In a departure from the organizational development literature, this study hypothesized that managerial responses to organizational change are influenced by 7 dispositional traits (locus of control, generalized self-efficacy, self-esteem, positive affectivity, openness to experience, tolerance for ambiguity, and risk aversion). Data were collected from 6 organizations (N = 514) to test the hypotheses. The 7 traits were reduced to 2 factors: Positive Self-Concept and Risk Tolerance. Both of these trait factors significantly predicted self-reports and independent assessments of coping with change. Results also indicated that coping with organizational change was related to extrinsic (salary, job level, plateauing, job performance) and intrinsic (organizational commitment, job satisfaction) career outcomes and that coping mediated roughly half of the relationships between the dispositional factors and these career outcomes. In a recent review of the literature, Quinn, Kahn, and Mandl (1994) noted that research in the field of organizational change and development has evolved from four major paradigms: organizational development, strategic choice, resource dependence-institutional theory, and population

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The completion of this dissertation is the end of one very educational era in my life. I am full of gratitude for many inspiring moments with interesting people during these years. I would like to thank the following people for their contribution to the production of this research. First of all, Professor Teija Laitinen, my supervisor, who guided me into the academic world. Our discussions gave me a lot of encouragement that was needed to conduct this research. I will always appreciate the freedom she gave me to take my own way and her great faith in my skills to survive. Profound gratitude also goes to the official pre-examiners Professor Norman Macintosh and Professor Lars Hassel for their review and very thoughtful feedback on the manuscript. The final version of this dissertation has benefited immensely from their efforts. Many professors gave valuable comments on my manuscript during the research process. Erkki K. Laitinen, Robert Chenhall, David Cooper, Tom Groot, Jan Mouritsen and Michael Shields are to be thanked. I am thankful for Adebayo Agbejule for guiding me into the interesting world of structural equation modeling. Professor Esko Leskinen is gratefully acknowledged for his valuable suggestions and guidance on the quantitative analysis whenever it was needed. The expertise of Professor Ilkka Virtanen, Professor Seppo Pynnönen, Pentti Suomela, Hannu Hirvonen and Tommi Lehtonen in various fields likewise improved this research. There are many professors, colleagues, administrative staff and friends at the University of Vaasa who supported me during the dissertation process. I appreciate their help and effort to create an inspiring research environment. I specially wish to thank Professor

This paper explores the conditions that foster a positive relationship between corporate social responsibility and financial performance by developing a model of corporate social strategy. The paper defines corporate social strategy and elaborates a typology of generic social strategies extant in the literature: differentiation, cost leadership, and strategic interaction. It then develops a framework for formulating social strategy by exploring the relationship of industry structure, firm resources, corporate values and ideology, and stakeholders to the generic strategies in order to create competitive advantages that are valuable, rare and imperfectly imitable. Key words: corporate social responsibility, strategy formulation, resource-based view TOWARD A MODEL OF CORPORATE SOCIAL STRATEGY FORMULATION One of the great preoccupations of the social issues in management literature has been the study of the relationship between corporate social responsibility (CSR) and its variants (corporate social responsiveness, corporate citizenship, etc.) and financial performance (Waddock & Graves, 1997; Griffin & Mahon, 1997; Preston & O’Bannon,

The importance of and the fast changes in the CIO's role in organizations are widely recognized. So is the need for CIOs to acquire the appropriate set of knowledge and managerial skills to lead the organization's effort in effectively using Information Technology. This study is based on an extensive survey of the literature addressing the desirable features of modern CIOs and the Information system area main activities. This study aims at evaluate (1) the impact of such features on the management performance of the IS department main activities and (2) their consequent impact on overall company performance. To empirically test these two relationships, 111 CEOs of companies located in Northern Italy were interviewed. The analysis of collected data provides some insights on the desirable features for modern CIOs, which in turn can be useful for CIO recruiting and professional development, and highlight the importance to properly manage the IS subfunctions in order to improve overall company performance.

The prioritization of information systems projects is a function of the strategic vision of the organization. We develop a model of the IT selection process that is based upon the influence of strategic vision. Strategic vision influences both the type of projects considered, the resources allocated to information systems, and the processes and mechanisms for justifying IT investments. Two of the processes that influence the final project selection are the reporting structure of the IS organization and the involvement of a steering committee for investment prioritization. We suggest that this influences the criteria used to make IT investment decisions. 1.

This paper explores a series of relationships between top managers, strategic direction and financial performance. Building on previous studies, it was hypothesised that: (a) firms pursuing different strategies would be led by managers with different profiles; and, (b) firms which aligned the profiles of their top managers with the requirements of their strategies would outperform those that did not achieve such alignment. Further the importance of the strategymanager alignment under various environmental and organisational constraints was also investigated. The results of the empirical examination of a sample of U.S. companies from three industries suggest that matching managers to strategy is a significant component of superior performance. Keywords:

It has been recognized that in today’s highly competitive industrial markets, one of the few ways left to gain differentiation from competitors is by offering value-added services. To do so, however, requires a service-oriented strategy and the active implementation of this strategy which includes significant internal changes in management philosophy and approach. Unfortunately, no study has examined the implementation aspects of a service-oriented strategy. In this context, our research focuses on two important “soft factors”, corporate culture and human resource management, that are necessary for a successful implementation of a serviceoriented strategy in industrial marketing companies. We analyze the mediating role of these two soft factors in the causal chain leading from a service-oriented strategy to organizational performance. We find that that the soft factors play an important mediating role in the link

Strategy process research attempts to address the very difficult question of how strategies are formed, implemented and changed. Embedded in this work is the assumption that managers aspire to, and firms realize something that can be called a strategy. What constitutes an effective strategy is addressed in the work of ‘strategy content ’ researchers (reported elsewhere in this book). Content research describes attractive destinations, but without explaining how to get there. The getting there, the journey, is the task of strategy process researchers. Unfortunately, in their preoccupation with the journey, process researchers too often lose track of the destination, the strategy outcome. Thus despite the voluminous writings on strategy process (see

The consequences of conflict between the venture capitalist and the entrepreneurial team in the United Kingdom from the perspective of the venture capitalist