Search

Article takes a look at a 14-year case study at the University of Glasgow on the difficulties of operating a mode 2 academic research project and then of transferring academic theory into a practical application successfully used at more than 150 companies.

Organizational effectiveness in construction administration covers a vast systemic area of organizational development, role pressure, satisfaction, decision making, cultural and societal influences, confidence and self-esteem, and technical and operational factors. These correspond to Maslow's systemic theory of health. As part of ongoing efforts at the State Department of Engineering Construction (SDEC) to develop its organizational resources, an independent pilot study was undertaken to estimate weak and strong areas of performance, and to assist in the design of intervention programs for further improvement. Comparisons were made between SDEC and private construction-management consulting firms. Analysis of variance (ANOVA) reveals that the organizational effectiveness at SDEC is significantly better than that at the private firms. The low score and high score areas of SDEC were identified, and intervention measures related to weaknesses and strengths also are ongoing. Further studies continue to monitor future performance.

Research on US firms strongly suggests that there is an inverse relation between company performance and senior executive turnover. As for whether or not this is also true in the UK, authors Jay Dahya, A. Alasdair Lonie and David M. Power contribute an important paper which reports significant findings about executive turnover and confirms the evidence from research on US firms that company performance and executive turnover are negatively related.

A study designed to show the dynamic nature of entrepreneurs identifies serial entrepreneurship as an important, but largely ignored, subset of habitual entrepreneurship. Serial entrepreneurs are defined as individuals who become involved in one venture after exiting from a previous one. The study analyses the behaviour of three kinds of serial entrepreneurs, namely serial deal makers, venture repeaters and organic serials, and concludes that two main types exist. The first group enter a second venture mainly for defensive reasons, while the second group are more opportunist.

A study of the cultural values of French and British managers working for the Channel Tunnel consortium Transmanche-Link largely supports the previous findings of Hofstede (1980) on the link between culture and organization. In his study of IBM managers in 40 countries, Hofstede defines power distance, individualism, masculinity and uncertainty avoidance as the four indices of national culture. Details of the Transmanche-Link study found that French managers were less reliant on procedures, while their British counterparts were better team players.

This study examines the moderating effect of international involvement on the relationship between top management team size and firm performance using two different operationalizations of team size. Data for 89 Fortune 500 firms of varying levels of international sales were gathered and analyzed. The results of the empirical examination suggest that both operationalizations of team size play an important role in determining a firm's level of success. In general, firms with high levels of foreign involvement that had smaller 'inner' top management teams and larger 'outer' top management teams realized superior performance outcomes. These findings suggest that as the level of a firm's international involvement increases, boards of directors may want to reduce the size of a firm's 'inner' top management team and increase the size of the firm's 'outer' top management team., In a recent study that examined the moderating role of environmental turbulence and discretion on the relationship between top management team (TMT) size and firm performance, Haleblian and Finkelstein (1993) [...]

Researchers found that marketing managers at savings and loan associations under stock governance took strategic action to manage their environments during the period of deregulation. This action differed distinctly from environmental decision-making by managers of S&Ls under mutual governance during this period.

Research on corporate management has led to debates on whether or not poor company performance is closely linked to sudden top management changes. A study was conducted to investigate this subject by scrutinizing a sample of 2,643 UK firms which announced 2,729 board changes over a 48-month time span from Jan 1, 1989, to Dec 31, 1992. The study focused on the link between the probability of a top executive's resignation from the company and company share performance in the period prior to his departure and the link between the firms' shareholdings and the market value of their shares.

This paper applies the construct of task uncertainty to study relationships between product development project characteristics and project outcomes. We characterize product development projects in terms of their technology novelty and project complexity levels. This characterization is based on product development literature and organizational information processing theory. We hypothesize that technology novelty and project complexity characteristics contribute to project task uncertainty and are in turn associated with project execution outcomes. A cross-sectional survey of 120 new product development projects for assembled goods was employed to test relationships between project characteristics and project success. Success measures include achievement of individual project goals, such as technical performance, unit-cost, and time-to-market, and overall achievement of project goals. Results suggest that projects with high levels of technology novelty or project complexity are not associated with overall project failure, but are associated with specific project outcome elements. Technology novelty is strongly associated with poor unit-cost and time-to-market results, and project complexity is strongly associated with poor unit-cost outcomes. Looking deeper into the technology novelty and project complexity dimensions, we find that process technology novelty is more problematic than product technology novelty and that the relative newness of a project's objectives to the firm is more problematic than other project complexity characteristics. Results suggest that technology novelty and project complexity do not interact to influence project outcomes and so can be seen as potential managerial tradeoffs. These findings suggest that future research should investigate detailed project task characteristics and specific project goals rather than solely address aggregate task factors and overall outcomes. In addition, these findings can help firms improve product development effectiveness through better estimates of outcomes for different types of projects, guidance into which projects to undertake, and insight into appropriate structuring of the task content of product development projects. Index Terms--New product development, project execution, project management, task uncertainty, time-to-market.

A study of the popularity of commitment models of human resource management in Ireland is presented. Topics include conditions favoring the commitment model, variables of the commitment model, hypotheses regarding favorable conditions, and the recognition of a low incidence of commitment models in Irish human resource management.

Issues related to the management of implementation of workplace reforms are examined. Topics include implementation rationales, association between rationales and reforms, effect of high and moderate intensity of implementation, and the nature of defining implementation effectiveness.

Issues related to the relationship between the working knowledge of organizational teams and evolving institutional knowledge are examined, focusing on a case study of a decision to implement new technological policies at the Department of Social Security. Topics include the importance of coordinating and building organizational knowledge, appropriability, and the manager's role in directing teams to implement change.

Issues related to the nature of teams in business organizations are examined, focusing on explaining team nature in terms of archetypes defined by the Japanese and German style of team management. Topics include the differing forms of the two archetypes, the nature of sociotechnical teams, and the need to constantly reinterpret the meaning of 'team.'

Cross-cultural studies of managerial attitudes, beliefs and values have produced evidence to support both the view that industrialization is a force for convergence, and for the notion that national cultural realities continue to support divergence. Data from an investigation of Malawian managers are considered in relation to those from comparable previous studies in other countries, and more specifically in terms of the African context. Some tentative hypotheses are advanced, to account for distinctive aspects of managerial thinking in Malawi. (Reprinted by permission of the publisher.)

This paper presents a new solution to capacitated lot-sizing problems. This approach has the advantage that linear programming software can be used to achieve it. It uses valid inequalities to reformulate the multi-item capacitated problem.

Organizations can be analyzed by interpreting 'texts' produced by the organization. These texts include managerial statements, writings, and observed behaviors. The rules for analyzing the texts of organizations have their roots in cultural anthropology, psychoanalysis, and hermeneutics. The procedure of psychoanalytic interpretation is applied to two case studies. Four general rules that can be applied to scrutinizing texts are to try to shape random observations into a thematically cohesive interpretation; to look for structural parallels between past and present activities; to look for the psychological urgency or pressing problem suggested by observed actions; and to look for multiple meanings in events.

A new study applies the social dilemma theory to the dynamics involved in advertising budget-setting as a means of understanding advertisers' interdependency problems in their investment decisions.

A multiple method study of a single competitive environment was conducted to test certain hypotheses concerning the conditions under which strategic groups developed using archival data will exist and the conditions under which alternative measures of competitive groups will converge. Using a derivation of the traditional multitrait/multimethod matrix, the analysis focused on a sample of 72 non-federal, acute care, general hospitals in a major metropolitan area to test the convergent validity of the concept of strategy groups in a mature, geographically delimited, competitive environment. Significant convergence was found between multiple measures of the group structure in this environment, a finding which directly confirms the relationship between the theory and measurement of strategic groups.