Organizational Subunits Research Articles

Formation mechanisms of intra-organizational membership overlap: a longitudinal network analysis of membership data from the International Communication Association

Abstract Social entities are linked and interdependent through shared members, a phenomenon described as niche overlap. Using archival data on yearly affiliations of International Communication Association (ICA) members with divisions and interest groups over a 9-year period, this study conducts a longitudinal network analysis to examine the formation mechanisms of intra-organizational niche overlap among organizational subunits. The results of the temporal exponential random graph model suggest the absence of dominant ICA subunits whose topic areas are broad enough to integrate different specializations through membership overlap. Triadic closure facilitates the sharing of members among three subunits, leading to a cohesive internal structure and limited brokerage opportunities. Subunits with smaller membership sizes are more likely to have membership overlap, particularly with larger subunits. Positive affinity relations between subunits, characterized by the sharing of scarce resources within the organization, contribute to the formation of membership overlap.

Charting the course: a framework for networking across the selling ecosystem

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to conceptualize the notion of thin crossing points from a social network perspective and to outline the concrete networking strategies that enable salespeople to foster mutually valuable resource exchange (i.e. to thin crossing points) across a selling ecosystem.Design/methodology/approachThe authors integrate extant theoretical perspectives to advance a conceptual framework of sales-related networking across three key actors in a selling ecosystem: intraorganizational selling actors and actors in customers and external partner organizations.FindingsThin crossing points are defined as figurative transaction points at the boundary between organizations or organizational subunits at which actors engage in mutually valuable resource exchange in the process of value cocreation. To thin crossing points with key ecosystem actors, salespeople must adapt networking strategies considering the time and trust constraints inherent in a network relationship. Such constraints inform the most advantageous network centralities (degree, eigenvector and betweenness) and actions to impact key network properties (tie strength, contact diversity) that enable salespeople to efficiently develop social capital and thus to optimally thin crossing points across a selling ecosystem.Originality/valueTo the best of the authors’ knowledge, this study is the first social network-based exploration of salespeople’s role in thinning crossing points with key ecosystem actors. It advances a novel conceptual framework of sales-related networking strategies that foster social capital development and optimally thin crossing points across a selling ecosystem.

Political power of Italian rectors: an analysis of recruitments in the period 2001–2021

ABSTRACT We examine the political power exerted by Italian rectors by investigating the preferential treatment received by the organisational subunits they belong to in terms of personnel resource allocation. During the rectors’ mandate, their organisational subunits tend to grow significantly more (by ∼9%) than the others. The effect persists even after the implementation of the New public management-inspired policy – the Gelmini reform.

Impact of performance-based budgeting on quality outcomes in U.S. military health care facilities.

Performance-based budgeting (PBB) is a variation of pay for performance that has been used in government hospitals but could be applicable to any integrated system. It works by increasing or decreasing funding based on preestablished performance thresholds, which incentivizes organizations to improve performance. In late 2006, the U.S. Army implemented a PBB program that tied hospital-level funding decisions to performance on key cost and quality-related metrics. The aim of this study was to estimate the impact of PBB on quality improvement in U.S. Army health care facilities. This study used a retrospective difference-in-differences analysis of data from two Defense Health Agency data repositories. The merged data set encompassed administrative, demographic, and performance information about 428 military health care facilities. Facility-level performance data on quality indicators were compared between 187 Army PBB facilities and a comparison group of 241 non-PBB Navy and Air Force facilities before and after program implementation. The Army's PBB programs had a positive impact on quality performance. Relative to comparison facilities, facilities that participated in PBB programs increased performance for over half of the indicators under investigation. Furthermore, performance was either sustained or continued to improve over 5 years for five of the six performance indicators examined long term. Study findings indicate that PBB may be an effective policy mechanism for improving facility-level performance on quality indicators. This study adds to the extant literature on pay for performance by examining the specific case of PBB. It demonstrates that quality performance can be influenced internally through centralized budgeting processes. Though specific to military hospitals, the findings might have applicability to other public and private sector hospitals who wish to incentivize performance internally in their organizational subunits through centralized budgeting processes.

Effective subunits in ineffective systems: Simultaneous tight and loose coupling in higher education data use

Higher education institutions are pressured to use data for university rankings, accreditation, decision making, and technical support of students and faculty. However, these organizations also experience barriers and resistance to such data-driven aspirations. Rather than simply focusing on the whole organization, this research attends to variations in organizational subunits and asks what processes help and hinder data use. It pays attention to the puzzle of how data use variation can lead to effective subunits just as data fragmentation contributes to ineffective systems. Although universities may create centralized coordinating bodies, the structural and cultural bases of loosely coupled university subunits may upset these efforts. Using the case of a university attempting to centralize its data systems, we employ in-depth interviews of senior and mid-level administrators to understand why technical changes happen within specific subunits even as only ceremonial changes happen for the larger organization. This suggests new insights for interrogating how loose and tight coupling can co-exist in the same organization.

BEYOND ORGANIC OF MANAGEMENT CONTROL STRUCTURE

The research objective is to find a new management control structure, in addition to the existing models: mechanistic and organic. The approach used is hermeneutic to reinterpret the text of management control structure in the Padang restaurant from the relevant literature. After finding the meaning of the text, then field observations were carried out. All relevant literature is positioned as a neutral text which is then reinterpreted to get the essence of the concept of management control structure. The research finding is the design of the Padang restaurant management control structure is the development of the organic model. Each restaurant branch is an autonomous organizational sub-unit, which includes three main characteristics, first, a horizontal and non-hierarchical organizational structure design, and a strategic business unit character. Managers in each branch are given full authority in making operational decisions of the company, a picture of radical decentralization can be seen. Second, the communication network follows the design rhythm of a flat organizational structure, namely fluid communication, dominated by informal communication. The third is budgeting, which is flexible, that is, there is no conventional budgeting that contains details, but only outlines.

Leveraging Collective Mindfulness in Dynamic Environments: Managing Performance in Sub-units

The dynamic capabilities perspective highlights that higher order capabilities enable organizations to adapt and evolve by sensing changes in the business environment and reorganizing their resources and capabilities accordingly. Yet research has not clearly explained how dynamic capabilities emerge and develop. We build upon the sparse literature that indicates that collective mindfulness may facilitate the creation of dynamic capabilities, and empirically test how collective mindfulness affects sensing and reconfiguring capabilities, and performance in organizational sub-units. We collect data using an online survey from one of the largest housing finance organizations in India (n= 1450), and analyze it using multilevel structural equation modelling. We find that dynamic capabilities, particularly sensing capabilities, mediate the relationship between sub-unit mindfulness and sub-unit performance. Drawing from the attention-based view of the firm, our study contributes by strengthening the theoretical linkages between collective mindfulness and dynamic capabilities, and by offering recommendations for practice.

The Multi-Level Nature of Psychological Ownership: Exploring its Antecedents and Consequences

Scholars emphasize the importance of psychological ownership (i.e., a feeling of possession towards an object independent of legal ownership) for desired behaviors and attitudes in corporate contexts. Psychological ownership is a multi-level phenomenon, meaning that the emotional attachment it implies might pertain to the overall organization as well as to organizational sub-units (e.g. business units). Hitherto, however, there is little empirical evidence on the antecedents, consequences, and vertical spillover effects of psychological ownership. To address this research gap, our paper presents arguments explaining how psychological ownership positively affects organizational performance by diffusing from higher levels of the organization towards lower levels. Furthermore, we suggest that error management culture and high affective commitment within teams, constitutes environmental conditions that let psychological ownership thrive. To test our theorizing, we created a unique dataset combining archival data with two surveys among 1,536 employees and 66 managers of an organization. Our results indicate that psychological ownership towards the business unit indeed enhances performance and mediates the effect of psychological ownership towards the entire organization. Additionally, our findings suggest that error management culture and the increase of affective commitment in teams pose mechanisms that can enhance psychological ownership towards the business unit. With these findings, our study yields important theoretical and practical implications.

Creativity in problem solving to improve complex health outcomes: Insights from hospitals seeking to improve cardiovascular care.

IntroductionImproving performance often requires health care teams to employ creativity in problem solving, a key attribute of learning health systems. Despite increasing interest in the role of creativity in health care, empirical evidence documenting how this concept manifests in real‐world contexts remains limited.MethodsWe conducted a qualitative study to understand how creativity was fostered during problem solving in 10 hospitals that took part in a 2‐year collaborative to improve cardiovascular care outcomes. We analyzed interviews with 197 hospital team members involved in the collaborative, focusing on work processes or outcomes that participants self‐identified as creative or promoting creativity. We sought to identify recurrent patterns across instances of creativity in problem solving.ResultsParticipants reported examples of creativity at both stages typically identified in problem solving research and practice: uncovering non‐obvious problems and finding novel solutions. Creativity generally involved the assembly of an “ecological view” of the care process, which reflected a more complete understanding of relationships between individual care providers, organizational sub‐units, and their environment. Teams used three prominent behaviors to construct the ecological view: (a) collecting new and diverse information, (b) accepting (rather than dismissing) disruptive information, and (c) employing empathy to understand and share feelings of others.ConclusionsWe anticipate that findings will be useful to researchers and practitioners who wish to understand how creativity can be fostered in problem solving to improve clinical outcomes and foster learning health systems.

Unfazed by Shackles: Do Constraints Really Affect Team Mindfulness?

Although research shows that collective mindfulness may have significant organizational consequences, studies have not adequately addressed how collective mindfulness is manifested in organizational sub-units such as groups and teams. Nor have these studies addressed the question- what affects collective mindfulness in teams. Using survey data from a housing finance organization, we explore how ‘team mindfulness’ is affected by two antecedents, namely- organizational constraints, and the connectedness of team members with people outside the team. We find that constraints, particularly those which are interpersonal in nature, negatively affect team mindfulness, while connectedness moderates these relationships. By exploring the antecedents of team mindfulness, we contribute to a deeper understanding of collective mindfulness in organizations. We discuss the implications of this study for theory and practice. Keywords: team mindfulness; constraints; connectedness

PENGARUH SISTEM INFORMASI MANAJEMEN LINGKUNGAN TERHADAP GOOD GOVERMENT GOVERNANCE

An Environmental Management Information System is an information system that produces outputs using inputs that can process all the information needed to meet the organization's objectives for management activities. A good Environmental Management Information System is able to balance the costs and benefits to be gained, meaning an environmental management information system that will save costs, increase revenue that arises from very useful information. The organization must realize that meticulous technology can design and implement an environmental management information system to suit its desires in determining cost limits from the point of benefit to be obtained, then the resulting Environmental Management Information System will provide benefits and money. Integrated and flexible information technology is an environmental management information system tool, in information processing in order to design an environmental management information system that is able to serve the main task. The purpose of the environmental management information system is to meet the general information needs of all managers in the company or within the organizational subunits of the company. The environmental management information system provides users with information in the form of reports and outputs from various mathematical simulation models. The results of this study indicate that the environmental management information system can provide good or bad changes in Good Government Governance that are managed by the company. This research was conducted at PT Bukit Asam Indonesia located in South Sumatra.
 Keywords: Environmental Management Information System, Good Government Governance

RECONCILING COMPETING INSTITUTIONAL LOGICS IN CORPORATE VENTURE CAPITAL UNITS

Prior literature highlights the competing institutional logics corporate venture capital (CVC) units have to face due to their intermediary position between the two environments in which they operate — the VC industry and the corporate firm. By conducting an inductive case study of 20 CVC units, we unravel how novel organisational subunits reconcile the conflicting logics in terms of their organisational structure. We show that, instead of fully aligning with one or the other environment, most units form hybrid organisations incorporating elements of both logics. Our data suggest that CVC units tend to follow the hybridisation strategy of selective coupling rather than apply strategies of compromising or decoupling. The type of structure depends on factors on the intra-, inter-organisational and industry level. We further suggest a specific hybridisation pattern that is especially beneficial in the achievement of a unit’s strategic objectives. Our findings contribute to both institutional theory and CVC literature.

Bridging Cultural Holes in Organizations: The Dynamic Structure of Social Networks and Organizational Vocabularies Within and Across Subunits

The mechanisms by which social networks and organizational vocabularies combine jointly to affect communication patterns across organizational boundaries remain largely unexplored. In this paper, we examine the mutually constitutive relation between the network ties through which organizational members communicate with each other and the vocabularies that they use to describe their organization. We suggest that the dynamic structure of social networks and organizational vocabularies is contingent on the formal design of organizational subunits. Within subunit boundaries, members who interact with each other are more likely to develop similar vocabularies over time. Interestingly, between subunits, the more two members share similar organizational vocabularies, the more likely they are to form a tie over time. We find empirical evidence for these arguments in a longitudinal study conducted among the managers of a multiunit organization. Organizational vocabularies, we suggest, may sustain communication patterns across organizational boundaries, thus bridging cultural holes within organizations.

Group Learning Through the Lens of Learner Autonomy

Learner autonomy describes the individual who exercises personal agency in his or her learning. Similar to an individual, groups—that is, collections of people with a defined purpose often represented by organizational subunits—also engage in intentional learning to support and improve existing processes or identify and pursue new opportunities. The purpose of this theoretical discussion is to characterize aspects of intentional group learning using the theoretical framework associated with learner autonomy. Applied to the group level, notions of agentic learning, modes through which agentic learning is exercised, and regulation will be discussed through this lens of autonomy. This discussion may prove useful in describing how organizational groups learn intentionally and in developing processes that improve such learning.

When do entrepreneurial firms benefit from transactive memory systems?

PurposeDespite the recognized importance of transactive memory systems (TMS) for firm performance, this relationship remains misconstrued for entrepreneurial firms. Some researchers argue that entrepreneurial firms benefit from effective knowledge management systems, whereas others contend that such systems may prove expensive for resource-scarce entrepreneurial firms. Accordingly, the purpose of this paper is to explore this relationship in the context of Indian entrepreneurial firms. Furthermore, the authors argue that relationship conflict among organizational members impacts the TMS–performance link for entrepreneurial firms.Design/methodology/approachData were collected from 127 entrepreneurial hotels in the Uttarakhand state of India and analyzed using multiple linear regression.FindingsThe findings of this study establish a positive relationship between TMS and firm performance for entrepreneurial firms. Also, it is found that TMS becomes more nuanced and beneficial in the presence of relationship conflict between organizational sub-units and is a unique finding that can be potentially helpful to entrepreneurs bestowed with the task of knowledge management in their organizations.Practical implicationsThis study offers at least two insights to entrepreneurs. First, establishing TMS – i.e. managing knowledge in such a way that specialization units are created, credibility is established among the knowledge units, and there is scope for sufficient communication – leads to enhanced performance in entrepreneurial organizations. Second, as the level of relationship conflict within the entrepreneurial firm increases, it becomes all the more crucial to emphasize TMS.Originality/valueAlthough researchers in the literature of knowledge management have emphasized a lot on its performance outcomes, relatively little research effort has been placed on understanding this link for entrepreneurial firms. The current study filled this void in the literature and offered crucial implications for entrepreneurial firms operating in dynamic environments such as hotels. Additionally, the data collected from a relatively unexplored context of Indian hospitality industry offer a valuable addition to the entrepreneurship literature.

Does it take three to dance the Tango? Organizational design, triadic structures and boundary spanning across subunits

In this paper, we investigate the processes of boundary spanning across subunits within organizational networks. We hypothesize that patterns of advice across organizational subunits are explained by different triadic mechanisms depending on the organizational design of the intra-organizational network. In organizational networks characterized by limited hierarchical differentiation among members and horizontal coordination, we found triadic cyclic closure to be positively associated to boundary spanning across subunits; but when the network reflects an organizational structure with formal hierarchical differentiation among members, then we found triadic transitive closure to be associated to boundary spanning across subunits. We test these predictions in two empirical studies consisting of two organizational networks that differ from each other in organizational design. We adopt a Bayesian approach for exponential random graph models specifically designed for the statistical analysis of interpersonal relationships within and across subgroups or subunits. We suggest that the effects of informal, triadic network configurations on boundary spanning are contingent on formal organizational design.

Contemporary organizational theory: The demographic, relational, and cultural perspectives

AbstractWe review three perspectives—demographic, relational, and cultural—that have dominated sociological research on organizations during the past four decades. These perspectives arose in reaction to the atomistic and rationalist–adaptationist assumptions of earlier perspectives on organizations. These perspectives have different conceptions of social structure and thus different conceptions of what creates opportunities for and constraints on action. The demographic perspective holds that social structure is constituted by distributions of social actors along salient dimensions of social and physical space; the relational perspective, by webs of social relationships; and the cultural perspective, by widely shared and patterned understandings of reality and possibility. These perspectives also have different conceptions of identity and therefore motivations for action. For demographers, identity derives from position, absolute or relative, along salient dimensions of social life; for relational scholars, from ties among individuals, groups, and organizations; and for cultural scholars, from social interaction. All three perspectives have been applied to explain behavior at five different levels of analysis: the individual, group or organizational subunit, organization, industry or organizational population, and field. Up to the 1990s, these perspectives were generally applied separately, but over the past two decades, studies have increasingly used multiple perspectives.

Adaptive Institutional Change: Managing Digital Works at the Museum of Modern Art

From digital video to software-driven installations, digital art is now present in museums around the world. Museum systems designed for object-based collections like paintings and sculpture do not address the collections management and conservation requirements for these new technologies and their associated hardware. In this article the authors investigate processes through which digital art becomes embedded in museums. Based on original research conducted at The Museum of Modern Art in New York, we argue that the introduction of digital art to MoMA did not lead, as recent literature suggests, to disruptive or radical changes of existing institutional practices. Instead, the result has been organizational subunit proliferation and adjustments to established practices and procedures. Through our study of managing digital art at MoMA, we engage Science and Technology Studies and the institutional analysis tradition in the sociology of organizations to advance the understanding of processes of change in art museums.

Boundary Organization Practices for Collaboration in Enterprise Integration

Multiparty collaboration is particularly challenging in large-scale enterprise integration (EI) implementations as diverse organizational subunits and external consultants need to work together to enact transformational change. We argue from prior research that a boundary organization—a formal organizational space that enables participants with divergent interests to collaborate—provides a relatively durable structure to manage emergent tensions and conflicts among stakeholders in EI projects. To better understand how a boundary organization enables ongoing, dynamic, multiparty collaboration, we introduce the concept of boundary organization practices to describe practices enacted as part of the boundary organization to define the working rules and arrangements for diverse stakeholders to work together. We conducted a longitudinal exploratory case study of a multiyear EI implementation in a large logistics organization. Our analysis of the longitudinal data led us to identify three sets of boundary organization practices (i.e., organizing to negotiate, to contain, and to sustain). These sets of practices emerged to address the divergence that arose in each of the three phases (designing, realizing, and leveraging) of EI implementation. We also find artifacts to be an integral part of the boundary organization practices as they motivated, coordinated, and enabled collaboration among diverse stakeholders.

L’honneur dans l’oeuvre de Montesquieu par Federico Bonzi

textual meaning would enrich the discussion of the generic boundaries between comedy and tragedy, as well as of the fraught relationship between politics and theater. A fine discussion of clemency underscores how the extra-legal decision to take no action in the face of crime corresponds to a redefinition of the king from executor of the law to its embodiment, an observation that illuminates readings of Cinna and Rotrou’s Vencenslas (although concluding this interpretation with Rotrou’s historically and thematically anterior Crisante does little to reinforce this argument). Returning to Racine, Bilis shows how the “king’s judgment becomes the central problem of the play, not its resolution” (185) in Mithridate and Phèdre, whose monarchs are blinded by their emotions and an over-reliance on ambiguous physical evidence reminiscent of tragicomic dénouements evoked earlier in the study. Even Racine fails in the contradictory task of constructing a moving spectacle around a faultless sovereign. Passing Judgment convincingly argues that this irreconcilable esthetic-political paradox pushed seventeenth-century playwrights toward the dynamic, original artistic practices that characterize the golden age of French tragedy. Louisiana State University Jeffrey M. Leichman Bonzi, Federico. L’honneur dans l’œuvre de Montesquieu. Paris: Champion, 2016. ISBN 978-2-7453-3052-9. Pp. 430. Bonzi’s examination of honor, the fundamental principle in Montesquieu’s definition of monarchy in the Esprit des lois, fills an important gap in Montesquieu studies. Although there have been book-length works devoted to virtue and fear—the principles of democracy and despotism respectively in the Esprit des lois—there has not been, to date, such an in-depth study of honor. Bonzi’s effort exhibits both strengths and weaknesses. First among the study’s strong points is its genetic focus. Bonzi examines all of Montesquieu’s works in order to account for the constitutive ideological, philosophical, and literary elements that would merge over time into the concept of honor as it would ultimately appear in the Esprit des lois. Additionally, Bonzi is to be praised for eschewing a purely linear, evolutionary examination. Instead, he teases out clusters of ideas surrounding five thematic nuclei: distinction, the relationship of the general to the specific, power, liberty, and nobility. Overall the book is well organized, with the exploration of these nuclei divided into chapters based on chronological periods of Montesquieu’s writing, each containing logical subsections. At the same time, however, certain stylistic and explanatory weaknesses within the organizational sub-units may present an obstacle even to highly educated readers, including professional eighteenth-century specialists. In spite of the book’s solid macro-structure, the more localized prose within subsections can be hazy, with too-frequent skips and jumps from one concept or reference to the next. Exegetic assessments are frequently made without adequate demonstration, as if the ideas go without saying, or as if 250 FRENCH REVIEW 91.4 Reviews 251 readers will understand them implicitly. References to other period works are similarly passed over in too rapid a manner without adequate context or explanation. Consequently , readers may often find themselves lost in a confused flurry of complex ideas. Bonzi clearly shows his own mastery of Montesquieu’s works and of a vast body of related literature from antiquity through the eighteenth century. However, Bonzi fails to raise readers to his level and guide them on the long, difficult journey through Montesquieu’s texts. As a result, the potential audience for this book is narrow. L’honneur is likely to appeal to professional scholars who are intimately familiar with the full gamut of Montesquieu’s works and whose research focuses specifically on the principles of government in the Esprit des lois.Other readers will find the work unsuited to their needs. Ohio University Christopher Coski Bouloumié,Arlette, éd. Modernité de Michel Tournier. Rennes: PU de Rennes, 2016. ISBN 978-2-7535-4861-9. Pp. 218. Michel Tournier nous a quittés en 2016. Ce recueil, en cinq parties de deux à trois articles, est un hommage rendu par douze spécialistes de son œuvre. Une importance nouvelle est donnée aux ouvrages“mineurs”que les succès romanesques ont pu éclipser. Un dossier de quatorze lettres et facsimilés, ainsi que...