Empirical support for the process and mechanism of interactions with knowledge-intensive business services (KIBS) is scarce, particularly with regard to small and medium manufacturing enterprises (SMMEs). Our study investigated how four SMMEs in China’s electrical appliance industry cluster attained high performance through interactions with KIBS. For our research, knowledge integration can be understood as knowledge identification, knowledge accession, and knowledge utilization. We investigated the mechanism involved in interactions between SMMEs and KIBS by tentative multiple case studies, and found that interactions with technology-based KIBS improved the performance of SMMEs by influencing their knowledge accession and knowledge utilization. Interactions with traditional professional KIBS, however, mainly influence SMMEs’ knowledge identification and knowledge accession. technology-based KIBS generally acts as a knowledge source and professional KIBS as a knowledge bridge for SMMEs. Interaction with technology-based KIBS is a kind of complementary interaction, while interaction with professional KIBS is a kind of supplementary interaction.

In the scholarly debate on how to deal with hypercompetition, a dominant logic has become that investing in ‘sensing’, ‘seizing’, and ‘transforming’ dynamic capabilities offers organization’s the potential to repetitively initiate business innovations. Actual research into the micro-foundations of these dynamic capabilities has been limited. This study explores whether modular organizing and lateral coordination are typical processes that support an organization’s sensing function. Empirically the study investigates how these two variables help The Netherlands armed forces to deal with its volatile crisis response environment. The findings show that both predictors stimulate the development of a broad knowledge base from which the organization can operationally benefit. Yet, the study has also uncovered that, when modularity's demand of organizational autonomy is not sufficiently satisfied, the organization becomes preoccupied with its own internal functioning at the expense of its external lateral sensing capacity.

This research is a pilot study on identifying the social initiatives that could potentially provide employment opportunities for female Sudanese refugees settled in western Sydney, Australia. An interpretative ethnographic approach was employed to analyse academic literature, government information and data gathered through in-depth interviews with a not-for-profit organisation working with this community. The outcome of this research emphasises three fundamental questions that relate to community value, customer need and opportunity risk that need to be considered with respect to the limitations that are framed by the social initiatives identified in relation to reducing unemployment for these women. This study revealed an interesting observation: programs that make use of existing skills create new opportunities in the employment market, whereas programmes that provide new skills or a combination of new and existing skills, were more inclined to link to existing opportunities in the employment market.

Contextual performance in the workplace has been identified as including relational activities that maintain the broader social and psychological environment in which task performance occurs in organisations. In this conceptual writing, organisational advocacy (OA) is offered as a form of task and contextual performance that is pertinent in the 21st century, especially while serving and working with customers on a day-to-day basis. Organisational citizenship behaviour is conceptualised as a component of the contextual performance of OA. OA and customer advocacy are defined and models are provided, suggesting that what is thought, said, and done by organisational members must receive expanded attention, in this case, in dealing with internal and external customers.

Dynamic capabilities ‘create, extend or modify’ the firm's current operating capabilities in order to enable strategic renewal. Although widely recognized, this conceptualization of the relationship between dynamic and operating capabilities lacks empirical grounding. Using process research into the difficult radical new product development path of a new influenza drug, our data reveal that dynamic and operating capabilities have a stage-gate type relationship. We demonstrate that dynamic capabilities need to achieve certain critical outputs if successful transfer to the operating capability stage is to be reached. Furthermore progress from one stage to the next is dependent on how well dynamic capabilities co-specialize with downstream operating capabilities. This co-specialization is enabled via three processes within a dynamic capability: value network knowledge generation, value schema development and value proposition development.

Context is an important but largely ignored dimension of quality service encounters. This paper contributes to the hospitality service industries literature by examining how the front-of-house and back-of-house boundary work (Nippert-Eng 1996, 2003) engaged by Room Attendants working within the hotel guest room space impact on the hospitality impression management performed. Qualitative data from fieldwork engaging with hotel employees located within the tourist resort of Queenstown New Zealand are used to explore the multiple fronts on which the front-of-house and back-of-house boundaries are simultaneously negotiated. The results suggest that Room Attendants negotiate the front-of-house and back-of-house boundary through objects – such as the guest room and articles belonging to the guest – and aspects of self– such as impression management, safety, socialising and self-responsibility for room checking. The results support the importance of considering context when seeking to understand the complexities associated with the (re)production of a reliably positive service encounter.

Researchers have advocated various perspectives on the relationship between strategic consistency and organizational performance. This inconclusive debate has created an inadequate theoretical foundation in strategic consistency literature. Therefore, the present study uses strategic planning, strategic change, upper echelons theory, and other literature as the theoretical foundation to empirically examine the moderating roles of organizational slack, environmental dynamism, and top management team attributes in the relationship between strategic consistency and organizational performance. Using 439 electronics companies in the Taiwanese stock market as sample data, the empirical results show that organizational slack, environmental dynamism, top management team tenure, and top management team tenure heterogeneity moderate the relationship between strategic consistency and organizational performance.

The sudden outbreak of coronavirus disease-2019 (COVID-19) sparked widespread concern about organisational resilience in the management domain. The resources, operations and practices of organisational resilience have to be considered in particular contexts at different stages and in relation to numerous inputs, processes and outputs. Selected as one example, the preparation, response and development of a retail supermarket's management and operations in China is examined through an empirical case study. Supply chain and digital construction, improvisational ability, system management and corporate social responsibility all played a positive role in this organisation's response to the outbreak of COVID-19 (2019–2020) in the Chinese management context. Organisational resilience is reflected in the case study organisation's self-interested and altruistic policies and practices. The case provides valuable insights on efficacious management practices for organisational resilience building in the retail industry.

Although the potential of arts to promote social inclusion is recognised, barriers to social inclusion for disabled people in the arts is under-researched. Based on 34 semi-structured interviews with disabled people and those without disability from four arts organisations in Australia, the paper identifies barriers for social inclusion for disabled people within performing arts across four dimensions: access; participation; representation and empowerment. Findings highlight barriers are societal, being created with little awareness of needs of disabled people, supporting the social model of disability. Findings have implications beyond social inclusion of disabled people within the arts, demonstrating how the arts can empower disabled people and enable them to access, participate and represent themselves and have a voice. Our framework conceptualises these four barriers for social inclusion for disabled people for management to change.

This paper extends the work of Thompson, Beauvais, and Lyness (1999, Journal of Vocational Behavior, 54, 392–415) on work–family culture by considering the role co-workers play. The proposed extended measure encompasses non-work spheres beyond the family as it has been established that much of the extant research does not include a large part of the workforce – those without childcare responsibilities (Kelliher, Richardson & Boiarintseva [2019, Human Resource Management Journal, 29, 101]). The extended measure constitutes Thompson et al.'s (1999) three original dimensions plus two additional dimensions: co-worker involvement (support and consequences) and gender expectations. Two quantitative studies confirmed that the extended measure is robust for different types of workers (part- and full-time, males and females). The co-worker dimensions were significantly associated with several outcome measures; however, the gender expectation dimensions added little additional variance in relation to employee outcomes. The results support the inclusion of co-workers as an important dimension of the workplace environment that supports work and life balance.

We argue that there is scholarly potential in linking theory on industry clusters with theory on value networks. To date, these two theoretical streams have developed largely in parallel, limiting understanding of how the two are integrated in practice. By considering these theories in combination and the unique context of creative industries, we generate insight on the management of clusters as value networks. Our ongoing longitudinal empirical case is a new media cluster called ‘Mediapolis’ in the city of Tampere, Finland. The case study commenced at the time the cluster was in the planning and early operational stage. Results demonstrate the usefulness of linking the two theories, and support a future research agenda examining the types of cluster configurations meeting the criteria of value networks, and the conditions under which value network cluster configurations are more sustainable than simply a spatial agglomeration of clusters.

The knowledge exchanges literature considered all types of knowledge exchanges as reactive. The present study develops the conceptual framework and the measure of knowledge-based proactive helping that was missing in earlier literature. The measure was validated across multiple population. Proactive helping was manifested in the scale items effectively, to the extent that at first, initially chosen five dimensions merged to form two factors: professional development and problem mitigation and; subsequent analysis revealed that the factors represented the same underlying construct of proactive helping. The nomological network, a process model highlighting the psychosocial causes and benefits of proactive helping based upon social exchange theory and social motivation theory was also proposed. The significance of the study was in bringing the prosocial, proactive exchanges at the forefront of knowledge exchanges, which predominantly focussed on reactive exchanges.

This study examined how information seeking and proximal adjustment outcomes (role clarity and social integration) mediate the relationship between transformational leadership and distal adjustment outcome (affective organizational commitment) in work group context. The results of hierarchical linear modeling involving 212 newcomers and their 53 immediate supervisors revealed that information seeking mediated the relationship between transformational leadership and proximal adjustment outcomes. These in turn were positively related to distal adjustment outcome. Furthermore, work group structure was found to moderate the relationship between transformational leadership and newcomer information seeking.

We undertake a critical literature review to facilitate academic dialogs regarding decisions under uncertainty in international business settings and highlight the growing focus on international investments as conveyers of real options. Our literature review (1) provides a systematic overview of uncertainty types considered in this literature, real options identified as particular to international investments, and valuation approaches used and (2) highlights key methodological approaches used for testing real options models applied to international investments, and the controversies in this regard. This study draws on the above to shed light on important avenues for future research including (a) the need for more fine-grained and diverse measures of uncertainty in the international context, (b) an emphasis on clarifying the value effects of combinations of real options, and (c) the necessity of further consideration of the costs of options along with the value.

The transition of many sport organisations from being predominantly volunteer-administered and anchored in an amateur ethos to professionally managed entities has created unique challenges for the governance of sport. This paper provides a contribution to the governance literature through the presentation of a situational case where a four-stage model, drawn from an action research approach, has been used for developing a board's strategic capability and subsequent improvement in organisational performance. Action research is founded on the premise that change and research are not mutually exclusive and that dual foci on improving practice and developing theory are possible (Coghlan & Brannick, 2001). Utilising a national sport organisation (NSO) in New Zealand the study developed and tested a structured model for improving board functioning and, specifically, strategic contribution. While the case to which the model has been applied is an NSO, the model and the subsequent reflections have value for non-profit as well as commercial entities particularly with regard to a greater understanding of the mechanisms associated with balancing the performance and conformance roles of the board.

We explore whether differences in perceptions of diversity might emanate from the characteristics of perceivers themselves rather than from the characteristics of those observed. Grounding our arguments in self- and social-identity theory, we hypothesize that individuals respond differently to the same diversity stimuli because they differ in their ‘propensity to stereotype’ and ‘diversity experience.’ Since individuals tend to gravitate towards similar others, we also hypothesize that perceived diversity can predict an individual's ‘desire to group’ with others. Over 200 individuals – staff and students – from a university were exposed to diverse stimuli in an online experiment in a bid to test the hypotheses. Structural Equation Modeling of the data generally supported the hypothesized relationships.

Sequential ambidexterity is a specific dynamic capability which can play an important role in the technological catch-up of latecomer firms with limited knowledge and resources. Through a longitudinal case study, the trajectory of a latecomer firm's transformation from a generic technology manufacturer to a world-class innovator is analysed. This paper finds that sequential ambidexterity can be the basis of building dynamic capability, which enabled a latecomer to become a market leader through three major transitions. It shows how the building of dynamic capability through sequential ambidexterity is dependent on four mechanisms: senior manager cognition of the environment; organization learning orientation; organization structure design; and process reconfiguration. Building dynamic capability is also dependent on alignment between these mechanisms within the firm. Theoretically, the paper enhances understanding of the micro-foundations of developing dynamic capability through sequential ambidexterity. It also suggests that three contingent dimensions in determining the optimal approach to ambidexterity are: (i) industry leading versus catch-up firms, (ii) the scale of the firm, and (iii) the diversity of the downstream market. Furthermore, the paper provides practical insights for latecomer firms seeking to catch-up with industry leaders.

Scholarly work in the field of crisis management has flourished in recent years with contributions from numerous disciplines, including strategic management, organizational behavior, public relations, risk management, and disaster management. However, the substantial and prospective applications from behavioral economics – from Herbert Simon to modern theorists – have yet to be systematically integrated into the literature. This paper presents a framework that categorizes applications from behavioral economics along three stages of the crisis management life cycle – crisis preparation, crisis action, and postcrisis. It provides insights for scholars and practitioners into the crisis decision-making process and outlines why ‘less-than-rational’ decision-making approaches often appear in crisis environments.

We examine the effects of two distinct forgiveness motives, self-oriented and other-oriented, on relationship quality within supervisor–subordinate relationships. We provide empirical evidence that both forgiveness motives are positively associated with leader–member exchange and differentially associated with interpersonal citizenship behavior and suggest that previous forgiveness research may be incomplete. We demonstrate that high-quality leader–member relationships and interpersonal citizenship behavior can be enhanced by self-oriented forgiveness motive and other-oriented forgiveness motive. We further show that the association between forgiveness motive and leader–member exchange can be strengthened by one’s disposition, such that proactive personality strengthens the influence of self-oriented forgiveness motive on leader–member exchange and empathic concern strengthens the influence of other-oriented forgiveness motive on leader–member exchange. This manuscript aims to empirically examine two key pathways to forgiveness: one driven by self-orientation and the other driven by other-orientation.

This study offers a broader perspective on the effects of entrepreneurial orientation beyond its well-established implications for firm financial performance. Herein, it is suggested that through higher firm innovativeness, risk taking, and proactiveness entrepreneurial orientation contributes to an increase in the overall value accrued by the firm’s base of stakeholders. In doing so, we offer a broader perspective on the significance of an entrepreneurial orientation strategic posture for increasing stakeholder value beyond simply the financial value captured by firm shareholding stakeholders. Results from a comprehensive sample of 1,015 public US corporations indicate significant relationships between the three core dimensions of entrepreneurial orientation (innovativeness, risk taking, proactiveness) and stakeholder value, suggesting that how organizations behave entrepreneurially plays an important role in the firms generation of stakeholder value.