Carolan McLarney

The classroom as a service encounter : Suggestions for value creation

Drawing on marketing concepts and language, the authors propose that the classroom is a service encounter between a marketer (instructor) who provides a service (the instruction) and a group of stakeholders (students). A marketing framework is informative in that it suggests that stakeholder satisfaction is important if the instructor is invested in meeting his or her pedagogical goals (the learning experience and outcomes). In this essay, the authors discuss the concepts of service encounters and value disciplines as a means for faculty members to reevaluate their teaching and design new strategies for creating value in the management classroom.

The cyclical effect of expatriate satisfaction on organizational performance: the role of firm international orientation

This study explores the role of expatriate satisfaction in organizational performance. It also posits that international transfer of knowledge and corporate learning are determinants in the overall satisfaction of expatriate managers. Moreover, as organizations gain international experience, their expatriate managers contribute to the global learning of the firm. This corporate learning provides the tools (e.g. foreign market experience and know‐how) for future expatriate managers and increases the likelihood of positive overseas experiences. Results from 132 expatriates of Fortune 500 firms indicate that satisfaction is significantly related to the performance of the organization as a whole and, further, that this relationship will vary depending on the international orientation of the organization.

Stepping into the light: stakeholder impact on competitive adaptation

This paper develops a new model for analysing industry competitive structure. The new model combines traditional strategic group analysis with stakeholder theory. Thus we have a model that incorporates all actors into the industry analysis. Company‐stakeholder clusters reveal the hidden, and often, crucial relationships that determine firm longevity. Using the new model, the small production canning industry is analysed.

Strategic planning‐effectiveness‐environment linkage: a case study

The literature on strategic planning has examined the process of planning in some detail, but most of it has ignored the external environment in its discussion. In the studies that have looked at the linkage between the environment and the strategic planning process, the strategic planning process has been treated like a black box. The literature does not delve into the box and examine the linkage between the environment and the characteristics (components and context) of the strategic planning process, but rather it has only looked at a simple relationship between the environment and this entity called the strategic planning process. It is this omission that is addressed in this study. This paper suggests that there is a need to open the black box and examine the relationship between the characteristics of the strategic planning process and the external environment of the organisation.

Social policy recommendations to alleviate stress among informal providers of elder care

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to examine social policy recommendations to deal with the high level of pressure placed upon informal providers of elder care.Design/methodology/approach – The paper investigates this subject of elder care by first establishing the significance of the problem. The paper provides an examination of how this problem is dealt with in several countries, both at the governmental level and by private enterprise. This forms the basis of a discussion of social (and enterprise) policy implications in particular for the USA. A focus on flexible work scheduling as a viable means to help alleviate the problem is recommended. In particular an approach of voluntary compliance is proposed to encourage wider acceptance by corporations.Findings – The paper finds that priority needs to be given to developing a social policy agenda that focuses on flexible work scheduling. In addition, meaningful effort must be expended to capture input from various stakeholders, and to educate and prom...

What happened is prologue: creative divergence and corporate culture fabrication

Culture is an overarching phenomenon that helps individuals make sense of their world. However, culture is not an unchanging “given.” Members of a society actively create culture and, through their activities and interactions, sustain or change this culture. In an organizational setting, culture gives meaning to each person’s membership in the social stage that is the workplace. In the process of cultural creation and sustenance, the past is often used as a harbinger of things to come. How an organization effectively uses the past to shape its present culture is a major focus of this study. This article is an ethnographic study of how culture is fabricated, sustained, and renewed in a small advertising firm. The authors propose three interpretive themes – nightmare avoidance, “Richardism,” and dream building – and develop these into a framework using Drucker’s three entrepreneurial strategies. A fourth strategy, creative divergence, emerges from our in‐depth analysis of EMC.

Socio‐political structures as determinants of global success: The case of Enron Corporation

Especially over the past decade, there have been numerous changes in the global marketplace which indicate that change is the only constant fact of life. These changes have increased not only opportunities but also uncertainty for organizations. The dynamic environment provides organizations with continuous feedback, to which they need to adapt. Past success masks the multinational corporation’s ability to perceive and respond to these changes. The key to survival in such a setting is culturally sensitive organizational learning. Strategic planning is necessary to cope with different levels of uncertainty encountered in foreign markets and to fully tap the new resources. Organizational effectiveness is directly influenced by the firm’s ability to achieve a “close‐fit” between the internal dynamics and the socio‐political structures. This, in turn, is possible through management practices sensitive to the local core cultural values. The Enron Power Project at Dabhol (Maharashtra, India) brings to light various socio‐political factors that have a direct impact on the organizational effectiveness, its survival and its long‐term success.

A Race to the Top: Should Labour Standards be Included in Trade Agreements?

The trade and labour debate is a sensitive and controversial issue. For a long time, critics and advocates have debated the link between labour standards and trade. Salem and Rozental (2012) indicate that the argument at the heart of this debate is that developing countries will end up raising the standards for their workers, and risk losing their comparative advantage, ultimately suffering a decline in export performance, leading to a dwindling per capita income. Industrialized or developed countries argue that developing countries have abusive working conditions and their wages are suppressed. Advocates of trade-linked labour standards aim to halt a ‘race to the bottom’ in which national labour conditions are reduced in an attempt to lower production costs, expanding international trade and competition. These advocates believe that labour standards provided in trade agreements level the playing field because they require countries to meet an acceptable level of labour conditions and eliminate a source of ‘unfair’ economic advantage (Salem & Rozental, 2012). Although labour standards vary from country to country, depending on the stage of development, per capita income, political, social and cultural conditions and institutions, efforts have been made to identify and achieve consensus on a group of core labour standards that should ideally apply universally (Stern & Terrell, 2003).

Where does all the money go? An investigation of donation filtration

There has been much social and legal debate over the definition of the word “charity.” For some it is a path way to heaven, for others, it plays a decisive role in anti‐trust cases. Charles Dickens wrote “Charity begins at home and justice begins next door.” Lord Macnaghten’s take on the Preamble to the Statute of Elizabeth (1601) 43 Eliz. 1, c.4 (UK), whilst considered to have its limitations, is widely regarded as a useful starting point for a legal definition of charity.

Online Surveys may be Hazardous to your Corporate Health: A Framework for Assessing and Improving Market Research Survey Quality

This paper identifies a number of difficulties associated with interpreting the results of online surveys used to gather market research data. Because of the nature of data collection, researchers are able to exert little control over who completes these surveys and how often they do so. As a result, findings based on online survey data can be very misleading. We highlight several problematic aspects of online market research surveys (unspecified objectives, unknown probability of selection, non-response bias, accessibility and privacy issues) and suggest that any or all of these possess sufficient potential to destroy the credence of any research findings the online survey may generate. We conclude by outlining ways to maximize the utility of research findings of this increasingly popular mode of survey administration.