Search results

This article emphasises the role of constraints when humans establish organisations. Previous research explains organisations because of individuals’ motivations. Here, I answer the question regarding the role of constraints in organising/organisations. In this article, the studied individuals face various constraints and want to avoid being targeted. Consequently, they establish horizontal organisations. I discuss the role of time in organising.

This research builds on an ethnographical study of activists and volunteers at the border between France and Italy where migrants cross the border. The area is mountainous, and the police, the judiciary and the far-right impede the actions of the activists and volunteers.

I argue that activists and volunteers establish non-hierarchical organisations to circumvent potential obstacles. To achieve this, they dedicated a significant amount of time to facilitate the formation of these horizontal structures. This approach allows them to operate without a designated leader, thereby reducing the risk of being targeted by law enforcement, judicial system or far-right groups. As a result, they successfully welcomed migrants.

This article presents new results on how activists and volunteers organise to welcome migrants.

Heritability studies attempt to estimate the contribution of genes (vs. environments) to variation in phenotypes (or outcomes of interest) in a given population at a given time. This chapter scrutinizes heritability studies of adverse health phenotypes, emphasizing flaws that have become more glaring in light of recent advances in the life sciences and manifest most visibly in epigenetics.

Drawing on a diverse body of research and critical scholarship, this chapter examines the veracity of methodological and conceptual assumptions of heritability studies.

The chapter argues that heritability studies are futile for two reasons: (1) heritability studies suffer from serious methodological flaws with the overall effect of making estimates inaccurate and likely biased toward inflated heritability, and, more importantly (2) the conceptual (biological) model on which heritability studies depend – that of identifiably separate effects of genes versus the environment on phenotype variance – is unsound. As discussed, contemporary bioscientific work indicates that genes and environments are enmeshed in a complex (bidirectional, interactional), dynamic relationship that defies any attempt to demarcate separate contributions to phenotype variance. Thus, heritability studies attempt the biologically impossible. The emerging research on the importance of microbiota is also discussed, including how the commensal relationship between microbial and human cells further stymies heritability studies.

Understandably, few sociologists have the time or interest to be informed about the methodological and theoretical underpinnings of heritability studies or to keep pace with the incredible advances in genetics and epigenetics over the last several years. The present chapter aims to provide interested scholars with information about heritability and heritability estimates of adverse health outcomes in light of recent advances in the biosciences.

The flexibility of corporations to adapt their strategy to a fast-changing environment can be a major source for competitive advantage and survival. While research mainly focuses on outcomes of this ability, little is known of how to foster it in organizations. Thus, by building on the upper echelons theory, the authors assume that the strategic flexibility of the company depends on the willingness and permission to change of the chief executive officer (CEO). To support the hypotheses, the authors apply the dimensions of commitment to change and work autonomy to the CEO and test for moderation under conditions of technological turbulence. The authors’ results based on medium-sized organizations in Germany show significant effects of both dimensions on strategic flexibility. In particular, under conditions of high technological turbulence, commitment based on loyalty and not on pressure together with autonomy on control and evaluation criteria is best suited to increase strategic flexibility. These insights extend the research literature and provide guidelines for CEOs and their supervisors alike.

The growth of wine sales in the Pacific Rim is receiving a large amount of attention. This study was designed to look more deeply into the actual purchase behaviour of middle class wine buyers in a selection of Singaporean supermarkets. Purchase behaviour was observed for 60 hours in a total of eight representative supermarkets. The findings show a smaller number of sales than would be expected, especially based on the size of the category displays. The types of wines, countries of origin, prices, browsing, and purchases are noted. The overall conclusion is of a wine market in its infancy with a need for education and further development before wine becomes a regular part of weekly shopping and consumption.

Quality management is dominated by rational paradigms for the measurement and management of quality, but these paradigms start to “break down”, when faced with the inherent complexity of managing quality in intensely competitive changing environments. In this article, the various theoretical strategy paradigms employed to manage quality are reviewed and the advantages and limitations of these paradigms are highlighted. A major implication of this review is that when faced with complexity, an ideological stance to any single strategy paradigm for the management of quality is ineffective. A case study is used to demonstrate the need for an integrative multi‐paradigm approach to the management of quality as complexity increases.

Library and Information Science (LIS) has for a long time tried to gain legitimacy. In an ever changing environment due to technological and economic developments, the motivations behind choice of LIS are still of great interest. The purpose of this paper is to provide a systematic review of studies investigating the motivations that determine the choice of LIS.

Different search terms were run on different but relevant databases. A number of inclusion and exclusion criteria were applied and in total 45 papers were judged as relevant to choice of LIS discipline. A thorough analysis of these papers’ content revealed three main themes: choice of LIS, choice of LIS specialty and career change to LIS.

A variety of different motivations for choosing LIS were identified. The same motivations were reported in all groups (high school students, students, professionals). Specifically, love of books and reading, nature of library work, desire to help people were among the most reported motivations. LIS was also chosen as a second career by different professionals mainly due to changes in their first career work environment, the nature of library work, the desire to use knowledge and the transferable skills in their new career.

This study considered only peer-reviewed research published between 2000 and 2014 in English. Specifically, it focussed on the motivations that specific groups chose to study LIS both as first and second career.

Library schools could raise awareness among high school students regarding the value, role and importance of LIS.

This paper examines the factors influencing the choice of LIS in a changing information environment, and sheds light on the individuals’ decision-making process attracted to LIS.

The impact of remittances on household consumption stability and economic growth is not quite clear. This paper attempts to reopen the debate on the relationship among these three variables. The current remittance literature suggests that a decrease in household consumption volatility, induced by remittances, automatically leads to economic growth. This paper challenges these arguments by stating that, under certain circumstances, there is no automatic relationship among remittances, household consumption stability and growth.

The authors approach the question from the perspective of emerging Central, Eastern and Southeastern European (CESEE) countries. The authors use the two-step system generalized method of moments (GMM) estimator with the Windmeijer (2005) finite-sample correction. To test the existence of the possible non-linear effects of remittances on household consumption stability and economic growth, the authors use threshold regressions.

The authors find that remittances significantly reduce household consumption volatility. They exhibit a consumption-smoothing effect on recipient households. This stabilizing effect happens not through the preventive role of remittances, but rather through their compensatory role. Remittances produce a weaker stabilizing effect on household consumption when the remittance to GDP ratio of the recipient country is above the estimated threshold level of 4.5%. The authors also find that there is a negatively significant and linear impact of remittances on growth. There is no evidence to suggest that remittances can foster productive investment and therefore promote economic growth in CESEE countries, which means that: (1) the remittances cannot be treated as a source of funds to invest in human and physical capital and (2) the remittances are compensatory rather than profit-oriented.

As far as the authors are aware, this is the first study that investigates the impact of remittances on both household consumption stability and economic growth simultaneously.

Different forms of strategic flexibility allow for reactive adaptation to different changing environments and the proactive driving of change. It is therefore becoming increasingly important for decision makers to not only possess marketing capabilities, but also the capabilities for strategic flexibility in its various forms. However, our knowledge of the relationships between decision makers' different ways of thinking and their capabilities for strategic flexibility is limited. This limitation is constraining research and understanding. In this article we develop a theoretical cognitive content framework that postulates relationships between different ways of thinking about strategy and different information‐processing demands. We then outline how the contrasting beliefs of decision makers may influence their capabilities to generate different hybrid forms of strategic flexibility at the cognitive level. Theoretically, the framework is embedded in resource‐based theory, personal construct theory and schema theory. The implications for research and theory are discussed.

Peirson Process Equipment of “The Knolls,” Leighton Buzzard, introduced in 1981 a new range of pumpsets based on the “Oberdorfer” series of bronze positive displacement gear pumps.

Business process management (BPM) supports the creation and capture of firm value. In a dynamic context, the current approach to BPM appears to be limited and static in the face of the challenges posed by the firm's open innovation (OI) ecosystem. The main purpose of this paper is to shed light on the value co-creation through the integration of OI principles and mechanisms of value system.

To this aim, the paper suggested a conceptual integration of strategy and operations literature on OI and the firm's value creation system. This analysis adopted BPM lenses with specific attention to the alignment between value creation and value capture. Applying BPM lenses to the process of creating shared value sought the attainment of a comprehensive system of decisions articulated between strategy and operations.

The paper pinpoints key links between strategy models and operational planning, thus proposing a new framework that integrates the characteristics of value system and OI. The paper elaborates a new theoretical framework rooted in the extant literature conducted in BPM, business strategy and business model innovation (BMI) fields.

This paper aims to fill the gap in the literature in which strategy models are separately treated from the operational ones. This conceptual effort contributes to the extant literature by drawing upon a comprehensive frameworkand mapping the complex set of interactions between the firm's value chain and its innovation ecosystem.