Search results

Social media such as blogs are being widely used in organizations in order to undertake internal communication and share knowledge, rendering them important boundary objects. A root metaphor of the boundary object domain is the notion of relatively static and inert objects spanning similarly static boundaries. A strong sociomaterial perspective allows the immisciblity of object and boundary to be challenged, since a key tenet of this perspective is the ongoing and mutually constituted performance of the material and social. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

The aim of the research is to draw upon sociomateriality to explore the operation of social media platforms as intra-organizational boundary objects. Given the novel perspective of this study and its social constructivist ontology, the authors adopt an exploratory, interpretivist research design. This is operationalized as a case study of the use of an organizational blog by a major UK Government department over an extended period. A novel aspect of the study is the use of data released under a Freedom of Information request.

The authors present three exemplar instances of how the blog and organizational boundaries were performed in the situated practice of the case study organization. The authors draw on the literature on boundary objects, blogs and sociomateriality in order to provide a theoretical explication of the mutually constituted performance of the blog and organizational boundaries. The authors also invoke the notion of “extended chains of intra-action” to theorize changes in the wider organization.

Adoption of a sociomaterial lens provides a highly novel perspective of boundary objects and organizational boundaries. The study highlights the indeterminate and dynamic nature of boundary objects and boundaries, with both being in an intra-active state of becoming challenging conventional conceptions. The study demonstrates that specific material-discursive practices arising from the situated practice of the blog at the respective boundaries were performative, reconfiguring the blog and boundaries and being generative of further changes in the organization.

Ethnic minority entrepreneurs (EMEs) are traditionally associated with lower growth industry sectors. The purpose of this paper is to draw on the theory of mixed embeddedness to determine if more recent EMEs have been able to break out of lower growth sectors and if break out varies across ethnic minority groups. It also compares entrepreneurial quality in terms of weekly hours worked, weekly earnings and job satisfaction.

Quantitative inferential statistical analysis is undertaken on data drawn from the large scale, social sciences data set for the UK, Understanding Society.

The study finds that break out is not associated with being a recent EME but does vary across ethnic minority groups. Break out is found to be associated with gender, education, English language proficiency and occupational status. Some variation in entrepreneurial quality is found for both recent EMEs and across ethnic minority groups.

Understanding the nature and quality of ethnic minority entrepreneurship is important since it informs public debate about migration, informs policy and shapes activities of future EMEs.

The study provides a theoretically grounded interpretation of the explanatory variables associated with EME break out and entrepreneurial quality. Second, it provides a large confirmatory study of break out and finally, it also finds an important empirical nuance to the concept of opportunity structure by identifying a variation over time in both external and socio-demographic factors.

The purpose of this paper is to apply the theoretical lens of liminality to a consideration of non-traditional entrepreneurial locations. The study exemplifies such locations by empirically exploring self-storage based businesses: that is, businesses that operate for a significant number of hours each week from self-storage facilities.

The study draws on interviews with entrepreneurs operating self-storage based businesses and operators of self-storage facilities. The interview data is supported by site visits, businesses’ websites, promotional and marketing materials and press coverage.

Consistent with the liminal lens, entrepreneurs view their time operating from self-storage as a transitional phase. They do not suffer the high levels of uncertainty and unsettledness usually associated with liminality. However, they experience anxiety related to perceptions of operating from a business location outside the mainstream. Whilst the entrepreneurs benefit from additional services provided by the self-storage operators, this may be at the expense of extra “liminal” work and anxiety experienced by the storage operators’ staff.

The study contributes to entrepreneurship by answering Steyaert and Katz’s (2004) call for studies in unfamiliar places and spaces. The authors identify a number of ways in which liminality can arise when considering entrepreneurial locations. Drawing on extant entrepreneurial studies, the authors theorise that idiosyncratic characteristics of such spaces attract entrepreneurs with particular personal characteristics and needs, who will in turn be influenced by those spaces. In the case of self-storage facilities, the liminal space allows trepidatious entrepreneurs to “try on” (Hawkins and Edwards, 2015, p. 39) operating a new venture.

This study aims to demonstrate empirically the varied mechanisms through which supply chain practices of indigenous Chinese companies are influenced by foreign‐owned multinational companies (MNCs) operating within China. It also provides empirical evidence of how the foreign‐owned MNCs are influenced by the coercive pressures arising from the local cultural norms and begins an exploration of the mechanisms through which isomorphic pressures operate between industries.

The study adopts a multi‐disciplinary approach by applying institutional theory from the field of organisational studies. The study is based on 27 in‐depth interviews in matched pairs of firms consisting of an indigenous Chinese firm and a foreign‐owned MNC in three industries. The interviews also include suppliers and third‐party logistics providers and hence the study extends beyond the dyad.

The findings show a “startling homogeneity” between the SCM practices of the paired firms and across the three industries studied. They also provide empirical evidence of the rich and varied mechanisms through which isomorphic pressures operate, and demonstrate that the pressures affect the foreign‐owned MNCs as well as the Chinese firms.

The study identifies a wide range of mechanisms that firms can use to model their SCM practices on those of other firms. The study also identifies a range of implications for policy.

To the authors' knowledge, this study is the first to explore empirically the rich and varied mechanisms through which isomorphic pressures operate.

The study goes beyond the more frequent interest in information privacy to identify other notions of privacy within the workplace. The purpose of this paper is to explore how these additional notions of privacy relate to key demographic and employment characteristics and how data protection training, often instigated as a means of highlighting and addressing issues relating to privacy of customers’ data, is related to employees’ notions of their own workplace privacy.

The study was undertaken in two telephone call centres since they offered a working environment where staff are highly monitored and hence there are likely to be issues relating to employee privacy. The study is exploratory in nature and adopts a mixed method approach based on a questionnaire survey that was followed by semi‐structured, qualitative face to face interviews.

The survey findings identified three distinct notions of privacy; the concern for personal information privacy (CfPIP), the concern for working environment privacy (CfWEP) and the concern for solitude privacy (CfSP). The findings were supported by the qualitative data provided by the interviews. CfWEP is found to be a gendered issue, with women showing a greater concern for the privacy of their working environment. Finally, the findings indicate that effective data protection training are associated with increased concern for their own privacy in the form of CfPIP, and that inclusion of data protection issues in performance reviews is associated their concern for CfWEP.

Previous studies of privacy in the workplace focus on the simplistic notion of information privacy. This study goes beyond such studies and provides empirically‐based evidence of multiple dimensions of privacy operant in a single, real‐world workplace setting. It also provides empirical insight to the previously unexplored issue of the association between data protection training employees’ notions of their own privacy.

Organisations are increasingly using project or programme management offices (PMOs) to co‐ordinate activities across information system (IS) projects. The purpose of this paper is to explore how the presence of PMOs and their involvement in IS projects relates to project success and to senior management satisfaction with those projects.

The study uses an exploratory survey method to consider the relationship of both the presence of a PMO and the involvement of the PMO in five key practices that span the project life‐cycle on project success and management satisfaction.

Counter‐intuitively, it is found that the presence of a PMO reduces senior management satisfaction with IS projects and has no effect on the overall success rates of those projects. The study draws on ideas of escalation of commitment to explain this finding.

The findings suggest that it is more important for PMOs to be involved at the start and at the review stage of projects, rather than in the on‐going monitoring, which is where much of their current focus is.

This study is the first, that the authors are aware of, to identify a reduced level of management satisfaction associated with the presence of a PMO. It is also the first study to consider PMO involvement at the level of key project practices and hence to be able to suggest how to understand and address the reduced management satisfaction identified.

In April 1988, the National Reference Center for Bioethics Literature (NRC) (see sidebar) published “AIDS: Law, Ethics and Public Policy.” As part of the NRC's Scope Note Series, the paper offered a current overview of issues and viewpoints related to AIDS and ethics. Not meant to be a comprehensive review of all AIDS literature, it contained selected citations referring to facts, opinion, and legal precedents, as well as a discussion of different ethical aspects surrounding AIDS. Updating the earlier work, this bibliography provides ethical citations from literature published from 1988 to the present.

While scholars recognize that digital technology is a major tool employed by contemporary learners to access knowledge, its full capacity is yet to be utilized. This paper investigates opportunities to increase individual learning engagement and knowledge retention in higher education and corporate environments through integrating educational content with innovative digital technology. Currently, within commonly adopted e-learning platforms, the most utilized online content delivery and student progress assessment tools in leadership education appear to be discussion-based instruction, along with written assignments, and research projects (Jenkins, 2016). To inform leadership educators’ choice in innovative tools for increased effectiveness of instruction, this paper shares an experience of delivering integrated global leadership education pedagogical content (i.e., cross-cultural competency instruction for graduate management class at a U.S.-based public university) within a gamified real-time multiuser learning platform—MyAltis—and discusses implications for leadership education.