Small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) play an important role in international markets. This study argues that the ownership structures of SMEs influence their proclivity to take risks and expand the scale and scope of their internationalization efforts. Data from 889 Swedish SMEs reveal that internal owners (CEOs and other senior executives) tend to be risk averse and have a lower proclivity to increase scale and scope of internationalization than external owners (venture capitalists and institutional investors). The results provide interesting insights into the behavioral change of executives regarding the scale and scope of internationalization in the presence of external ownership.
The authors studied the effect of ownership structure on human capital investments as indicated by wage intensity, defined as the ratio of expenditure on employee wages to sales, in a sample of 996 Japanese manufacturing firms during their economic recession of 1998-2002. They found that domestic shareholders, with interests beyond financial considerations, enhance wage intensity, especially when performance is low, and thereby safeguard human capital investments. Foreign shareholders with sole interest in financial returns have an opposite effect; they reduce wage intensity when firm performance is low.
When I was a doctoral student and a young faculty member, I dreaded dealing with editors because I was afraid I would inadvertently do or say the wrong thing. And, because I attributed to editors great power over my career, I worried about the consequences of any misstep on my part. Now that I am on the other side of the table as editor of Journal of Management, I realize that I wasted a worry. Editors are in the business of trying to publish articles, not reject them. Indeed, the major gratification of being an editor is bringing manuscripts from rough shape to final acceptance. For that reason, editors are typically more lenient than reviewers in their judgments. Moreover, after years of being beaten up as authors themselves, editors are usually quite empathic to the unhappiness authors feel when getting negative feedback, to the frustration authors feel when getting tossed about by reviewers, and to the anxiety authors feel when important tenure and promotion decisions hang in the balance. During the past 3 years, particularly in the context of conducting doctoral student and junior faculty consortia, I have received many questions about when and how authors should converse with editors. The frequency of such questions makes me realize that the tacit knowledge senior faculty have accumulated over the years on this topic is not as obvious to new entrants into our field, who are supposed to somehow “pick it up” through some vague socialization process along the way. What I thought might be instructive here is providing some fairly specific recommendations about how to most effectively communicate with editors. Obviously, there will be some style differences across journals and editors in our field, but by and large, I think most editors at most journals in the organizational sciences would agree with the basic principles outlined below. First, I address the communications between authors and editors; then, I address the communications between reviewers and editors. Reviewers play an integral role in editors’ conversa-
This article proposes an individual-level theoretical framework of self-management failure. First, the authors introduce six self-defeating behaviors (SDBs) to the organizational literature. Second, they explain how personality may predispose employees to engage in these SDBs. Third, they define self-management failure and analyze how each SDB can undermine standard setting, operating, and monitoring. Throughout their presentation of the framework, the authors offer several research propositions. Finally, they discuss both the practical and theoretical implications of the framework.
This study examines the extent to which firms’ human resource dependence explains the representation of Black employees in nonmanagement, management, and top-management jobs. Human resource dependence is a firm-level construct describing the degree to which an organization has difficulty procuring and maintaining supplies of human resources. Indicators of human resource dependence in 154 private sector firms explained the representation of Black employees in nonmanagement and management-level jobs but did not predict Black employee representation in top-management jobs. The results provide new insights into characteristics of firms that shape the demographic makeup of the workplace.
This article reports the results of a randomized field experiment that tested the effects of a control-enhancing stress intervention among unit managers of a trucking company. Individuals who managed geographically dispersed profit centers were randomly assigned to either an intervention group (N = 34) or a no-intervention group (N = 30). The intervention increased perceptions of control after 4 months, but only for those managers with supportive supervisors. In conjunction with supervisory support, the intervention produced improvements in job satisfaction, but not general well-being outcomes. The impact of the intervention and supervisory support on satisfaction was fully mediated by control perceptions.
This study examines the relationship between burnout and performance among three samples of account managers. Using a multidimensional and multifaceted burnout instrument, the authors tried to uncover meaningful configurations based on the basic symptoms of burnout and the role members to whom these symptoms refer. Subsequently, the authors explored how the revealed burnout configurations are related to in-role and extra-role performance. Cluster analysis resulted in five burnout configurations, including the burned-out group, the non-burned-out group, and three moderately burned-out groups. As predicted, the burnout configurations performed differently.
Although status and stratification processes have been studied extensively at the societal level in the sociology literature, they continue to be neglected in the study of management and organizational life. This review begins by questioning why this neglect has occurred. The authors then focus on the theoretical perspectives and empirical findings related to ascribed and achieved status, their interrelationships, how status hierarchies are established and maintained in organizational settings, and the role of culture in these processes. They conclude with an agenda for future research and implications for management practice.
A charismatic leadership model consisting of leader social and emotional skills, follower openness to organizational change, and organizational-change magnitude was tested using data from 108 leaders and 325 direct followers in 64 organizations. Leader social control and emotional expressivity skills predicted charismatic leadership whereas follower openness to change mediated the relationship between charismatic leadership and leadership effectiveness. Surprisingly, organizational-change magnitude did not moderate the relationship between charismatic leadership and leadership effectiveness. Implications for leadership theory, practice, and future research are discussed.
Upper echelons research has emphasized decision making either by individual CEOs or by teams of top managers. The authors introduce the CEO-Adviser model as an intermediate model of strategic decision making. The CEO-Adviser model leads to new propositions that have not been explored through the individual CEO or top management team models concerning how context affects the use of formal versus informal advisory systems and how advisers are selected.