The dynamic role of fit in human capital pipelines: a coevolutionary perspective

Research Summary The behavioral theory of the firm suggests that organizations make strategic choices to retain or search for a technology based on performance feedback in comparison to organizational aspiration. Such technological choices become challenging as decision makers face uncertainty not only in technological search, but also from technology deterioration and market turbulence. While different organizational aspirations have been used in prior research, their performance and risk implications for technological choices are unclear. I advance theory by conducting a simulation study to systematically investigate the performance and risk of technological choices with different organizational aspirations, and explore their contingencies on technological and market uncertainty. The simulation results provide novel insights into the indispensable role of goal setting to ascertain organizational performance. Managerial Summary Goal setting has important impacts on the performance and risk of strategic decisions. While it is often believed that processing more information can help managers cope with uncertainty, this study shows that paying attention to both internal and external performance goals may be suboptimal for technological choices. Solely relying on an internal performance goal may even do more harm than good. A superior way of goal setting is to focus on external performance information from a reasonable reference group, such as firms with a similar performance or all industry peers rather than the best‐in‐class in the industry. This is more beneficial when technologies rapidly change and is less useful when customer preferences shift due to unpredictable shocks (e.g., the COVID‐19 pandemic).

Research on person–environment fit theory has largely developed within the context of people and organisations in urban settings. There has been little research of this kind within organisations in isolated and confined contexts. The purpose of this article was to examine the implications of person–environment fit theory within the context of the complementary fit and supplementary fit paradigm (Muchinsky & Monahan, 1987), for people working in isolated and remote organisational settings. Using a sample of Antarctic personnel, this study examined the extent to which psychological need fulfilment and subjective fit with Antarctic station culture were equally important in predicting individual attitudes, including satisfaction with being an expedition member, intent to return and willingness to recommend the Antarctic to others. Results showed that gender and subjective fit with Antarctic station culture predicted satisfaction with station membership. Results also showed that subjective fit predicted willingness to recommend the Antarctic as a good place to work, while psychological need fulfilment was not a predictor of any of the outcome variables examined. Results suggest that outcomes such as intention to return (or to stay) may be less relevant in such settings because of the unique and temporary nature of the experience and the work. Results also attest to the need for further development of organisational theories, including person–environment fit theory, using data collected from organisations in isolated, confined and extreme environmental contexts.

This paper examines organizational heterogeneity in social comparison related to organizational aspirations. Organizational social comparison is the process wherein an organization compares performance with its reference group. Combining the organizational aspiration literature and the social comparison literature, we investigate the immediate and deferred influences from organizational self-comparative performance (difference between organizational performance and aspiration) on social reference group selection. Our theorizing is based on the activation of different social comparison motives. We hypothesize that an organization progressively narrows the performance range of its social reference group when performance increases, while first narrows and then broadens the industry range of the group as performance increases from below to above aspiration. We also hypothesize that higher variance of self-comparative performance across time weakens the effect from positive self- comparative performance; while it strengthens the effect from negative self-comparative performance. We utilize one-step system GMM estimations on a secondary dataset of 1,127 North American listed firms from 2006 to 2015. The results partially support our hypotheses. Our research advances the knowledge on organizational heterogeneity in social reference group selection by expanding the role of historical performance, adding the self-improvement motive of social comparison, and highlighting the time dimension when investigating relevant antecedents.

School career information advice and guidance in England has typically focused on pupils aged 13–18. However, pupils aged under 11 have already formed career aspirations. Career aspirations are used as a proxy for future occupational destinations. This study tracks the individual career aspirations over 3 years for 78 children aged 7–9 at the start of study, from three schools in the North East England taking part in a STEM outreach project. The data are also used to explore the applicability of aspiration development frameworks for younger children. The majority of children were able to name at least one career aspiration with nearly 70% naming more, although these aspirations were drawn from a relatively narrow pool of jobs related to children’s interests and jobs they see around them. 38% of the children had the same aspiration over time, but 60% of children changed their careers aspirations completely over the 3 years of the study. Career aspirations were strongly gendered, with boys naming a smaller pool of jobs most often. Between 2019 and 2021, there was an increase in STEM aspirations named by boys, and a decrease by girls. Thematic analysis of the reasons given for different aspirations identified four themes: self-actualisation, altruism, characteristics of the job, and role models. These themes were related to the aspiration frameworks. This study shows that there is both flux and stability in children’s aspirations between the ages of 7 and 11. The gendered career choices at both time points indicate that there is a need for educators to challenge stereotypes about who can do what type of job from a much earlier age. All aspirations were drawn from a relatively small pool of job suggesting that introducing children to a wider range of jobs at an earlier age could support development of aspirations.

PurposeIn pursuit of objectives, under the European Green Deal, to channel capital flows to sustainable activities, the EU Taxonomy offers clarity, labelling real economic activities as “sustainable”, based on technical screening criteria. This study of disclosure experiences aims to explore the role of co-evolutionary relationships in the Taxonomy’s effectiveness.Design/methodology/approachCo-evolution theory implies a dynamic interplay among sustainable finance stakeholders (SFSs), through adjustment to, impact on and operationalisation of the Taxonomy. Corporate disclosure experiences, including those of financial institutions and related SFS experiences, may reveal co-evolutionary processes. With significant Undertakings for Collective Investment in Transferable Securities (UCITS) and Alternative Investment Funds (AIFs), Irish SFSs provide contextual insight. Semi-structured interviews with a purposive sample of Irish SFSs capture inaugural corporate Taxonomy disclosure experiences.FindingsA thematic analysis reveals six co-evolutionary processes that facilitate Taxonomy implementation in pursuit of policy objectives: [1] cross-functional reporting; [2] iterative pre-empting and addressing compliance issues; [3] regulation as a catalyst for co-evolution; [4] advanced capacity building; [5] stakeholder adaptation and [6] graduated use of ESG data. Implications for sustainability policy development and management are significant.Practical implicationsWhilst limited to just one EU jurisdiction, given limited prior empirical evidence for sustainable finance regulations from co-evolutionary perspectives, this study highlights a catalytic, yet precautionary role for co-evolution in their transformation effectiveness. As such, they must take account of their potential to stimulate co-evolution and to nurture it in pursuit of their policy objectives.Social implicationsThe findings of this study add to a small, but growing body of academic literature on the Taxonomy Regulation, which suggests that a co-evolutionary lens is important for gaining a comprehensive understanding of its early-stage dynamics. From an implementation perspective, the qualitative data reveals actionable implications for regulators and policymakers, such as building capacity, better anticipation of outcomes and investment in data infrastructure.Originality/valueUnlike existing analyses of disclosures, this study offers a co-evolutionary lens on Taxonomy contributions to sustainable development through qualitative accounts.

This study aims at investigating generation Z career aspirations process by applying the self-efficacy theory and the Five-Factor Model (FFM) to examine the relationship among individual characteristics, career self-efficacy, gender, university major, and career aspiration in tourism and hospitality. The participants sample for this study was drawn from students enrolled in eight national Jordanian universities from different majors (tourism and hospitality and non-tourism and hospitality) PLS-SEM was employed for hypotheses testing. The study findings indicate that consciousness and openness are positively associated with self-efficacy, which in turn is directly related to career aspirations among Generation Z. In addition, the study demonstrates that the influence of self-efficacy on career aspirations is moderated by demographic variables such as gender and major. Specifically, the results suggest that gender and major act as moderating factors in the relationship between Generation Z career aspirations and the antecedents (Self-Efficacy Theory and consciousness and openness).

This paper presents an innovative conceptual and analytical framework to enhance understanding of the dynamic processes of food supply chains. The framework employs a co-evolutionary perspective to exploit complex and dynamic relationships spanning different levels of aggregation. To make this co-evolutionary perspective operational, the paper's conceptual approach draws from complexity theory, Austrian economics, and social networks. This approach not only improves our understanding of the conflicting dynamic influences that impact food market systems but also presents an alternative viewpoint of organizational interrelationships. In addition, this framework provides analytical advances through the use of agent-based modelling in an agricultural supply chain context. Simulation results are presented to support the arguments of this nested co-evolutionary framework.

Purpose: The aim of this paper is to analyse the relationship between career success and individual career aspirations for engineers, and to test whether this differs according to gender. The primary hypothesis in this research is that gender does make a significant difference. Design/methodological/approach: The sample consists of 1011 engineers who graduated from a prestigious Peruvian college between 1998 and 2005. Female graduates constituted only 4% of the sample, which is similar to the national statistics for engineers in Peru during this period. The relationships were primarily tested using multiple regression and structural equation modelling analyses. Findings: Findings show a positive relationship between individual career aspirations and career success for men, but not necessarily for women; this supports the hypothesis that gender moderates this relationship. Females seek more secure career orientation than their male counterparts. In addition, females have shown that their career success is more related to feminine themes such as achieving ‘work–family balance’. The findings are in line with previously published results in other countries in which female engineers have career orientations with a preference for a balance between work and family as well as work stability. Research limitations/implications: The sample is limited to graduates from a single Peruvian college of engineering. Although the sample has similar demographic characteristic to a national population, a more heterogeneous sample is called for in a future research. Moreover, additional moderators should be incorporated, such as family background, residency (large urban cities vs. small villages) and perhaps other variables. Practical implications: Results can help Human Resource Managers to design better career plans, which consider gender in defining policies for the attraction and retention of competent female engineers.

The rapid changes in technological, economic, political and cultural environment have profound effects on the world of Career. These changes have created a kind of uncertainty in the nature and culture of work, thereby have affected the careers and lives of people. Career is becoming the top most priority in people’s lives. There is a shift from employment to career owing to the many changes that have happened in the economic and social landscapes. This paper rises to understand the key ingredient of the Career trajectory – “Career Aspiration”. Career aspiration is the starting point in the Career life cycle of an individual. Organisations and Individuals approach Career aspirations in a variety of ways. This paper has provided a stimulus for reflecting on and evaluating Individual career aspirations. Acknowledging that not all aspirations can be realised and that choices must be made, the discussion presented here challenges organisations to be more explicit about the employees’ understanding and clarity of aspirations, both judged and determined. This paper analyses the perspectives of respondents with different demographics and has used a survey instrument for this purpose. The survey instrument was administered on 600 respondents (employees working in IT/ITES industries) from within and outside of the Bangalore city.

This paper examines how employees’ career aspirations benefit organizations, i.e., contribute to strengthening organizational capabilities and connections, by means of two aspects of contemporary work: proactive and relational. Data were collected from alumni of a public university in Amsterdam, the Netherlands, in two waves with a 1-year time lag. The results showed that employees with career aspirations strengthen: (a) organizational capabilities; and (b) organizational connections through their instrumental and psychosocial relationships. Interestingly, although employees’ career aspirations were positively associated with taking charge, we did not find that taking charge mediates the relationship between career aspirations and employees’ individual contributions to organizational capabilities. This study is the first to examine how individual career aspirations benefit organizations, and it discusses the results in light of their novel contributions to theory and practice.

La resiliencia como constructo social plantea un panorama conceptual confuso y diverso el cual incluye su visualización como cualidad individual, como rasgo colectivo, o como proceso dinámico, entre otros, con el común denominador de la adaptación que se genera ante la vivencia de una situación retadora. En la exploración histórica de los orígenes de este concepto, se evidencia cómo las ciencias sociales han tendido a atribuir la mayor parte de la responsabilidad del proceso adaptativo, al individuo en sí mismo más que a las relaciones que este establece con la multiplicidad de eventos y factores que experimenta a lo largo de su vida. El presente ensayo analiza esta situación y propone la consideración de la resiliencia como un proceso coevolutivo y dinámico de aprendizaje, no solo del individuo sino también del entorno con el cual se encuentra en estrecha coevolución. Se concluye resaltando la importancia de considerar la evidencia neurocientífica actual para analizar la resiliencia como parte de un proceso neurobiológico y coevolutivo que permite la diversidad, la supervivencia de la especie y la exploración y comprensión de la afectación mutua entre los organismo y sus entornos.

Chapter 3 discussed the emergence of communication networks from the perspective of complexity theory. Specifically, we described complexity as a network of agents, each with a set of attributes, who follow rules of interaction, which produces emergent structure. Complexity arose from the fact that there were numerous agents with extensive relations. Some complex systems but by no means all, we argued, were self-organizing, meaning that they created and sustained internal structure in response to the flow of matter and energy around them. Some readers, particularly those with some familiarity with the complex adaptive systems literature, may have noticed that the discussion of complexity in chapter 3 did not include processes of adaptation, evolution, or coevolution. The reason for this is that it is possible to view these as theoretical mechanisms that operate in at least some complex, self-organizing systems, though not necessarily all. Thus, we have chosen to treat adaptation and the coevolutionary perspective as theoretical mechanisms in the same manner as the other theoretical mechanisms we have examined in chapters 5 through 8. In the present chapter we examine adaptive and coevolutionary processes as the basis for building MTML models of emergent communication networks that form the basis for organizational populations and communities. Modern interest in evolutionary theory as a basis for studying human social processes can be traced to the work of Amos Hawley (1950, 1968, 1986). Much of the interest in applying this perspective to studying organizational structures is credited to Donald Campbell (1965, 1974). Over much of his professional life Campbell explored the application of evolutionary theory to a wide array of sociocultural processes, including organizations (Baum & McKelvey, 1999). Campbell is perhaps best known throughout the social sciences for his work on experimental and quasi-experimental design (Campbell and Stanley, 1966; Cook & Campbell, 1980) and multimethod triangulation (Campbell & Fiske, 1959). Nonetheless, McKelvey and Baum (1999) point to Campbell’s enormous influence in organizational science via the early work of Aldrich (1972) on organizational boundaries, Weick’s (1979) formulation of an evolutionary model of organizing, Hannan and Freeman’s (1977, 1983) development of population ecology theory (and inertial theory), McKelvey’s (1982) work on organizational taxonomies, and Nelson and Winter’s (1982) evolutionary theory of economics.

This paper combines a multi-sectoral approach with a perspective on the geography of transitions. The concept of coevolution is used to bridge these contributions as it allows to see mutual influences and adaptation between sectors while acknowledging spatial embeddedness and its economic, institutional and social aspects. The argument is discussed using the case of the transition to Electric Vehicles (EVs) and the connections between three technologies: EV, battery, and smart grid. Patent citations are used to construct three main paths allowing to geolocate key inventions and to elaborate on the role of cities in supporting knowledge recombination. The case study suggests that a coevolutionary perspective can contribute to understanding the geography of transitions in three ways: by relating emerging socio-technical configurations to changed power relations and opportunities along the value chain, by exposing the spatial embeddedness of interdependent sectors and by clarifying the role of actors and networks.

Aim/Purpose The study aims to critically examine the commonly held belief that role conflict always hampers administrative performance. It seeks to uncover how role conflict can, under certain conditions, enhance efficiency and foster organizational adaptability. Background Traditional management theories portray role conflict as a negative force causing stress and inefficiency. However, recent empirical research suggests that role conflict can stimulate growth, innovation, and better decision-making when well-managed. Methodology The paper systematically reviews multiple theoretical frameworks, including Role Theory, Person-Environment Fit Theory, Organizational Theory, and the JD-R model. By synthesizing these perspectives, it deconstructs simplistic assumptions about the negative impacts of role conflict. Contribution This study offers a nuanced understanding of the relationship between administrative performance and role conflict, moving beyond outdated views. It provides evidence-based insights into how role conflict can be harnessed positively within organizations. Findings The research finds that role conflict does not inherently reduce performance and can enhance administrative efficiency under the right circumstances. Administrators who effectively navigate conflicting responsibilities can drive innovation and adaptability within their organizations. Recommendations for Practitioners Practitioners should shift from avoiding role conflict to learning how to manage and leverage it for organizational improvement. They are encouraged to create environments that support adaptive leadership and embrace role complexity. Recommendations for Researchers Future research should explore the specific conditions and organizational contexts where role conflict becomes a constructive force. Researchers are also advised to develop models and tools that help quantify the positive impacts of managed role conflict. Impact on Society By reframing role conflict as a potential strength, this study supports more resilient and innovative organizations, ultimately benefiting societal governance and service delivery. It encourages a cultural shift toward embracing complexity in leadership, which can enhance institutional adaptability in the face of change. Future Research Future research should empirically test when role conflict improves administrative performance across various contexts. It should also develop practical tools or frameworks to help organizations manage role conflict effectively for positive outcomes.

Caring for older adults is a dynamic and complex process, and analyzing personal and environmental factors separately fails to capture its full nature. The person-environment fit theory offers a valuable framework to explore interactions between caregivers and their environments. This review aimed to synthesize evidence on the person-environment fit of formal and informal caregivers for older adults, identify gaps in existing literature, and propose future research directions. The scoping review was conducted following the six-step guidance of the Joanna Briggs Institute 2020. A literature search was conducted in June 2024 across seven databases: Scopus, ProQuest, Web of Science, Embase, PubMed, MEDLINE, and CINAHL. Empirical studies published after 2000 regarding the person-environment fit of caregivers for older adults were included. A total of 15 eligible articles were included, with nine focusing on formal caregivers and six focusing on informal caregivers. Research on formal caregivers' person-environment fit often came from human resource management perspectives and was supported by various theories. In contrast, studies on informal caregivers tended to draw from environmental gerontology theories and lacked a systematic analytical model. Most studies used self-designed questionnaires or interviews, with one employing a standard person-environment fit measurement scale. Caregivers' person-environment fit was analyzed through "demands-abilities fit" and "needs-supplies fit" dimensions, covering various types like person-physical, person-interpersonal, value, goal, and caregiving-life fit. Findings indicated that a high level of person-environment fit was associated with better physical and mental well-being, stronger caregiving commitment, and improved care quality. The holistic and dynamic nature of person-environment fit theory is closely aligned with the caregiving process, enhancing our understanding of the experiences of caregivers. Based on existing evidence, this review proposes a theoretical framework for analyzing informal caregivers' person-environment fit. Further investigation into the theoretical framework of caregiver person-environment fit, along with the development of standardized assessment instruments, will significantly advance the well-being of both caregivers and care recipients. Open Science Framework https://doi.org/10.17605/OSF.IO/YV26C .