Carina Antonia Hallin

Space and Place for BASE: On the Evolution of a BASE‐Jumping Attraction Image

BASE jumping is an extreme sport activity that employs rare natural or man‐made resources from where the participants can legally leap and perform a free flight before landing on the ground, assisted by opening their parachute canopies at the last possible moment. The 1000‐metre high Kjerag Cliff in Lysefjord, Norway was first used for this sport in 1994. Since then, it has achieved a position as a “Mecca” for BASE jumpers worldwide, resulting in increased traffic of BASE jumpers and observers to the area. This article discusses how the image of this attraction has evolved. Data were collected from documents, printed sources, videos, and mainly from interviews with participants and central providers of services and support. The strong image that has emerged is built upon the exciting experiences of participants and observers, the paradoxical effects of accidents and fatalities, the media, and the strong impressions provided by watching this wild nature. A key component is the communication within the BASE‐jumping community by word of mouth, e‐mail, pictures, and amateur video recordings.

Exploring Qualitative Differences in Knowledge Sources: A Study of Hierarchical Effects of Judgmental Confidence and Accuracy Performance

Focusing on knowledge management (KM) and strategic decision making in service businesses through the constructs of strategic capital and knowledge sharing, the study investigates qualitative differences in domain-specific knowledge of frontline employees and executives. The study draws on cognitive theory and investigates the extent to which the knowledge of these subject groups is correct with respect to incorporating intuitive judgments by various employee groups into forecasting and following strategic decision making. The authors carried out this investigation through an exploratory study of the subject groups’ confidence and accuracy (CA) performance in a constructed knowledge-based forecasting setting. The groups’ intuitive judgmental performances were examined when predicting uncertain business and industry-related outcomes. The authors surveyed 39 executives and 38 frontline employees in 12 hotels. The analysis is based on a between-participants design. The results from this setting do not fully confirm findings in earlier CA studies. Their results indicate that there are no significant differences in the accuracy of executives (as experts) and frontline employees (as novices). Although executives demonstrate overconfidence in their judgments and frontline employees demonstrate under confidence, in line with earlier CA theory of experts and novices, the differences we find are not significant. Similarly, the CA calibration performance difference between the two groups is not significant. They suggest, among other reasons, that our findings differ from earlier CA studies because of organizational politics and culture by power distance, social capital, misuse of knowledge and the size of the business.

In Times of Uncertainty in the Hotel Industry: Hotel Directors' Decision‐Making and Coping Strategies for Dealing with Uncertainty in Change Activities

This paper is based on an exploratory case study of 12 hotel directors from Copenhagen, Denmark. The study investigates their perceived uncertainty in terms of decision‐making during change processes with the aim of evaluating whether hotel directors take advantage of uncertainty to promote creativity and innovation in their change activities as a means of business development. It investigates which change activities hotel directors perceive as highly or less uncertain, and why and how they address uncertainties strategically. The findings of the study suggest that hotel directors do not benefit from uncertainty in order to develop competitive advantages. They employ traditional strategic approaches that apparently seem to reduce uncertainty by means of planning, sticking to procedures and routines and postponing decisions until they feel sure about them.

Harnessing the frontline employee sensing of capabilities for decision support

The ability to sense developments in operational (steady-state) and dynamic (growth) capabilities provides early signals about how the firm adapts its operations to ongoing changes in the environment. Frontline employees engage in the daily transactions and sense the firms operating conditions and ability to deal with the environment that eventually will affect performance and strategic outcomes. The environmental sensing is a central cognitive feature and constitutes an information source for operations strategy decisions. Drawing on aggregated judgmental time-series forecasting techniques, this article develops a sensing instrument an employee-sensed operational conduct (ESOC) index for updated information as an essential decision support mechanism. This sensing capacity is firm-specific and difficult to replicate once in place and thus can provide a basis for sustainable competitive advantage. An employee-sensed operational conduct (ESOC) index as a new decision support mechanism is proposed.The frontline employee ability to sense developments in operational (steady-state) and dynamic (growth) capabilities can predict fluctuations in future firm performance and thereby provides early warnings for decision making.The importance of frontline employee sensing of developments in firm-specific capabilities for decision support is supported empirically.

Democratizing the Multinational Corporation (MNC): Interaction Between Intent at Headquarters and Autonomous Subsidiary Initiatives

Abstract Contemporary organizations with multinational business activities must strive to achieve strategic responsiveness to thrive and survive as they operate across a highly dynamic and complex global business environment. Here we emphasize the importance of combining the slow analytical strategy processes at headquarters with the fast autonomous responses taken by frontline agents in the subsidiaries in view of the changing conditions. New business developments are observed first in the fast activities around the multinational periphery where updated experiences from ongoing responses create useful insights that can be used strategically if management at headquarters is cognizant about its existence and able to collect this information. We introduce the notion of democratizing the strategic engagement of managers and employees at all levels and locations of the multinational corporation (MNC) as an essential leadership paradigm. The implied interaction between slow central analytical reasoning at headquarters and updated insights from fast decentralized initiatives in local subsidiaries constitutes an effective dynamic responsive mechanism. This dynamic interaction implies that critical strategic decisions made in the MNC must be informed by the diverse updated insights of managers and employees operating on the corporate frontlines tapping into the crowd wisdom readily available in and around the organization.