This study presents a method to establish empirically what drives organization members in their day-to-day behavior. The method starts from the sense employees make of their own actions. The approach consists of two steps: qualitative laddering interviews to determine the most central means and ends that play a role in the sensemaking of organization members, and a follow-up survey to examine in depth the organizational means-end structure. The method was validated by relating the results to independently observed indicators of what guides organization members in their behavior. Apart from the deeper insight it provides in the forces that drive day-to-day behavior in an organization, the method also provides management with a practical tool for addressing employee motivation and for developing credible communication toward stakeholders. 5001-6182 Business 5410-5417.5 Marketing Library of Congress Classification (LCC) HD 58.7 Organizational Behavior M Business Administration and Busines...

This paper draws on the need to understand how mobile technology is implemented and used at the organisational level. IT is a general-purpose technology and therefore its use involves a high degree of uncertainty and ambiguity. Moreover, IT vendors and system developers tend to be very unambiguous in their rhetoric about mobile technology opportunities. Therefore, managers have trouble to identify the real scope, the functionality and the impact of new mobile applications. However, these three types of uncertainties need to be handled in change management projects where new information technology is involved. Gradual uncertainty reduction at these three different levels, i.e. what technology can do; will technology work; and will users adopt it, is studied in this paper. This is achieved through an analysis of the implementation process of an information system where mobile terminals are used to give service technicians access to the ERP system at BT Europe, a leading supplier of forklift trucks. The analysis shows how the three levels of uncertainty interact, and how the computerised parts of the information system are complemented by mindful intertwining with the non-computerised communication and manual data processing, in order for the information system to work.

Avoir le sentiment de faire partie d’une équipe: de l’identification à la coopération

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The notion of organizational culture has raised a considerable interest during the past two decades in the field of International Management for being a factor playing an important role in the various organizational processes leading ultimately to performance. However organizational culture is generally presented as a set of values and ideas that would be homogeneously shared by the entire organization, a monolithic vision generally rejected by most social scientists and psychologists. This paper examines how different disciplines have conceptualized organizational culture and identity, progressively revealing its complex and multidimensional nature. We argue that there is a considerable discrepancy between the claimed organizational culture expressed and promoted by the top management as an indirect control mechanism and the sub-cultures and identities coexisting in a firm. Using the example of research on identity and culture in Mergers and Acquisitions, we show that the shift from the traditional “monolithic culture ” analysis to the more complex “multiple culture ” perspective requires major change in the approach of human interaction in International Business and Management.

The objective of this paper is to discuss the notion of identity and identification on a network level of analysis. The paper distinguishes between organisational and network levels of identity and suggests that managers face different challenges depending on how they perceive their networks. Managers in networks with an identifiable hub or center may find it feasible to create an explicit network identity. Contrary to networks where neither pre-existing firms act as network hubs, nor where new administrative entities are established, the industrial network approach portrays networks without clear boundaries and commonly without hubs. Under such circumstances, the task is to increase one’s own and others network awareness by considering boundaries and thereby facilitating network identification. We describe this task as one of creating and perceiving ‘imaginary network boundaries’.

This paper explores the link between organizational identity (OI) and strategy in an analysis of data from an organization actively engaged in a strategy development process. It strengthens the findings of Dutton and Dukerich (1991) and Glynn (2000) by supporting the idea that OI and strategy are linked, but it also extends their work by showing that the OI-strategy relationship is important not only in the “crisis” situations they discuss. Moreover, the preliminary findings we gathered during a series of workshops with this firm directly implicate imaginative processes in representing OI, akin to the concept of national “imagined communities ” proposed by Anderson (1991). We suggest that “imagining OI ” can therefore improve strategy, just as it appears to have done for the 3 business divisions discussed in this research. As a result, this research is the first to discern a close relationship among OI, imagination, and strategy.

In this paper we explore the interplay between organisational identity and information systems (IS). More specifically, we examine how the appropriation of new IS may influence established patterns of identity enactment and inter-organisational practices. We report on findings from three in-depth case studies that depict the adoption and use of a new collaborative 3D modelling technology by a metal fabrication firm in the architecture, engineering, and construction (AEC) industry. We investigate the manner in which the new technology was associated with changes in the company’s practices, interactions, and organisational identity. Our study contributes to the scarce research on IS and organisational identity by emphasising the relational, practical, and dynamic nature of organisational identity.

Abstract How do informal institutions affect conflicts between controlling and minority shareholders, also known as principal–principal (PP) conflicts? The dominant formal institution-based view of corporate governance suggests that legal rules and regulations are crucial for the protection of shareholder rights. While this perspective has significantly advances our understanding of international corporate governance, we suggest that more attention to informal institutions may complement the formal approach. First, we utilize social identity theory to shed light on the formation of shareholder coalitions. Second, we draw on research involving informal institutions such as culture and trust to better understand PP conflicts. Overall, we extend the growing literature on PP conflicts by an explicit focus on informal institutions. Keywords Informal institutions. Culture. Principal–principal conflicts. Shareholder coalitions. Social identity theory An institution-based view of corporate governance has recently emerged in the literature (Jiang & Peng, 2011a, b; La Porta, Lopez-de-Silanes, Shleifer, & Vishny, 1997, 1998, 2000; Peng & Jiang, 2010). The basic proposition is that “institutions matter, ” which is consistent with a long line of corporate governance research that has emphasized the importance of the formal institutional environment for the protection of investor rights (La Porta et al., 1998, 2000). A common element in these studies is the focus on the We thank Dane Blevins, Elizabeth Lim, and Weichieh Su for helpful comments and discussions. We acknowledge funding from the Jindal Chair of Global Strategy at the Jindal School of Management,