[Abstract] Management scholarship has recently received an increasing amount of criticisms, centered on (1) its alleged lack of relevance and (2) the alleged dysfunction associated with publication-based scholarly competition. In defense of the spirit of management scholarship, we make two arguments. First, the criticism that management scholarship is flawed because it is irrelevant may be itself irrelevant. It reflects a lack of awareness of the nature of scholarship. Instead of losing self-confidence, management scholars should be very proud of our scholarship, which has enabled modern business schools to

This paper begins to answer the call to broaden current theories of individual decision-making by including in them the effects of human mood. Grounding our arguments in psychological literature on the effects of mood on information processing, motivation, and decision heuristics, we develop hypotheses about how mood can significantly affect individuals' use of structured decision protocols. In support of our hypotheses, results from an experimental study of complex decision-making suggest that, in situations where a structured decision protocol is the usual method of decision-making, individuals in moderately negative moods are significantly more likely than those in moderately positive moods to: (1) carefully execute all the steps of a structured decision protocol, (2) execute the steps of a structured decision protocol in the correct order, and (3) rely on the outcome of the structured decision protocol as the primary basis for the decision. We discuss these findings in terms of the...

As knowledge gains a reputation for being a critical resource in the information-intensive economy, organizations have doubled their efforts in trying to extract value from knowledge management policies. One particular aspect of knowledge management, which has gone unnoticed in academic research, is the presence of conflicts in knowledge activities. By adopting a conflict perspective of knowledge activities, this study arrives at a two-dimensional framework that defines knowledge conflicts in terms of its type and nature. Central to this paper is the fundamental idea that conflicts form an integral part of knowledge management and depending on how they are managed; conflicts may be formidable partners or dangerous adversaries in the corporate quest for knowledge-derived competitiveness.

Management scholarship has recently received an increasing amount of criticisms, centered on its alleged lack of relevance and alleged dysfunction associated with publicationbased scholarly competition. In defense of the spirit of management scholarship, we make two arguments. First, the criticism that management scholarship is flawed because it is irrelevant may be irrelevant itself. It reflects a lack of awareness of the nature of scholarship. Instead of losing self-confidence, management scholars should be very proud of our scholarship, which has enabled modern business schools to abandon the highly “relevant ” but academically bankrupt “trade school ” model of the 1950s. Second, we suggest that our scholarly competition resembles the Olympic Games, which captivate the entire human race. Clearly, the ability to win Olympic medals (such as outrunning, outskating, and outshooting competitors) is not that relevant in the modern world. But it is the focus, the discipline, and the dedication that represent every bit of the human spirit in search of excellence—so is the spirit of scholarship that we vigorously advance and support here. What is the nature of management scholarship? 1 Why do we do research? If prospective or first-year doctoral students, in search of the meaning of We thank Ben Arbaugh (AMLE editor), Jonathan Doh (Exemplary

Retailers are becoming involved with networks consisting of multiple firms in order to more effectively perform business activities such as supply chain management. This research develops and tests a framework outlining the effects of conflict in networks and how conflict management can mitigate and exacerbate these effects. A study of 81 simulated networks finds that relational and task conflict have a negative effect on network member satisfaction with and desire to be a member of the network. The use of a collaborative conflict management style has a positive effect on satisfaction and desire for continuity, but the effects of accommodative and confrontational styles depend on the level of relational and task conflict present in the network. 2 MANAGING CONFLICT TO IMPROVE THE EFFECTIVENESS OF MARKETING NETWORKS Retailers increasingly are becoming involved with groups of other firms to improve their effectiveness in performing business activities. This trend toward complex, interorganizational relationships suggests that firm performance may be determined by competition between business networks rather than competition between individual firms

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Confrontation and the rules of the game in product development- the micro processes by

This paper is work in progress and I am thankful for any comments and suggestions regarding it. Errors and omissions might remain in the paper and the intention is not to implicate any of them to the many scholars that have moved the field forward. Please do not quote without prior permission from the author. This paper examines how managers create and develop strategy in practice. It reports findings of an in-depth investigation of managerial activities and associated learning dynamics in strategy creation, the generation and development of radically new strategies. Managerial and learning activities on different organizational levels, their influence on strategy development, and relationship to strategic change are examined. A dual longitudinal case methodology, including a single in-depth case study combined with a multiple retrospective case study is used, involving four multinational companies. The findings show a twofold character of strategy creation including an adaptive and a creative strategy motor of strategic change involving fundamentally different learning dynamics, reflecting their diverse location and social embeddedness. Adaptive learning dynamics were based on exploitation and refinement of prevailing industry and resource structures and involved a deductive reasoning or sensemaking as regards strategy, including knowledge assimilation activities such as formal intelligence and routine experiences. Creative learning dynamics evolved in the periphery of the organizations and were more remote from existing values and beliefs. They predominantly involved exploration and inductive sensemaking, including activities like informal noticing and creative experiments. The exploration/exploitation trade off interaction between the two strategy motors resulted in tension, which finally triggered strategic change.

Beach, 1997). These reviews have focused primarily on models of individual decision making and the state of the art in that realm. None of these reviews have given much attention to the burgeoning body of literature on group decision making. The group decision making literature has reached a high growth rate in the last decade primarily due to the interest in group process and, especially, to effective teamwork as businesses have organized work structures more and more around teams. Nevertheless, linkages between the vast research in individual decision making and group decision processes are slight. For instance, there is a large body of work on normative decision models in individual decision making (Von Neumann & Morgenstern, 1947; Edwards, 1954), but these models are rarely mentioned in the literature on group decision making. This paper presents a model of group decision making process that partially fills this gap. Individual decision making has its roots in the model of the rational man beginning as far back as Bernouli and the 1740’s. These models of decision making were mathematical, based upon statistical principles. The rational man model assumes that the decision maker is a) completely informed, b) infinitely sensitive, c) rational (Stevenson