In this paper, we elicited and examined mental models of human resource professionals, regarding the interrelationships of important elements in shaping competitive strategy, for consensus or systematic variation, testing for HR's distinctive contribution at the strategy table. In order to examine their mental models, we collected empirical data from a stratified non-probability respondent sample of HR professionals in three stages: semi-structured informant interviews; free list and rank ordering tasks; and drawing exercises. Performing consensus analysis of respondents' mental models, we found that: First, as a group, HR professionals lack a robust, integrated HR strategic perspective; second, consensus views of labor relations practitioners and business unit generalists emerge as most distinctive and most people-focused. As one of few scholarly empirical examinations of HR practitioners' mental models on their view as strategic partners, this study challenges the normative calls among scholars and professional organizations for HR's participation in strategy formulation.

Innovation researchers have typically focused on either the adoption or the implementation phase of organizational innovation. In the present study, we propose that four agents of innovation (i.e., top management, external environment, innovation, and employees) play distinct roles in the adoption and implementation stages, and that, together, they predict innovation outcomes. We test the phase-dependent process of organizational innovation using data drawn from intensive interviews with 40 executives of a consumer product company. A path analysis of 94 innovations introduced to the organization over the past 20 years indicates that there is a significant level of stability in innovation-driving dynamics. Particularly, top management and employees tend to remain heavily involved in the implementation of an innovation if they played an important role in adopting it. The four agents of innovation play different roles in accruing benefits from the innovation. The results also suggest that employees tend to produce positive innovation outcomes when they have been involved in the innovation from the very beginning and are thus responsible for its adoption. The present study makes a distinct contribution to the literature by exploring the multi-stage, unfolding processes of organizational innovation.

In this study we analyze the contingent effects of the firm's internal factors in the influence of pioneer orientation on new product performance. The results obtained show that in dynamic and hostile industries, pioneer orientation has a positive influence on the performance of new products. We have found that technological capabilities, cross-functional integration and internal commitment allow pioneer firms to improve their new product performance. However, strong market intelligence can induce pioneer firms to direct their new products to a secure but limited market, and worsen outcomes. We reinforce first mover advantage (FMA) literature highlighting the promotional role of several internal factors in pioneer advantage. We note the complementary character of the resource based view (RBV), marketing and the organization theory to the explanation of the performance of those firms developing a pioneer orientation.

We investigate differences between the ways novices and experienced specialists perceive their workplaces as learning environments and also examine differences between the learning processes of these two groups of employees. The study's research questions are explored by applying discriminant analysis to survey data collected from 218 employees in 31 New Zealand small manufacturing firms. We found that novices and experienced specialists do differ significantly in their perceptions of (1) work-environment conditions that either help or hinder learning, (2) supervisors' proximate support for learning, and (3) satisfaction with workplace learning. We also found that novices and experienced specialists do differ significantly in terms of the sources and methods of learning that they use. Our results identify the individual variables that contribute most to the discrimination between the two groups. Limitations of the study and the implications of our findings for researching and managing employee learning in small firms are discussed.

Despite the continued popularity of outsourcing amongst managers and management researchers alike, signifi cant questions arguably remain as to the adequacy of the typical framing of the outsourcing decision. An extensive review of the literature revealed a skewed, partial and fragmented conceptualisation of the option, further exacerbated by a concerning tendency effectively to rank quantitative outcomes over qualitative outcomes, even ex post. In this article it is argued that a critical analysis of the theoretical frameworks that underlie this body of work suggests a more realistic conceptualisation of outsourcing, both for management researchers and management decision makers.

The business literature on the causes and consequences of downsizing has grown significantly over the last three decades. A multitude of causes has been identified. Downsizing is sometimes seen primarily as a cost-reducing response to various crises and external factors over which management has little or no control. Others see downsizing as a strategic management initiative in its own right. A considerable body of literature indicates workforce reductions often lead to negative financial and operational outcomes for the downsizing firm as well as negative psychological outcomes for victims, survivors, and executioners. This research paper represents a literature review on the causes and consequences of downsizing. It addresses a diverse body of literature and suggests an integrative framework on the typical causes and consequences of downsizing as well as outlines some challenges ahead for researchers seeking to advance the knowledge of downsizing.

Discussions about deunionisation usually focus on lower levels of the workforce with managers seen as the initiators of deunionisation strategies. Managers, however, occupy contradictory positions as agents of capital, employees and possibly trade unionists. This can place them in the position of being both recipients and conduits in deunionisation strategies. The focus of the study is on Telstra, the major telecommunications carrier in Australia. Using a range of sources such as interviews and company and union materials, this qualitative research shows how between 1992 and 2000 Telstra's senior management's concerns over middle management agency prompted them to reframe the concept of a manager by using a set of managerial practices from the mining company CRA and the provisions of the Workplace Relations Act (1996) to individualise and deunionise their managerial ranks as a precursor to the deunionisation of the wider workforce.

The issues of business ethics, corporate social responsibility and sustainability have come to attract increasing attention in management education in recent years, at least from the perspective of potential employers, accrediting bodies and business school alumni. This paper examines the extent of penetration of these three subjects in to global MBA curricula through an examination of course content and structure pertaining to the Financial Times Global MBA Rankings top 100, the Australian Financial Review BOSS top 17 ranked Australian MBAs, and the seven MBA programmes currently offered by universities in New Zealand. The findings reveal that: a variety of delivery modes are utilised; while the teaching of ethics has achieved considerable penetration, only about fifty percent of MBA programmes include it as a required subject (and even then it may only constitute part of a larger subject); and that the teaching of sustainability has achieved much lower penetration, with only six percent of MBA programmes examined incorporating the topic into their core curriculum. Implications for the design of MBA programmes and future research directions are then discussed within the context of a business environment in which increasing prominence is being given to these subject areasx.

Drawing on the resource-based view (RBV) of the firm, this study proposes two levels of resource action: shedding resources and adding resources as the main two turnaround approaches. Since firms differ in the way they manage their resources over stages of organizational development, this study further analyzes the link between the RBV and organizational life-cycle model to investigate the contingency role of life stages in the turnaround context. The study sample consists of 72 Taiwan firms had ever experienced a successful turnaround. The results indicate that cost-cutting and investment in training and R&D, which represent respectively a shedding and an adding resource action, enable firms to turn around their deteriorating performance. The results also show that R&D investment is more effective for early-stage firms, while cost-cutting is more useful to firms in the late-stage.

This paper adapts and extends the technological community perspective (e.g., Van de Ven, 1993), to review and analyze the outcomes of a series of three research projects funded by the Australian Government as reported in a number of publicly available documents. The projects were designed to support education for sustainability within Australian business schools and to promote knowledge sharing between the business schools and industry around sustainability. Project participants included seven business schools and their industry collaborators.

The technological community perspective, which is particularly well-suited to examining this innovative education for sustainability project, is a theoretical framework that examines evolution of innovation at the community level; this includes multiple internal and external stakeholders, and is beyond the more traditional uni-dimensional focus on organization or industry levels. This approach provides lessons with respect to complex and dynamic interactions between and among multiple stakeholders responsible for successful development and dissemination of sustainability in business schools, corporations, and beyond.

Hence, this paper addresses issues raised in the call for papers for the special issue of Journal of Management and Organization, ‘Educating for Sustainability and CSR: What is the role of business schools?’ The paper addresses the questions: (1) What are the barriers for business schools with respect to integrating sustainability in the curricula; (2) What role do partnerships with other stakeholders play in such initiatives?

Limited academic attention has been afforded to young workers relative to their adult counterparts. This study addresses a phase of the employment relationship for young people that is very infrequently examined – during or around the time when the relationship ends. It examines the relative frequency of different forms of dismissal and the circumstances preceding the dismissals via a content analysis of 1259 cases of employee enquiries to a community advocacy organisation in Australia. Results indicate that dismissal was most commonly associated with bullying, harassment, and taking personal leave. Young men, compared to young women, were disproportionately likely to report allegations of misconduct as preceding dismissal, while females experienced higher rates of sexual harassment and discrimination. The research highlights the types and circumstances of dismissal across a range of employment contexts and reveals the complexities of youth employment relationships which may differ from those of the general workforce.

In recent years, consumer boycotts are increasingly being used by various activist groups to punish targeted countries. This paper develops an analytic framework to help managers formulate strategies to cope with country-of-origin-related consumer boycotts. Based on the two dimensions of brand–country association and boycott intensity, we propose four possible strategies. We discuss spillover effects wherein certain firms become unintended victims of boycotts due to misperceptions about their nationality. Also discussed are economic opportunities that boycotts present to potential new entrants.

This paper uses a strategy—structure—performance-based model of marketing channel relationship structure to conduct an empirical examination of the involvement of four external stakeholder groups in manufacturing firms' product innovation. The results show that firms' stakeholder orientation (strategy), involvement of stakeholders in product innovation (structure) and quality of stakeholder relationships (performance) are intrinsically linked. Also, the way in which multiple stakeholder groups were involved in manufacturing firms' product innovation was more similar than different.

This paper argues that change practitioners could benefit from expanding change communication strategies to allow for the emergence and use of multi-genre change stories in place of minimalist storylines. We argue that minimalist storylines do not acknowledge the polyvocal view of change that has been discussed in storytelling theory or engage with multiple modes of understanding and suggest that change agents adopt a multi-genre approach to storytelling to address this gap. Drawing from Quentin Tarantino's movies Kill Bill 1 & 2 as an example of how stories can be constructed, this paper proposes that the use of multiple story genres increases the likelihood of audiences finding a genre they can relate to, thus increasing better audience reach. Findings suggest that existing change narrative types can be viewed as genres of organizational change and added to change agents' repertoires to make change communication interventions more appropriate and appealing to employees. While our paper aims to provide a conceptual way forward for change agents, we acknowledge that change agents need to engage with living stories in the future. Living stories recognize the multiple loose ends developed from past and present change experiences that can be used to construct new stories, which are more likely to transform organizations and acknowledge the unfolding nature of change.

This article proposes that duality theory plays a role in obtaining more nuanced and textured insights into the complex, paradoxical stability–change nexus by illustrating how tensions are managed not through definitive resolution toward one pole or the other, but through improvised boundary heuristics that establish a broad conforming imperative while opening up enabling mechanisms. Duality thinking also reinforces the need to discard assumptions about opposing values, instead replacing them with an appreciation of complementary concepts. The article explores the characteristics of dualities to allow managers to chart what they are seeking from their management interventions and subsequent choices in structural support systems. A key benefit of identifying and explaining duality characteristics comes in attempting to understand how to mediate between two contradictory dimensions of organizing, such as continuity and change. Our argument is that both need to be encouraged, but this requires a particular mindset where the problem of mediation viewed as the need to work towards simultaneity and synergistic mutuality rather than resolution of action between the two opposing dimensions.

Sales performance is widely regarded as an important index of individual and organizational performance. Sales employees require access to organizational and job resources as well as personal resources in order to function effectively. An individual-level salesperson performance model is proposed that draws from the motivational process represented in the Job Demands-Resources Model (Bakker & Demerouti, 2007). Organizational and job resources are conceptualized in terms of employee involvement climate (Riordan, Vandenberg, & Richardson, 2005). Personal resources are conceptualized in terms of employees' psychological capital (Luthans & Youssef, 2004). The model delineates how employee involvement climate influences engagement; how psychological capital influences performance; how employee involvement climate and psychological capital interact to influence employee engagement; and how, in turn, engagement impacts salesperson performance. The model will potentially prove useful to human resource managers, organizational development practitioners, and sales managers aiming to up-skill and more fully involve and engage their salespeople in order to optimize salesperson performance.

Mixed methods is a youthful but increasingly robust methodological movement characterised by: a growing body of trans-disciplinary literature; prominent research methodologists/authorities; the emergence of mixed method specific journals, research texts, and courses; a growth in popularity amongst research funding bodies. Mixed methods is being utilised and reported within business and management fields, despite the quantitative traditions attached to certain business and management disciplines. This paper has utilised a multistrand conversion mixed model research design to undertake a retrospective content analysis of refereed papers (n = 281) from the 21st Australian and New Zealand Academy of Management (ANZAM) Conference 2007. The aim of the study is to provide a methodological map of the management research reported at the conference, and in particular the use, quality and acceptance level of mixed methods research within business and management fields. Implications for further research are discussed along with a call to the ‘first generation’ of business and management mixed method researchers to instigate mixed methods research training and capacity building within their respective business schools, relevant academies and associated professional forums and publications.

The challenge to embed sustainability in the formal curriculum has been greatest for the business studies curriculum. Schools of business have been perceived as key socialising agencies for the intelligentsia of advanced capitalist societies, whereas the students of sustainability need to be helped to critique the dominant capitalist paradigm and consider its alternatives. Drawing on a critical perspective of education for sustainability, this paper presents a detailed examination of the sustainability curriculum at a regional university in Australia. The paper contributes to the discussion needed to understand what sustainability skills are required by managers and how tertiary education programs may need to change to develop these skills. In this way the nature of the role that business schools should be playing in leading and managing change towards sustainability is further informed.