Dean Bartlett

Management and Business Ethics: A Critique and Integration of Ethical Decision-making Models

This paper critically reviews the literature relating to the management of ethics within organizations and identifies, in line with other authors, a gap between theory and practice in the area. It highlights the role of management (both as an academic discipline and from a practitioner perspective) in bridging this gap and views managers, with their sense of individual ethical agency, as a key locus of ethics within organizations. The paper aims to address the theory-practice gap by surveying the business ethics literature in order to identify, draw together and integrate existing theory and research, with a particular emphasis upon models of ethical decision-making and their relationship to work values. Such an endeavour is necessary, not only because of the relative neglect of management practice by business ethics researchers, but also because of the current lack of integration in the field of business ethics itself. The paper outlines some of the main methodological challenges in the area and suggests how some of these may be overcome. Finally, it concludes with a number of suggestions as to how the theory-practice gap can be addressed through the development of a research agenda, based upon the previous work reviewed.

Green technology and eco‐innovation

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to describe seven case studies of university‐industry cooperative partnerships at Nizhny Novgorod Architecture and Civil Engineering State University in Russia. It examines the relationship between green technology and innovation in order to explore how green technologies are developed into successful eco‐innovations following the liberalisation policy which started in the 1990s in the Russian research and development (R&D) sector.Design/methodology/approach – The research adopts a case‐study approach and conducts cross‐case comparative analyses in order to develop insights into the evolution of green technology projects in what was formerly a closed area (Gorky city) prior to the market reforms.Findings – The technical empirical data included in the cases illustrate how eco‐innovations can arise incrementally from highly structured technical problem spaces, in contradiction with previously published literature which has tended to treat them as more creative and radi...

Embedding corporate responsibility: the development of a transformational model of organizational innovation

Purpose – This paper aims to describe a model for embedding corporate responsibility through innovation and organizational transformation.Design/methodology/approach – The model was developed from the findings of a qualitative case study, describing the design and implementation of an innovation development program. Data from semi‐structured interviews with program participants were entered into a qualitative analysis software package and a thematic analysis was conducted based on the principles of grounded theory that uses predominantly emergent coding categories. The results of this analysis were then linked with relevant theoretical concepts from the research literature in order to develop and extend the case through a process of deductive theory‐building, drawing on theories of innovation and organizational design.Findings – The findings illustrate the potential of the model for enhancing and embedding corporate responsibility practices in a bottom‐up way, through a process of customer‐engagement and ...

Challenges of international technology collaboration with Russian R&D organisations

Purpose – This paper aims to examine the challenges experienced by Russian research and development (R&D) organisations in international technology collaboration in the global innovation arena.Design/methodology/approach – A total of 33 Russian R&D organisations were selected from a sample of 138 potential participating organisations from the Central, Nord‐Western and Volga Federal Districts of Russia to take part in a qualitative interview study. Organisations were selected based on their responses to a questionnaire which measured the extent and nature of their experience in international technology collaborations. Participants were interviewed about their experiences of engaging in international technology collaboration under two different modes of collaboration: short term customer‐supplier relationships vs longer‐term strategic alliances. The semi‐structured interviews focused on 15 different issues which had been derived from the previously published literature on international technology collaborat...

A framework for the effective adoption of software development methodologies

Significant developer productivity gains and software quality improvement are expected with the use of software development tools and methods. However, recent studies reveal that the adoption of innovative technologies in software development has been undersubscribed. As different types of systems may need different kinds of software processes, programming paradigms and tools, no single set of solutions is best for all situations. The purpose of this study is to propose a framework for organizations to effectively select and adopt systems development methodologies so that they can decide on the most suitable tools and methods for their specific environment.

Bridging the Divide in Work and Occupational Psychology: Evidence From Practice

This study explores the extent to which work and organizational (W&O) psychology practitioners use evidence, how they apply it to the everyday contexts in which they work, and the types of barriers they encounter in so doing. It adopts a mixed methods approach involving the administration of a survey to a UK sample (N = 163) of W&O psychologists and a series of semi-structured interviews (N = 25) exploring in greater depth how evidence is applied in practice. Findings reveal that practitioners consult a wide range of different types of evidence which they employ at various stages of engagement with client organizations and that this evidence is pressed into service in the pursuit of solutions which are both acceptable from the client perspective and consistent with the scientific standards underpinning professional knowledge and expertise in W&O psychology. Barriers to evidence-use were mainly practical in nature, concerning issues around managing the client–consultant relationship and the particularities of implementation context, both of which were shown to influence evidence utilization. The study contributes to current debate on the extent to which W&O psychologists adopt an evidence-based approach and provides a valuable and much called-for empirical insight into the enactment of the scientist–practitioner model in W&O psychology.

Is OO the Systems Development Technology for Your Organization

Object-oriented technology, emerged in response to the growing needs for developing and maintaining complex software system, has aroused a great deal of interests in both academia and industry. After more than a decade, there is still no clear result describing the extent to which the technology is used. A recent survey found that the adoption rate of object-oriented technology in systems analysis and design is much lower than expected. This study applies the theory of diffusion of innovations to investigate the extent to which the technology is used and the reasons as to why it is being adopted or not adopted. Based on the survey findings, an instrument is proposed for organizations to assess whether they are ready to adopt this new paradigm for their systems development. The purpose of this study is to help management make informed decisions on the adoption of object-oriented systems development methodologies in their organizations

Champions of local authority innovation revisited

ABSTRACT This article revisits the concept of the public sector innovation champion. Reflecting changes in sectoral and wider contexts and conceptual advances in the innovation literature, it suggests that much of the underlying thinking behind the original article is of continuing relevance and suggests a number of directions in which this could now be extended, particularly in terms of the nature of innovation and the role of champions therein. It concludes by considering how innovation champions of the future will require a new skillset which draws on new and emergent technologies to align diverse sets of stakeholders in networks of ‘open innovation’.

Research note : the development of an Arabic cross-cultural adjustment scale

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to report on the development of an Arabic language scale for measuring cross‐cultural adjustment in the Arab world, predominately the Middle East. It also comments on aspects of psychometric tools and their appropriateness for use in cross‐cultural management research.Design/methodology/approach – Black and Stephens Cross‐Cultural Adjustment Scale was translated into Arabic using the method of back‐translation and a pilot item‐by‐item debriefing. It was then administered to 111 Arabic‐speaking employees of a single firm.Findings – The Arabic language version yielded high alpha coefficients and a subsequent factor analysis revealed three primary factors of cross‐cultural adjustment, namely, Work Adjustment, Interaction Adjustment and General Adjustment, which corresponded closely to the original English version of the scale, with two minor exceptions.Research limitations/implications – The research is confined to the cultural‐linguistic context in which it was execut...