Contextual Contingency Research Articles

How clients choose procurement strategies and organizational control systems in the Swedish housing sector

Purpose This paper aims to examine how different contextual contingency factors and organizational goals influence construction clients’ decision-making when procuring contractors in the housing sector. More specifically, it investigates how clients’ choice of procurement strategies and organizational control systems is contingent upon various contextual factors and organizational goals. Design/methodology/approach It is based on an explorative interview study of clients and contractors in the Swedish housing sector underpinned by a review of organizational control literature. Findings The client's knowledge and resources, as well as project complexity and uncertainty, are the most important contextual contingency factors, while property management and sustainable development are the most important organizational goals that housing clients consider when designing procurement strategies. Research limitations/implications The paper contributes to the understanding of how construction clients choose procurement strategies, by providing new insights into effects of the mentioned contextual contingency factors and organizational goals on clients’ choice of control systems through their procurement strategies. Practical implications Property owners who continuously procure housing projects with sustainability requirements and high degrees of complexity and uncertainty should develop knowledge and resources related to their client role, to enable the design and implementation of appropriate procurement strategies. Originality/value Novel aspects of the paper are the demonstration of the value of a holistic approach, considering both contextual contingency factors and organizational goals, when selecting control systems and explicit discussion of how the client's knowledge and resources influence possibilities to implement different control systems.

A Survey Based Analysis: Labor-Market with Young Workforce or Adequate Governmental Policies? Key attributes of Person-Job Fit in Kosovo

The synergy of Person-Job fit has long been an important construct within the labor market in developed, but more so in developing countries. Personality attributes comprise a psychology framework, which can predict and explain human behavior. Nevertheless Person-Job fit is moderated by contextual contingency. In this vein, the question of how personality attributes interact with job-related indicators such as job performance continue to acquire scholars’ attention. Consequently, this research aims to answer this question, by applying a survey-based analysis in Kosovo, to identify key personality attributes impacting Person-Job fit. Kosovo has a huge dividend of a young work-force, which has been found as an instrument mitigating the gap of Person-Job fit, considering the high rate of unemployment. The research approaches two methods in verifying the impact of personality attributes on job related competences, based on survey data, a) first it presents the empirical evidence analysis, and b) validates the statistical significance of personality characteristics to the job-related tasks, applying a General Linear Model-Multivariate Testing Simulation (GLM-MVA). Both methods confirm the significant correlations of attitudes and perceptions having an impact on the daily job performance, however with a mitigating role of the contextual indicators. The findings show that more than a half of the working force declare that they fit to their job, which in an analysis perspective has two reasons: 1) the unemployment rate, and 2) the young work-force rate. Both aspects shape the inner personal perceptions of having a job and the way they perform at the job. However, within sector analysis, there is a discrepancy between the private and public sector, making the latter more compatible for the working force. This is justified by the fact that in Kosovo the public sector makes people feel more secure about their job, therefore showing a higher rate of satisfaction. At the end, the research adds some key policy reflections, attributed to dimensions, such as: educational reform system, and the fragile governmental policies addressing employment in Kosovo, to help construct a stable framework of Person- Job fit.

Doing good in good times only? Uncertainty as contingency factor of warm-glow investment

Recent studies in investor behavior have put forth a so-called warm-glow theory, suggesting that investors appear to have developed a preference for socially responsible investments. The theory explains why investors appear willing to pay a premium for responsible assets. According to recent reports, however, Covid-19, supply chain uncertainties, and the recent surge in inflation have led to a resurgence of investment in what could be considered non-responsible assets. Investor sentiment thus appears to have changed. Our research question in this paper is whether market uncertainty acts as a contingency variable of warm-glow preferences, such that in times of crisis, investors lose the taste for responsible assets, in favor of the preservation of their consumption and wealth. Exploring a global sample of 882 financial sector firms over two decades, we use panel regressions to link both operating and stock performance to environmental, social, and governance (ESG) ratings. We break down our sample into periods of low and high uncertainty. Our results indicate that uncertainty may moderate investors’ warm-glow preferences, as hypothesized. Thus, our study adds uncertainty as an important contextual contingency to discussions on socially responsible investing: investors may be willing to do good in good times only.

Abitudine, contingenza, oralità: per una letteratura “viva” a partire da Leopardi


 
 
 What is the relationship between habit and literary creativity? What role does the notion of habit play in the process of composition and, in general, in artistic productivity and the aesthetic experience? How do the terms habit and improvisation, habituation and contingency relate to each other? To answer these questions, crucial for aesthetics, this essay moves from the discussion of some significant passages in Giacomo Leopardi’s Zibaldone. On the one hand, the notions of habit and habituation will be discussed, understood – in the specific case of their application to poetry – as the poetic work of giving oneself a form; on the other hand, I shall analyze the notion of environmental or contextual contingency as the input that activates the poetic composition, in terms of a so-called “deliberate improvisation”. Against the background of these interconnected concepts the issues of the relationship between book and orality, performativity and recitation, lowbrow culture and highbrow culture will emerge, in a dense web of cross-references that defines, at least in its general lines, one of the axes of Leopardi's theoretical thinking around the 1820s.
 
 

Contextual Contingency of Social Rules

Contextual Contingency of Social Rules

Policy abstraction as a predictor of cognitive effort avoidance.

Consistent evidence has established that people avoid cognitively effortful tasks. However, the features that make a task cognitively effortful are still not well understood. Multiple hypotheses have been proposed regarding which task demands underlie cognitive effort costs, such as time-on-task, error likelihood, and the general engagement of cognitive control. In this study, we test the novel hypothesis that tasks requiring behavior according to higher degrees of policy abstraction are experienced as more effortful. Accordingly, policy abstraction, operationalized as the levels of contextual contingency required by task rules, drives task avoidance over and above the effects of task performance, such as time-on-task or error likelihood. To test this hypothesis, we combined two previously established cognitive control tasks that parametrically manipulated policy abstraction with the demand selection task procedure. The design of these tasks allowed us to test whether people avoided tasks with higher order policy abstraction while controlling for the contribution of factors such as time-on-task and expected error rate (ER). Consistent with our hypothesis, we observed that policy abstraction was the strongest predictor of cognitive effort choices, followed by ER. This was evident across both studies and in a within-subject cross-study analysis. These results establish at least one task feature independent of performance, which is predictive of task avoidance behavior. We interpret these results within an opportunity cost framework for understanding aversive experiences of cognitive effort while performing a task. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2023 APA, all rights reserved).

Does FDI bring knowledge externalities for host country firms to develop complex technologies? The catalytic role of overseas returnee clustering structures

Prior research has extensively studied FDI spillovers on broadly defined technological innovation but offered inconclusive evidence. Relatively little is known about how the knowledge characteristics of local technological development are shaped by FDI and the innovation context where this development takes place. We therefore study the influence of FDI presence on host country firms' technological progress with a focus on two factors: the underlying technological characteristic, complexity, which reflects the difficulties in recombining diverse knowledge combination for innovation, and an under-studied contextual contingency: the local clustering of returnees (skilled returned migrants) that creates different interactive environments for incorporating foreign knowledge. Using a unique sample of 35,376 firms over an 11-year period in China's equivalent of Silicon Valley, Zhongguancun, we reveal that FDI exerts a curvilinear spillover effect on local firms' technological complexity. Furthermore, we find returnees' clustering in related sectors heightens the effect of FDI spillovers on local technological complexity, whereas unrelated sectoral clustering flattens this U-shaped relationship, reducing FDI spillovers. We add to the debate on FDI knowledge externalities by highlighting the importance of considering knowledge characteristics and the contextual setting of returnee clustering in understanding FDI spillover effects on local technological progress. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.

발언 행동과 직무열의: 리더와 구성원 조망수용의 역할

This study contributes to research on voice behavior by identifying the social context that can create positive effects of voice behaviors in the side of employees. Voice to employees can have a significant impact on continuous job engagement depending on the results of communication with the leader. Although the voice research so far presupposes the positive effect of employee voice, in fact, little attention has been paid to when voice can lead to a positive result for employees. The current research attempts to fill this research gap by exploring a social boundary condition between employee voice and job engagement. This study examines that voice can lead to constructive results when leaders try to understand the viewpoints or thoughts contained in employee voice. At the same time, this study also suggests that employees who try to speak up can also get positive results when they try to understand the thoughts or viewpoints contained in the leader's voice feedback. This study proposes that the leader’s perspective taking on employee voice and employees’ perspective taking on the leader’s voice feedback serves as a social contextual contingency for the desirable effect of employee voice on job engagement, respectively. Using the data from a sample of 162 employees of a financial service company in South Korea, I found that only when employees perceived high levels of perspective taking of the leader on their voice, employee voice was significantly and positively related to job engagement. This finding highlights the important moderating role the leader’s perspective taking plays in the process where voice leads to job engagement at work. Theoretical and practical implications are discussed.

Cognitive Diversity in Strategic Decision Making: A Contextual Contingency Perspective

The riddle of diversity remains unresolved; it can spur innovation and creativity, yet also give rise to hostile conflict. Indeed, disagreement abounds as to whether cognitive diversity—which represents differences in ideas, preferences and beliefs among top managers concerning firm strategy—leads to positive or negative outcomes. While meta-analyses have concluded that the consequences of cognitive diversity among upper echelons executives are largely negative; the fact remains that the effects of diversity vary considerably across different studies, indicating the presence of unknown moderators and mediators. Hence in this study, recognizing the embeddedness of top managers within their firm and broader environmental context, we build new theory concerning moderating and mediating influences on the effects of cognitive diversity. We test our theory on a multi-informant, multi-source sample of 117 strategic decisions. We find a main negative effect of cognitive diversity on top management team behavioral integration, and that behavioral integration mediates the negative effects of cognitive diversity on decision comprehensiveness. We further develop new knowledge by drawing on resource-based theory, and we theorize that firm size and environmental hostility moderate the effects of cognitive diversity on behavioral integration and on comprehensiveness.

The Complexities of Passing

The Complexities of Passing

The efficacy of organizational control interactions: External environmental uncertainty as a critical contingency

We investigate the efficacy of organizational control interactions in contexts with varying levels of external environmental uncertainty. Specifically, we examine the contingent effect of external environmental uncertainty on the interactions of behavior and outcome control, behavior and clan control, and outcome and clan control on organizational performance. The empirical evidence draws from two temporally sequenced surveys of top executives in 203 firms. We theorize and find that these control combinations are complementary when the level of environmental uncertainty is low, and that this complementarity diminishes as environmental uncertainty increases. Further, in highly uncertain external environments, our findings reveal that higher performance is achieved through a high level of one organizational control type and a low level of the other, indicating a shift toward substitutive effects. Consequently, this study informs the complement-substitute debate in organizational control theory by explicitly investigating external environmental uncertainty as a contextual contingency.

Challenging the necessity of New Public Governance: Co‐production by third sector organizations under different models of public management

AbstractIn this article, I answer two research questions: How do different models of public management define relationships between the state and the third sector? And how do these relationships influence how third sector professionals involve citizens in co‐production? I consider evidence from non‐profits in France, England and Quebec to illustrate how three varying models of public management (neo‐Weberian state in France, New Public Management in England, and New Public Governance in Quebec) structure the relationships between government and the third sector (based, respectively, on hierarchy and control, contracting and performance management, and partnership) and how these in turn impact non‐profits' co‐production activities with citizens. The article challenges the thesis that co‐production is most compatible with the model of NPG, demonstrating the variety of co‐production activities that occur in all three contexts and providing new insights into the contextual contingency of the barriers and enablers to co‐production between third sector professionals and citizens.

The Archaeology of Pig Domestication in Eurasia

The multifaceted behavioral and ecological flexibility of pigs and wild boar (Sus scrofa) makes study of their domestication both complex and of broad anthropological significance. While recognizing contextual contingency, we propose several “pathways” to pig domestication. We also highlight the diversity of pig management practices. This diversity complicates zooarchaeological detection of management techniques employed by humans in the early steps of domestication, and we stress the need for multiple lines of evidence. Drawing together the evidence, we review early Holocene human–Sus relations in Japan, Cyprus, northern Mesopotamia, and China. Independent pig domestication occurred in northern Mesopotamia by c. 7500 cal. BC and China by c. 6000 cal. BC. In northern Mesopotamia pig domestication followed a combined “commensal and prey” pathway that evolved into loose “extensive” husbandry that persisted as the dominant form of pig management for several millennia. There are not yet enough zooarchaeological data to speculate on the early stages of pig domestication in China, but once that process began, it involved more intensive management (relying on pens and fodder), leading to more rapid selection for phenotypes associated with domestication. Finally, pig domestication “failed” to take off in Japan. We suggest this was related to a number of factors including the lack of domestic crops and, potentially, cultural barriers to conceiving animals as property.

To greener pastures

PurposeWhile humanitarian supply chains (HSCs) inherently contribute to social sustainability by alleviating the suffering of afflicted communities, their unintended adverse environmental impact has been overlooked hitherto. This paper draws upon contingency theory to synthesize green practices for HSCs, identify the contingency factors that impact on greening HSCs and explore how focal humanitarian organizations (HOs) can cope with such contingency factors.Design/methodology/approachDeploying an action research methodology, two-and-a-half cycles of collaboration between researchers and a United Nations agency were completed. The first half-cycle developed a deductive greening framework, synthesizing extant green practices from the literature. In the second and third cycles, green practices were adopted/customized/developed reflecting organizational and contextual contingency factors. Action steps were implemented in the HSC for prophylactics, involving an operational mix of disaster relief and development programs.FindingsFirst, the study presents a greening framework that synthesizes extant green practices in a suitable form for HOs. Second, it identifies the contingency factors associated with greening HSCs regarding funding environment, stakeholders, field of activity and organizational management. Third, it outlines the mechanisms for coping with the contingency factors identified, inter alia, improving the visibility of headquarters over field operations, promoting collaboration and resource sharing with other HOs as well as among different implementing partners in each country, and working with suppliers for greener packaging. The study advances a set of actionable propositions for greening HSCs.Practical implicationsUsing an action research methodology, the study makes strong practical contributions. Humanitarian practitioners can adopt the greening framework and the lessons learnt from the implementation cycles presented in this study.Originality/valueThis is one of the first empirical studies to integrate environmental sustainability and HSCs using an action research methodology.

Chapter 9 - Hierarchical cognitive control and the frontal lobes

Cognitive control refers to our ability to choose courses of thought and action that achieve our goals over habitual but contextually inappropriate ones. Hierarchical control problems are those in which multiple goals or contextual contingency must be managed at once and related to one another. In the open-ended complexity of the real world, hierarchical control arguably characterizes most of the problems faced by our control systems. And, it is these cases of hierarchical control where patients with damage to executive systems are most apt to fail, even those that perform well on simplified laboratory tasks. In this chapter, we consider the functional organization of frontal brain systems that support hierarchical cognitive control. We focus on two particular cases of hierarchical control. First, we discuss a line of work testing how managing multiple contingencies en route to a response relates to processing along the rostrocaudal axis of frontal cortex. Second, we consider cases of sequential tasks that require monitoring and behaving according to a series of tasks performed in time. In this latter case, we focus on the particular role of rostrolateral prefrontal cortex. We conclude with considerations of future directions of basic and clinically relevant research in this domain.

Knowledge heterogeneity, social capital, and organizational innovation

PurposeObserving across four comparative case organizations, the purpose of this paper is to identify two sources of contingency (i.e. construct and contextual contingency) for the relationship between knowledge heterogeneity and innovation.Design/methodology/approachThe contingencies was explored by conducting a comparative case analyses with rich qualitative data extracted and interpreted from four case companies.FindingsFirst, the construct contingency is examined by refining knowledge heterogeneity into three dimensions: domain, process, and context heterogeneity. Specifically, the author proposed that knowledge heterogeneity in domain is associated with innovation in an inverted U-shape, while heterogeneity in process and context dimensions both negatively influence innovation. Second, contextual contingency is studied. The author proposed that: trust positively moderates the relationship between knowledge heterogeneity and innovation; depending on the knowledge owner attributes, centralization positively or negatively moderates the relationship between heterogeneous knowledge and innovation; shared knowledge vision positively moderates the relationship between knowledge heterogeneity and innovation.Originality/valueThe influences of knowledge heterogeneity on innovation have yet been inconsistent. The present study set to reconcile such inconsistency with a solution of contingencies that intervene the heterogeneity-innovation relationship. These results offer useful references for future large-scaled, quantitative studies.

Funding Financial Inclusion: Institutional Logics and the Contextual Contingency of Funding for Microfinance Organizations

Microfinance is a promising tool for addressing the grand challenge of global poverty. Yet, while many studies have examined how microfinance loans affect poor borrowers, we know little about how m...

Moral parochialism and contextual contingency across seven societies.

Human moral judgement may have evolved to maximize the individual's welfare given parochial culturally constructed moral systems. If so, then moral condemnation should be more severe when transgressions are recent and local, and should be sensitive to the pronouncements of authority figures (who are often arbiters of moral norms), as the fitness pay-offs of moral disapproval will primarily derive from the ramifications of condemning actions that occur within the immediate social arena. Correspondingly, moral transgressions should be viewed as less objectionable if they occur in other places or times, or if local authorities deem them acceptable. These predictions contrast markedly with those derived from prevailing non-evolutionary perspectives on moral judgement. Both classes of theories predict purportedly species-typical patterns, yet to our knowledge, no study to date has investigated moral judgement across a diverse set of societies, including a range of small-scale communities that differ substantially from large highly urbanized nations. We tested these predictions in five small-scale societies and two large-scale societies, finding substantial evidence of moral parochialism and contextual contingency in adults' moral judgements. Results reveal an overarching pattern in which moral condemnation reflects a concern with immediate local considerations, a pattern consistent with a variety of evolutionary accounts of moral judgement.

Infants use contextual contingency to guide their interpretation of others’ goal-directed behavior

To examine the extent to which infants encode the context of a goal-directed action, nine-month-old infants were tested in three separate experiments using a visual habituation paradigm similar to that used by Woodward (1998). Experiment 1, necessary to support methodology used in subsequent experiments, demonstrated that infants can track the goals of others in a visual habituation paradigm even when a goal object changes position. Experiment 2 examined the capacity of infants to make context-dependant judgments regarding an actor's two goal-directed actions (i.e., that object A would be grasped when paired with B, and B would be grasped when paired with C). Experiment 3 examined whether infants encode these contextually contingent goals in a linear order (e.g., A>B>C). Infants are able to use contextual information to correctly encode the actions of others, yet no evidence was found for encoding this information in a linear order.

Men in the Office, Women in the Kitchen? Contextual Dependency of Gender Stereotype Activation in Spanish Women

In a set of two studies, we tested whether gender-stereotypical associations are automatically activated by Spanish women in a categorization task, and how this process is conditioned by the context in which the target is presented (kitchen vs. office). We hypothesized that gender stereotypes would be activated implicitly when the target (men vs. women) appeared in an office context (associated with male dominant roles), but not when they appeared in a kitchen context (traditionally associated with female roles). The studies were conducted with two samples (N = 44; N = 47) of female undergraduate students from the University of Granada (Spain). In both studies, a priming effect was found, indicating that a traditional, role-congruent stereotype pattern (men-competence, women-warmth) emerged when primes appeared in an office context, but not in a kitchen context. Further, negative competence traits were evaluated faster when a male prime was presented in the context of a kitchen (role-incongruent). The purpose of Study 2 was to clarify the implicit nature of this contextual contingency effect by manipulating the controllability of the priming effect (i.e., Stimulus Onset Asynchrony duration-SOA, and restricted response time). The results of Study 1 were replicated in only the short SOA condition, which implies faster and presumably less controlled processing of the stimuli. Theoretical implications for stereotyping and gender role research are discussed.