Inside Organizations Research Articles

VOICES: TOTALLY FOCUSED

There is a major transition happening today inside organisations; and, says Antonio Nieto-Rodriguez, companies moving in this new direction are finding immense rewards.

The Faithful Rise Up: Split Identification and an Unlikely Change Effort

Through a qualitative study of the emergence of unlikely activism from committed members of the Catholic Church, we examine how identification can trigger and shape a change effort. We uncover how crafting “split identification” allows members to retain their identification with normative aspects of an institution, while disidentifying with, and seeking to change, organizational aspects. Our process model traces how members split their identification, attempt to repair the split by seeking change, and respond when their claimed identification is challenged. We offer implications for identification theory and for literature on change originating inside organizations and institutions.

E-Learning Adoption Inside Jordanian Organizations from Change Management Perspective

The objective of this research is to build a complete e-Learning adoption model which can be used to increase the acceptance of e-learning inside Jordanian organizations. This objective is achieved through the analysis of the e-learning adoption process in two different Jordanian case studies.

Do training institutions learn from experience?

This essay is concerned with organisational learning and, in particular, policy learning. Sometimes, organisations learn; sometimes they do not. Sometimes they use their acquired knowledge, but this is, not always the case. Inside organisations, particular values, rules and incentive systems are developed. In addition, organisations need to structure their responses to the outside world. The main challenge of this essay is to make sense out of a web of interests, prizes, penalties, habits and inertia that may drive the impulse to learn. Individual creativity and the types of organisational climates that stifle or stimulate learning are also be considered. The paper will present a number of concrete cases studies of both policy learning and non-learning situations. In some cases, the focus is on the learning that takes place within multinational agencies. In others, learning inside national training institutions is examined. The following lessons stand out: (i) Organisational culture matters. (ii) The critical issue is not learning but using what was learned. (iii) The chances of learning are greater if the payoffs are positive. (iv) Power inside institutions influences learning and non-learning. To sum up, there is logic to the system but no single and simple pattern emerges.

INNOVATING GLOBALLY

Costas Markides has spent over two decades studying business strategy and innovation. Recently, he has been focusing on the bigger picture of how people can address major social problems. Can the techniques used by managers to create innovation inside organizations work with global change? Markides talks with Stuart Crainer about his latest research.

Inside Organizations: Pricing, Politics, and Path Dependence

When economists have considered organizations, much attention has focused on the boundary of the firm, rather than its internal structures and processes. In contrast, this review sketches three approaches to the economic theory of internal organization—one substantially developed, another rapidly emerging, and a third on the horizon. The first approach (pricing) applies Pigou's prescription: If markets get prices wrong, then the economist's job is to fix the prices. The second approach (politics) considers environments where important actions inside organizations simply cannot be priced, so power and control become central. Finally, the third approach (path dependence) complements the first two by shifting attention from the between variance to the within. That is, rather than asking how organizations confronting different circumstances should choose different structures and processes, the focus here is on how path dependence can cause persistent performance differences among seemingly similar enterprises.

Análise do sistema de gestão ambiental do laboratório de camarões marinhos da Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina – UFSC

AO aumento da utilização de recursos naturais decorrente do consumismo desenvolvido durante a Revolução Industrial gerou impactos ambientais irreversíveis que, após as décadas de 1960 e 1970, deram início a uma crescente preocupação ambiental. A partir da década de 1990 destacaram-se as iniciativas empresariais, governamentais e não governamentais buscando uma melhor relação do ser humano com o meio ambiente. Neste contexto, eleva-se a importância dos conceitos de Gestão Ambiental e Produção mais Limpa. E é com o intuito de esclarecer a forma como esses processos ocorrem nas organizações que se pesquisou, neste trabalho, a gestão ambiental do Laboratório de Camarões Marinhos – LCM, da Universidade Federal de Santa Catarina. Verificou-se a importância da disseminação dos conhecimentos sobre os processos dentro das organizações e indicou-se a responsabilidade da Universidade na gestão ambiental do laboratório.

Information Security Inside Organizations - A Positive Model and Some Normative Arguments Based on New Institutional Economics

This work develops an abstract, theory-founded understanding of organization-internal infor­mation security. For this purpose, established knowledge from the field of information security is restructured on the basis of two different dimensions: The historical dimension distinguishes three "eras" of information security and relates them to concurrent changes of prevailing computing paradigms. The "security triangle" identifies and characterizes three different "meta-measures" for realizing information security inside organizations and highlights the existence of a higher-level regulatory framework. Additionally, the work is based on principles from the field of New Institutional Economics. In particular, the concepts of information asymmetries, transaction costs and principal-agent relations are explicated as well as their relevance to the establishment of cooperation among individuals. Cooperation is in turn modeled as consisting of the two partial problems of coordination and motivation. These theoretical foundations are then merged into an economically inspired positive model of information security inside organizations. The model provides abstract and theory-founded explanations for the changes of prevailing information security practices that happened in the past. Besides this explanatory use, the positive model is also applied in a prospective manner. Current technological developments will presumably lead to increasingly "interwoven" compu­ting structures and thus to another change of the prevailing computing paradigm. The application of the model to the changed givens suggests that now-established practices like behavioral guidelines or those means usually associated with the term "security culture" will prove inefficient and thus inadequate in the future. Organizations will therefore have to use alternative approaches or to modify existing ones for realizing information security under the changed circumstances. Various possibilities for doing so have been suggested in the past. Some of these are evaluated on the basis of the economically inspired, positive model. This analysis leads to well-founded suggestions which of the approaches should be applied under what conditions. Furthermore, the economic understanding also supports the development of new approaches that have so far not been thought of. As a final aspect, the future role of the higher-level regulatory framework is illuminated. It is shown that this framework will have to be adopted to the upcoming changes in order to protect organizations from being forced to apply highly inefficient practices for compliance reasons alone. Overall, the positive model developed in this work provides explanations for what can be observed in the field of organization-internal information security, allows for well-founded predictions about what can be expected for the future and leads to normative arguments regarding necessary changes of established approaches and practices. It might therefore prove valuable for future research in a multitude of ways.

A neuro-genetic based short-term forecasting framework for network intrusion prediction system

Information systems are one of the most rapidly changing and vulnerable systems, where security is a major issue. The number of security-breaking attempts originating inside organizations is increasing steadily. Attacks made in this way, usually done by “authorized” users of the system, cannot be immediately traced. Because the idea of filtering the traffic at the entrance door, by using firewalls and the like, is not completely successful, the use of intrusion detection systems should be considered to increase the defense capacity of an information system. An intrusion detection system (IDS) is usually working in a dynamically changing environment, which forces continuous tuning of the intrusion detection model, in order to maintain sufficient performance. The manual tuning process required by current IDS depends on the system operators in working out the tuning solution and in integrating it into the detection model. Furthermore, an extensive effort is required to tackle the newly evolving attacks and a deep study is necessary to categorize it into the respective classes. To reduce this dependence, an automatically evolving anomaly IDS using neuro-genetic algorithm is presented. The proposed system automatically tunes the detection model on the fly according to the feedback provided by the system operator when false predictions are encountered. The system has been evaluated using the Knowledge Discovery in Databases Conference (KDD 2009) intrusion detection dataset. Genetic paradigm is employed to choose the predominant features, which reveal the occurrence of intrusions. The neuro-genetic IDS (NGIDS) involves calculation of weightage value for each of the categorical attributes so that data of uniform representation can be processed by the neuro-genetic algorithm. In this system unauthorized invasion of a user are identified and newer types of attacks are sensed and classified respectively by the neuro-genetic algorithm. The experimental results obtained in this work show that the system achieves improvement in terms of misclassification cost when compared with conventional IDS. The results of the experiments show that this system can be deployed based on a real network or database environment for effective prediction of both normal attacks and new attacks.

Information Security Inside Organizations - A Positive Model and Some Normative Arguments Based on New Institutional Economics

This work develops an abstract, theory-founded understanding of organization-internal infor­mation security. For this purpose, established knowledge from the field of information is restructured on the basis of two different dimensions: The historical dimension distinguishes three eras of information and relates them to concurrent changes of prevailing computing paradigms. The security triangle identifies and characterizes three different meta-measures for realizing information inside organizations and highlights the existence of a higher-level regulatory framework. Additionally, the work is based on principles from the field of New Institutional Economics. In particular, the concepts of information asymmetries, transaction costs and principal-agent relations are explicated as well as their relevance to the establishment of cooperation among individuals. Cooperation is in turn modeled as consisting of the two partial problems of coordination and motivation. These theoretical foundations are then merged into an economically inspired positive model of information inside organizations. The model provides abstract and theory-founded explanations for the changes of prevailing information practices that happened in the past. Besides this explanatory use, the positive model is also applied in a prospective manner. Current technological developments will presumably lead to increasingly interwoven compu­ting structures and thus to another change of the prevailing computing paradigm. The application of the model to the changed givens suggests that now-established practices like behavioral guidelines or those means usually associated with the term security culture will prove inefficient and thus inadequate in the future. Organizations will therefore have to use alternative approaches or to modify existing ones for realizing information under the changed circumstances. Various possibilities for doing so have been suggested in the past. Some of these are evaluated on the basis of the economically inspired, positive model. This analysis leads to well-founded suggestions which of the approaches should be applied under what conditions. Furthermore, the economic understanding also supports the development of new approaches that have so far not been thought of. As a final aspect, the future role of the higher-level regulatory framework is illuminated. It is shown that this framework will have to be adopted to the upcoming changes in order to protect organizations from being forced to apply highly inefficient practices for compliance reasons alone. Overall, the positive model developed in this work provides explanations for what can be observed in the field of organization-internal information security, allows for well-founded predictions about what can be expected for the future and leads to normative arguments regarding necessary changes of established approaches and practices. It might therefore prove valuable for future research in a multitude of ways.

O desenvolvimento do marketing: uma perspectiva histórica

For a better understanding of marketing and its growing importance in organizations, this work provided a detailed view of the historical evolution of marketing, from a time when it was not yet considered a specific area, up to the present day. The early history of marketing included activities that were developed only as trade practices. After 1900, marketing activities differed from the practices of trade, with the emergence of Marketing as a distinct domain. So from 1900, the history was divided into decades until now to show the emergence of the different schools of thought, the development of new activities, marketing inside organizations as well as the differentiation into the specific activities of Societal Marketing and Experience Marketing. Further, the history of marketing in Brazil was revisited emphasizing important milestones. Finally, some contributions from other areas of knowledge and sciences as well as problems experienced by Marketing are mentioned.

The Process of Sustainability Reporting: A Look Inside Organizations

The purpose of this paper is to investigate the managerial processes that organizations use when they prepare disclosures that involve social and environmental information. Data were gathered in the petroleum industry through interviews with twelve companies and a representative from the trade association. Our sample of companies had various years of experience and levels of sophistication in social and environmental reporting. Our analysis reveals that stakeholders and values play an important role in an organization's willingness to provide information about their performance; however, firms sometimes need to develop resources and capabilities to provide credible information. Therefore, in contrast to most studies that have claimed greenwashing and little diligence by reporters in the past, our study reveals six learning resource domains to support the process of sustainability reporting.. They experience an evolutionary process in building internal resources that provide business value through reporting both internally and externally.

Inside Organizations: Pricing, Politics, and Path Dependence

When economists have considered organizations, much attention has focused on the boundary of the firm, rather than its internal structures and processes. In contrast, this essay sketches three approaches to the economic theory of internal organization - one substantially developed, another rapidly emerging, and a third on the horizon. The first approach (pricing) applies Pigou’s prescription: if markets get prices wrong then the economist’s job is to fix the prices. The second approach (politics) considers environments where important actions inside organizations simply cannot be priced, so power and control become central. Finally, the third approach (path-dependence) complements the first two by shifting attention from the “between” variance to the “within.” That is, rather than ask how organizations confronting different circumstances should choose different structures and processes, the focus here is on how path-dependence can cause persistent performance differences among seemingly similar enterprises.

Estilos de dirección de RRHH dentro de las empresas: Una cuestión de intensidad en la DRRHH

There are not too many articles that have studied how human resources (hereafter HR) practice systems have been used inside organizations. The uniform vision with which the management of HR, and more specifically the high performance practices, is approached can be hiding a reality that suggests that different HR practices may coexist. Thus, various authors warn about the necessity to consider this fact in order to avoid falling in a too simplistic vision of HR management. This article pretends to prove that HR practices vary inside the enterprises according to the importance of the jobs, as defined by Lepak and Snell. Further, it proposes that internal variations can follow the trend found in works that study HR practices systems. An empirical study confirms that, depending on how important the jobs are, organizations adopt different styles or uses of HR practices and that these are, basically, a more or less intensive use of the approach proposed by the high performance practices.

Diverse Economies and the Negotiations and Practices of Ethical Finance: The Case of Charity Bank

This paper draws on the emerging literature on diverse economies to analyse the everyday practices in a new type of finance organisation. Social finance organisations (SFOs), on the one hand, provide a mechanism for ‘ethical’ investors to invest money in line with their values and, on the other, provide loan finance sensitive to the needs of a variety of charities, and social enterprise and civil society organisations which have traditionally found access to finance difficult. They work through a mode of operation which emphasises partnership, reconnection, and association between stakeholders. Furthermore, social finance practitioners have developed a series of negotiation strategies for balancing social concerns with financial ones. The paper argues that there remain few analyses from inside organisations trying to practise economic relations differently. It demonstrates how theoretical debates on economic–social relationships are expressed on a day-to-day basis. The paper develops the concept of a sociofinancial narrative to highlight how social and financial organisational logics are hybridised within SFOs. This leads to a discussion on the integration of ethics into economic practice, in the context of neoliberalism as well as the entanglement of analysing alternatives through an ethnographic lens.

Control and change—Analysing the process of institutionalisation

This paper studies the process by which a change in the institutional logic of an organisational field diffuses through the management control system of a firm. The theoretical framework proposed by Hasselbladh and Kallinikos (2000. The project of rationalization: a critique and reappraisal of neo-institutionalism in organization studies. Organization Studies, 21, 697–720) enables us to describe the institutionalisation process of management control systems in more detail by observing how ideals are translated into discourses and control techniques. We argue that both the process by which institutional changes are implemented inside organisations and the process of decoupling are two aspects of the same issue. Revisiting core notions of new-institutional theory such as internalisation and decoupling, our findings question the systematic as well as the linear nature of the institutionalisation process. Empirical findings, based on a field study conducted in the French subsidiary of a pharmaceutical laboratory, highlight how the discourses of organisational actors contradict new ideals and control techniques. More particularly, it appears that, when a discourse cannot be heard, it can be partly bypassed using techniques. It is also argued that intra-organisational change builds on stable discourses and ambivalent technology, which foster insidious dissemination of the new institutional logics when “what can be done cannot be said”.

A Person–Organization Fit-based Approach for Spirituality at Work

Management of meaning inside organizations has been an enduring issue in organization studies. Issues relating to commitment and control through the meaning-making mechanisms have been studied by organization culture theorists for sometime now. However, rapidly changing dynamics of the business environment lend these issues a critical salience today. Two factors of this dynamic context are particularly noteworthy. Firstly, a redefinition of the long-standing employment relationship—loyalty no longer being traded for lifelong employment—has led management to look for alternative sources of gaining commitment from their employees. Second, several factors—socio-cultural, organizational and individual—have led the employees today to explore issues relating to meaning and purpose in their workplaces. Labelled variously by different scholars, the most widely accepted term for this growing movement is ‘Spirituality at Work’ (SAW). In this article we link the two factors to present a framework wherein the emergence of an issue from the private individual domain to the organizational is seen as having the potential of answering concerns of eliciting commitment from employees in a turbulent environment. However, the SAW movement is accompanied by vigorous debates about the concept itself and on how it is to be studied. In the course of this article we present the central conceptual debates that have characterized the SAW discourse to emerge with three definitional themes to understand and study SAW, and then argue for utilizing the person–organization fit lens to study SAW. We end with a conceptual framework that would enable researchers to make a comprehensive study of the elusive phenomenon of SAW.

Pricing Favors: Some Evidence on the Efficiency of Backscratching

Backscratching is the trading of favors and the economic basis of much of the informal cooperation that goes on inside organizations and in society. The experiment we present investigates the efficiency of backscratching. We find that people are, for the most part, good at coordinating the exchange of favors, even when restricted to tacit bargaining, and even when there is an asymmetry to the payoffs of the favors exchanged. Transactions nevertheless tend to have low social efficiency because of the way the favors are priced.

Surfacing Perversions of Democracy in the Workplace: A Contemporary Psychoanalytic Project

Can democratic institutions contain conflict, division, and uncanny emotions with cultures of management that are frequently undemocratic? What distinguishes those institutions and organizations capable of containment from others? And, what are the psychodynamics at work in the perversion of democratic processes inside organizations? In this paper, we explore the psychodynamics of democracy in the workplace with a particular focus on unconscious and collusive forms of perverting democratic processes at work. We suggest that interpersonally and collectively the dialectical interplay between (1) autistic–contiguous, (2) paranoid–schizoid, and (3) depressive modes of experience and organized perceptions, which are necessary to the containment of divisions and conflicts in democratic organizations, is vulnerable to stress, anxiety, and psychological defenses that foster regression and collapse into more oppressive, authoritarian, and sadistic political cultures. With the objective of understanding perversions to democracy in the workplace, we find that a contemporary psychoanalytic view of organizations is more instructive than mainstream organization theory or that found in Foucault's writings on power and institutions.

Corporate Social Responsibility and Corporate Citizenship: Towards Corporate Accountability

Corporate Social Responsibility and Corporate Citizenship: Towards Corporate Accountability