Reed Elliot Nelson

Network Characteristics of High-Performing Organizations:

This paper analyzes the relationship between performance and social networks across a sample of 14 protestant churches. Findings suggest high performers have overall more weak ties, higher numbers of intergroup strong ties, and more within group very strong ties than low performers.

The Adoption of New Technology: Conceptual Model and Application

The decision to adopt a new technology or not depends on the benefits to be gained by incorporating new technical, functional or esthetic solutions, in order to attain the company’s competitive positioning; this decision also depends on the costs and risks involved. In general terms, businesses lack the resources, whether financial, human, or structural, to innovate or even to adapt new technologies. The objectives of this study are to test an innovation adoption model on a real case and show the importance of international cooperation for new technology implementation processes, based on a decision-making case about whether or not to adopt a new technology that occurred in eletronic company in Brazil (called “A”). The new technology might help to solve certain challenges the company faced in its printer plant, by increasing efficiency and cutting costs.

Leadership, Personal Values, and Cultural Context in Brazil, China, and the USA

This research examines the association between configurations of personal values and managerial incumbency among professionals in Brazil, the US, and Asia. Our research is different from classical leadership research as well as most cross-cultural studies in that it focuses on variance within countries first and then compares results between countries, while the great bulk of research looks at differences between means from one country or category to another. Accordingly, we use cluster analyses rather than analyses of variance or regressions as the major analytical tool. By generating comparable clusters of professionals in different countries, we obtain a novel view of the relationship between individual variables, cultural settings, and leadership. In each cultural setting sampled there is one cluster of personal values which is highly associated with managerial position, and particularly with upper management. These managerial clusters are similar in their overall profile, and are the smallest clusters in each of the three countries, suggesting a universalistic managerial personality like that identified by Miner over thirty years ago. At the same time, we find significant differences between countries in the absolute numerical levels of values held by managers and even greater differences in the levels of values which characterize their subordinates.

A Constructivist Perspective on Leadership Thought among Brazilian and North-American Scholars

This paper presents the results of an exploratory, inductive cataloguing of the views of Brazilian and U.S. academics regarding current leadership theory and development. Semi structured interviews with academics from a variety of institutional settings in Brazil and the U.S. were content analyzed to identify major themes and tendencies across the two countries. Our analyses revealed that neither Brazilian nor U.S. academics adopted the bulk of current formal leadership thought uncritically. Instead, both the Brazilian and North American business education fields adopted theories selectively and formulated idiosyncratic approaches to the field. The U.S. interviewees appeared to vary much more from one another than the Brazilian scholars, whose positions were more critical but more homogeneous overall. There was also considerable variation across the two national settings. We found Bourdieus practice theory useful in interpreting our results, particularly the concepts of field differentiation and heteronomy, habitus, and cultural capital. Still, much research remains to be done to disentangle the purely historical and cultural factors from the impacts of the social construction of the field of business education in the two countries.

Industry Environment, National Culture, and Verbal Networks in Organizations: An Exploratory Study

This paper describes an empirically derived typology of the verbal networks of 66 organizations from diverse industrial environments in Brazil and the United States and speculates about the possible origins and dynamics of network configurations across organizations. We identified three distinct configurations of verbal networks: high‐density, low‐factionalism, weak‐tie networks; low‐density, high‐factionalism, strong‐tie networks; and an intermediate category with high factionalism in frequent ties but a preponderance of weak ties and intermediate density. The different types were associated with different degrees of volatility and munificence in industrial environment and with different proportions of Brazilian and U.S. firms.

Information Technology Use, Strategy, and Subcultural Environments: An Exploratory Study of Brazilian Real Estate Agencies

An exploratory study of strategy and information technology usage in the Brazilian real estate sector suggests that firm strategy and subcultural dynamics play an important role in IT adoption and internet usage. The broader questions raised by these results suggest challenges to traditional models of strategic thinking when subcultural and technological factors are taken into account.

Gênero, Classe Social e Empreendedorismo: Foco nas Estudantes Universitárias de um País Emergente

Research worldwide has identified a strong association between social class and a variety of dimensions related to entrepreneurship including entrepreneurial intention, frequency of firm foundings, growth, success and other factors. Similarly, researchers have identified an association between gender and a series of entrepreneurial behaviors and outcomes. There is however very little research considering possible interactions between social class, gender and entrepreneurship, especially outside of the US and continental Europe. Using elite versus subelite university affiliation as a proxy for social class, the present article looks at the interaction between social class and gender as it relates to several aspects of entrepreneurship in four samples summing up 14,807 responses from Brazilian undergraduates. While supporting much of the existing research on social class and entrepreneurship and gender and entrepreneurship, it identifies a number of unexpected interactions between gender, social class and correlates of entrepreneurial behaviors.

TECNOLOGIA DE PRODUÇÃO E CULTURA ORGANIZACIONAL EM UMA EMPRESA DE TRANSPORTE EM MASSA

O presente trabalho considera a relacao entre tecnologia de producao e cultura organizacional em uma empresa estatal de transporte em massa. Este estudo sugere que as demandas de um sistema de producao altamente mecanizado, de alta intensidade de capital e de alta precisao nao determinam diretamente a cultura organizacional como alegariam alguns estudos classicos. Antes, parecem gerar tensoes subculturais entre as unidades responsaveis pela operacao cotidiana do sistema e as unidades que fazem intermediacao entre a organizacao e o seu ambiente politico e economico. Essas tensoes, por sua vez, podem gerar maior variância em percepcoes de cultura organizacional do que se encontra em organizacoes que nao precisam conciliar simultaneamente as demandas de uma tecnologia de precisao e as tensoes inerentes as organizacoes publicas. Em termos teoricos, este trabalho abre novo espaco conceitual para abordar a tecnologia como variavel independente em um campo que tradicionalmente tem visto a cultura organizacional como variavel dependente.

Classification of business clusters based on information transfer events

This paper examines the utility of the attributes associated with information transfer events for classifying business clusters and understanding their workings. A field survey collected data from diverse actors in six business clusters located in Brazil, including: companies responsible for the development or final assembly of a product or service (central actors); the entity that represents the companies in each business cluster (the administrative body); and the entities seeking to transfer information to the central actors of localities (knowledge agents). We found that differences in the degree of productive complementarity on the part of central actors of business clusters were associated with variance in perceptions of information transfer events that took place in localities. To our knowledge this is the first research which analyzes and classifies business clusters based on dimensions of information transfer which are relevant to the practice of knowledge management.

Tipos de empreendedores em penturbia brasileira

Este artigo visa analisar de que forma diferentes atores sociais, em particular os empreendedores locais, se articulam - ou nao - na construcao de modelo de desenvolvimento economico regional baseado na nocao de penturbia, conforme proposta por Lessinger (1986). Neste artigo, identificou-se a cidade de Tiradentes (MG) como caso exemplar de penturbia brasileira. Em termos metodologicos, a pesquisa que subsidiou seus resultados e de natureza indutiva, orientada pelos principios da Grounded Theory. De cunho etnografico, o estudo envolveu analise documental, observacao direta e realizacao de 39 entrevistas semiestruturadas e em profundidade junto a dirigentes de pousadas, restaurantes e atelies, representantes de fundacoes e associacoes de artesaos, membros da igreja e politicos. Para o tratamento dos dados fez-se uso do software N-vivo 8.0. Como resultado foi possivel a identificacao de duas grandes categorias de empreendedores, emergentes das antinomias locais. Tais categorias, por sua vez, subdividiram-se em subcategorias, as quais refletem, bem como desafiam, tipologias internacionais de artesao, artista, bricoleur e engenheiro. A frequencia e a orientacao dessas categorias para com modelos alternativos de desenvolvimento local tem importantes implicacoes para o futuro sociocultural e economico da cidade.