As part of comprehensive research on the ethical climate in the Serbian tourism industry, this study examines the effects of selected predictors (job department, individual values and employees’ perspective) on the perception of ethical climate types as well as the relationship between the type of ethical climate, and job satisfaction. Additionally, this study tests these goals for both managers and their subordinates. Research was conducted in 2013, on a sample of 258 employees in different small and medium tourism organizations in Serbia. The findings revealed new information on both ethical climate and job satisfaction-related factors in small and medium tourism enterprises in a non-Western, transitional economy, where ethical behavior is influenced by constant social and economic changes. Several theoretical and managerial implications and future research opportunities were derived from the findings.

This paper examines how the characteristics of CEOs' social networks, such as the size of the network and the strength of the ties, influence strategic flexibility from a strategic change perspective. External social networks can affect strategic flexibility positively. Previous experience with strategic change will influence external social networks differently, in ways that have repercussions for strategic flexibility. The data were gathered from surveys completed by the CEOs of 203 Spanish firms. The methodology used is regression analysis. We observe that external social networks affect strategic flexibility positively, primarily through the greater size of the networks. We also find that the effects vary if previously the organization is involved in a process of strategic change.

This paper provides a better understanding of the motivational incentives driving franchising choice from the female franchisee's perspective. A qualitative methodology was adopted in this research to gain a clearer picture of the salient issues influencing female entrepreneurs' evaluations of alternative business models when making the self-employment decision. A sample of 14 female franchisees and 12 female independent business owners was interviewed to gather data on the reasons supporting a woman's initial decision to enter self-employment. Major contrasts have been identified between female franchisees and independent business owners suggesting that franchisors need to re-design their selection strategies and communication methods to promote female participation, sustain system wide growth and add creative diversity in franchise systems that have limited growth potential due to the lack suitable franchisees.

Call centres have been described as ‘electronic sweatshops’ and ‘slave galleons of the twenty first century’ and, contrarily as progressive, team based and career fulfilling work environments. Drawing on data from a survey of call centre managers in Australia, it is shown that there are elements of call centre management with practices from both extremes of the descriptive continuum and in some instances these elements coexist in the one centre. Whilst call centres are managed with a high level of control and the work of call centre agents is subject to intense scrutiny and monitoring, the simplistic notion that they are electronic sweatshops, or that the metaphor of the Panopticon applies, is rejected.

Mainstream academic literature and media use the word ‘Islam’ or ‘Muslim’ in a monolithic manner that implies internal homogeneity. However, the Islamic faith is subject to multiple interpretations, with multiple types of Muslims who practice Islam based on their ideological interpretations, sect, ethnicity and gender. Drawing on a review of literatures on Islam and Muslims from diverse fields such as religion, gender, diversity and extremism, we present a taxonomy of different types of Muslims, and highlight implications for management, organizations and governance. We trace ideological sources of divergence among variants of Islam and analyze how certain doctrinal and jurisprudential associations may reflect intolerance and extremism.

This paper addresses an important knowledge gap regarding the internationalization of family businesses. To understand the specific factors that influence the internationalization of these firms, this paper investigates the role and articulation of entrepreneurial orientation (EO) and family social capital (FSC) on internationalization performance. Our findings reveal that the more entrepreneurial the family business, the higher the likelihood of identifying and exploiting business opportunities in foreign markets. The moderating effect that FSC can have on the dynamics between EO and internationalization indicates that this relational family specific asset facilitates organizational stability and performance enhancement.

Information asymmetry about the employee's state of health means that workers may decide to work (or not) when they are sick, which turns presenteeism into a principal-agent relationship. From this new perspective, presenteeism can be explained by some distinct and original factors such as implicit incentives related to motivation and a sense of autonomy (empowerment, job usefulness, and recognition) and explicit incentives given by wages and other non-economic benefits (training and career prospects). In a sample of European workers using multilevel (by country) Tobit models, we find that short-term incentives and workers' empowerment increase presenteeism, while long-term incentives reduce it. As expected, supervision is ineffective in controlling presenteeism, while relationships based on trust have a positive impact. Finally, we propose several practices related to incentives, training, monitoring, occupational health and safety and job design specifically intended to manage presenteeism and its consequences in six areas of the human resources function.

This study examines the efficacy of the smiling curve, and clarifies the relationship between downsizing strategies (advertising, marketing, and research and development, respectively) and firm performance specifically in an economic downturn. This study tests hypotheses using 1996–2010 data from the Taiwan Economic Journal on 436 listed Taiwanese companies. The results indicate that the benefits for firms to follow the smiling curve may not occur in the short term and that downsizing strategies may not always be the appropriate strategy to improve firm performance. During an economic downturn, downsizing strategies do not appear to enhance firm performance, that is, the smiling curve should not frown during an economic downturn to enhance firm performance.

This study examined the impact of situational and individual characteristics on sales representatives' propensity to lie or to tell the truth. The situational elements were the honesty of the organisation climate and its formal rules about lying to customers. The individual elements were the participants' degree of Machiavellianism and tolerance for ambiguity. The results indicated that more Machiavellian people were more likely to lie and that they were less guided by the rules than people who were low in this trait. In addition, rules and climate work together for people with a high tolerance for ambiguity in a complex manner.

The literature on capability development has focussed on either the content or process of capability development. Such a partial explanation of the capability development phenomenon has created some flaws in the literature. This paper argues that integrating the content and process of capability development is the way ahead in theorising in this field. Analysis of the methodological development in parallel to theory development reveals the critical role of microprocesses in such integration. To develop an integrative view of capability development we propose a conceptualisation of capability development processes through internal and external strategic fit and emphasise the role of knowledge and innovation processes. We also argue that a critical realism approach is of high relevance to researching such an integrative view.

Drawing on the configuration argument of strategic fit – i.e., an effective alignment of a firm's strategy with its environment, internal structures, and processes – and the resource-based view, this paper clarifies the impact of alliance strategy, alliance management resources, and alliance management capabilities on innovation performance in collaborative ventures. This study of 441 collaborative ventures in the electronics industry offers empirical support for the configuration argument. First, greater alliance strategy formalization influences innovation performance directly and indirectly. Alliance management capabilities – that reflect organizational routines to implement an alliance strategy – partially mediate this effect. Second, alliance management capabilities leverage alliance management resources in that the effect of the former on innovation performance is moderated by the latter. Furthermore, greater innovation strategy formalization affects innovation performance and moderates the direct effect of alliance strategy formalization on innovation performance; an effect that increases with technological uncertainty.

Based on positive organizational scholarship in healthcare, this study examined the relationships between four dimensions of employee perception of training: workplace stress, organizational outcomes, job performance, and turnover intentions. We hypothesized that employee training perception would have a negative relationship with workplace stress and that stress would mediate the relationship between employee training perception, job performance, and turnover intentions. We obtained data on 317 elderly-care workers in Northern Cyprus and analyzed it using structural equation modeling. Employee training perception was negatively related to workplace stress, and stress was negatively related to job performance and positively related to turnover intention. In line with Job Demand-Resource theory (JD-R), workplace stress partially mediated the relationship between employee training perception and organizational outcomes. The study contributes to the literature by confirming that elderly-care organizations that provide training opportunities for employees can reduce workplace stress, build organizational strengths, and facilitate positive outcomes.

Humor has been positively perceived in general. However, research has shown that a leader should adopt humor with care and only after considering the relevant context, such as cultural differences. This study was undertaken to gain insight into how leader humor is perceived in the predominantly Confucian culture of Taiwan, through a series of in-depth interviews with individuals from throughout the hierarchies of various organizations. Overall, our participants expressed conflicting attitudes toward leader humor in the workplace, depending on the place and time of their leader humor experience. Specifically, leader humor was deemed more effective in informal domains and when a good leader–follower relationship exists. The findings echo the implicit theory of leadership and highlight the need to consider the context when exercising leader humor in Confucian cultures. Implications and future study directions are discussed.

Innovation researchers have typically focused on either the adoption or the implementation phase of organizational innovation. In the present study, we propose that four agents of innovation (i.e., top management, external environment, innovation, and employees) play distinct roles in the adoption and implementation stages, and that, together, they predict innovation outcomes. We test the phase-dependent process of organizational innovation using data drawn from intensive interviews with 40 executives of a consumer product company. A path analysis of 94 innovations introduced to the organization over the past 20 years indicates that there is a significant level of stability in innovation-driving dynamics. Particularly, top management and employees tend to remain heavily involved in the implementation of an innovation if they played an important role in adopting it. The four agents of innovation play different roles in accruing benefits from the innovation. The results also suggest that employees tend to produce positive innovation outcomes when they have been involved in the innovation from the very beginning and are thus responsible for its adoption. The present study makes a distinct contribution to the literature by exploring the multi-stage, unfolding processes of organizational innovation.

We employ the concept of stupidity to address why more has not been done to address climate change and sustainable development. While the ‘new’ science of stupid has long existed in organizational studies, academicians have been too polite to call it that and organizational researchers historically labeled it the ‘threat-rigidity effect.’ With Alvesson and Spicer’s ‘stupidity-based theory of organizations’ management researchers overcame this reluctance. In this work we explore what we will call the ‘stress-stupidity system.’ Building on the threat-rigidity effect, we outline the elements of the stress-stupidity system and look at how we may be able to ‘fix stupid’ to address issues of sustainability.

Previous research suggests that innovation is heavily informed by strategic management theories and that there is little engagement with practice-based approaches. A case study of a public sector organization identified as doing something innovative is presented. Four main themes emerged. Two themes, the ‘importance of a mandate’ and the ‘development of trust’, had their foundations in traditional management practices. The others, ‘capacity to challenge the norms’ and ‘boundary spanning’, emerged from practice. It is suggested that a managerial approach that developed a supportive setting for innovation enabled the development of practices whereby innovation was effectively recognized, nurtured and sustained.

The recent Karpin Committee report once again focused attention on managerial skills and competencies, as it prognosticated on the skills and knowledge required by current and future Australian managers, and the kinds of educational experiences necessary to foster them. In doing so, the report made critical assumptions about the kinds of functions and behaviours that can be properly called ‘managerial’. Indeed, leadership is elevated as the conspicuous task of managers (leaders?). But is this what managers should be doing?

Closer examination of the Karpin model of ‘management’, in the broader context of the literature on management and managerial behaviour, shows that the Karpin view is narrow and partial — it ignores or devalues key managerial functions while promoting others. This is due, in part, to the fact that the committee's approach is devoid of any theoretical framework for designating particular behaviours as ‘managerial’. If the Karpin recommendations are to steer management education into the third millennium, the result will be, in turn, a narrow and partial educational experience.

This paper argues for an approach to management education driven, not by a populist vision of managers simply as entrepreneurial leaders, but by an appreciation of the necessarily broader range of managerial functions and the way in which they are integrated. It proposes such an approach, derived from management theory and elaborated in the context of Australia and the Asia-Pacific region in the 1990s and beyond.

With rising unpredictability of the business environment, the strategy–structure–performance construct is being questioned afresh. But cutting edge research evidence is still difficult to come by. One of the possible reasons is that few researchers are adopting new and innovative methodologies. This paper carries out a paradigmatic and methodological review of research on the topic for the last 10 years after classifying published research into three broad categories of enquiry. The study finds that contrary to expectations, the logical positivistic/empiricist paradigm of enquiry into the one way linear causality in the strategy–structure–performance relationship was still the favorite among researchers and may explain the lack of breakthrough contribution of recent research. This paper makes a case for more research on the challenging two-way causality using innovative designs and archival data, and suggests some future directions for research.

Corruption is one of the most destructive and pervasive wicked problems, present in commercial enterprises, governmental agencies and Non-Government Organisations (NGOs). The reduction of corruption is prominent amongst the United Nation's Sustainable Development Goals, but research on corruption in the context of NGOs in developing countries is scarce, particularly relating to the identification and management of corruption in this context. This paper adds new insights to this under-researched field by providing a rich description of a single, longitudinal ethnographic case study of one NGO in Bangladesh, which has successfully identified and managed (out) complex, entrenched corruption through a simple sustainable intervention: expanding and improving information channels for stakeholders.