlying mechanisms of this relationship, highlighting an organization's ability to leverage its resources as playing a crucial moderating role in implementing intended HR practices, while employees' expectations of HRM moderate the link between implemented and perceived HR practices. We advance a set of propositions that contributes to a more nuanced, multilevel understanding of the complex phenomenon of HRM implementation. © 2014 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to explore the impact that occupational stereotypes held by customers have on value co-creation processes in human-centered service systems (HCSSs) like hospitals. Specifically, by exploring if and how customers' (i.e. patients') stereotypes toward frontline employees (e.g. nurses) affect their satisfaction as co-creators of value, this study responds to current service research priorities attempting to understand value co-creation in collaborative contexts like healthcare, and addresses calls to investigate the changing role of health care customers therein.Design/methodology/approach A field study was conducted in the context of German hospitals, which provides unique empirical evidence into the relationship between patients' stereotypes toward healthcare professionals and their satisfaction with health services as well as the mediating mechanisms through which such stereotypes affect patient satisfaction.Findings Negative (positive) stereotypes patients hold toward healthcare occupations decrease (increase) their satisfaction and are associated with perceptions of reduced (improved) patient orientation and patient participation in co-creation. However, only perceived patient orientation partially mediates the link between occupational stereotypes and patient satisfaction.Originality/value This study develops and tests new hypotheses related to occupational stereotyping in complex HCSSs, and extends previous research on stereotypes in service by exploring the previously unknown mediating mechanisms through which these impact value co-creation processes overall. It furthermore provides important guidance for future research about stereotyping in general, and its impact on value co-creation and HCSS, in particular. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Innovation partnerships can be a double-edged sword. While they are important vehicles for learning and value creation, such partnerships also increase a firm's vulnerability to unintended knowledge leakage and imitation by others. In this study, we go beyond previous research by studying the imitation threats induced by innovation partnership portfolios rather than individual alliances. Drawing on the resource-based view, we develop and test a model that links salient structural attributes of partnership portfolios and distinct forms of imitation. Results from our analysis of 803 German manufacturing firms support our prediction that a firm's probability of being imitated increases with the partnership variety of its portfolio. We also find that firms can mitigate this threat by carefully selecting innovation partners and using appropriation mechanisms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper adds to the emerging literature stream advocating a contingency view on open innovation. Drawing on the relational view of the firm, this study sheds light on the complex interplay among collaboration partner types (market- and science-focused innovation partners), governance modes (informal, self-enforcing and formal, contractual collaboration governance), and internal research and development( R& D). More specifically, it is proposed that the use of governance modes tailored to both the characteristics of each innovation partner type and the specific innovation objectives pursued by the focal firm (incremental and radical new product development) can increase the payoff from innovation collaboration. Moreover, appropriate collaboration governance is expected to reduce the focal firm's vulnerability to possible negative side effects often assumed to be associated with the simultaneous pursuit of external collaboration and internal R& D, among which most notably the not-invented-here ( NIH) syndrome. Cross-industry evidence from 2502 German firms underlines the critical role of collaboration governance-a contingency factor that is at the heart of the relational view, yet has remained surprisingly absent from the open innovation debate so far. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines one of the most important sources of competitiveness in dynamic industries-the capability of firms to introduce process innovations. While the management of product innovation has received considerable theoretical and empirical attention in the literature, our knowledge about how firms become process innovators-and why many firms fail to do so-remains underdeveloped. In order to provide novel insights into the configuration of firms' process innovation activities and their performance implications, this paper draws on the dynamic capabilities approach. More specifically, this study aims to shed light on the antecedents, contingencies, and performance consequences of interfirm differences in process innovation success, that is, firms' propensity and effectiveness of implementing new production, supply chain, or administrative processes. Particular emphasis is placed upon the analysis of potential complementarities or substitution effects between innovation activities such as internal and external research and development, prototyping, external knowledge acquisition, and employee training. Cross-sectional data from a large-scale survey of German manufacturing and service firms serves as the basis for testing the hypotheses advanced in this paper. Findings suggest that by engaging in a broad range of different innovation activities, firms can indeed increase the likelihood of achieving process innovation success, which is in turn positively related to firm financial performance. Yet decreasing marginal returns to innovation activities have to be considered as process innovation propensity was found to increase with the number of activities pursued simultaneously only up to a point, after which negative marginal returns set in (inverted U-shaped relationship). Furthermore, while environmental turbulence was found to have surprisingly little influence when it comes to translating process innovation success into firms' subsequent financial performance, industry membership as well as the nature of the innovation process (i.e., internal generation, external adoption, or cocreation of an innovation) emerged as key contingency factors. These findings have important theoretical as well as practical implications for managing new process introductions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examines the complex linkages between employees' perceptions of HR systems and hospital performance. In particular, it explores the role of attitudinal and behavioural HR outcomes as potential mediating mechanisms of the HRM–performance link. Structural equation models using multi-informant (e.g. medical and non-medical staff, patients) and multi-source data from 167 acute hospital trusts in the English National Health Service reveal a positive relationship between employees' HR system perceptions and patient satisfaction. Moreover, results suggest that this relationship is mediated by employees' civility towards patients, that is, by the extent to which employees treat patients with courtesy, dignity and respect. This behavioural HR outcome, in turn, is negatively affected by employees' intention to leave, an essential attitudinal HR outcome that mediates the link between HR system perceptions and civility towards patients. This study, therefore, contributes to a better understanding of the mechanisms through which HRM can enhance patient satisfaction in health care organisations. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]