Robin Matthews

The myth of global competition and the nature of work

Competition is viewed as an archetype. Global competition is examined as a closed or narrow version of the archetype, part of a language game that justifies the often ruthless strategies of organizations. More open narratives of competition are discussed. The paper examines the response of individuals to archetypes, the implications for work, and reflects on the foundations of the myth of global competition and the implications for modern business strategy.

Competition archetypes and creative imagination

Organizational studies have been deeply influenced by three separate streams of research: the soft sciences; the hard sciences; and economics. This paper makes a case for an interdisciplinary approach, one that includes not only the social and physical and life sciences, but also methodologies that have a long history in mysticism. It illustrates how the similarities and relationships between depth psychology, in Jung’s theory of archetypes, and the “hard science” notion of complexity theory can reveal critical aspects of competition as expressed through capitalism. It also suggests that a methodology for accessing information about archetypes in general and capitalist competition in particular is through creative imagination.

EIS—A guide for executives

Abstract Although the use of executive information systems (EIS) is increasing, many senior executives have such mixed feelings about them that there is an ‘EIS paradox’. Information managers and software suppliers believe this is because senior executives are intimidated by information technology, but this does not hold up to scrunity. The EIS paradox occurs because of failure to explain coherently how EIS fit with other aspects of the organizational database and what EIS can and cannot do for a senior executive and his or her organization. This article is designed to close the ‘information gap’ about EIS specifically for senior executives. The change in terminology from ‘data processing’ to ‘information technology’ is symptomatic of a change in the way in which computers are used. Rather than being the mere province of the data professional, information technology as exemplified by EIS can be applied to tasks where judgement and selectivity are required. The crucial point about EIS is, however, that computing can complement and increase managerial qualities of imagination and intelligence but not replace them.

Organizational strategic adaptation in the presence of inertia

This paper extends the particle swarm metaphor into the domain of organization science. A simulator (OrgSwarm) which can be used to model the adaptation of a population of organizations on a strategic landscape is introduced. The simulator embeds a number of features of the process of organizational adaptation, including the resistance of organizations to change (strategic inertia), errorful assessments of the payoffs to proposed strategies, and market competition. These features allow the examination of a wide range of real-life scenarios in organizational adaptation. The paper reports the results of a number of simulation experiments and these suggest that agent (management) uncertainty as to the payoffs to potential strategies has the effect of lowering the average payoffs obtained by a population of organizations. The results also suggest that a degree of strategic inertia can assist rather than hamper adaptive efforts at a populational level.

Investigating Strategic Inertia Using OrgSwarm

The previous adversary models of public key cryptography usually have a nature assumption that permanent/temporary secret (private) keys must be kept safely and internal secret states are not leaked to an adversary. However, in practice, it is difficult to keep away from all possible kinds of leakage on these secret data due to a new kind of threat, called “side-channel attacks”. By sidechannel attacks, an adversary could obtain partial information of these secret data so that some existing adversary models could be insufficient. Indeed, the study of leakage-resilient cryptography resistant to side-channel attacks has received significant attention recently. Up to date, no work has been done on the design of leakage-resilient certificateless key encapsulation (LR-CL-KE) or public key encryption (LR-CL-PKE) schemes under the continual leakage model. In this article, we propose the first LR-CL-KE scheme under the continual leakage model. Moreover, in the generic bilinear group (GBG) model, we formally prove that the proposed LR-CL-KE scheme is semantically secure against chosen ciphertext attacks for both Type I and Type II adversaries.

The financial Tower of Babel: roots of crisis

Purpose - The aim of this paper is to explore and discuss the causative factors of the current financial crisis from an Islamic perspective. This paper also examines Islamic finance as an alternative financial system and a potential long-term solution to financial instability. Design/methodology/approach - The paper provides descriptive, analytical and comparative analyses. Findings - The paper offers insights into the causes of the current international financial crisis. It highlights an alternative and a solution to this dilemma in the form of Islamic finance and stresses the stability of the Islamic finance system. Practical implications - The findings presented in this paper can be used by policy makers, regulators and practitioners in both the Islamic and conventional financial sector as they provides insights into factors that can insulate the market from future crisis. However, to expect a wholesale transformation to an Islamic financial system is idealistic. Originality/value - This paper contributes to the understanding of Islamic finance principles and its value as a solution to the current and any future financial crises. A highly original conceptual idea is used in the metaphorical comparison to the Tower of Babel. The findings of this research will be of interest to western and Islamic financial practitioners, policy makers and academicians.

Evolving Classifiers to Model the Relationship between Strategy and Corporate Performance Using Grammatical Evolution

This study examines the potential of grammatical evolution to construct a linear classifier to predict whether a firms corporate strategy will increase or decrease shareholder wealth. Shareholder wealth is measured using a relative fitness criterion, the change in a firms marketvalueadded ranking in the Stern-Stewart Performance 1000 list, over a four year period, 1992-1996. Model inputs and structure are selected by means of grammatical evolution. The best classifier correctly categorised the direction of performance ranking change in 66.38% of the firms in the training set and 65% in the out-of-sample validation set providing support for a hypothesis that changes in corporate strategy are linked to changes in corporate performance.

A Particle Swarm Model of Organizational Adaptation

This study introduces the particle swarm metaphor to the domain of organizational adaptation. A simulation model (OrgSwarm) is constructed to examine the impact of strategic inertia, in the presence of errorful assessments of future payoffs to potential strategies, on the adaptation of the strategic fitness of a population of organizations. The results indicate that agent (organization) uncertainty as to the payoffs of potential strategies has the affect of lowering average payoffs obtained by a population of organizations. The results also indicate that a degree of strategic inertia, in the presence of an election mechanism, assists rather than hampers adaptive efforts in static and slowly changing strategic environments.

Agent-based modelling of product invention

This study describes a novel simulation model of the process of product invention. Invention is conceptualized as a process of directed evolutionary adaptation, on a landscape of product design possibilities, by a population of profit-seeking agents (inventors). The simulation experiments examine the sensitivity of the rate of advance in product fitness to the choice of search heuristics employed by inventors. The key finding of the experiments is that if search heuristics are confined to those which are rooted in past experience, or to heuristics which merely generate variety, limited product advance occurs. Notable product fitness advance only occurs when inventors expectations as to the relative fitness of potential product inventions are incorporated into the model of invention. The results demonstrate the importance of human direction and expectations in invention. They also support the importance of formal product / project evaluation procedures in organizations, and the importance of market information when inventing new products.

Russian management style: a game theory approach to evaluating decision making

This paper springs from the practical problem of designing management training programs to improve decision making by Russian managers in the market economy. We approach the problem by attempting to identify any clustering (focal points) in their decision making, and investigating the impact upon the efficiency of firms in a simulation game. We then consider the implications for a real economy and for the orientation of management training programs by asking whether these focal points inhibit effective decision making and efficient results. We believe that our methodology has wide implications for identifying management training needs generally, and is not confined to the Russian managers who provide the empirical basis for this paper. Ausgangspunkt dieser Arbeit sind praktische Probleme der Entwicklung von Managementtrainingsprogrammen zur Verbesserung der Entscheidungsfindung russischer Manager im Hinblick auf marktwirtschaftliche Erfordernisse. Dazu wurden zunachst Schwerpunktbereiche der Entscheidungsfindung identifiziert und deren Auswirkungen auf die Effizienz mittels Simulationen uberpruft. Aus den Ergebnissen wurde die notwendige Ausrichtung von Trainingsprogrammen abgeleitet. Wir glauben, das unsere Methode zur Identifikation von Weiterbildungsbedarf allgemein verwertbar und nicht nur auf russische Manager anwendbar ist.