Social enterprises implement business-like approaches to address social problems. Scale-up of these enterprises beyond one geographical context can extend their impact to better match the scope of problems being addressed. Unfortunately, many social enterprises start but relatively few expand to new contexts, making scale-up one of the most important but least understood outcomes of social entrepreneurship. We explore this outcome empirically, extending existing research that is predominantly conceptual. The study adopts a multicase study research design. A dynamic capabilities framework reveals how resources are amassed and configured for expansion, a process that can be more difficult for social compared to commercial enterprises. Findings suggest scale-up may be a second act of social entrepreneurship because dissimilarities between initial and scale-up contexts necessitate product modification, different partnerships, and idiosyncratic resource configurations. We thus call into question existing literature’s focus on standardization – generic resource configurations – for scaling-up social enterprises to new geographical contexts.

The current research examines the combined role of proactive personality and political skill in job crafting and work engagement by integrating the job demands-resources (JD-R) model and trait activation theory. Self-reported survey responses collected from three samples – university students (study 1, N = 363) and panel data (study 2, N = 300 and study 3, N = 206) – were analyzed using the PROCESS macro. Results revealed that political skill strengthened the relationship between proactive personality and work engagement and between proactive personality and job crafting when trait activated. Furthermore, perceived supervisor support did not interact with the job crafting–work engagement relationship with trait activation, suggesting that proactive individuals rely on self-resources to improve engagement when presented with trait-relevant situational cues. The findings extend JD-R theory to offer the interplay of proactive trait and political skill in facilitating overall job crating. JD-R is identified as a contextual condition for trait activation.

We wish to develop the argument in this paper that through aesthetic and artistic work, practices and their metaphorical use, we have a potential to better understand the relationship between academic leadership theory and practical action. By aesthetic approach we mean the experiential way of knowing that emphasizes human senses and the corporeal nature of social interaction in leadership. In this paper, we discuss how leadership could look, sound and feel like when seen via the artistic metaphor of dance. We use the traditional dance, waltz and the postmodern dance experience of raves to illustrate our argument. By doing so, we challenge traditional, intellectually oriented and positivistic leadership approaches that hardly recognize nor conceptualize aesthetic, bodily aspects of social interaction between people in the workplace.

The ballroom dance waltz is used as a metaphorical representation of a hierarchical, logical and rational understanding of leadership. The waltz metaphor describes the leader as a dominant individual who knows where to go and the dance partner as a follower or at least as someone with a lesser role in defining the dance. Raves, on the other hand representparadigmatically different kind of a dance and therefore a different understanding of leadership. There are neither dance steps to learn, nor fixed dance partners where one leads and the other follows. Even the purpose or aim of dancing may not be known at the beginning of the dance, but it is negotiated as the raves go on. We think that raves describe the organizational life as it is often seen and felt today: chaotic, full of unexpected changes, ambiguous and changing collaborators in networks. Here leadership becomes a collective, distributed activity where the work processes and the targeted outcome is continually negotiated.

Through the dance metaphors of waltz and raves, we suggest aspects such as gaze, rhythm and space to give an aesthetic description both to a more traditional and an emerging aesthetic paradigm of leadership where the corporeality of leadership is emphasized. We wish to make the point that leadership is aesthetically and corporeally co-constructed both between the leader and the followers as well as between the researcher and the subjects. The metaphor of dance illustrates the corporeal nature of leadership both to practitioners and theoreticians.

The purpose of this paper is to explore how middle managers respond when an existing institutional logic is reinforced through radical organisational change. We analyse documents and interviews with middle managers in three public sector contexts (hospitals, upper secondary schools, municipal agencies) in which the power balance between the managerial and professional logics changed through mergers. Contrary to expectations from previous research, we found a variety of responses across contexts. Our data suggest that the middle managers chose whether to acknowledge available information about the managerial logic, and that they either accepted or rejected the new power balance between the logics. There were two different ways of accepting the new power balance: by showing loyalty or through resignation. Its rejection took the form of strategically adhering to the managerial logic as a novice, even though a middle manager was, or should have been, familiar with this logic.

Because ‘doing business’ significantly contributes to altering the Earth's atmosphere and depleting limited natural resources, business education should be re-oriented so that global sustainability is the core and economic sustainability a subset. The neo-Aristotelian foundation of this paper proposes eudaimonia (human flourishing) as a teleology, and divides human activity, particularly learning into technē (practical utilitarian skills) and phronesis (experience, insight, and intuition). By developing intellectual, affective, and moral virtues, business students can attain a meta-virtue of phronesis, which provides a potential capacity to deal with uncertainty, mutability, and duality of human life and development. The principles of social practice wisdom provide the basis of a proposed sustainability curriculum.

The study examines the effect of psychosocial safety climate (PSC) and psychological capital (PsyCap) on customer engagement through discretionary service behaviors including adaptive and proactive service behaviors (ASB and PSB). A field study of 56 managers, 513 service employees, and 560 customers in 56 branches of insurance companies was carried out to test a theoretical model using hierarchical linear modeling (HLM7). The results demonstrated that PsyCap and PSC were both positively associated with ASB and PSB at the individual level. The results also showed that an interaction between PsyCap and PSC was related to ASB but not PSB. This suggested that PsyCap and PSC interact in a synergic manner to affect service employees' engagement in ASB, beyond their direct effects. At the branch level, ASB was not associated with customer engagement behavior, but PSB was. Furthermore, PSB mediated the relationship between PSC and customer engagement behavior, although ASB did not.

This paper reports the outcomes from a teaching and learning research project at an Australian University centred on improving a third year course in industrial relations. The paper addresses the cognitive and affective outcomes of the course. Cognitively, students developed a greater understanding of the processes of industrial relations and their interconnectedness; however, research and academic skills were identified as in need of further improvement. Affectively, students responded to the challenges of the course, increasing their confidence and self-efficacy and being better prepared for the transition from student to practitioner. While the course in question was a final year ‘capstone’ course, the findings are applicable to all who are interested in designing, or redesigning, any business course that attempts to integrate theory and practice.

The article reviews the literature for the key markers of high growth firms, which create the majority of new jobs. From the review, a template is developed comprising the key markers. They include: training and experience in entrepreneurship and management; and strategies that emphasise innovation, marketing and employee and organisational learning. High growth firm owners take steps to access management skills that complement theirs through employment of a management team, outsourcing management tasks or making decisions with oversight from an informal board. Good reward structures, which may include ownership interests, are essential to performance of the management team. Access to resources, especially finance and human capital is critical to growth but abundant resources could compromise efficiency. The article finds that personality characteristics of owners and postgraduate education in management are not effective identifiers of high growth firms. Some of the barriers to identifying high growth firms are presented and suggestions made to overcome them.

This study used two theoretical lenses (positive organizational behaviour and social exchange theory) to examine the influence of an individual attribute – psychological capital (PsyCap), and an organizational factor – leader–member exchange, upon police officers’ perceptions of learning options (teamwork and training) and affective commitment. A cross-sectional design using a survey-based, self-report strategy was used to collect data from 588 frontline police officers in the United States. The findings indicate that leader–member exchange explained almost a fifth of PsyCap and together leader–member exchange and PsyCap accounted for almost a third of police officers’ satisfaction with training. Further, leader–member exchange, PsyCap, training and teamwork collectively explain almost half of affective commitment. One implication of the findings is that if senior management want police officers to be more committed, they have to improve officers’ relationships with their supervisors, upskill them (especially their supervisors) in PsyCap, and improve teamwork opportunities and processes.

This study examined the individual and combined effects of the organisational-level variables of climate and task design, and the group-level variables of group citizenship behaviour (GCB), market orientation, group self-efficacy (GSE), and group climate for innovation (GCI) on work group service innovativeness. Specifically, this study theorised that work group service innovativeness is a product of both organisational (organisational climate and task design) and work group (GCB, market orientation, and GSE) contexts. Drawing upon the theories and literature, six hypotheses were derived. Data were collected through a 64-item questionnaire using a 7-point Likert scale from four hotels in Melbourne, Australia. Results indicated that organisational climate, task design, GCB, group self-efficacy, and group climate for innovation were significant predictors of work group service innovativeness, while market orientation was not. Limitations, future directions, managerial and research implications are explored.

The aim of this paper is to present and test a model that examines the relationship between organizational learning culture and innovativeness. Organizational learning culture consists of the organizational learning process and of different culture types that can be placed within the competing values framework. It is defined as a set of norms and values within an organization that support systematic, in-depth approaches aimed at achieving higher-level organizational learning. Innovativeness consists of both innovative culture and innovations. Innovations, the process or outcome of innovating, are more likely to occur and be more successful if there is a strong innovative culture, meaning that the behavioral patterns of the employees are directed towards innovating. We used data from 112 Turkish firms employing more than 50 people. The relationship between organizational learning culture and innovativeness is empirically tested via structural equation modeling (SEM). We found support for a very strong positive relationship between organizational learning culture and innovative culture, as well as for the indirect relation between organizational learning culture and innovations via innovative culture.

Firms today thrive on innovation. Knowledge exploration, the nonlocal search for new knowledge beyond the firm’s current expertise, is posited to be critical for innovation. This paper seeks to contribute to the research on knowledge exploration in two ways. First, this paper provides a comprehensive review of key empirical studies on knowledge exploration and innovation. Second, this paper proposes a recombinatory search framework of innovation to reconceptualise extant understanding of knowledge exploration on innovation. This new framework focusses on the evolution of the benefits and costs of knowledge exploration, and puts forward an inverse S-curve proposition between knowledge exploration and innovation. Two company cases, IBM and Procter & Gamble, are then used to illustrate the new proposition.

Mentoring received by protégés has been shown to play an important role in relieving protégés’ job-related stress. However, literature on the relationship between mentoring and job-related stress has yielded mixed and inconclusive results. Our research seeks to reconcile the conflicting implications by examining protégés’ individual traditionality and trust in mentor as moderators on the relationship between mentoring and job-related stress. We tested the hypotheses with data from a sample of 210 protégés from a large company in China. Results of our two-way and three-way interaction effect tests revealed that: (1) traditionality moderated the negative relationship between mentoring and job-related stress in such a way that the relationship was stronger for protégés with higher rather than lower traditionality; (2) the influence that mentoring had on job-related stress was strongest for protégés with both high traditionality and a high level of trust in mentor.

The purpose of this study is to gain insight into the relations between gender, networking behavior and network structure, in order to investigate the relevance of gender for organizational networks. Semi-structured interviews with 39 white, Dutch, women and men account managers were analyzed both qualitatively and quantitatively. Our study's results show that the men account managers employ exchange and affect-based trust networking and, to a lesser extent, authoritative networking, whereas the women account managers employ affect-based trust and also use exchange. Authoritative networking appears to foster higher status ties, exchange networking behavior fosters lower status ties and affect-based trust networking fosters equal status ties. Gender differences in network structure may be explained by networking behavior rather than by gender. Our study is limited by the size of our group of respondents (n = 39). A larger sample is needed to test hypotheses concerning the relations between networking behavior, network structure and gender in a more rigorous manner than our study allowed. However, our research material enabled us to test these relations in a sound, be it preliminary way. Our study suggests to focus less on gender as a demographic bivariate category to explain gender differences in network structures and outcomes. In so doing, organizational network research will gain more insight into how gender expectations are negotiated in networking. In organizational practice, this will support organization members to employ the diversity of networking behaviors necessary to generate optimal network structures and outcomes. While most organizational network research focuses on network structures, we introduce the relational process of fostering network relations as central to women's and men's networking behavior. Networking behavior may have greater explanatory power for differences in network structure, than gender as a demographic, bivariate variable.

The purpose of this paper is to: (a) offer rationale for the importance of an increasingly important organizational management topic – the wisdom of top managers – what we call executive wisdom; (b) develop a theoretical framework for the construct, including core components and outcomes, and (c) provide implications for practice. The research in several related literatures is reviewed and synthesized to provide the foundation for the development of this theoretical framework. Applying the extant literature on wisdom to the specific context of a top-level business manager, we argue that there are four foundational characteristics of executive wisdom: (1) Knowledge, developed by prior learning and experience, (2) moral maturity, (3) reflective strategic decision-making, and (4) ability to manage uncertainty. Executives possessing such characteristics are: (a) able to make enlightened strategic judgments that are (b) implemented as principled actions. The effectiveness of such implementation is contingent upon, among other moderators, the executive's leadership skills. We view each of the characteristics as necessary but not sufficient to possess and benefit from executive wisdom. The principled actions undertaken by those possessing executive wisdom will, when compared to other executives, have a greater likelihood of leading to valued outcomes indicative of organizational effectiveness, including enhanced stakeholder trust and loyalty, reputational capital, and stronger financial and social performance. We believe that the main arguments developed in this paper will help improve managers’ understanding of how to become a wise executive and to realize the benefits of doing so. From a theory perspective, this paper adds to the growing body of literature in a new and increasingly valued area of research.

In a global society experiencing an increasing shortage of qualified workers and the recognition that individuals with autism spectrum disorder (ASD) can be effective employees, there is an uptick in private sector initiatives to address employment needs through the recruitment of workers with ASD. A case study methodology with consensual qualitative research analysis was used to gain a rich understanding of employment of people with ASD at a medium-sized clothier in collaboration with a service provider for people with ASD. Perceptions of implementation and effectiveness were collected. Results suggest the hiring of people with ASD was positively perceived by employees. Components of this success included changes to the physical work environment, diversity training specific to individuals with disabilities, and a company climate of engaging and supporting employees with ASD. This research suggests that the collaborative initiative may prove a meaningful model for other companies interested in employing people with ASD.

This study focuses on firms’ search behavior with regard to corporate R&D investment. Building on Cyert and March's (1963) behavioral theory of the firm, we develop specific hypotheses about how firms adjust their R&D investment in response to performance discrepancies, and how this adjustment varies for two types of slack resources. Moreover, by utilizing institutional logic, we also hypothesized that the firms’ search behaviors in response to performance feedback may differ between business-group affiliated and unaffiliated firms. Empirical evidence from panel data coving 274 Taiwanese electronics firms listed on the Taiwan Stock Exchange over the period 1999–2008 is consistent with our theoretical predictions. In particular, we find that firms will increase R&D investment when they faced discrepancies in performance, but will decrease R&D spending when close to bankruptcy. Moreover, our results show that unabsorbed and absorbed slack have different impacts, positively and negatively affecting R&D investment, respectively. In addition, we find that both business group-affiliated and unaffiliated firms will increase R&D investment in response to negative performance feedback, but only business group-affiliated firms will increase R&D activity when facing positive performance feedback. Furthermore, we also find that only business group-affiliated firms have a greater inclination to invest in R&D when there is unabsorbed slack. Our findings extend the claims of behavioral theory in newly industrialized economies, and identify the important factors that need to be considered in future studies.

As a source of competitive advantages for firms, innovation has boosted scholars’ interest in the identification of its main determinants from the perspective of organizational culture. However, there is a lack of research on innovation cultures in the context of emerging markets. Based on survey data from 433 manufacturing firms (331 Chinese firms and 102 Vietnamese firms), this study addresses this research gap using a hierarchical regression analysis to explore the impact of organizational innovation culture on firms’ new product performance and to examine the moderating effects of institutional environments and organizational cohesion on this relationship. We find that there are positive relationships between organizational innovation culture and firms’ new product performance. In contrast to recent research on organizational cohesion, we report that organizational cohesion has both a direct, positive effect on new product performance and a positive moderating role in organizational innovation culture and firms’ new product performance. Furthermore, regarding the institutional environment in the context of emerging markets, we find that the effects of organizational innovation culture on firms’ new product performance are stronger in China than in Vietnam. Therefore, this paper enriches organizational culture research by providing a multidimensional theoretical framework and extends institutional theory in the context of emerging markets by examining the moderating effect of institutional environments on the relationship between organizational innovation culture and firms’ new product performance in both China and Vietnam.

Research has demonstrated the growing prevalence of sexual harassment (SH) across continents, industries and occupations as well as the associated negative outcomes (Glomb et al. 1999). Not surprisingly, job satisfaction is one of the job-related variables that is frequently investigated in the SH literature, with Lapierre et al. (2005) meta-analytically establishing that SH significantly diminishes job satisfaction. Other studies have argued, however, that ‘satisfied’ employees do not necessarily perform to the best of their abilities (Crossman & Abou-Zaki 2003) and that work engagement is a better construct to understand what makes employees ‘go the extra mile’ (Hallgerg & Schaufeli 2006; Buckingham & Coffman 1999). This study, conducted in Australia, adopted the Utrecht Work Engagement Scale (Schaufeli et al. 2002a), as an empirical gauge of the construct ‘work engagement’ and the Sexual Experiences Questionnaire (Fitzgerald et al. 1988) to measure SH. A strong negative relationship was established in addition to significant differences in the SH experiences of men and women.

This paper identifies how management’s intentional use of participatory management practices can heighten knowledge sharing across a multigenerational workforce through the presence of socio-technical flexibility. In this conceptualization, we identify the value of socio-technical flexibility to effective employee knowledge sharing in three steps. First, we define the prominent characteristics of the current multigenerational workforce. Second, we define the behavioral characteristics of socio-technical flexibility. Third, we describe how an intentional use of salient management practices, including reverse mentoring, flexible work roles, and self-managed teams optimizes multigenerational talents to enhance employee socio-technical flexibility, which in turn, leads to multigenerational knowledge sharing. We believe that by embracing the benefits of multigenerational workforce, management can take intentional steps to create a workplace that optimizes effective knowledge sharing behaviors for improved service through salient participatory management practices.