Managers face an ethical dilemma in the allocation of scarce resources to corporate social responsibility because the underlying managerial incentives behind such CSR spending can range from pure altruism to complete financial orientation. Despite the importance of the managerial role in implementing CSR, prior studies generally have treated the role of managers as an exogenous factor. This study builds on recent studies on the managerial characteristics in studies on CSR by examining how managerial efficiency influences (...) the outcomes of CSR. Using a newly developed measure of managerial efficiency, we find that, on average, managerial efficiency is positively associated with a subsequent change in corporate social performance, although the association is weak in the level of total CSP. We find that efficient managers are more likely to engage in the product-related CSR that directly connects to corporate financial performance but are less likely to engage in environment-related CSR. We also find that CSP is positively associated with CFP with efficient managers. Our findings contribute to management and other stakeholders’ understanding of the association of CSR to its outcomes, CSP and/or CFP, which is hinged by the indispensable moderating role of managerial efficiency. (shrink)

Managers face an ethical dilemma in the allocation of scarce resources to corporate social responsibility (CSR) because the underlying managerial incentives behind such CSR spending can range from pure altruism to complete financial orientation. Despite the importance of the managerial role in implementing CSR, prior studies generally have treated the role of managers as an exogenous factor. This study builds on recent studies on the managerial characteristics in studies on CSR by examining how managerial efficiency (...) influences the outcomes of CSR. Using a newly developed measure of managerial efficiency, we find that, on average, managerial efficiency is positively associated with a subsequent change in corporate social performance (CSP), although the association is weak in the level of total CSP. We find that efficient managers are more likely to engage in the product-related CSR that directly connects to corporate financial performance (CFP) but are less likely to engage in environment-related CSR. We also find that CSP is positively associated with CFP with efficient managers. Our findings contribute to management and other stakeholders’ understanding of the association of CSR to its outcomes, CSP and/or CFP, which is hinged by the indispensable moderating role of managerial efficiency. (shrink)

It is a supreme irony that given the requirement for rebellious creativity, organizations discourage individuality. Accordingly, these cases of creative rebellion contain the seeds of a more informed criticism of the dominant management paradigm. The conventional notion of efficiency is questioned. The concept of moral efficiency is explained. The cases examined describe and analyze: (1) Refusal to concur with the findings of an aircraft accident report that covers up senior officer management weakness. (2) Falsification of data in order (...) to overcome the dysfunctional impact of a management information system. A deconstruction of these stories suggests theoretical as well as practical tension between the dominant normative management paradigm and the manner in which an innovative perspective of individual ethics pushes toward adaptive solutions to problems that cannot be solved by orthodoxy. (shrink)

The purpose of the research is to develop a new methodological basis for identifying, analyzing and solving problems of international corporations export-import activities and to ground the directions for ensuring their business excellence. The approach originality provides introduction of a conceptual model that aims to eliminate the negative symptoms of international corporations export-import activities based on the results of comprehensive market research, effectiveness of export-import activities and calculation of the integrated indicator of business excellence. The leading corporations of Slovakia and (...) India in the production of bi-axially oriented polypropylene (BOPP) films were the primary basis for this study. The results of the research showed the need to implement a system of managerial innovation for reasoning the directions of ensuring international corporations business excellence. This is achieved because of using logically formalized methods and provides the improvement of organizational and structural interaction of management entities in the process of solving export-import activity problems. Important factors for ensuring business excellence are also the optimization of export and import costs, as well as an increase in export revenue for Slovak companies, and an increase in market share and cost optimization for Indian companies. The practical value of the obtained results is to develop a set of managerial innovations that can improve the efficiency of export-import activities and improve international corporations business. (shrink)

We examined whether and how managerial ability affects the relationship between customer concentration and corporate performance. Based on a novel measure of managerial ability, we found that customer concentration has a significant negative effect on corporate performance, while managerial ability can mitigate this effect. The negative effect of customer concentration is only significant in the subsample of low ability and lower efficiency in asset utilization, while the moderating effect of managerial ability is significant for all (...) levels of asset utilization efficiency and more significant for firms with a lower gross margin. The results are robust to numerous robustness tests and endogeneity concerns. Additional analysis of mechanisms shows that in addition to superior operating ability, competent managers select major customers who are more beneficial to their company and decrease the sensitivity of their research and development investment to customers. These findings indicate that the heterogeneity of managerial ability plays an important role in the supplier–customer context when the supplier firm generally faces one or more concentrated customers. (shrink)

This article evaluates effectiveness and costs of external regulation, in particular the Sarbanes-Oxley Act of 2002 (SOX) in restricting managerial malfeasance and safeguarding shareholder interests. It discusses the role of managerial ethics as an alternative corporate governance mechanism to protect shareholder value. This article builds a mathematical model to illustrate shareholders' choices of best corporate governance mechanisms, taking into account the influence of managerial ethics, effectiveness and costs of monitoring. We suggest that the best corporate governance design (...) and the optimal monitoring expenses are influenced by managerial types, monitoring efficiency, and effectiveness of ethics education. We conclude that stringent regulation and monitoring may not always enhance shareholder value. When managerial ethics could be improved by ethics education or social norms, ethics education may be a better alternative than stringent regulation. (shrink)

The culture conveyed by global firms becomes the perfect tool to embody and strengthen the spirit of our time. Nothing is capable of enhancing and strengthening the values of the individual and his passions as the capitalist company. This is why the words and virtues of ‘business’ are becoming the words and virtues of our social life including politics, health care, education, and so on. Merit, efficiency, competition, leadership, incentives and innovation are now the only ‘good’ words of communal (...) life. In the absence of other safe places capable of producing a different culture and values, the virtues of companies present themselves as the only ones to be recognized and cultivated. This essay discusses virtues that, although not considered important by the current business culture, nevertheless are becoming more and more crucial for the survival and growth of organizations. In particular, work-related suffering shows that there are virtues that are not ‘buyable’. This advances a point about the necessity of welcoming vulnerability in work communities to prevent the systematic destruction of its values, creating a global culture of immunity. Conversely, such destruction will eventually lead to the dismantling of most of the world organizations. (shrink)

The real estate industry is characterized by a high degree of financial intensity and is more significant in certain areas. The relative enterprises require certain financial ability and large shareholders’ controlling power to support their survivals and competitiveness. However, due to the multiple adverse impacts of current state policies on banks and private capital, the problem of capital restraints of real estate has become increasingly serious. From a corporate governance perspective, this paper studies the interactions among financial constraints, ownership concentration (...) and corporate performance under different shareholding states: by analyzing the quantitative characteristics of equity structure and searching for the appropriate range of the largest shareholder holding ratio, which has considered both the financial sustainability and characteristics. It is found that raising the ownership concentration could enhance supervision effect rather than encroachment, effectively ease the financial constraints and improve the performance of enterprises, both of which are significant under high ownership concentration. Financial constraints play a significant intermediary effect in absolute holdings and have obvious regulatory effects in decentralized equity. Also, the mechanisms of ownership concentration are reflected in the strengthening of corporate supervision, reduced agency costs, improved operating efficiency, and increased investment attractiveness. The adjusted behavior adds to the responsibility awareness rather than free-ride psychology, forming a dynamic game on financial decisions. Their financial sustainability in areas would provide a nationwide reference for governance reform and managerial behavior. (shrink)

This study examines perceptions of ethical climate and ethical practices in a sample of Polish organizations and the relationship between ethical climate and behaviors believed to be associated with successful managers. A survey of Polish managerial employees (N = 200) indicated that “efficiency” was the most reported, and “professionalism” was the least reported ethical climate type. A majority of the respondents (61.5 %) perceived successful managers as being ethical, and in particular, those that believed that their organization had (...) a “professionalism” and “independence” climate perceived a strong positive link between success and ethical behavior. Implications of these findings are then discussed. (shrink)

This study aims to examine the main determinants of efficiency of both conventional and Islamic Saudi banks and then choose the best fit model among machine learning prediction models, Chi-squared automatic interaction detector, linear regression, and neural network ). The data were collected from the annual financial reports of Saudi banks from 2014 to 2018. The Saudi banking sector consists of 11 banks, 4 of which are Islamic. In this study, the major financial ratios are subgrouped into the profitability (...) ratios, managerial practices, asset and loans, capital adequacy ratios, and liquidity. First, regression analysis is implemented with efficiency ratio as a dependent variable and the proxies of banks’ profitability, liquidity, asset quality, management ratios, and capital adequacy ratios as independent variables. Next, the feature selection is applied for different prediction models. Subsequently, 4 prediction models were developed to choose the best fit. The performance metrics have also been evaluated. Regression results exhibit that the efficiency of both conventional and Islamic banks is highly affected by profitability, liquidity, and managerial practices. Finally, we choose the best prediction model with the highest R2 in the training and the testing phases with/out feature selection that is the CHAID model. The best predictors of cost efficiency for Saudi banks are the capital ratios, namely, CAR total and CAR tier 1. Findings are theoretically and practically important to academics, investors, and policymakers. Policymakers can benefit from the novelty of this study in building an early warning system using the CHAID model to predict different financial distress scenarios. (shrink)

Continual pressure on managers, their efficiency, and the need to search for novel solutions to problems can lead to psychologically demanding situations. In efforts to understand the main obstacles to work and to effectively manage work-related processes, and in the need to achieve personal development, new approaches that are based on existential philosophies emerge. The aim of this article is to highlight the ways in which existential approaches have been used or discussed in management and to show that existential (...) themes and their applications in management can also be found in the Eastern tradition of thought. The paper presents six case vignettes from management practice that use Western and Eastern existential insights and offer recommendations for self-development of managers. The paper concludes that although it is difficult or impossible to create a unified framework of existential philosophy of management because of the diversity of existential approaches and because of the problematic nature of comparing Eastern and Western philosophies, it is possible to work towards gathering applicable insights and values. (shrink)

In the early twentieth century, fatigue research marked an area of conflicting scientific, industrial, and cultural understandings of working bodies. These different understandings of the working body marked a key site of political conflict during the growth of industrial capitalism. Many fatigue researchers understood fatigue to be a physiological fact and allied themselves with Progressive-era reformers in urging industrial regulation. Opposed to these researchers were advocates of Taylorism and scientific management, who held that fatigue was a mental event and that (...) productivity could be perpetually increased through managerial efficiency. Histories of this conflict typically cease with the end of the First World War, when it is assumed that industrial fatigue research withered away. This article extends the history of fatigue research through examining the activities of the Harvard Fatigue Laboratory in the 1920s and 1930s. The Laboratory developed sophisticated biochemical techniques to study the blood of exercising individuals. In particular, it found that exercising individuals could attain a biochemically “steady state,” or equilibrium, and extrapolated from this to assert that fatigue was psychological, not physiological, in nature. In contrast to Progressive-era research, the Laboratory reached this conclusion through laboratory examination, not of industrial workers, but of Laboratory staff members and champion marathon runners. The translation of laboratory research to industrial settings, and the eventual erasure of physiological fatigue from discussions of labor, was a complex function of institutional settings, scientific innovation, and the cultural meanings of work and sport. (shrink)

This article examines discursive strategies used by police and politicians to describe and justify the application of penalty notices to minor criminal offences. Critical discourse analysis is used as an analytical tool to show how neoliberal economic thinking has informed the prism through which infringement notices have been rationalised as a legitimate alternative to traditional criminal prosecution, while also highlighting the contradictions inherent in neoliberalism as an ideology through which to view the embrace of legally hybrid powers in the criminal (...) justice system. Discursive strategies identified in the article include the use of ideological keywords ordinarily associated with free market economics and managerial efficiency; the adoption of militaristic vocabulary and metaphors in representations of policing and space; the strategies of assimilation and formulation to represent police views as uniform and coherent; and the use of nominalisations to legitimise the lack of procedural safeguards attached to infringement notices. The logic of—and the language ordinarily associated with—the domain of private business, the ‘free market’, and deregulation has infiltrated the criminal justice sphere. In addition, the naturalisation of neoliberal economic discourse in political and police representations of infringement notices produces and sustains important ideological effects, by disguising the ways in which the expanded use of administrative sanctions in public order policing intensifies state power at the expense of due process of law. (shrink)

This article summarizes the question of finding effective solutions to ensure the excellence of modern business through the introduction of managerial innovations. The main purpose of the study is to improve the theoretical and methodological approach to the implementation of managerial innovations in the system of modern business solutions. Systematization of literature sources and approaches to solving the problem of improving business management through the introduction of managerial innovations indicates the widespread use of methodological approaches and methods (...) of managerial innovation, but much management issues to ensure business excellence, justification of new opportunities for its development remain unnoticed. The urgency of solving this scientific problem is that in conditions of growing uncertainty and risk, accelerating the transformation of business, the importance of ensuring its perfection in the long term economic development of Ukraine is growing. The methodological tools of research methods were a system of methods used to obtain the final results of the study: generalization and comparative analysis – to clarify the essence of the concept of «managerial innovation»; abstract-logical – to reveal the relationship between the use of information and communication technologies, business excellence and implementation of management innovations; system-analytical – in developing a model of business excellence based on the use of modern information and communication technologies. The object of research is the industrial enterprises of the modern economy of Ukraine, because they are the basis of economic formation, a source of replenishment of the country budget and form the export orientation of business. The article presents the results of abstract-logical analysis of the blocks of business excellence, which showed that at the present stage of its development, the introduction of managerial innovations should be associated with the digital transformation of business. The results of the system-analytical analysis are presented, which are the basis for the development of an economic model for business excellence. The results of the study can be useful for business structures (and in particular, business units of the industrial complex of Ukraine), which seek to increase the efficiency of decision-making in today's digital business transformation. (shrink)

The paper expands on Goshal’s criticism of what management as a scientific discipline teaches and the effects on managerial and societal ethics. The main argument put forward is that the economisation of management has a detrimental effect on the practice of management and on society in large. The ideology of economism is described and analysed from an epistemological perspective. The paper argues that the economisation of management not only introduces the problems of economics (three are identified and discussed) but (...) destroys the very essence of management because economics is focused on efficiency and management should be focused on effectiveness. What is more, the basic axioms of mainstream economics stand in stark contrast to the philosophy of the Enlightenment and therefore endanger the foundations of Western societies. Management theory (via corporate governance) is the Trojan horse carrying economism into society. (shrink)

The urgency of the research topic is that the theoretical and methodological principles of psychology of managerial activity of the head in the conditions of the information society help to increase the levers of management and guidance. The purpose of management - the receipt of the desired result, which must be obtained after the actions of the management of the head as the main operating force, which is heading for transformations, tries to increase the self-governing principle in the organization. (...) The problem of research is that for effective management it is necessary to develop reliable mechanisms for the identification and development of manager's abilities, to increase the level of professionalism and competence of the head to the highest level, so that the management organism does not disorient. A person who works as a specialist, a professional, a competent person can be qualified to carry out the work of a manager. The hypothesis is put forward that the manager of a high level of professionalism and competence is able to form the psychological foundations of the organization, so that it worked as a single social organism. The task of the research is to analyze the psychological foundations of management activity in the conditions of the information society, which would allow the most optimal management of a particular organization. The methodological foundations of the psychology of management as the basis of effective leadership include methods of cultural development, which are used to solve the problems of organization, the formation of psychological culture, devoid of conflicts, contradictions, disasters. Methodological basis of scientific research of psychological principles of administrative activity as the basis of effective management are methods, such as system, structural, structural-functional, historical, comparative, which allow to achieve a higher level of organization and self-organization at the expense of skilful leadership. Therefore, the manager must use the whole set of methods, techniques, algorithms of actions, techniques, methods of achieving certain results that will lead to the management of a high level. It is concluded that the determinants of the optimization of the managerial psychology of the head is a model aimed at regulating relationships, which would use the resources of the information society, which is based on high information provision for improving the efficiency of management work. (shrink)

Algorithms increasingly make managerial decisions that people used to make. Perceptions of algorithms, regardless of the algorithms' actual performance, can significantly influence their adoption, yet we do not fully understand how people perceive decisions made by algorithms as compared with decisions made by humans. To explore perceptions of algorithmic management, we conducted an online experiment using four managerial decisions that required either mechanical or human skills. We manipulated the decision-maker, and measured perceived fairness, trust, and emotional response. With (...) the mechanical tasks, algorithmic and human-made decisions were perceived as equally fair and trustworthy and evoked similar emotions; however, human managers' fairness and trustworthiness were attributed to the manager's authority, whereas algorithms' fairness and trustworthiness were attributed to their perceived efficiency and objectivity. Human decisions evoked some positive emotion due to the possibility of social recognition, whereas algorithmic decisions generated a more mixed response – algorithms were seen as helpful tools but also possible tracking mechanisms. With the human tasks, algorithmic decisions were perceived as less fair and trustworthy and evoked more negative emotion than human decisions. Algorithms' perceived lack of intuition and subjective judgment capabilities contributed to the lower fairness and trustworthiness judgments. Positive emotion from human decisions was attributed to social recognition, while negative emotion from algorithmic decisions was attributed to the dehumanizing experience of being evaluated by machines. This work reveals people's lay concepts of algorithmic versus human decisions in a management context and suggests that task characteristics matter in understanding people's experiences with algorithmic technologies. (shrink)

The problem of building an effective system of interconnected and purposeful innovative changes in business management is solved in the article. The main purpose of the research is to improve the model of business excellence on the basis of interconnected and purposeful innovative changes in business management. Critical analysis of literature sources and approaches to solving the problem of building a perfect model of business emphasizes the diversity of applied methodological approaches and methods of management innovation. However, in terms of (...) business technologicalization, necessity to accelerate information exchange, development of innovation and, at the same time, development of new threats, the need on the basis of strategizing, intellectualization of management, partnership, compliance with the challenges of the external environment, communication efficiency, leadership transformation, balancing intermediate and final results, there is a need to transform business and management on the basis of strategizing, intellectualization of management, partnership interaction, compliance with the challenges of the external environment, communication efficiency, transformation of leadership, balancing intermediate and final results. Relevance of solving of this scientific issue is that the timely use of innovative tools and management methods in the implementation of strategic intentions and goals forms a high adaptability of companies to transformation processes occurring in their external and internal environment under the influence of digital technologies in business processes. The scientific-theoretical and methodological basis of the study were the following methods: abstract-logical and comparative analysis – to generalize theoretical approaches and confirm the practical importance of solving the problem of building a model of providing business excellence on the basis of interconnected and focused innovative changes in business management; system analysis and modelling – method of building a model of business excellence based on managerial innovation; system-analytical – method of balancing the interaction of the components providing business excellence; generalization – when drawing conclusions based on research results. The object of research is a system of interconnected and purposeful innovative changes in business management. The results of solving the problem of building a model of business excellence while balancing the interaction of the components of such provision and implementation of the process of digital transformation of the business model. The results of the research have practical value for business entities that seek to increase the effectiveness of interconnected and purposeful innovative changes in business management. (shrink)

ABSTRACT:In this address, I outline a “back to basics” approach to specifying the responsibilities and role of business in relation to society. Three “basics” comprise the approach. The first is arguing that basic principles of ordinary morality, such as a duty not to harm, provide an adequate basis for specifying the responsibilities of business managers. The second is framing the role of business in society by looking to the values realized by the basic building blocks of contemporary economic activity, i.e., (...) markets and firms. The third is making explicit the basic institutions that structure the background against which business operates. The aim is to develop a plausible framework for managerial decision making that respects the fact of value pluralism in a global economy and that fosters meaningful criticism of current business practices while remaining sufficiently grounded in contemporary circumstances so as to be relevant for managers. (shrink)

Abstract:Organizational justice is a behavioral science concept that refers to the perception of fairness of the past treatment of the employees within an organization held by the employees of that organization. These subjective perceptions of fairness have been empirically shown to be related to 1) attitudinal changes in job satisfaction, organizational commitment and managerial trust beliefs; 2) behavioral changes in task performance activities and ancillary extra-task efforts to assist group members and improve group methods; 3) numerical changes in the (...) quantity, quality and efficiency of divisional outputs; and—though this is far more tentative—4) eventual changes in the competitive advantage and financial performance of the full organization. The authors propose that these constructs can be applied to all stakeholders, rather than just to the current employees of the firm, and that objective determinations of fairness by the managers can be related to subjective perceptions of fairness by the stakeholders that will result in the sequential series of attitudinal, behavioral and numerical changes that will lead to performance improvements. In short, the authors propose a normative stakeholder theory of the firm, based upon ethical principles, that will have testable descriptive hypotheses derived from the behavioral constructs. (shrink)

Using the conceptual lenses offered by the ideational and cultural path taken in the health care arena, this article attempts to explain the trajectory of recent major health care reforms in Italy and the reasons for their failure, as well as providing some directions for successful intervention. A diachronic analysis of the relatively under-investigated phenomenon of health care reforms in Italy is carried out, drawing on a systematic review of the Italian and international literature combined with the research work carried (...) out by the Author. For all the three major health reforms examined, a significant gap between the authoritative policy choices taken and the overall implementation, in terms of process and system changes, can be observed, determining a growing distance between the theoretical efficiency and the practical effectiveness of the Italian National Health Service (NHS) as well as its detachment from the social system. The main obstacle to effective reform seems to be the cultural hegemony of the administrative-managerial and the biomedical paradigms, which, by reinforcing one another, yielded infertile ground for renewing in a post-modern sense the Italian NHS. The various Reforms have not been conceived to break such a positivistic monopoly in that they did not promote cultural or educational intervention. In this context, intervention that acts at a cultural level, such as reforming university education for physicians and managers or devising immigration policies to attract adequately acculturated people to the Italian NHS, seems to be the most promising. (shrink)

The article starts by arguing that seeing the firm as a mere nexus of contracts or as an abstract entity where different stakeholder interests concur is insufficient for a “humanistic business ethos”, which entails a complete view of the human being. It seems more appropriate to understand the firm as a human community, a concept which can be found in several sources, including managerial literature, business ethics scholars, and Catholic Social Teaching. In addition, there are also philosophical grounds that (...) support the idea of business as a human community. Extending this concept, and drawing from some Phenomenological-Personalist philosophers, we propose that the firm should be seen as a particular “community of persons” oriented to providing goods and services efficiently and profitably. Being a “community of persons” emphasizes both individuals and the whole, and makes explicit the uniqueness, conscience, free will, dignity, and openness to human flourishing. This requires appropriate communication about and participation in matters which affect people’s life, and makes it essential to cooperate for the common good of the business firm and the society. (shrink)

Abstract:Organizational justice is a behavioral science concept that refers to the perception of fairness of the past treatment of the employees within an organization held by the employees of that organization. These subjective perceptions of fairness have been empirically shown to be related to 1) attitudinal changes in job satisfaction, organizational commitment and managerial trust beliefs; 2) behavioral changes in task performance activities and ancillary extra-task efforts to assist group members and improve group methods; 3) numerical changes in the (...) quantity, quality and efficiency of divisional outputs; and—though this is far more tentative—4) eventual changes in the competitive advantage and financial performance of the full organization. The authors propose that these constructs can be applied to all stakeholders, rather than just to the current employees of the firm, and that objective determinations of fairness by the managers can be related to subjective perceptions of fairness by the stakeholders that will result in the sequential series of attitudinal, behavioral and numerical changes that will lead to performance improvements. In short, the authors propose a normative stakeholder theory of the firm, based upon ethical principles, that will have testable descriptive hypotheses derived from the behavioral constructs. (shrink)

The paper starts with a case study of a medium-sized company in which a strong and successful change in the organisational form and job design took place. A bureaucratic organisation with highly-specialised jobs was converted into a new organisation in which employees became much more autonomous in managing their own work. This not only entailed new techniques and managerial systems but also a new anthropological vision. Bureaucratic rules were reduced, but not eliminated completely, and management became less authoritarian. Employees (...) could therefore apply greater entrepreneurial spirit, developing their talents in pursuit of the company’s common goals. It is argued that this new organisational form is ethically superior to the old, and reflects the basic requirements of the principle of subsidiarity. The ethical principle of subsidiarity holds that a larger and higher-ranking body should not exercise functions which could be efficiently carried out by a smaller and lesser body; rather the former should support the latter by aiding it in the coordination of its activities with those of the greater community. While the principle has usually been applied in a political context, this paper explores the principle as a moral base for organisational forms within business organisations. Finally, the principle of subsidiarity is analysed in the context of business organisations and proposed as an ethical guideline for organisational forms. This would help to mitigate the effects of those bureaucracies in which individuals, with their dignity, freedom, diversity and capacity for undertaking business activities with entrepreneurial spirit, are often not fully appreciated. (shrink)

This dissertation sets out Dewey's theory of society, as outlined in the lecture notes for his courses on social and political philosophy between 1923 and 1928. I argue that Dewey had tripartite theory of economic processes, political/legal structures and social-moral functions that focuses on the relationship between material/technological forces and the institutions established to direct them. ;The first section presents and then refutes the charge that pragmatic social thought reduces thought to sheer efficiency and is therefore unable to resist (...) ideology. The primary dispute was between the turn toward objectivist methodology in American social science, frequently attributed to Dewey's influence, and those who saw this turn as a decline into crude, instrumental reason. Unlike the objectivists, instrumentalism incorporated ideas of intersubjectivity, value, and reflexivity. He did not believe that democracy could be best served by a managerial elite who sharply divides facts from values and means from ends. ;The second section comprises the positive presentation of Dewey's social theory. Chapter three discusses economic processes. I set out the organic model that guides his early and late economic theory and how Dewey draws from J. A. Hobson's theory of underconsumption to organize a coherent set of specific economic proposals during the Great Depression. Chapter four presents Dewey's theory of political structures, laws, institutions and habits that shape the direction of material life. But these structures may come in time to restrain further economic and technological growth. The final chapter takes up the breakdown of traditional structures, the reconstruction of which Dewey believed to be the fundamental problem of modernity. There is a need for new customs and institutions that continue traditional ideals of liberalism while being grounded in modern material conditions. The need, Dewey believed, was for a social theory that would understand the interplay of forces and institutions and direct them toward a democratic culture. ;I end with an epilogue on uses of Dewey's thought within contemporary social theory. The cheerful pursuit of instrumental reason by the neo-pragmatists Richard Rorty, Stanley Fish and Richard Posner is contrasted with recent work in the communitarianism/liberalism debate. (shrink)

In the present world, where the sphere of knowledge and social relations have become extremely complex, the problem of insufficient competency and inability to manage efficiently the accumulation and distribution process of various professional skills, has grown very urgent. Paradoxically, the insufficient knowledge,lacking skill or competence may be advantageous. To a certain extent, it reduces the threat of arrogant technocracy and meritocracy, while supporting innovation and creative search process, in which the burden of excessive erudition has often slowed down progress. (...) I will focus on some fallacies common in many countries undergoing modernization process, connected to the lack of clear awareness of the reasonably expected results of the medical university education(not quite professional if related to the background of the scientific state of the matter), to the dangerous “dissemination” of responsibility for a patient in the medical bureaucracy as well as to the overrepresentation of doctors among the managerial staff. To take advantage from some portion of ignorance in the medical life it needs to be acknowledged and reflected on. (shrink)

A dazzling blend of business vision, history, social psychology, and economics, The Support Economy starts with a compelling premise: People have changed more than the corporations upon which their well-being depends. In the chasm that now separates the new individuals from the old organizations is the opportunity to forge a capitalism suited to our times and so unleash a vast new potential for wealth creation. In recent years, many books have offered fixes for this crisis, but they have dealt only (...) with its symptoms. The Support Economy is the first book to critically examine its cause: Managerial capitalism has outlived the society it was once designed to serve. It successfully achieved the efficient production of goods and services, but today's individuals want more. They want to take their lives into their own hands and are ready to pay for the support and advocacy necessary to fulfill that yearning. The next leap forward in wealth creation depends upon developing a new capitalism that speaks to the needs of people today. The Support Economy will be the next "must read" big think book. It speaks to every business and technology leader, as well as every reader interested in the future of the economy and society. (shrink)

This study focuses on the managerial issue of should social enterprises become more marketing oriented. It adapts the Kohli et al. MARKOR marketing orientation scale to measure the adoption of marketing by SEs. The items capture Vincentian-based values to leverage business in service to the poor as a measure of a Vincentian marketing orientation. A VMO is an organisational wide value-driven philosophy of management that focuses a SE on meeting its objectives by adopting a more marketing orientated approach to (...) serve the needy and poor in a just and sustainable manner. SEs that exhibit a VMO seek to understand and respond to both the needs of their beneficiaries and stakeholders. They are constantly generating, disseminating, and responding to environmental, beneficiary, and stakeholder information and develop their business propositions to more effectively and efficiently meet the needs of the poor, while guided by a philosophy of leveraging business for social good. This study of SEs in Australia found that a VMO is strongly and positively correlated with social, economic, and environmental performance. These findings suggest that SEs may benefit by leveraging marketing capabilities to better serve their beneficiaries and stakeholders. (shrink)

The purpose of this contemporary history study is to analyse nursing strategy documents produced by NHS Trusts in England in the period 2009–2013, through a process of discourse analysis. In 2013 the Francis Report on the Mid-Staffordshire NHS Foundation Trust was published. The Report highlighted the full range of organisational failures in a Trust that valued financial efficiency over patient care. The analysis that followed, however, dwelt heavily on the failings of the nurses. Nursing strategy documents at that time (...) served to set the future direction for NHS Trusts, prescribing specific value frameworks for each nursing workforce. However, the values chosen frequently conflicted with each other pitting nursing values against a managerial trope. It is argued that documents provided a response to wider NHS concerns and high-profile failures in care, particularly the Francis Report, paying lip service to staff engagement whilst maintaining a corporate focus. Nursing values were placed firmly within a managerialist discourse, one that has needed to be re-evaluated in the current Covid-19 pandemic. Wider implications of the research suggest discussion of value conflict may be beneficial within nursing education and a truly local approach to strategy creation would potentially promote staff buy-in to strategy documents. (shrink)

Purpose The manner in which people, businesses and governments perform is changing because of the spread of technology. Digitalization of governments can be considered a necessity as we are now entering the era of the Internet-of-Things. The advantages and disadvantages of electronic governments have been examined in several research studies. This study aims to examine the attitudes of decision-makers towards e-government. The research aims are as follows: to determine the problems related with e-government usage, to establish the factors which decrease (...) the usage of e-government services and to propose recommendations for the effective application of e-government practices. Design/methodology/approach Qualitative research has been used for the study. Participants were chosen by the snowball sampling method, and face-to-face in-depth interviews were conducted with all decision-makers. In-depth interviews are more efficient and enable the acquisition of better qualitative information, in-depth knowledge and statistics, as the distance between the interviewer and interviewee is reduced. Questions asked can be categorized under two sections, where the questions in the first section are related to the decision-maker’s management style/managerial proposition, and in the second section, technological questions are asked in terms of the preferred communication method and the decision-makers’ attitudes towards e-government practices. Findings Decision-makers perceive electronic government to be important, while the level of importance is observed to be different among the decision-makers. Chronic problems exist in many countries, such as nepotism, where the decision-makers have conflicting arguments about e-government and the resulting effect on nepotism. Furthermore, the study also indicates that decision-makers are aware of the importance of mobile government, although they acknowledge that more time is required, as their country is still developing. Electronic voting is also perceived to be important, although the decision-makers believe that security and privacy issues need to be solved before related projects can be initiated. Originality/value This research can be a benchmark study for the decision-makers of small island developing states by means of e-government. The impediments preventing the effective application of e-government practices are also discussed in the study. This study will be useful to highlight the triggers and obstacles for e-government development in the context of a developing country. Internet penetration has increased significantly since the 2000s, and therefore, decision-makers need to consider the shift in citizens’ behaviour, such as the high usage of smartphones and the emergence of the Internet-of-Things. (shrink)

The market failures approach to business ethics has recently garnered substantial critical attention (see, e.g., Cohen and Peterson 2019; Moriarty 2020; Steinberg 2017; Hsieh 2017; von Kriegstein 2016; Smith 2018; Endorfer and Larue 2022; Singer 2018). Though precursors of this view can be found in the literature (e.g., McMahon 1981; Friedman 1970), it was Joseph Heath (2004, 2006, 2014, 2023) who developed the approach and gave it its name. The market failures approach (henceforth: MFA) is concerned with the ethical obligations (...) of managers of firms (Heath 2014, 69). Roughly, it holds that managers ought not to conduct their businesses in a way that exploits market failures. “Market failure” is a technical term, meaning any failure of the conditions of the first fundamental welfare theorem, sometimes called the “Pareto conditions” (see Arrow 1951). The theorem states that if the Pareto conditions hold, then the market equilibrium will use society’s scarce resources efficiently, meaning that no one could be made better-off without making anyone else worse off. Efficiency, according to Heath (2014, chapter 7), is the implicit morality of the market. We coordinate much of our shared activity using markets, Heath claims, because of their ability to produce efficient results. Markets are good forms of social organization, according to Heath, because they are the best way to promote our values given empirical facts about the frailties of human psychology and the informational constraints that we face. As such, managers ought not compromise the very conditions that justify a market economy by profiting from breakdowns in the market’s efficiency. Managers are permitted to maximize profits, so long as they do not violate the market’s norm of efficiency in so doing. This is because the fundamental justification for the profit motive is that it is necessary for the operation of the price system which is essential to the efficiency properties of markets. In this paper, I will argue that the MFA is more general than even Heath himself claims. The MFA describes the professional obligations of managers, but the view I develop, the generalized market failures approach, describes the obligations of all market participants. Since efficiency is the implicit morality of the market, it binds not just managers, but all market participants, including consumers, investors and workers. Market participants are permitted to maximize the benefit they gain from market interactions, as long as they do so in a way that does not take advantage of any market failures. Generalizing the MFA in this way has three benefits: first, we gain a unified understanding of the ethics of non-managerial market roles; second, we will develop an even better understanding of the duties of managers; finally, it gives us the resources to respond to some familiar objections to the MFA found in the literature. In the next section, I will further motivate the MFA and explain how this motivation can be easily generalized to other market roles. Importantly, one can avoid benefiting from a market failure in two distinct ways: by avoiding transactions that exploit market failures or by transacting in such markets and then remediating the harm done, by compensating those negatively affected by the market failure. This section concludes by discussing how the remediation duties are to be split between the transacting parties and how to identify the parties to whom compensation is owed. In section 3, I use the tools of the generalized MFA to develop a unified ethics of consumption, investment and labor, respectively. This is the basis of a grand abductive argument for the generalized MFA. The view is strongly supported by the fact that it provides attractive and unifying explanations of our obligations in domains as variegated as carbon offsetting, CEO compensation, the reparations white Americans owe to black Americans and occupational licensure. Section 4 briefly concludes. (shrink)

The article aims to define the management mechanism of complex, open dynamic systems with human participation. The following parts of the system life-cycle were identified and unified in the theoretical scope: general and specific compositional elements of repeating changes, marginal index boundaries, the dynamics of the compositional elements of the lifecycle, the key points of the change in the character of the index dynamics. In the practical scope, two common trends of socio-economical system life-cycle management are considered. The first trend (...) is the regulation of the comprising element ratio, which provides the increase in the duration of the maximally effective performance of a functioning system. The second trend is the regulation of the reproduction time of a new system. The systems life cycle aspects are investigated in almost all sciences and studied within many disciplines in the field of higher education. Therefore, deepening the mastery of scientific and methodological foundations of the life cycle of a complex open dynamic system is useful for any subject in everyday and practical activities. A human being – in the formation of own human capital. Families – when it is formed, the birth of children, the distribution of income and expenses. Companies – for efficient business activities. As well as local communities, local self-government bodies, public authorities and global entities within their profile activities. The results of the research provide the possibility of the development of applicable mechanisms for effectiveness and stability enhancement of managerial and entrepreneurial operation in business projects. (shrink)

This empirical study investigates the effects of nine ethical climate types (self-interest, company profit, efficiency, friendship, team interest, social responsibility, personal morality, company rules and procedures, and lastly laws and professional codes) on employee work satisfaction. The ethical climate typology developed by Victor and Cullen (in W. C. Frederick (ed.) Research in Corporate Social Performance and Policy, 1987; Administrative Science Quarterly 33, 101–125, 1988) is tested on a sample of staff and managers from 62 different telecommunication firms in Turkey. (...) The results obtained from the 1174 usable questionnaires confirm the existence of nine different ethical climate types observed in western cultures in the present sample context, which is a developing Muslim country. Regarding the effects of ethical climatic factors on employee work satisfaction, self-interest climate type appears to negatively influence work satisfaction, whereas team interest, social responsibility and law and professional codes climate types are found to have positive impacts. Managerial and further research implications of the findings are discussed. (shrink)

The Austrian School's conventional theory of the firm is based on an attempt to synthesize Coase's concept of the firm as a centrally planned hierarchy with the Austrian theory of entrepreneurship and monetary calculation. This paper is a critique of that program as well as an attempt to outline the alternative theory of the firm, one based on the synthesis of the contractual agency theory of the firm with the same Austrian arguments about entrepreneurship and calculation. The firm in this (...) paper is defined as a nexus of various markets for goods as well as for labor and managerial services rather than as a hierarchy or “organization.” Both the neoclassical and Austrian critiques of the latter concept are utilized to prove that a clear distinction between the market and the firm cannot be established. That distinction is based on the misunderstanding of the firm's dynamics as exclusively tied to the managing/transaction costs ratio as well as on the mischaracterization of inter-firm relations as commanding ones. On the other hand, the central planning view of the firm is equally at odds with the key Mises's argument that rational economic planning is impossible in the absence of market prices. If this is so, the firm, as understood in a Coasian paradigm, would not have any reason to exist, or any reason to contribute positively to economic efficiency, because it would simply represent a centrally planned “island of incalculability” in a wider market setting. Since the firm is a nexus of various markets, its operation is contrary to the Coaseian assumptions led by the price signals. Only insofar as the internal firm's operation is driven by the price signals can the firm be efficient. (shrink)

With environmental issues increasingly becoming prominent in today’s business world, firms may need to pay extra attention to developing their environmental strategies and capabilities in response to environmental concerns and achieving sustainable growth. While a broad consensus exists on the value of green innovation, current empirical research on how different types of green innovation strategies may account for the international performance of a firm remains scant. Addressing this gap is important because determining how to better manage a firm’s green innovation (...) strategies nowadays has become increasingly important for firms hoping to achieve and maintain their sustainable performance advantages. This study aims to bridge this gap by systematically examining how various types of green innovation strategies can be beneficial to firms in an emerging market economy. This study also examined the important role that potential risks of supply chain play in shaping the relationships between various types of green innovation strategies and firm performance. This study proposes that the effective management of supply chain risks may be important to the successful implementation of green innovation strategies because green innovation has increasingly become a collaborative effort. This study empirically tested the hypotheses by gathering survey data from a sample of 337 firms in China’s manufacturing industries. Results demonstrate that the green innovation strategies of firms are positively related to their firm performance. Additionally, the potential risks faced by the firms in efficiently and effectively managing their supply chain significantly moderate the impact of green product innovation and green process innovation strategies on their firm performance. This study not only offers useful theoretical implications for the green innovation strategy research and for better and effective supply chain risk management. It also provides important practical guidelines and managerial actions that practicing managers can implement to accelerate their green innovation strategy, assess the effect of supply chain risks, and thus improve firm performance in the post-pandemic era. (shrink)

There has been noted that in the process of the development of economic relationship, improvement and technology integration, innovations and transformations implementation, increase in productivity and activity outcomes the principles of management, development and system functioning are changed, complemented and transformed. There has been found that to meet the goals of industrial enterprises development, encourage co-operation of all units in the system during development, make financial and economic, production and technical managerial decisions on the basis of systemic approach to (...) management, analysis of systems principles, development and management of phenomena and processes it is necessary to take into account the developed basic and additional principles of formation of the strategic management system of the industrial enterprise development. The basic principles are: flexibility, integrity, optimality, efficiency, productivity; the additional ones: rationality, correspondence, dynamism, control. The multitude of the mentioned principles has been formed according to managerial actions that correspond to the stage of the formation of the development goal (correspondence and dynamism principles), stages of development management (flexibility, integrity, optimality, rationality, control principles) and stages of development goals realization (efficiency and productivity), which ensures specification of the role and principles in the process of the industrial enterprise development. The principles are subdivided according to subsystems of inner state (production and realization - flexibility principle, financial state - integrity, resource state - flexibility principle), the subsystem of outer state (correspondence and dynamism principle). There have been determined principles that characterize the functioning of all subsystems within the system of strategic management of development during the formation of managerial decisions (optimality, rationality and control principles) and during the results of the industrial enterprise development (efficiency and productivity principles). (shrink)

The paper reviews the basics of development and implementation of the debt policy of Ukraine, outlines its formation principles and establishes requirements to normative legal documents which specify administrative measures in the field of the public debt. The research conducted shows that the main normative legal documents which govern activities of state administration bodies responsible for the debt policy implementation are the State Budget and the Program for State Debt Management of the Ministry of Finance of Ukraine. An analysis of (...) the structure of the above documents and ensuing governmental regulations of Ukraine indicates that the national debt policy is not a separate link of the public financial administration, it is shaped subsequent to the results of managerial decisions in the field of monetary relations, changes in the taxation system, operation of the efficiency control system of national taxes, the government deficit level, impacts of foreign economic factors etc. It is proved that debt operations in Ukraine are becoming a factor of economic risk for the state budget whereas the debt budget itself is becoming a destabilization factor. The budgetary policy of Ukraine, which is primarily aimed at maximization of tax collection, results in distortion of the public finance system and aggravates the economic status of numerous industries. The public debt service expenses are however still increasing and require public borrowings which keep growing year by year. The author indicates that the most unsuccessful decisions of the national leadership, which brought about a higher public debt, are the issue of internal public bonds for capitalization of the Privatbank PJSC in 2017 and poor state control over quasi-fiscal operations which may result in default of national Compulsory Social Insurance Funds on their obligations, accumulation of debts on VAT refund, remission of dead tax debts, instalment payment and deferral of money liabilities or tax debts of taxpayers, attraction of sovereign credits by resident economic entities, debt restructuring of such entities with public guarantees, supply of natural gas to heat-and-power engineering companies for generation of thermal energy at preferential prices, accrued receivables of the National Joint-Stock Company 'Naftogaz Ukrainy' for sale of natural gas to the population and heat-and-power engineering companies. (shrink)

The paper examines the role of public property in economic development of the country. It looks into economic scientists' views of the 'property' category. There are innovative approaches to improvement of the efficiency of public property administration outlined, specifically: 1) identification of priority branches for privatization and branches to be left in the state ownership; 2) development of individual programs for preparation of branches for privatization and implementation of the latter; adoption of a new State Program for Privatization for (...) 2015 and the ensuing years; 3) introduction of amendments into land legislation as to simplification of the privatization process of properties with plots of land; 4) transition to a management system of state companies through Boards of Directors, which are to comprise independent directors; 5) staffing executive managerial bodies of state companies with professional managers on a competitive basis; 6) clear split of government assets privatization and administration functions on the level of central executive authorities in the context of their optimization; 7) increase of authorized capitals of joint-stock companies owing to the cost of the land plots where they are accommodated, including those which have been privatized and corporatized; 8) optimizing the administration of state corporate rights and prevention of dilution of state corporate rights in authorized capitals of business entities; 9) revision of legislation and introduction of amendments in order to prevent the assignment of assets directly by state undertakings which can be individual privatization targets; 10) monitoring of effective administration of facilities owned by the state, increasing managers' responsibility for ineffective administration of state property; 11) development of a legal framework for reprivatization of property; 12) detailed regulation of public property administration processes. (shrink)

Instrumental Stakeholder Theory has begun to suffer from what might be termed “mission drift.” Despite its initial success in creating a foothold for ethics in managerial decision-making, the efficiency arguments which now dominate this research stream have become counterproductive to the original goal of connecting ethics and capitalism. We argue in this paper that the way forward is by re-centering contingency, conversation, and inefficiency in stakeholder theory. To start this process, there needs to be a reckoning of some (...) unintended impacts of the success of the instrumental stream of stakeholder research. For a contrasting approach, we draw on Richard Rorty’s pragmatism and its foundation of ethical “irony,” a state of continuous doubts about the utility of one’s moral vocabulary. We offer a Rortian approach to stakeholder theory, unearthing the possibility for new corporate target functions in the goals of harm reduction, solidarity, and social mobility, the foundational building blocks of an ironist ethical perspective. (shrink)

This collection of case studies in public management bridges the gap between mainstream CSR - confined to the for-profit corporations - and the vast bodies of workers and organizations that make up government and its public administration. The variety and discretion of managerial endeavours in public management calls for accountability and responsibility of government beyond current legal instruments: The book argues that CSR must be brought to bear with government. In government in fact, knowledge management is not a linear (...) process, but the result of working with passion of the parts, implying discretionary behaviour and creativity which in turn imply choice and responsibility. Cases ranging from the USA to Central America, New Zealand and Europe all confirm the complex nature of public management, entailing partnership synergy for disaster recovery, the intertwined link between management and new technology and mindfulness at individual level. The cases are set in a framework by theoretical essays on bureaucratic behaviour and unknown stakeholders. Public-sector management has long drawn upon principles, tools, and techniques developed in the private sector, aiming to infuse bureaucracies with touches of efficiency and productivity. But good governance is also central to good management. This fascinating, wide-ranging volume shows how ideas from the Corporate Social Responsibility movement apply to the governance and administration of public agencies. A series of detailed and informative case studies, written by researchers and practitioners with deep knowledge of their industries and agencies, explores the challenges of managing public and government agencies in a socially responsible manner. The book offers a nuanced and balanced portrait that calls for greater public involvement and oversight in keeping public organizations on track. Highly recommended! Peter G. Klein University of Missouri Norwegian School of Economics and Mises Institute Here are six compelling case studies that reveal the relevance, even the imperative, of Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) in the public sector. In doing so, the authors simultaneously expand the role of CSR and provide us with a refreshed concept of government and public management. The authors then lay the theoretical groundwork for their observations in ways that enrich our understanding of both CSR and the evolving roles of government in our lives. This is "must reading" for corporate officers and for public managers. Thomas R. Sexton Stony Brook University, NY College of Business and School of Professional Development. (shrink)

In the twentieth century, two Nobel-Prize winning economists wrote two seemingly unrelated characterizations of the processes constraining human behavior. One, Ronald Coase, wrote a short article entitled The Nature of the Firm,1 in which he reduced all managerial decision-making to a fundamental choice between making the factors of production, or buying them. This article and the idea of the "make or buy" decision for which it has come to be known, have proven to be among the most seminal in (...) the history of financial economics and organizational behavior. The second economist, Friedrich Hayek, wrote what he thought to be a comprehensive treatment of the approach that ought to be taken to the generation of rules constraining human interaction. This voluminous work, Law, Legislation and Liberty, characterized the creation of legal rules as the product of either spontaneous or planned orders. Hayek argued that spontaneous orders like "law" were more efficient mechanisms for governing human behavior than planned orders like "legislation." 2 This thesis received a lukewarm reception generally, and virtually no reception at all in legal circles. This Article demonstrates that Coase and Hayek were actually making the same observation, albeit in different contexts. Hayek's conception of the two sources of order is, in fact, a more abstract application of Coase's "make or buy" decision. Had Hayek understood his characterization of legal processes to be a variant of Coase's "Theory of the Firm," his ideas may have received more traction. Lawyers, judges, and lawmakers may also have understood some of the implications of Hayek's thesis for constraining legal actors, as well as its applications in current debates on the scope of administrative agency authority, tort reform, or the use of legislative history in litigation. (shrink)

The urgency of the study of "stem-education" as a factor in the development of "smart-society" is that this kind of society is a continuation of information and "knowledge society", which is developing on the basis of smart technologies. The concept of smart society is at the heart of modern state -owned development programs of South Korea and Japan. In South Korea, the National Social Agency has developed a "Smart Society Strategy" that introduces the technological foundations of smart societies. The central (...) issue of Smart-society is business, which makes managing more intelligent and activities aimed at using knowledge and innovation. The objectives of the study are to identify the "stem-education" endpoint through the use of electronic and collective technologies, which become more massive and effective, and through the use of natural, engineering and maternal education. It is no coincidence that this concept is documented in the Europe 2020 Strategy: Smart Growth Strategy, which includes the development of an economy based on knowledge and innovation, fosters sustainable growth, more efficient use of resources, and inclusive growth and strengthening of high employment. Countries such as the United States, China, Australia, the United Kingdom, Israel, and Singapore carry out state-of-the-art stem-education programs. The methodological basis of the study is systematic, structural, axiological, synergetic methods and approaches that have allowed disclosing stem -education as the leading trend in the world of educational space. Conclusion - It is proved that stem-education is an innovation that combines the traditions of natural and mathematical education, is based on the principles of fundamentalism and knowledge -based, combining technological, organizational, material and technical resources and human capital. As a result of the development of stem-education at the expense of ICT, business processes, governance, and management reform are undergoing change, leading to economic, social and managerial processes at a higher level in some of those societies. Smart society is a new quality of society in which the combination of the use of new technologies will allow people to improve the quality of their lives. This article presents philosophical and educational reflection of smart -society as a new model of the information society and presents its impact on human capital. It reveals timeliness of this topic, which is innovative and hardly developed. It analyses international experience in establishment and growth of smart -society and dimensions of axiological field of smart-society, which is based on axiological matrix of information and knowledge, which are considered and being civilized dimensions of modern society. The main idea is to prove the evolution of the information society to smart -society and the possibility of establishment of smart-society in Ukraine. The analysis of smart-society formation was made and its characteristics were defined, which claims priority role in the world information space formation and contribute to the competitiveness of Ukraine in the international information space. (shrink)

Companies increasingly implement digital transformation strategies to promote efficiency. Nevertheless, there are few concerns about employees’ acceptance of the changes, especially the executives’ adaptability, which is an important part of digital transformation strategy implementation. By utilizing the “searching-matching” in keywords of the annual reports of public listed companies in China, we measured the degree of corporate digital transformation to analysis its influence on the turnover rate of the Chairman and CEO. We found that digital transformation decreases the possibility of (...) Chairman and CEO’s turnover. Derived from the dynamic managerial capital theory, we demonstrated that executives’ social network and political connections both have a moderate effect on the relationship between digital transformation and the turnover rate of executives. These findings will contribute to the digital transformation research by integrating with executives’ dynamic managerial capital which is attained through social networks and political connections. (shrink)

In the wake of recent corporate scandals, this paper traces the growing power of pension funds to provide managerial oversight of the firms they hold in their investment portfolios. Increasingly pension funds are exercising their legitimate rights as owners to raise the corporate governance standards of the firms they invest in. Within corporate governance generally, pension funds are shifting their attention away from managerial accountability and toward measures that increase transparency in firm-level decision-making. Pension funds use transparency to (...) ensure that shareholders are the primary interest being served by the firm. Transparency not only aligns managers and owners, it also raises issues of firm behaviour that allow other stakeholders to engage the corporation more broadly. I contend that secrecy is economically inefficient. When organizations are opaque and interests are secret, decision-making can and does distort efficiency. I examine recent pension fund corporate governance campaigns with particular reference to the California Public Employees Retirement System. (shrink)

In the United States, the IRS now requires charities to publicly disclose any significant asset diversion, which is the theft or unauthorized use of assets, that the charity identifies during the year. We use this new disclosure to investigate whether strong governance reduces the likelihood of a charitable asset diversion. Specifically, for a sample of 1528 charities from 2008 to 2012, we simultaneously examine eleven measures of governance that capture four broad governance constructs: board monitoring, independence of key individuals, tone (...) at the top, and capital provider oversight. We find consistent evidence that good governance across all four constructs is negatively associated with the probability of an asset diversion. Of the eleven governance measures, our results indicate that monitoring by debt holders and government grantors, audits, and keeping managerial duties in-house are most strongly associated with lower incidence of fraud. Our results also indicate that the likelihood of a fraud is negatively associated with a board review of the Form 990, the existence of a conflict of interest policy, and the presence of restricted donations. In addition, we document that the likelihood of an asset diversion is negatively associated with program efficiency and positively associated with growth and organizational complexity. (shrink)

Contemporary theory surrounding knowledge generation linked to knowledge transfer practice and process is extensive, and has been fruitful in delivering many useful and recognised frameworks. In this regards authenticity for managerial governance and/or remedial programmes for business efficiency and delivery, derive resource legitimacy from many of these frameworks as a direct consequence of theoretical strategy. Underlying these views is the belief that texts and practices carry with them the codes necessary for their own decoding and, therefore, enable an (...) unproblematic knowledge transfer. Although this position or direction is supported by various authors, consequential focus originates from a point at which businesses and organisations cannot create knowledge on their own, whereby, supporting dynamisms are required to develop created knowledge. Thus, purposely acknowledging that proportional competitive advantage of a particular business can relate to its process or efficiency of knowledge transfer. Reconciling this apparent anomaly remains a popular topic with many authors, however, maintains a focused and biased underpinning within its many descriptions. This paper will therefore consider the relevance of knowledge generation as a key aspect of this underpinning and add to the debate surrounding knowledge generation as a factor of business success. (shrink)

This study explores cultural influence on corporate behavior employing the case of merchant guild culture in China and further the moderating role of Marketization. Using hand-collected data on merchant guild culture, we find that merchant guild culture is significantly negatively associated with owner-manager agency costs, suggesting that merchant guild culture in ancient China still has its continuous and remarkable effects on managerial behavior in contemporary corporations. This finding also implies that merchant guild culture motivates managers to upgrade the (...) class='Hi'>efficiency of controlling operating costs, reduces agency conflicts between management and shareholders, and eventually mitigates owner-manager agency costs. Moreover, provincial Marketization level attenuates the negative association between merchant guild culture and owner-manager agency costs. Above results are robust to a variety of alternative measures of merchant guild culture and owner-manager agency costs. Furthermore, our findings are still valid after controlling for the potential endogeneity between merchant guild culture and owner-manager agency costs. (shrink)

Although not always termed “organizational justice,” the fairness of organizations has been a consistent concern of management thinkers. A review of the 1900–1965 time period indicates that management theorists primarily conceptualized organizational justice in utilitarian terms, although each theory emphasized distributive and procedural justice to different degrees. There is clearly a need for contemporary scholars to consider non-economic rationales for organizational justice, but the willingness of earlier scholars to make utilitarian arguments about organizational justice and productive efficiency helped legitimize (...) the idea of fairness in organizations as an arbiter of value. Further, each theory tempered absolute managerial autonomy with some inherent check thereon. Researchers interested in organizational justice should therefore take a historical perspective in considering how management theory includes consideration of justice-related concerns. (shrink)

National governments in several countries have promoted and carried out different forms of mergers, consolidations and alliances within their higher education systems in order to increase efficiency, effectiveness and governmental control to ensure that the universities more directly serve the national and regional economic and social objectives. This article sets out to explore structural reforms between and within universities from a micro-level perspective by investigating how academics make sense of and respond to the structural reforms, and how these reforms (...) shape academic cultures, work practices and identities. Drawing upon in-depth interviews with 31 Finnish academics working under structural rearrangements, five core meanings of structural reforms are discerned: structural development as part of a flood of changes, expanding bureaucracy, profiling, searching for partners and branding. The paper concludes that structural reforms along with other managerial transformations foster experiences of competition and polarization at the departmental and individual level of academia, involving redefining what it means to be a successful academic. (shrink)

The economic globalization process has integrated different competitive markets and pushes firms in different countries to improve their managerial and operational efficiencies. Given the recent empirical evidence for the benefits to firms and stakeholders of good corporate governance (CG) practice, it is expected that good CG practice would be a common strategy for firms in different countries to meet the increasingly intense competition; however, this is not the case. This study examines the differences in CG practices in firms across (...) different countries using the concept of ethical sensitivity. Through the regression analysis of 271 firms in 12 countries and regions, it is found that Hofstede’s cultural dimensions can explain the differences in CG practices. Furthermore, the results demonstrate the influence of culture on ethical sensitivity, which eventually determines the CG practices in different regions. (shrink)