European Management Review最新文献

This article explores “doubting with” in collaborative management research. Extending methodological reflections on collaboration between researchers and practitioners, this article, drawing on the foundations of the pragmatist inquiry, stresses the central role of doubt and the doubtful situation in overcoming difficulties that are encountered in problem-oriented approaches. We propose guidelines for “doubting with” in collaborative research, highlighting how it transforms modes of researcher–practitioner collaboration and the opportunities it provides to restore possibilities of action with a broader social dimension. We emphasize how “doubting with” addresses the challenges of collaboration and the key implications for management research regarding the importance of keeping doubt alive in our inquiries and of doubting with practitioners.

Family owners monitor managers, attenuating principal–agent conflicts and improving firm performance. However, family owners also appropriate resources, creating principal–principal conflicts that harm firm performance. Although these effects occur simultaneously, research does not explain when one outweighs the other. We theorize that agency costs are minimized when the family's involvement on the board of directors is proportional to its ownership; too little board involvement fuels principal–agent conflicts, and too much fuels principal–principal conflicts. Consistent with our theorizing, evidence from French panel data shows firm performance increases as family board involvement and family ownership jointly increase, and performance is maximized when family board involvement and family ownership are proportional.

Given the influence of agency theory, corporate governance is tightly associated with the idea of monitoring. But what happens when the decision-maker must act in an uncertain, open-ended world? In this article, we propose a typology of firms' projects drawing on two parameters stemming from recent advancements in creativity theory: opacity and unlikelihood. This results in a matrix with four types of projects that display different qualities of entrepreneurialness: replicative projects, incubation projects, insightful projects, and innovative projects. We draw on the knowledge governance literature to suggest mechanisms and strategies of governance based on the prevailing type of project that the organization pursues. Our framework contributes to the theoretical understanding of the interplay between governance, creativity, and entrepreneurship literature while offering practical insights for designing better-tailored governance mechanisms that align with a firm's prevailing project type.

Existing scholarship offers a comprehensive understanding of the concept and purposes of human resource analytics (HRA). However, how HRA is carried out in practice in organisations is still under-researched. We examine the practice of HRA through a systematic review across three disciplines, namely, human resource management, business analytics and management information systems while using a process lens: the knowledge discovery process (KDD) model. A hundred and three high-end quality manuscripts were analysed. Our findings show that the scope of HRA is expanding both in the use of HR and business data and certain sophisticated statistical techniques. However, much needs to be done to uncover the measurable impact of HRA on HR and business outcomes.

We set out to investigate how organizations respond to the variety of requirements as experienced in their pluralizing institutional environments. We found that, in addition to acquiescence and compromise, Dutch vocational education and training (VET) organizations predominantly respond with cooperation and coordination strategies. Extensive multistage qualitative data analysis of 26 semi-structured in-depth interviews with management team (MT) members showed that cooperation and coordination are viable and effective response strategies to face a divergent and highly differentiated set of sometimes-conflicting institutional requirements. Our study advances understanding of how organizations deploy strategic choice to arrive at their strategic responses. It offers organizational leaders, legislators, policymakers, and other constituents' insights into complex reality of how contemporary organizations actually relate to and act in their pluralizing institutional environments.

Crafting and publishing high-quality literature reviews is a challenging journey. In this Viewpoint article, I outline what authors should consider when submitting a stand-alone literature review or a manuscript containing a literature review section to the European Management Review. I focus on five selected themes and offer recommendations to authors. I also address reviewers and editors when relating some of my observations to the “An A is an A” mentality debate.

While the personal and social benefits of generosity have been demonstrated in sociological studies, little is known about the levers and mechanisms of generosity within organizations. This article explores how members of a social and educational organization can participate in the culture of generosity. Based on an analysis of 89 semi-structured interviews with members of five different institutions oriented toward youth education, the authors provide insight into the different ways to contribute to disseminating generosity. Our study reveals how certain managerial practices can be effective levers for developing generalized generosity within an educational organization. We also show that each member of this type of organization is assigned specific roles of giver and receiver to enable their participation in the educational project.