David Sarpong

Managerial organizing practices and legitimacy seeking in social enterprises

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to explore how social enterprises as an emerging organizational form in market economies acquire legitimacy to attract the support of their constituents and stakeholders. Design/methodology/approach – Employing a qualitative case study of ten UK-based social enterprises, data for the empirical inquiry was collected using semi-structured interviews and documentary evidence (e.g. Internet web pages, newsletters, and marketing materials). Findings – We found cross sector partnerships, community engagement and capability building and, compassionate enterprise narratives as quintessentially embedded managerial initiatives and practices which give form to the legitimating activities of social enterprises. Practical implications – Proactive investment in the practices identified could help social enterprises to shore up their legitimacy to garner more societal support. In particular, they can draw on their partnership ties to locate, and recruit benevolent co-optees, strate...

On the influence of organisational routines on strategic foresight

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to propose a conceptual model to unpack the relationship between organisational routines and strategic foresight integration. Design/methodology/approach – Three moderating factors, actors mindfulness, organisational context and organisational ambidexterity, are used in a Routines-Foresight Model to explain how and when organisational routines might influence strategic foresight integration. In addition, the interactions between the ostensive and performative aspects of routines are linked to the concept of routines as generative structures to provide a solid theoretical foundation for the relationship between routines and foresight. Findings – The success (or failure) of foresight integration is partly a result of the nature of interaction between the ostensive and performative aspects of routines within a focal organisation. As a result of the characteristic embeddedness of routines in organisations however, certain factors further act as moderators to contribute t...

Service nepotism in the multi-ethnic marketplace: mentalities and motivations

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to emphasize the multi-ethnic marketplace as the site of the emergence of service nepotism: the practice where employees bestow relational benefits and/or gifts on customers on the basis that they share a perceived common socio-collective identity. The authors draw on the contemporary turn to practice in social theory to explore why ethnic employees may engage in service nepotism even when they are aware that it contravenes organizational policy. Design/methodology/approach – Given the paucity of empirical research which investigates the multi-ethnic marketplace as a locus for the emergence of service nepotism, the authors adopted an exploratory qualitative research approach to advance insight into service nepotism. The study benefits from its empirical focus on West African migrants in the UK who represent a distinct minority group living in urban areas of the developed world. Data for the study were collected over a six-month period, utilizing semi-structured interviews as the primary method of data collection. Findings – The research highlights the occurrence and complexities of service nepotism in the multi-ethnic marketplace, and identifies four distinct activities (marginal revolution, reciprocal altruism, pandering for recognition, and horizontal comradeship), that motivate ethnic employees to engage in service nepotism, despite their awareness that this conflicts with organizational policy. Research limitations/implications – By virtue of the chosen theoretical lens, the authors were unable to demonstrate how service nepotism could be observed outside spoken language. Also, care should be taken in generalizing the findings from this study given the particularities of the sub-group involved. For example, since the study is based on a small sample of first generation migrants, the findings may not hold true for their offspring, whose socialization and marketplace experiences may be qualitatively different from those of their parents. Practical implications – Service nepotism challenges fundamental western egalitarian ideals in the multi-ethnic marketplace. Organizations may wish to develop strategies to placate observers’ concerns of creeping favouritism in a supposedly equitable marketplace. The research could also serve as a starting point for managers objectively to assess the likely impact of service nepotism on the organizing value systems and competitiveness. In particular, the authors suggest that international marketing managers would do well to look beneath the surface to see what is really going on in international marketplaces, since ostensible experiences of marketplace consumption may not always reflect underlying reality. Originality/value – By using service nepotism as an analytical category to explore the marketplace experiences of ethnic service employees living and working in industrialized societies, the research shows that the practice of service nepotism, whilst taken for granted, can have far-reaching impact on individuals, observers, and service organizations in an increasingly highly differentiated multi-ethnic society.

Fading memories of the future: the dissipation of strategic foresight among middle managers

ABSTRACT Strategic foresight among middle managers is crucial, considering their responsibilities and authority vested in them in directing everyday organising. Emphasising practices as the locus of strategic foresight, we argue that imposed organising processes and bureaucratic routines may interact to dissipate the cultivation of strategic foresight among middle managers in their situated practice. Building on an explorative case analysis of a European sportswear retail company, our study highlights how top-down changes in organising processes may induce the dissipation of organisational ‘foresightfulness’. We identify four dimensions emphasised by the new organising processes and their associated routines (rhetoric of legitimation, instrumental rationality, suppression of creative freedom, and the formulations of solutions in search of problems) which typify the observed patterns of foresight dissipation among middle managers. The study and its findings extend our understanding of contextual antecedents that could lead to the dissipation of strategic foresight among middle managers in organizing.

Service nepotism in cosmopolitan transient social spaces

This article examines service nepotism, the practice of bestowing gifts or benefits on customers by frontline service staff based on a perceived shared socio-collective identity. Adopting a micro-sociological approach, it explores the practice as played out in multi-cultural transient service encounters. Given the dearth of existing research and low visibility of service nepotism operating ‘under the radar’, the article assumes an exploratory qualitative research approach to capture it through ‘microstoria’: the sharing of stories by marginal actors, as recounted by West African migrants working in the UK. These stories reveal similarity-to-self cueing, non-verbal communication and the availability of discretionary authority as three salient logics in play. In a highly differentiated multi-ethnic society, service nepotism challenges a very specific customer-oriented bureaucratic ethos that demands impartiality. It also provides contexts for relatively powerless employees to rebalance their relationship with their organizations, thereby addressing a more pressing dysfunction within the market and society more generally.

Sustainable Packaging: Regulations and Operational Challenges in a Manufacturing SME

The issue of sustainability has attracted considerable attention over the last decade and has been accompanied by the development of stringent packaging material legislation for firms. Drawing on a single case approach, this paper examines the operational challenges faced by manufacturing SMEs as they strive to meet the expectations and requirements of increasingly demanding sustainable packaging regulations. The findings highlight the internal costs and complexities that are faced by manufacturing firms when complying with the regulations. It suggests that some firms may face financial and technical constraints that prevent them from reporting the significant efforts that they are making to improving packaging materials. More significantly it identifies the seemingly insurmountable problems that are faced by SMEs when confronted with powerful upstream or downstream supply chain partners that are resistant to improvement initiatives. This can result in organisations acting in a self-interested manner and consequently, the cumulative environmental impact of the supply chain is greater than it may be if organisations were more environmentally cooperative.

Meeting the needs of the Millennials and Generation Z: gamification in tourism through geocaching

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to present a conceptual framework based on an understanding of the principles of popular mobile-enabled games, indicating how organisations in the tourism sector could meet the needs of Millennials and Generation Z through engaging with the existing gamified location-based practice of geocaching as an information and communication technology enabled gamified enhancement to the destination experience. Design/methodology/approach As a primarily conceptual paper, the authors take an inductive qualitative approach to theory building based on the understanding of an existing practice (geocaching) that is undertaken among a community of practitioners (geocachers), which results in the presentation of a conceptual framework, which is the theory itself that the authors have constructed from the understanding of what is going on and which principles can then be applied across other tourism practices. Findings Findings indicate that through engaging with geocaching, smaller entrepreneurial businesses even in non-urban destinations that fall outside of the remit of smart city developments, and in tourism destinations on the less technologically enabled or resource-rich side of the digital divide, can reap the benefits associated with employing the principles and practices associated with smart tourism to meet the needs of this new generation of tourism consumers who seek richer digital and often gamified tourism experiences. Originality/value This paper fills a gap in the literature regarding the way many different types of tourism destinations could meet the needs of Millennials and Generation Z tourists.

What’s in a name? Cross-national distances and subsidiary’s corporate visual identity change in emerging-market firms’ cross-border acquisitions

Addressing the unique challenge facing emerging-market firms (EMFs) of branding and marketing in their foreign subsidiaries, the purpose of this paper is to evaluate the foreign subsidiary’s corporate visual identity (CVI) transitions during the post-acquisition period.,Data on 330 cross-border acquisitions from five emerging markets, namely, Brazil, Russia, India, China and South Africa (BRICS) are used. The cross-sectional multivariate analyses are used to test the hypotheses.,Utilizing a sample of worldwide acquisitions conducted by EMFs originated from BRICS, this study establishes that various cross-national distances do not consistently cause the targets to take on the parent’s CVI. While economic distance and formal institutional distance increase the likelihood of an acquired subsidiary’s CVI change, cultural distance decreases the likelihood of CVI change.,Lacking international experience and shaped by national differences between the host and home markets, EMFs often grant foreign subsidiaries substantial autonomy to respond to diverse stakeholder demands in subsidiary branding. Contrary to extant literature, the findings show that some distances are more pertinent to CVI transformation in the subsidiaries than others in the context of the EMFs.,This research shows that the formal institutional distance and economic distance will increase the likelihood of CVI changes in the subsidiaries, whereas, the cultural distance requiring soft skills like the cultural adaptability from the EMFs will decrease the CVI change possibility. The findings presented in the paper have significant implications for future research and strategic application.

Strategic Foresight for Innovation Management: A Review and Research Agenda

The concept of strategic foresight has come to dominate contemporary management discourse in recent times with a remarkable upsurge in the number of scholarly papers reporting a positive influence of strategic foresight on innovation. This causal link has served not only as a point of convergence for many empirical and conceptual studies, but also the starting point for theorizing the relevance of strategic foresight in organizing. Drawing on an exhaustive sample of 258 academic publications from 1990–2014, this paper provides a comprehensive review of strategic foresight and its influence on innovation. Our review suggest that strategic foresight rather than directly resulting in innovation tend to rather influence it by shaping and giving form to innovation management tools, and future-oriented knowledge creation, which in turn cumulatively drive innovation performance. Our proposed integrative framework therefore specifies the conceptual linkages between strategic foresight and innovation performance.

Cultivation and management of strategic foresight in contexts of rapid change, greater complexity, and genuine uncertainties

Cultivation and management of strategic foresight in contexts of rapid change, greater complexity, and genuine uncertainties