We propose a research agenda that can assist in developing a dynamic and comprehensive theory of boards of directors. It is based upon the concept of temporality, with time being organised around the life-cycle metaphor, and integrates research on agency theory, decision-making theory and resource dependence theory. We identify three key roles of boards of directors:

1. 1.monitoring and controlling top management;

2. 2.involvement in strategic decision-making; and

3. 3.providing access to resources and networks.

Our analysis suggests that boards perform all three roles, but that these roles change over time. We propose clear researchable questions for each stage of the organisational life cycle as well as the transition between the stages.

This study focuses on university—industry—government (UIG) linkages and their influence on innovation in Taiwan. The innovation effects are estimated using a quartet of measures — technology transfers, technology licensing, firms incubated and patents granted — while the UIG influence is estimated via its differential impact according to the size of the firms involved, the type of innovation (process or product-oriented), the stage of the technology cycle, and the role of government. Using a Structural Equation Model (SEM) method to examine these interactions, the study reveals that UIG linkage effects vary with the size of company, in that the major incentive for UIG linkages for large companies is an attempt to acquire a skilled and qualified workforce, while SMEs (small and medium enterprises) tend to use them to gain marketing advantage, particularly for those SMEs or start-ups in emerging industries. The study concludes that Taiwan's innovation capacity is heavily reliant on building the capability of SMEs and continues to depend greatly on government leadership through technology-capability-enhancing institutions such as ITRI.

Trade associations are a form of business network distinguished by third party coordination and representation of sector-affiliated organisations. In New Zealand, a recent review found that trade associations have made increasing contributions to industry and business development. The possibility that New Zealand's associations benefit from a small country advantage in supporting collective activity is explored. This follows suggestions in the New Zealand survey and Nordic claims that small economies benefit from shared trust that facilitates business cooperation. A matched sample of 13 Australian and New Zealand trade associations reveals that New Zealand's associations tend to have higher levels of membership and are less troubled by ‘free riders’ than their Australian counterparts. There is weak evidence that support for trade associations reduces with increases in enterprise diversity (size and activity specialization) within an industry and that the organisation of industry value chains influences trade association activity. Any advantage in maintaining participation is reduced by the greater resource strength of Australian associations. Further investigations of Trans Tasman differences in business associability are justified.

Commercialisation activities combining the discoveries of one occupational group, such as scientists, with the commercial skills of managers involve interactions across occupational and organisational cultures. This article explores the challenges posed by working across occupational and organisational boundaries, and describes management techniques developed informally in four Australian organisations to address barriers to knowledge transfer. It identifies the existence of Knowledge-stewarding Communities of Practice (CoP) that span organisational boundaries and impact commercialisation outcomes. It also presents recommendations for management practice based upon diversity management and innovation theories. The context of the study is Australian hybrid industry-research organisations composed of academic, government and industry personnel. Semi-structured interviews with a total of twenty scientists, engineers and managers focused on their experiences of knowledge sharing across organisational and occupational cultures, and methods used to manage these boundaries. The existence and efficacy of boundary-crossing individuals and boundary object strategies are explored. A generic process management model of innovation is extended to acknowledge and accommodate occupational and organisational cultural proclivities towards exploration or exploitation, and to stimulate future research.

In this paper, we report the frequency that family business research has been published by year and by discipline in top-tier journals as listed in the Journal Quality List (JQL) (Harzing 2008) to argue that family business research has reached a tipping point threshold. We suggest that the acceptance of family business research in top-tier journals is the tipping point that will enamor the field to a wider researcher audience and thereby further contribute to paradigmatic development.

Organisations are increasingly investing in complex technological innovations such as enterprise information systems with the aim of improving the operations of the business, and in this way gaining competitive advantage. However, the implementation of technological innovations tends to have an excessive focus on either technology innovation effectiveness (also known as system effectiveness), or the resulting operational effectiveness; focusing on either one of them is detrimental to the long-term enterprise benefits through failure to achieve the real value of technological innovations. The lack of research on the dimensions and performance objectives that organisations must be focusing on is the main reason for this misalignment. This research uses a combination of qualitative and quantitative, three-stage methodological approach. Initial findings suggest that factors such as quality of information from technology innovation effectiveness, and quality and speed from operational effectiveness are important and significantly well correlated factors that promote the alignment between technology innovation effectiveness and operational effectiveness.

There is an increasing focus in today's organization on measuring results and calculating return on investment. Efforts of administrators today to control organizational endeavors are essential and generally aligned with current best practices. Control mechanisms, however, ultimately prove to be only part of the puzzle. Strategic planning, encompassing such activities as planning, performance measurement, program budgeting, and the like, has proven to be very useful but limited. It is a technical fix that gets at only part of the question of organizational effectiveness and only deals with some organizational dilemmas. In the face of such realities, the notion of strategic thinking emerges to fill the gaps and overcome the limitations that experience with strategic planning has proven to exhibit. This paper presents an integration of leadership ideas, strategic thinking and traditional planning activities in an effort to make important connections and important distinctions.

This study examined the individual and combined effects of the organisational-level variables of climate and task design, and the group-level variables of group citizenship behaviour (GCB), market orientation, group self-efficacy (GSE), and group climate for innovation (GCI) on work group service innovativeness. Specifically, this study theorised that work group service innovativeness is a product of both organisational (organisational climate and task design) and work group (GCB, market orientation, and GSE) contexts. Drawing upon the theories and literature, six hypotheses were derived. Data were collected through a 64-item questionnaire using a 7-point Likert scale from four hotels in Melbourne, Australia. Results indicated that organisational climate, task design, GCB, group self-efficacy, and group climate for innovation were significant predictors of work group service innovativeness, while market orientation was not. Limitations, future directions, managerial and research implications are explored.

The status of women in employment in general and in management in particular has interested researchers in Australia since the mid-1970s, although interest in women's industrial and occupational employment segregation and pay inequality has an even longer history. However, this overview concentrates on developments in the ‘women in management’ field since the 1970s, primarily because of the concerted and concentrated efforts to raise the employment status of women since that time.

The overview also concentrates on the Australian experience, in an attempt to determine if ‘the more things change the more they remain the same’ or if actual change and progress has been made. My credentials for undertaking this retrospective are that I have been researching in the women in management area since the early 1980s and have tracked the main changes, influences and dimensions since that time. Readers who are expecting a critique of the impact of feminism and other ideologies in the area will be disappointed. My research perspective is, and always has been, managerial and organizational. I will thus not be mentioning a whole raft of substantive thinkers and researchers from other perspectives who have contributed to this area over the years. To assist the process of review, I have divided developments into a number of eras to illustrate the progression of both policy and research over the various periods.

Family business research has grown over the last decade and there are increasing requests for deeper insights into the nature and workings of these organizations. Currently, family business research is dominated by quantitative research methods. In this article, we argue that these studies should be complemented by a research approach that is more apt to capture the specific complexity and dynamics unique to family businesses. We suggest that the interpretive approach within the broader umbrella of qualitative methods has this potential. The article discusses issues, choices, requirements and implications for family business scholars engaged in interpretive research. We also offer suggestions for how editors and reviewers can assess interpretative research.

Organizational decision making requires the ability to process ambiguous information while dealing with overload and conflicting requirements. Although researchers agree that ambiguity tolerance is a critical skill for making high-quality complex decisions, few have investigated the effects of ambiguity tolerance on self-efficacy to make complex decisions. In the current experiment, 151 participants were randomly assigned to either a moderate complexity or high complexity decision task. Ambiguity tolerance moderated the relationships between task complexity and self-efficacy, and between task complexity and the accuracy of self-efficacy in predicting future performance. In the highly complex task, individuals with a higher tolerance for ambiguity reported higher self-efficacy and more accurate self-efficacy versus individuals with lower tolerance for ambiguity. In the moderately complex task, tolerance for ambiguity had no effects on self-efficacy or accuracy. Implications for research and practice are presented, along with study limitations.

This study investigates the impacts of information technology on business process reengineering from intra- and extra-organizational perspectives. This research proposes a framework for facilitating business process reengineering efforts towards competitive organizations. The framework was tested using data from a sample of 382 chief information officers or senior information systems managers, each of whom completed a survey. The survey results indicate that organizational innovation, market pressure and competitive intensity positively affect information technology adoption, which in turn trigger changes or business process in terms of workplace, workforce and business structure.

Research has demonstrated the growing prevalence of sexual harassment (SH) across continents, industries and occupations as well as the associated negative outcomes (Glomb et al. 1999). Not surprisingly, job satisfaction is one of the job-related variables that is frequently investigated in the SH literature, with Lapierre et al. (2005) meta-analytically establishing that SH significantly diminishes job satisfaction. Other studies have argued, however, that ‘satisfied’ employees do not necessarily perform to the best of their abilities (Crossman & Abou-Zaki 2003) and that work engagement is a better construct to understand what makes employees ‘go the extra mile’ (Hallgerg & Schaufeli 2006; Buckingham & Coffman 1999). This study, conducted in Australia, adopted the Utrecht Work Engagement Scale (Schaufeli et al. 2002a), as an empirical gauge of the construct ‘work engagement’ and the Sexual Experiences Questionnaire (Fitzgerald et al. 1988) to measure SH. A strong negative relationship was established in addition to significant differences in the SH experiences of men and women.

One striking finding from recent natural environmental management research is that family firms are more likely to engage in environmentally friendly practices. However, the source of such difference is less clear. The primary objective of our research is to investigate if family firms react to stakeholder pressures differently when making natural environmental management decisions. We survey 235 manufacturing firms from the chemical, and the electronic and information technology industries in Taiwan to test our hypotheses. The results of regression analysis show that family firms pay much more attention to their internal stakeholders than non-family firms. This finding complements the current discussions on family business uniqueness. It also contributes to provide a more comprehensive framework of stakeholder salience.

Research reveals that emotional intelligence is an important factor in predicting performance in teams. In this article, we initially outline a theoretical model for examining emotional intelligence in teams. Using this model, we test a short version (16 items) of the self-report Workgroup Emotional Intelligence Profile (WEIP). Evidence from three studies supports this model. Two samples of 620 and 217 employees support the hypothesized structure of the WEIP-S. Four distinct constructs were derived: Awareness of own emotions; Management of own emotions; Awareness of others' emotions; and Management of others' emotions. The WEIP-Short Version (WEIP-S) scale, therefore, is based on abilities that are vital during the interaction of team members. Data from 99 employees provide evidence of test–retest stability for the WEIP-S across three time periods. Limitations and potential uses in management research for this short-version scale are discussed.

Commitment has received great attention in the inter-organisational relationship literature but there is widespread debate and contention on what constitutes its key determinants, specifically in an import supplier context. Furthermore, inconsistencies in empirical findings of the buyer–seller relationship studies limit the theoretical development and use of internationalization theories in management practice. Yet this area warrants attention as it may assist in enabling the integration of the spectrum of importer commitment in the importer–exporter relationship. Essentially, this paper integrates and synthesises over eighty conceptual and empirical studies on commitment in the buyer–seller relationship from different contexts including grounding on internationalisation process theory, resource based theory of the firm and transaction costs economics. Conceptual arguments are assessed and empirical findings are evaluated across studies with the aim of developing a framework. With the support of three basic theories and extant literature, ten antecedents of importer commitment are identified. The causal direct and some indirect relationships are specified. Seventeen propositions are offered to guide future research efforts in this important field.

Professor Still presents a succinct and insightful piece, reflecting on the development for women in management within Australia over the past three decades. She rightly focuses on women in management rather than to try and map the multitudinous developments of the women/gender in organisation literature that has mushroomed into a sub-discipline of its own over the past three decades.

In considering any parallel development for women in New Zealand it seems compelling to start in the late 19th century. As a result of direct and indirect action by the suffrage movement; fuelled by activities of the women's temperance union, NZ women gained the vote in 1893. Like Australia, the colonial women were perceived very much as Damned Whores and God's Police (Summer, 1994). In these brief reflections, I focus on the last 30 years of changes since the second wave of the feminist movement. In summary, the conclusions are somewhat depressingly similar to Australia; however, there are some noteworthy differences.