Eric Knight

Becoming Salient: The TMT Leader’s Role in Shaping the Interpretive Context of Paradoxical Tensions

How do paradoxical tensions become salient in organizations over time? Ambidexterity and paradox studies have, thus far, primarily focused on how tensions inside organizations are managed after they have been rendered salient for actors. Using a longitudinal, embedded case study of four strategic business units within a media organization, we theorize the role of the top management team leader’s practices in enabling tensions to become salient for their respective lower-level managers when there are initial differences in how tensions are interpreted across levels. Our findings extend a dynamic equilibrium model of organizing by adding interpretive context as an enabling condition that shapes the emergence of salience through the provision of a constellation of cues that guide sensemaking. Informed by a practice-based perspective on paradox, we also contribute a conceptual model of leadership as practice, and outline the implications for ambidexterity studies.

Managing exploration and exploitation paradoxes in creative organisations

Purpose -- This paper addresses the paradox that individuals face in seeking to both generate new ideas and be committed to delivering standardised processes in a creative industry. We explore this tension in order to better understand how synergistic benefits are reaped at the intersection of these competing demands. Design/Methodology/Approach -- The paper adopts a longitudinal case study approach inside a global media organisation in the creative industries sector. Data derived from participant observations, manager interviews, administered survey instruments, and archival documentation.Findings -- We find that creative organisations experience explore/exploit paradoxes which are nested at three levels: knowledge, learning and motivation. Further, we find that managers are able to respond to competing tensions through organisational processes that allow differentiation/ integration simultaneously. These management responses are supported and sustained by both structural and contextual organisational forms. Originality/Value -- First, we provide a clearer theoretical explanation of paradox in creative organisations by accounting for competing demands to explore and exploit through nested tensions. Second, we extend our understanding of management responses to these paradox by showing how managers balance both demands simultaneously rather than cumulatively over time, thereby offering insight into how managers behave over time. Third, we outline the supporting role of organisational form in sustaining management responses within creative organisations at the same time in order to reap synergistic benefits.

Temptation and the Virtues of Long-Term Commitment: The Governance of Sovereign Wealth Fund Investment

In this article we look at the governance of SWFs from the perspective of the competing political interests embedded in the sponsor – the domestic political claims on funds and the principles and practice of governance used to discipline those interests in favour of a long-term perspective that emphasizes the conservation of wealth and the intergenerational transfer of benefits. Using the case study of the Australian SWF known as the Future Fund, we argue that SWFs can be used as legal instruments to promote the interests of future generations. In this way, it puts into action the principle of intergenerational equity which has been hereto notoriously difficult to substantively apply in international law. By invoking the intergenerational principle we argue that the Australian government not only responded to the legal challenges of implementing intergenerational equity but also contributed to its currency as a customary norm.

What Role for Public Finance in International Climate Change Mitigation

The level of investment required to finance carbon mitigation projects to stabilize carbon emissions at current levels is estimated to be in the order of USD 200-210 billion annually (UNFCCC 2007). The IEA estimate about around USD 150 billion needs to be invested annually between 2010 and 2050 in the early deployment of new technologies.This paper considers this challenge in the context of the investment needed in developing countries under a post-2012 global agreement. Firstly, we consider possibilities for raising this scale of finance amongst developed countries in a short time frame and offer insights on some innovative financing approaches. Secondly, we discuss what policy approaches are needed to ensure that public finance is used in the most efficient and cost-effective manner towards catalysing major technology change. We conclude that early stage deployment and R&D financing are significant gaps in the innovation chain which public institutions need to address to achieve the greatest impact for public financing in clean energy investment.

Clean Energy Technology and the Role of Non-Carbon Price Based Policy: an Evolutionary Economics Perspective

Much academic attention has been paid to the role of carbon pricing in developing a market-led response to low-carbon energy innovation. Taking an evolutionary economics perspective, this paper makes the case as to why price mechanisms alone are insufficient to support new energy technologies coming to market. In doing so, we set out the unique investment barriers in the clean energy space. For guidance on possible approaches to non-carbon price-based policies that seek to tackle these barriers, we turn to case studies from Asia, a region which has experienced a strong uptake in climate policy in recent years.

The Economic Geography of Clean Tech Venture Capital

Climate change has emerged as one of the dominant environmental business problems of this century. A key aspect of this challenge is financing and commercializing the technologies which will assist economic transition to a low carbon economy. This paper is focused on examining the levers and barriers to private equity investment in this technological innovation in the United States and United Kingdom specifically. In particular, we focus on the critical role of geography in shaping private investment for a variety of reasons including physical conditions, regulatory influences, access to finance, and social clusters. In the final section, this paper considers the broader implications of our findings for optimal policy settings to facilitate clean technology innovation. Although carbon markets have been identified as part of the policy mix in assisting structural transition in the global economy, the proper formulation of technology policy has been relatively under-addressed. This paper argues that well-targeted technology policy is needed alongside carbon pricing to help promote technological innovation and remove barriers to private investment.

The Economic Geography of Financing Clean Energy Technologies

This article seeks to describe the geography of clean tech investment which has emerged in recent years in the USA and the UK. An empirical approach was used, relying on close-dialogue interviews with senior investment managers in both markets. The article draws three conclusions. First, clean tech investment is often strongly influenced by physical geography, particularly in the area of renewable energy technologies. Second, regulatory settings play a strong role in the flow of investment. Third, capital flows unevenly between the different stages of technological maturity in clean energy products — a phenomenon which has been described as the ‘valley of death’ financing gap.

Geographical linkages in the financial services industry: a dialogue with organizational studies

ABSTRACT Geographical linkages in the financial services industry: a dialogue with organizational studies. Regional Studies. This article proposes a conceptualization of the geographical linkages in the financial services sector based on boundary-spanning activities. In doing so, it seeks to open a dialogue between organizational sociology and regional development that goes beyond an analysis of financial transactions and asset prices to the informational content shared between organizations within a city, country or region. This conceptual approach offers new insights into why and how geographical linkages emerge within and between financial services organizations. This article foreshadows the utility of this approach by way of an illustrative case of HSBC, the ‘world’s local bank’.

Economic Geography of Investment Banking Since 2008: The Geography of Shrinkage and Shift

abstract Investment bank capitalism might have foundered during the global financial crisis in 2008, but what has happened to investment banks? Our analysis reveals that core investment banking activities have experienced a significant contraction, accompanied by diminished institutional and geographic concentration. Large banks have experienced the largest falls in revenue, and Asian banks have capitalized on the growth of their local capital markets. With direct access to the largest market in the world, US banks remain dominant globally, but their market shares have declined. Our results highlight the variegated nature of change under way in the global financial system, and its implications for geopolitics and geoeconomics.

Lens or prism? How organisations sustain multiple and competing reputations

Purpose This paper aims to challenge singular definitions, measurements and applications of corporate reputation which tend to be reductionist. The authors rebuff such narrow representations of reputation by showing the multiplicity of reputation in the case of a global management consulting firm and demonstrate how it has sustained such reputations. Design/methodology/approach Using a large cross-country qualitative case study based on interviews, focus groups, non-participant observations, workshops and a fieldwork diary, dimensions of reputation are highlighted by drawing on perceptions from multiple stakeholder groups in different geographies. Findings The authors find significant differences in perceptions of reputation between and within stakeholder groups, with perceptions changing across dimensions and geographies. Originality/value The theoretical implications of the research indicate a plurality of extant reputations, suggesting that a prism is more suited to representing corporate reputation than a singular, lens-like focus which is too narrow to constitute reputation. This paper offers theoretical and practical suggestions for how global firms can build and sustain multiple and competing corporate reputations.