During the 1990s, many Australian universities adopted innovative new online learning technologies without critical examination of their merit to those institutions, leading in some cases to wasted resources, unfulfilled expectations, program and organisational failure. Given that limited theoretical and empirical explanations have addressed this important research problem, this paper discusses and applies a management fashion framework to this research problem and argues that online learning technologies could be conceptualised as a management fashion, following the empirical work of Abrahamson and Fairchild (1999). The major contributions of this paper are to identify an important yet under-researched area in higher education research, demonstrate the utility of a management fashion framework in this context, and propose a number of recommendations for policy makers, university managers and academics confronted with educational innovations.

This panel study, conducted in a large Venezuelan organization, took advantage of a serendipitous opportunity to examine the organizational commitment profiles of employees before and after a series of dramatic, and unexpected, political events directed specifically at the organization. Two waves of organizational commitment data were collected, 6 months apart, from a sample of 152 employees. No evidence was found that employees’ continuance commitment to the organization was altered by the events described here. Interestingly, however, both affective and normative commitment increased significantly during the period of the study. Further, employee’s commitment profiles at Wave 2 were more differentiated than they were at Wave 1.

We examine the manner in which South African-owned multinationals devolve power to their international subsidiaries in Africa, and the resulting effects of the interaction between strategy and structure. The research suggests that a dynamic process of power distribution may develop, in terms of the following: (1) the performance of the subsidiary, its expertise and experience to adapt to local market demands; and (2) the multinational’s need to manage the risks propagated by the African operating environment in which it operates. There is a dual facet to power devolvement, one in which South African multinationals opt for risk mitigation through long-standing control, often at the expense of operational adaptation. In contrast with the literature, which sees multinational corporations as differentiated networks, in the South African case we find a more traditional approach with clear headquarters and ‘miniature replica’ subsidiaries. This suggests that South African multinational corporations are still emerging and that it will take time to develop differentiated networks.

This paper explores the relationships among positive and negative work reflection during leisure time, psychological capital, and radical and incremental creativity. We collected data from 500 dyads of employees and their direct supervisors, and employed the structural equation model to test our research hypotheses. The results reveal that positive work reflection during leisure time is positively related to radical and incremental creativity, while negative work reflection during leisure time is negatively related to the two types of creativity. Our findings also suggest that psychological capital mediates the effects of positive and negative work reflection during leisure time on radical and incremental creativity.

Using the data on the religious belief of entrepreneurs in Chinese family firms, this study shows that religious entrepreneurs significantly positively affect corporate longevity, echoing the view that religious entrepreneurs can obtain managerial skills and share managerial knowledge about corporate operation through the conduit of religious attendance, and thus firms with religious entrepreneurs are more long-lived. Moreover, the development of factor markets across different provinces in China reinforces this positive relation between religious entrepreneurs and corporate longevity. Furthermore, qualitatively similar results can be found from various robustness tests, and our conclusions still stand after controlling for the potential selection bias in the research sample. Lastly, after differentiating different religious beliefs, the positive relation between religious entrepreneurs and corporate longevity is only valid for Western religious beliefs (but not for Eastern religious beliefs), and the reinforced role of the development of factor markets only stands for Eastern religious beliefs.

This study elucidates the falsity of business research in relying on either respondents or informants alone for data collection, and argues that with the biased data, business research cannot provide unbiased solutions. We compare 400 reports (200 respondents and 200 informants) on the workplace deviance and assess the goodness of both the techniques. Analysis of variance and posthoc (descriptive discriminant analysis) indicate significant disparities between the two approaches across all items. In the informant’s role, people tend to overreport, whereas in the respondent’s part they underreport an undesirable behavior. Further, we find that conventional techniques for assessing the construct’s validity and common-method bias neither assures realistic measurement nor eliminate the response bias. Drawing on the theory of psychological projection, we propose a hybrid approach that curtails some of the main biases in data and measurement. Qualitative confirmation through informal interviews with managers in the investigated firms validates the proposed method.

This paper proposes an Artful Learning Framework as an organisational development initiative. The framework is designed to assist people in organisations seeking higher levels of engagement in their strategic and operational endeavours, such as navigating change. The Artful Learning Framework offers three strategies as potential artful learning events designed to help people in organisations engage with each other creatively to achieve their organisational and professional goals. The Artful Learning Wave Trajectory model (Kerr 2006) forms a conceptual antecedent for the Artful Learning Framework. The Framework's strategies align with the relevant literature on organisational learning and, in particular, a proposition of Kerr (2006) who identifies a suite of skills, capacities and capabilities that are important in organisations. The notion of the wave, with the effect of ‘pausing and gathering’ to consider amidst the inevitable ambiguity and turbulence offor-ward movement, is invoked as a metaphor for the elements of the Framework which support its strategies. The paper will be of interest to individuals and groups that are committed to profound learning and capability building for the benefit of themselves, their teams and the organisations in which they work.

The paper describes an investigation into the information search activities of senior Japanese executives involved in strategic decision-making in Japanese trading companies. The research task was conducted over a twelve-month period between 2000-2001, at five well-known Japanese kaisha (see Appendix 1 for a list of Japanese expressions used in this paper) headquartered in Tokyo. This paper identifies sources of information that are dev-eloped and used by executive decision-makers in evaluating strategic alternatives. As well modes of access to the identified sources are highlighted and analysed.

Results from the study indicate the prominence of distinctive Japanese managerial practices such as nemawashi and settai, in developing information sources. As well it was found that these practices strongly influence how information sources are accessed. Executive decision-makers from the Presidential level to Divisional Manager level who participated in this study were emphatic in their belief that strategic decision-making in most situations is reliant upon the network of information sources cultivated by decision-makers as well as their skill in accessing the various sources.

Business in New Zealand is increasingly global in nature. Additionally, the domestic workforce reflects a unique blend of cultural groups. These factors highlight the need for managers to understand the cross-cultural nature of their task. In this article we review the research on cross-cultural management that has been conducted in New Zealand. Findings in seven topic areas of management (job satisfaction, motivation and performance, absenteeism and turnover, leadership, communication, group behaviour and employee adaptation) are discussed. We then identify areas that might benefit most from research attention.

This research was supported in part by the Carnegie Bosch Institute for Applied Studies in International Management. The authors gratefully acknowledge the helpful comments of Kerr Inkson and John Deeks on earlier versions of this manuscript

The increasingly multicultural nature of the business environment has become widely recognised as a management issue (Adler and Ghadar 1990). New Zealand is neither a large target market (population under 3.5 million) nor is it the headquarters of a large number of multinational corporations. However, because of its geography, it is dependent on international business for its quality of life. Additionally, its unique domestic cultural environment provides a dramatic back drop for cross-cultural management. These two dimensions make cross-cultural management a particularly salient issue in New Zealand.

This paper reviews women in management research, as it moves from being a specialisation, to a source on influence on the mainstream. Specifically, there has been a shift from women to gender as a conceptual framework, which has led to explorations of identity issues in the workplace. There is a growing acceptance of organisations as manifestations of masculinity that is being differentiated into masculinities. The intersection of identities such as genders, race and ethnicity is beginning to be explored. The extensive work on sexual harassment is broadening to include research into the subtle but explicit presence of sexuality in organisations. Women have moved in management and are poised at the brink of senior management. At this point many women leave and studies are beginning to explore the functioning of women run organisations. Finally the potential ability of women in management research to expand the concept of management is noted.

The purpose of this study is to investigate the interactive effects of individual work autonomy and interdependence on collaborative planning, building on the distinction of task and outcome interdependence. Using a questionnaire study, we assess collaborative planning and its antecedents in supply chain relationships, incorporating the forestry and timber industry. While no interactive effects hold for task interdependence, outcome interdependence only facilitates collaborative planning for individuals with low work autonomy. Individuals with high autonomy always invest in collaborative planning. This study provides a picture of supply chain reality more complete than that sketched in studies that have assessed interdependence as a one-dimensional construct and alludes to the importance, often overlooked, of work autonomy in supply chain relationships.

Controversies surrounding the behaviour of ministers and high profile leaders seem to be commonplace in public life. That there has been a resurgence of interest in the study of ethics is not surprising. The spotlight on ethics in the public domain has been due in part to the crisis in confidence about government and a lack of public trust in organisations. Furthermore, a complex organisational environment where managers are being required to juggle a ‘multitude of competing obligations and interests’ (Cooper 1998, p. 244) has provided fertile ground for the emergence of ethical dilemmas. In this paper we put forward a tentative model that reveals important inputs that bear upon an individual, such as a public sector manager, who is confronted with an ethical dilemma. In the final part of the paper we illustrate the model's efficacy with an ethical dilemma described by a retired senior public servant to determine whether the model works in practice.

Drawing on social exchange theory, we explore the reciprocal relationship between the perception of being offered family-oriented benefits (childcare information services and childcare vouchers) and parent–employees' engagement in organizational citizenship behaviors (OCBs). We examine the moderating role of both general and family-oriented social support from coworkers, an often cited, but less frequently studied aspect of parent–employees' work experiences. Based on survey data from parent–employees and their supervisors in the United States, we find that the strength of the relationship between the benefits and OCBs varies when coworker support is high versus low and that the direction of the relationship varies according to the type of coworker support. Specifically, when childcare vouchers are offered, OCBs are related to general support, whereas when childcare information is offered, OCBs are related to family-oriented support.

We analyze the effects of four different types of firm legitimacy – managerial, technological, local community legitimacy and business press endorsement – on the choice of alliance governance structure in partnerships with newly public biotechnology firms. We expand current research to differentiate between non-equity, minority equity and joint venture alliance structures. We find that initial public offering of stock (IPO) firms with higher levels of managerial legitimacy and local community legitimacy are more likely to enter into joint ventures than minority equity alliances and non-equity alliances. IPO firms with higher technological legitimacy and business press endorsement are more likely to use a less hierarchical governance structure.

The literature on new organizational forms commonly stresses the key role of ‘collaborative individuals’ in delivering the challenging balance of creativity and productivity, vision and focus, openness and decisiveness critical to achieving coherence and responsiveness in the turbulent environment of the 21st Century. This paper reports a recent study that considers these requirements as expressed by competing psychological types/brain styles and assesses the impact of stressors within the task environment on the breadth of stylistic repertoire of high-potential managerial aspirants. It finds that stress significantly shrinks stylistic repertoire and, more critically, moves the focus away from creative, collaborative and ambiguity-tolerant styles towards performance-driven, control-oriented, and grounded styles. The implications of this finding for building the strategically coherent but flexible and developmental cultures advocated in the ‘new organization’ literature are discussed.

The nature of consumer ethnocentrism in Australia is examined through the application of the CETSCALE to a total of 377 respondents from Victoria. Two groups of respondents — members of the Australian Owned Companies Association (AOCA) and a comparable sample from the general population were used to assess ‘known group validity’ of the scale. The results suggest that the CETSCALE is a reliable measure of consumer ethnocentrism in Australia and offers evidence of ‘known group validity.’ Two underlying dimensions of ethnocentrism, termed emotional and reasoned ethnocentrism, were detected and found to be invariant across the two groups. Awareness and knowledge of three Australian made logos was found to be lower than expected for both groups.

The planning-performance literature suggests that there is a weak positive correlation between strategic planning and financial performance. This study has been undertaken to determine whether this weak positive correlation is true for Australian firms.

Strategic planning for the purposes of this study is arranged in three levels of planning complexity. A sample of 77 listed firms was surveyed to determine their level of planning complexity, and this was correlated with the firm's financial performance over a three year period.

A range of statistical tests did not reveal any significant correlation between strategic planning at any of the three levels and the financial performance of the firm. This negative finding is generally in line with other recent studies conducted in Australia, the United States and the United Kingdom.

However, positive correlations were found with several subjective performance measures, suggesting that respondents generally believe that strategic planning is helping their company.

In an era of hypercompetition, research and development (R&D) investments are vital for organizations to stay competitive. This microlevel study draws on dynamic managerial capability (DMC) theory to explore the mechanisms contributing to competitive advantages. It posits that DMCs enhance firm performance by increasing R&D spending, and explores the moderating role of slack resources due to their effect on resource availability. Employing hierarchical regression analysis and bootstrapping methods on a longitudinal sample comprising 31 German DAX firms, the findings robustly demonstrate that DMCs facilitate firm performance by fostering R&D expenditures and confirm the moderating effect of specific slack resources. However, only internal but not external slack resources amplify the relationship between DMCs and R&D intensity. Overall, this study emphasizes the critical role of managers’ microlevel capabilities in determining firm performance and sheds light on how different slack resources influence the relationships between DMCs, R&D intensity, and firm performance.

We explore how relational identification (RI) complements the influence of relational exchange within work role-relationships. In two temporally-lagged studies, we examine the contribution of RI, after accounting for relational exchange quality (REQ), in predicting organizationally-relevant behaviors and attitudes – namely, (1) interpersonal citizenship behaviors (ICBs; person-focused and task-focused), (2) job satisfaction, and (3) affective organizational commitment. Across samples of ‘non-professional’ (N = 152) and ‘professional’ (N = 197) employees, we found that RI (after accounting for REQ) significantly predicted outcomes. Indeed, we found RI to be the only predictor (after accounting for REQ) with affective commitment (‘non-professional’ sample only), person-focused ICBs (both samples), and task-focused ICBs (both samples). We discuss potential approaches for better specifying both identification and exchange as well as their unique and interactive effects within work role-relationships as well as managerial implications, limitations, and future research directions.