Gerald E. Fryxell

Attaining Decision Quality and Commitment From Dissent: The Moderating Effects of Loyalty and Competence in Strategic Decision-Making Teams

Contradictory forces of dissent and consensus building attend the strategic decision process. Taking an information-processing perspective, we argue that two factors that affect perceptions of trus...

The New Task of R&D Management: Creating Goal-Directed Communities for Innovation

How do firms manage research and development units to optimize their innovation capabilities? First, the most innovative RD relying much more heavily on intrinsic rewards than extrinsic rewards; building cohesive teams that preserve individuality; and assuring a continuous supply of slack resources.

THE INFLUENCE OF ENVIRONMENTAL KNOWLEDGE AND VALUES ON MANAGERIAL BEHAVIOURS ON BEHALF OF THE ENVIRONMENT: AN EMPIRICAL EXAMINATION OF MANAGERS IN CHINA

This study explores linkages between what Chinese managers generally know about environmental issues, how strongly they value environmental protection, and different types of behaviours/actions they may take within their organizations on behalf of the environment. From a sample of 305 managers in Guangzhou and Beijing, it was found that both environmental knowledge and values are more predictive of more personal managerial behaviours, such as keeping informed of relevant company issues and working within the system to minimize environmental impacts, than more overt behaviours. Moreover, for these more personal actions, environmental knowledge and values were found to have both main and interactive effects. By comparison, it was found that both environmental values and knowledge had additive effects on managerial tendencies to initiate new programs within their domain of responsibility. Only environmental values was found to have a modest influence environmental advocacy.

Belaboring the Not-So-Obvious: Consensus, Commitment, and Strategy Implementation Speed and Success

One of the accepted beliefs among strategic management researchers is that strategic decision consensus among decision-makers facilitates decision implementation speed and implementation success. Despite this belief, there has been little empirical research directly examining these relationships. Using hierarchical regression, this study examines the effects of strategic decision consensus and commitment on decision implementation speed and success. Results from a sample of 68 intact strategic decision-making teams in Southeastern United States hospitals support the normatively accepted ideal that decision consensus helps build decision commitment, which in turn positively affects implementation success. Contrary to our expectations, however, decision commitment serves to slow implementation speed. The implications of these results for consensus and implementation research are discussed.

Visual and Verbal Communication in the Design of Eco-Label for Green Consumer Products

Abstract Eco-labels are meant to convey information to consumers about the environmental implications of purchasing the product, so that consumers who care about such effects can express their desires in the market. Whereas all eco-label designs utilize a visuallogo, only a few of them include verbalmessage withinthe label to communicate the main reason why the label is granted. As such, the purpose of this study is to investigate the influence of visual and verbal communication in eco-label designs on consumers purchasing behavior. Using an experimental design with homogenous sample, participants were randomly assigned one of four possible treatments in a 2 × 2 design with manipulations of both visual and verbal communication cues within a simulated web-based shopping experience. It was found that both the visual and verbal communication had significant individual and additive effects on the purchase of the designated products.

Governmental and Societal Support for Environmental Enforcement in China: An Empirical Study in Guangzhou

The enforcement behaviour of environmental officials in developing countries has not received adequate attention despite enormous challenges to regulatory enforcement in those areas. Accordingly, this article examines the relationship between perceptions of support from local governments and society and evaluations of enforcement effectiveness. A model in which organisational commitment partially mediates these relationships was tested using a sample of 202 enforcement officials in Guangzhou, China. The findings confirm a partial mediating role for organisational commitment and an interaction effect between government and societal support. A plot of this interaction reveals that when enforcement officials perceive high levels of governmental support, societal support further enhances their perceptions of enforcement effectiveness. However, when they perceive government support to be low, higher levels of societal support appear to diminish their assessments of enforcement effectiveness.

Enforcement Styles, Organizational Commitment, and Enforcement Effectiveness: An Empirical Study of Local Environmental Protection Officials in Urban China

The authors investigated the relationship between enforcement styles and perceptions of enforcement effectiveness in China by surveying three groups of environmental protection bureau officials from the major cities of Guangzhou, Chengdu, and Dalian. In general, it was found that organizational commitment partially mediates the relationship between the enforcement style of prioritization and perceptions of effectiveness. In this case, mediation and direct effects work together such that prioritization has by far the greatest positive total effect. In contrast, a coercive enforcement style is more completely mediated by organizational commitment, but this relationship is negative (that is, a coercive style appears to reduce organizational commitment, leading to lower perceptions of enforcement effectiveness). Although some differences are noted among the three samples, the overall pattern suggests that other enforcement styles (formalism, education, and external influence) appear to be much less influential in shaping perceptions of enforcement effectiveness.

Organizational Membership and Environmental Ethics: A Comparison of Managers in State-owned Firms, Collectives, Private Firms and Joint Ventures in China

Abstract This study empirically examines the relationship between organizational type and the environmental, ethical orientation of managers in the Peoples Republic of China (PRC) on three dimensions—stewardship and long- and short-term utilitarianism. It was found that Chinese managers uniformly self-report strong ethical commitments to environmental protection. In addition, organizational type was found to be a significant predictor for the different ethical dimensions. Overall, managers in state-owned firms uniformly reported the strongest values. Managers in private firms, on the other hand, self-reported lower values and appeared relatively more skeptical of emergent utilitarian arguments that economic performance and environmental performance are compatible in the short term.

Enforcement Styles Among Environmental Protection Officials in China

Researchers examining regulatory enforcement have found that enforcement styles tend to be contextually determined in Western countries, which has resulted in a divergence in regulatory approach at both the national and local levels. Given the dearth of regulation research in non-democratic regimes, this paper makes an initial attempt to fill the gap by studying the impact of regional variations in regulatory enforcement in China. Accordingly, the effects of external support and organizational factors on the preferences for enforcement styles of environmental officials in three Chinese regions were examined. It was found that the strength of these influences on enforcement style dimensions is more variable than was anticipated. Generally, the patterns of relationships for Guangzhou and Chengdu were similar, while those for Dalian appear to reflect its unique environmental, economic and political conditions. Public support appears to promote several dimensions of enforcement style (i.e., education, prioritization, coercion) in Guangzhou and Chengdu; however, in Dalian the influence of government was greater than that of public support. The effects of internal factors were even more variable and probably reflect unique characteristics and priorities within each agency. Overall, the results suggest that caution is warranted when interpreting current findings about China that have used samples from a single region and that enforcement agency directors in nondemocratic regimes must take into account a complex array of contextual factors in attempting to promote a particular style of enforcement.

Unified diversity in top‐level teams

Purpose – This study attempts to move beyond the “congruence assumption” surrounding top management team (TMT) demography by exploring the intervening processes that link TMT diversity and organizational performance.Design/methodology/approach – Using Fiols concept of unified diversity and employing an information processing perspective of strategic decision‐making, this article proposes a model that incorporates both moderating and mediating influences; and then tests the hypotheses using data from specific strategic decisions faced by 85 top‐level decision‐making teams within the health care industry.Findings – Evidence was found to support the expectation that goal consensus moderates the relationship between informational diversity and decision quality within the management teams. In addition, team member collaboration was found to partially mediate this effect. Research limitations/implications – The retrospective nature of the data collection captured the essence of the decision‐making process over...