Følg med i CBS’ nye forskningsudgivelser / Juni
Foto: Bjarke MacCarty
Er du journalist, forsker eller simpelthen bare interesseret i videnskabelige artikler om business og kultur?
Så skriv dig op til denne forskningsoversigt, hvor du får overblik over de nyeste forskningspublikationer på CBS for den seneste måned – direkte i din indbakke.
Vi har ikke gennemtygget det, så du får det i et råt format, hvor du selv skal læse videre eller kontakte forskeren bag for yderligere information.
De videnskabelige artikler er peer-reviewed, dvs. de har været igennem flere uvildige forskere, der har anerkendt og godkendt resultater og fremgangsmåde.
I denne måned handler publikationerne blandt andet om crowdfunding og om indførelse af kvindekvoter som mulig løsning på uligheden mellem kønnene på chefposter.
HER ER DENNE MÅNEDS PEER-REVIEWED FORSKNING (PÅ ENGELSK) – GOD LÆSELYST:
H(a)unting Quotas: An Empirical Analysis of the Uncanniness of Gender Quotas
ABSTRACT: Despite years of gender equality research and initiatives, women are still highly underrepresented in top management positions. In Denmark, the number of female top managers is particularly low, despite Denmark’s public image of being a country of equal opportunities. In several European countries, quota systems are proven to have a positive effect in increasing the representation of women in politics, as well as on corporate boards, but they are met with resistance from both men and women in Denmark, especially among Danish business leaders. Through empirical analysis of interviews with 45 Danish top managers, this paper investigates such resistance. Although the initial focus of the research agenda for the interviews was not quotas per se, but identity, gender and leadership more generally, the resistance towards – and even fear of – quotas was repeatedly brought up by interviewees, thereby unsettling the conversation. Based on this disturbance, we theorise gender quotas in organisations along a ghostly methodology as something uncanny. The analysis shows how the mere idea of quotas haunts the managers, who, in return, try to hunt down the quota ghost, as it apparently poses a threat to the current understanding of meritocracy. The fear of quotas seems to be what holds back the realisation of sustained gender equality. We argue that this fear is irrational and illogical and therefore suggest an approach of appeasement. Listening to the whispers of the ghost, we outline new presentunderstandings of merit. We hope that even if this paper does not bring legitimacy to quotas in the way that has happened in politics (in some countries), it will at least bring legitimacy to the discussion.
Journal: Ephemera: Theory & politics in organization
Published: 2019
Read more
Contact CBS researcher: Jannick Friis Christensen
Contact CBS researcher: Sara Louise Muhr
The Uneven Geography of Crowdfunding Success: Spatial Capital on Indiegogo
ABSTRACT: Optimists contend that crowdfunding, in which project backers use online campaigns to assemble numerous small donations, can democratize access to finance, but there are legitimate concerns that this funding approach remains discriminatory. Drawing on recent readings emphasizing the geographic components of Bourdieu’s field theory, we argue the relationship between crowdfunding teams’ resources and crowdfunding success is mediated by spatial capital—the ability to draw capital from other social spaces due to geographic context. We use logistic regressions predicting success rates for 134,098 campaigns launched in the USA on the Indiegogo platform between 2009 and 2015, combined with other spatial data, to model the relationship between spatial capital and other success predictors. Our models suggest spatial context mediates the relationship between resources and success. Rural areas, in particular, have lower success rates than urban areas, and affluent areas have the highest success rates. Given that only around 10% of Indiegogo campaigns are fully funded, spatial inequalities place significant limits on who can benefit from crowdfunding campaigns, suggesting crowdfunding may not democratize access to finance, as optimists hope.
Journal: Environment and Planning
Published: 2019
Read more
Contact CBS researcher: Kristian Roed Nielsen
Contact CBS researcher: Kristjan Jespersen
Bullshit and Organization Studies
ABSTRACT: Bullshit is a ubiquitous communication practice that permeates many dimensions of organizational life. This essay outlines different understandings of bullshit and discusses their significance in the context of organization studies. While it is tempting to reject bullshit as corrosive to rational organizational practice, we argue that it is necessary to understand its organizational significance and performative nature more systematically. We outline different social functions of bullshit focusing on two particular types of managerial practices in which bullshit is likely to play a significant role: commanding and strategizing. On this backdrop, we consider bullshit in terms of the messages, senders and receivers involved, focusing especially on the dynamics between these dimensions in the context of organizations. The final part of this essay debates the reasons why bullshit, which is recognized by organizational members, is rarely called and rejected explicitly.
Journal: Organization Studies
Published: 2019
Read more
Contact CBS researcher: Lars Thøger Christensen
Contact CBS researcher: Dan Kärreman
Contact CBS researcher: Andreas Rasche
Lice Work: Non-human Trajectories in Volunteer Tourism
ABSTRACT: This article studies volunteer tourism by following the trajectories of a non-human actor. Based on fieldwork at a Nepalese orphanage and drawing on insights from the material semiotics of Actor–Network Theory, we describe how the louse interferes as an unexpected actor with volunteer tourism at the orphanage. This post-human approach decentres the volunteer and destabilises the host–guest binary while adding to our understanding of tourism practices as complex and materially distributed endeavours. We analyse two configurations of head lice enacted through a modern morality of hygiene and Nepalese everyday life and show how they are deployed, contested and reconfigured onsite by volunteer tourism actors. By exploring patterns of absence and presence and using the concept of ontological choreography as an analytical resource, we show how the situated lice work of human and non-human actors at the orphanage offers new ways to grasp the forging of volunteer experiences and subjectivities.
Journal: Tourist Studies
Published: 2019
Read more here
Contact CBS researcher: Amira Benali
Degrowth through Income and Wealth Caps?
ABSTRACT: In the degrowth literature, maximum caps on wealth and/or income are frequently mentioned among the policy instruments that could support transitions towards ecologically and socially sustainable societies. Yet an in-depth discussion of concrete policy proposals has yet to be initiated. To facilitate such a discussion, the present paper reviews several proposals for placing caps on wealth and/or income. Some of these proposals consider environmental limits, others focus exclusively on social inequality. The paper moreover raises various critical issues concerning the introduction of maximum caps on wealth and income in a degrowth context, discussing the role of the state, the impact on economic growth and the risk of emigration of high-skilled employees and capital flight. We conclude that while, in an ecologically constrained world, there is an argument for imposing limits on wealth and income above a certain level, it is crucial not to dictate such policies as mere top-down measures but to develop and deliberate them in democratic forums.
Journal: Ecological Economics
Published: 2019
Read more
Contact CBS researcher: Hubert Buch-Hansen
Legitimation as Justification: Foregrounding Public Philosophies in Explanations of Gradual Ideational Change
ABSTRACT: In accounts of institutional change, discursive institutionalists point to the role of economic and political ideas in upending institutional stability and providing the raw material for the establishment of a new institutional setup. This approach has typically entailed a conceptualisation of ideas as coherent and monolithic and actors as almost automatically following the precepts of the ideas they hold and support. Recent theorising stresses how ideas are in fact composite and heterogeneous, and actors pragmatic and strategic in how they employ ideas in political struggles. However, this change of focus has, until recently, not included how foundational ideas of a polity, often referred to as ‘public philosophies’, are theorised to impact on institution‐building. Drawing on French Pragmatic Sociology, and taking as a starting point recent efforts within discursive institutionalism to conceptualise the dynamic nature of public philosophies, this article seeks to foreground moral justification in accounts of ideational and institutional change. It suggests that public philosophies are reflexively used by actors in continual processes of normative justification that may produce significant policy shifts over time. The empirical relevance of the argument is demonstrated through an analysis of gradual ideational and institutional change in French labour market policy, specifically the development from the state‐guaranteed minimum income scheme of 1988 to the neoliberal make‐work‐pay logic of the 2009 scheme, Revenu de solidarité active. The analysis shows that public and moral justifications have underpinned and gradually shaped these radical changes.
Journal: European Journal of Political Research
Published: 2019
Read more
Contact CBS researcher: Martin B. Carstensen
The United Nations' (UN) Decision to Adopt International Public Sector Accounting Standards (IPSAS)
ABSTRACT: Purpose: The objective of this study is to analyse and understand the UN System’s adoption of IPSAS from a legitimacy perspective.
Design/methodology/approach: A content analysis of publicly accessible documents from the UN System archives was conducted. The analysis was framed through the broader lens of legitimacy theory, drawing attention to the rationalities of decisions taken.
Findings: This study illustrated how the need for accounting reforms was rationalised throughout the UN System of organisations. Decision-making processes were reflective of political concerns and the accompanying need to continually demonstrate accountability. The discursive strategies observed associated the need to improve accountability with the adoption of globally recognised accounting systems. However, such logic assumed that existing accountability deficits were intrinsically linked to accounting failures, which overemphasises accounting’s role.
Originality/value: This study addresses a lacuna in empirical studies providing an understanding of the role of accounting reforms within international organisations such as the UN System.
Journal: Journal of Public Budgeting, Accounting & Financial Management
Published: 2019
Read more
Contact CBS researcher: Caroline Aggestam Pontoppidan
Mobilizing Intuitive Judgement during Organizational Decision Making: When Business Intelligence Is Not the Only Thing That Matters
ABSTRACT: Academics have argued that data-driven decision processes will replace intuitive judgements, but the empirical aspects of this claim are understudied. We provide empirical findings of how managers communicate and share intuitive judgements when BI system's output is prescribed to be the main information source for decision making. We investigate organizational decision making regarding IT project portfolio investments. We used a rich empirical dataset from a longitudinal, qualitative study investigating the prioritization of IT projects in a large financial institution. Our findings show that decision makers employ four techniques to communicate and share intuitive judgements during organizational decision making, which built on the BI output. Furthermore, we found that the use of these techniques depends on the decision maker's familiarity with the group and the convergence of perceptions about either a project, or specific issues in the group.
Journal: Decision Support Systems
Published: 2019
Read more
Contact CBS researcher: Ioanna Constantiou
Contact CBS researcher: Arissa Shollo
Contact CBS researcher: Morten Thanning Vendelø
Free No More: Investigating Customer Reactions to Unexpected Free-to-Fee Switches
ABSTRACT: Many companies struggle with the consequences of introducing prices for previously free services, known as free-to-fee switches. We compare an unexpected forced free-to-fee switch, in which continued usage is only possible if the fee is paid, to a freemium switch, which entails the option to use a service with reduced features for free. Integrating price fairness theory and the concept of cannibalization, three experimental studies reveal detrimental effects of free-to-fee switches on fairness perceptions, attitude toward the company, and purchase intentions, which may partly be attenuated by a freemium switch. Furthermore, we examine different levels of feature reduction as a way for improving the effectiveness of free-to-fee switches. Overall, the findings question the common practice of unexpectedly introducing freemium business models, contribute to a better understanding of customer reactions to free-to-fee switches, and provide recommendations for companies intending to introduce a price for free services.
Journal: Journal of Business Research
Published: 2019
Read more
Contact CBS researcher: Tobias Shäfers
Rogue Neoliberalism, Liturgical Power, and the Search for a Left Governmentality
ABSTRACT: This paper argues against a recent authoritarian turn of neoliberalism, pointing to its advocacy of authoritarian regimes in the 1970s and the use of illiberal practices for certain populations in “welfare reform” from the 1990s. Instead, it characterizes today’s neoliberalism as at the conjuncture of two contingent events: the failure of the over four-decade search for a “left governmentality” and the renewal of “liturgical power.” The latter arises from a displacement of public opinion in liberal democracy by the fluctuations of public mood as registered on social media, with a concomitant renewal of the public assembly. A rogue neoliberalism belongs to no one side and attaches itself to diverse political and economic formations: fundamentalist Christians and diversity advocates, finance and real-estate capital, progressive liberals and conservative authoritarians, and sovereign decisionism and the rule of law. Their opposition might be imagined as a low-intensity confessional civil war.
Journal: South Atlantic Quarterly
Published: 2019
Read more
Contact CBS researcher: Mitchell Dean
Communities Versus Platforms: The Paradox in the Body of the Collaborative Economy
ABSTRACT: Communities and platforms pervade all aspects of the collaborative economy. Yet, they exist in apparent tension. The collaborative economy is grounded in communities. These are typically characterized by isonomic relations, in which the singularity of members finds its distinctiveness in being woven into mutual, collective endeavor. Yet, the collaborative economy also entails digital platforms organized through largely heteronomic relations in which employees and users are configured as isolate, useful, interchangeable, and flexible “units.” As such, communities and platforms are traditionally framed as separate from, and in contradiction to, one another. There is, it seems a paradox at the heart of the collaborative economy. Yet, inspired by the work of Merleau-Ponty, we argue the expression, embodiment, and eventfulness characterizing the collaborative economy show communities and platforms being constituted by one another. We conclude that the paradox, far from being a condition of opposition and dialectical tension requiring managed resolution, is a generative organizational process.
Journal: Journal of Management Inquiry
Published: 2019
Read more
Contact CBS researcher: Robin Holt
Bankers kapitalomkostninger: Hvad koster mere egenkapital for en bank?
ABSTRACT: Hvis egenkapital er dyr finansiering for banker, så vil øgede kapitalkrav føre til højere udlånsrenter. Højere udlånsrenter vil give lavere økonomisk aktivitet i samfundet, og derved kan der være en negativ realeffekt af højere kapitalkrav. Spørgsmålet er derfor, om egenkapital er dyr finansiering for banker? Vi viser i denne artikel, at bankers kapitalomkostninger i praksis opfører sig i overensstemmelse med Modigliani-Millers teori. Det betyder, at bankers kapitalomkostninger ikke ændrer sig væsentligt, selvom egenkapitalen øges. Der vil dog stadig være et mindre værditab for banken fra et lavere skatteskjold. Øges egenkapitalen eksempelvis med 10 procentpoint, hvilket er lidt mere end en fordobling af det nuværende niveau, vil udlånsrenterne i gennemsnit stige med 8 basispoint. Dette resultat står i skarp kontrast til flere af de eksisterende internationale studier, og understøtter argumentet om, at øget egenkapital for banker i praksis ikke fører til højere samlede finansieringsomkostninger.
Journal: Finans/Invest
Published: 2019
Read more
Contact CBS researcher: Jens Dick-Nielsen
Falling Not Far from the Tree: Entrepreneurs and Organizational Heritage
ABSTRACT: Past research has shown that founders bring important capabilities and resources from their prior employment into their new firms and that these intergenerational transfers influence the performance of these ventures. However, we know little about whether organizational practices also transfer from parents to spawns, and if so, what types of practices are transferred? Using a combination of survey and registrar data and through a detailed identification strategy, we examine these two previously unaddressed questions. Our results provide strong evidence for organizational heritage in practices. About 70% of the comparisons of start-ups and other established organizations are less similar than the average similarity between a parent organization and its spawn and that the overlap in organizational practices is almost 10% greater between a spawn and its parents than between the spawn and other established firms. Our further investigation shows that not all practices seem to find their way into the new entrepreneurial firms. In particular, practices that are valuable for and fit with the requirements of a start-up organization, and at the same time are more clearly defined and casually less ambiguous, are more likely to be transferred by the founders from their previous employers. These results contribute to our understanding of how entrepreneurs assemble their organizations and practice innovation as well as the diffusion of practices and the origins of firm heterogeneity.
Journal: Organization Science
Published: 2019
Read more
Contact CBS researcher: Toke Reichstein
Paramount Clause and Codification of International Shipping Law
ABSTRACT: This article analyses the voluntary inclusion in a charterparty or its incorporation into a bill of lading by the contracting parties of protective clauses such as the Paramount or Himalaya Clauses. The Clauses provide for the application of the Hague-Visby Rules or other international instruments for the limitation of responsibility of the carrier and its servants, agents, and subcontractors. However, the interaction between forum and ius may lead to additional consequences. The validity of the agreement on the applicable law altogether with the choice of seat to solve future disputes between the parties can be limited by public policy and overriding mandatory rules of the forum.
Journal: Journal of Maritime Law and Commerce
Published: 2019
Read more
Contact CBS researcher: Jonatan Echebarria Fernández
Limitations on Jurisdiction and Arbitration Agreements Based on Applicable Law and the Identity of the Carrier in Cargo Claim Disputes: Who and Where to Sue
ABSTRACT: The article demonstrates through an analysis of the limitations on choice of forum or arbitration agreements following the invalidity of a choice of law clause included in a charter party and/or a bill of lading (B/L). It is equally difficult enforcing a jurisdiction or arbitration clause included in a B/L if the parties are not clearly defined in the contract for the carrige of goods by sea. The article delivers some conclusions and suggests the approach to be taken by maritime contracting parties to overcome any feasible invalidity of a choice of forum or arbitration agreement based on the choice of law by European Member (EU) States’ courts.
Journal: Cuadernos Derecho Transnacional
Published: 2019
Read more
Contact CBS researcher: Jonatan Echebarria Fernández
European Union's Post-"Brexit" Decisión-Making Capacity in the Development of International Maritime Law
ABSTRACT: The article analyzes from a public perspective (fight against pollution, environmental protection and safety at sea) the interrelated consequences of the global governance through European Union (BU) and international practice, altogether with the BU democratic representation in the decision- making process at international institutions to foster its interests. An assessment of the EU's capacity to effectively become a member to the International Maritime Organization (IMO) dueto its weight as a leading global actor is provided. Finally, the future status of the United Kingdom (UK) after leaving the BU on 29 March 2019 raises further questions related to the applicable maritime and environmental safety standards to the UK and the remaining 27 BU Member States.
Journal: Revista de Derecho del Transporte: Terrestre, Marítimo, Aéreo y Multimodal
Published: 2018
Read more
Contact CBS researcher: Jonatan Echebarria Fernández
Struggling with Meaningfulness when Context Shifts: Volunteer Work in a German Refugee Shelter
ABSTRACT: This article draws on an ethnographic study of volunteer work in a German refugee shelter to explore how individual experiences of meaningfulness are intertwined with shifting discursive and organisational contexts. At the beginning of the so‐called refugee crisis, societal discourses portrayed this volunteer work as extraordinarily meaningful – a state we capture through the metaphor of ‘overflow’. This ‘overflow’ mobilised volunteers and was an important point of reference for framing their work experiences as meaningful. Later, shifting discursive and organisational contexts challenged their framings. Instead of letting go, however, the ‘overflow’ triggered volunteers to reframe their experience in dysfunctional ways in order to sustain their sense of meaningfulness. This paper reveals how shifting societal discourses feed into individual experiences of meaningfulness, shows how individuals may respond to such shifts in problematic ways and theorises the nature of such shifts in drawing on Swidler’s notion of settling contexts.
Journal: Journal of Management Studies
Published: 2019
Read more
Contact CBS researcher: Dan Kärreman
Orchestrating Corporate Social Responsibility in the Multinational Enterprise
ABSTRACT: Research Summary: Multinational enterprises (MNEs) invest significant resources in corporate social responsibility (CSR), but their attempts to build a global “social brand” may clash with the execution of operational strategies at a subsidiary level. Using a game‐theoretic model, this research addresses the complex interplay of different contingencies that shape the coordination and control challenges facing MNEs when they implement global CSR strategies, including brand spillovers, the risk of public scandals caused by irresponsible behavior, the size of the MNE network, as well as the roles played by nongovernmental organizations and altruistic managers. Challenging the view of CSR as insurance against lapses of responsible conduct, our model shows that investment in social brands helps avoid irresponsible practices across the MNE network, thereby inducing subsidiaries to “walk the talk.”
Managerial Summary: Global social brands are increasingly valuable to multinational enterprises (MNEs), which makes the control and coordination of responsible behavior across their network of foreign subsidiaries a relevant managerial challenge. Indeed, lapses of responsible conduct at the subsidiary level often generate reputational damage at the multinational level. This research explores several mechanisms that help MNEs manage this coordination and control challenge. First, it shows under what conditions MNEs can leverage their investments in social brands to induce responsible practices across their global network. Second, it illustrates how MNEs can exploit collaborations with nongovernmental organizations to reduce the costs of coordinating and controlling their subsidiaries. Finally, it identifies conditions under which MNEs benefit from hiring altruistic managers to run their subsidiaries.
Journal: Strategic Management Journal
Published: 2019
Read more
Contact CBS researcher: Christian Geisler Asmussen
Meshes of Surveillance, Prediction, and Infrastructure: On the Cultural and Commercial Consequences of Digital Platforms
ABSTRACT: Digital platforms like Spotify, Netflix, and YouTube rely on mass data collection, algorithmic forms of prediction, and the development of closed digital systems. Seemingly technical and trivial, such operational and infrastructural features have both commercial and cultural consequences in need of attention. As with any other kinds of infrastructure, the surveillance practices and digital ecosystems that are now installed and solidified will have long-term effects and will be difficult to challenge. We suggest that the cultural and commercial ramifications of such datafied infrastructural developments can be unpacked by analyzing digital platforms—in this case Netflix—as surveillance-based, predictive infrastructures. Digital platforms fortify their market positions by transitioning surveillance-based assets of audience metrics into infrastructural and informational assets that set conditions for other actors and approaches at work in the domain of cultural production. We identify the central forces at play in these developments: digital platforms critically depend on proprietary surveillance data from large user bases and engage in data-structuring practices (Flyverbom and Murray 2018) that allow for predictive analytics to be a core component of their operations. Also, digital platforms engage in infrastructural development, such as Netflix’s decentralized system of video storage and content delivery, Open Connect. These meshes of user surveillance, predictive analytics, and infrastructural developments have ramifications beyond individual platforms and shape cultural production in extensive and increasingly problematic ways.
Journal: Surveillance & Society
Published: 2019
Read more
Contact CBS researcher: Mikkel Flyverbom
Retaining Clients in B2B E-Marketplaces: What Do SMEs Demand?
ABSTRACT: Business-to-business (B2B) e-marketplaces serve local small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) by assisting them in connecting with potential overseas buyers. They leverage multiple channels to connect with and bring potential leads to SMEs. The authors’ understanding of such an intermediary has been either largely impaired by limited studies on the services that e-marketplaces should offer or implicitly deduced from business-to-consumer studies. In this work, the authors attempt to unveil whether the efforts that an e-marketplace has made are associated with the continuance of its SME clients. To answer thisresearch question, a set of data from a B2B e-marketplace connecting qualified SMEs with overseas buyers was used for analysis, and they discovered three results. First, generating many online leads is negatively associated with SMEs’ continuance with such an e-marketplace company. Second, organizing many online videoconferencing meetings between SMEs and buyers can promote this tendency, which is different from organizing many offline meetings. Third, onsite visits that e-marketplace salespersons make can attenuate the negative effect of the generation of online leads. Their follow-up interviews unveiled that SMEs only desire sufficient attention to obtain tangible results from a B2B e-marketplace.
Journal: Journal of Global Information Management
Published: 2019
Read more
Contact CBS researcher: Qi Qi Jiang
"Together We Rise": Collaboration and Contestation as Narrative Drivers of the Women's March
ABSTRACT: The Women’s March is arguably the most important counter-narrative to Trump’s post-truth regime, but does it also present a leadership alternative to his populist and authoritarian style? And is this alternative necessarily better than currently dominant social formations? In this paper, we argue that the Women’s March is partially configured by similar forces of affective circulation as those governing pro-Trump narratives, but that it is different and better in one important respect. The narratives of the Women's March are driven by both collaboration and contestation, meaning its circulation is both centripetal and centrifugal. We substantiate this claim through a close reading of the narration of the Women’s March – from its inception until its first anniversary. Here, we focus particularly on the development from a moment of resistance to a political movement, arguing that this process offers a prototype for conceptualizing a new form of “rebel” or social movement leadership. Hence, the Women’s March not only offers a different and better alternative to the leadership of Trump but also an opportunity for promoting and refining leadership theory in the post-heroic vein.
Journal: Leadership
Published: 2019
Read more
Contact CBS researcher: Sine Nørholm Just
Contact CBS researcher: Sara Louise Muhr
The Dark Side of Stakeholder Reactions to Corporate Social Responsibility: Tensions and Micro‐level Undesirable Outcomes
ABSTRACT: With a review of literature on corporate social responsibility (CSR) and its micro‐level impacts, this paper proposes an integrative framework to map undesirable relational outcomes of CSR activities on internal (employees) and external (customers) stakeholders. By adopting a paradox‐based perspective, the authors determine that unexpected, adverse stakeholder reactions to CSR are driven primarily by either performing or belonging tensions, related to exchange‐ and identity‐based stakeholder concerns, respectively. Specifically, contextual and personal influences can trigger and explain undesirable relational outcomes of CSR. On this basis, this paper offers a research agenda for developing a more refined understanding of CSR‐related tensions and a more nuanced perspective on the business case for CSR.
Journal: International Journal of Management Reviews
Published: 2019
Read more
Contact CBS researcher: Adam Lindgreen
Lessons from Port Sector Regulatory Reforms in Denmark: An Analysis of Port Governance and Institutional Structure Outcomes
ABSTRACT: This paper studies the recent regulatory reform and current institutional structure of the Danish port sector. We document changes with regard to the structure of management, the financial strength and the market power of partially or fully municipally controlled ports in response to the Port Law passed in 1999 and most recently revised in 2012. This law enabled greater degrees of freedom for ports to engage in cargo handling operations while in some cases retaining advantageous public financing. During a period of overall slowdown in goods volumes, we document expansionary development of municipally controlled ports, and we argue that such a phenomenon is attributable to the institutional structure and rules set by the Danish Port Law. For a future legal framework to successfully aid the port sector in realizing its relevant goal of cost-efficiently producing goods handling services, the risk of opportunistic behaviour needs to be explicitly recognized and managed.
Journal: Transport Policy
Published: 2019
Read more
Contact CBS researcher: Stefan Kirkegaard Sløk-Madsen
Dominant, Hidden and Forbidden Sensemaking: The Politics of Ideology and Emotions in Diversity Management
ABSTRACT: An important but understudied issue in the study of organisational sensemaking concerns how power and politics influence sensemaking processes, specifically the political struggles immanent in collective processes of meaning construction and organising. When people are located at different areas and levels in the organisational hierarchy and they draw on different experiences and areas of knowledge, they often develop conflicting interpretations, which may compete for legitimacy. To capture the dimension of power in sensemaking, we combine the sensemaking perspective with a poststructuralist feminist conception of power, as this allows us to explore the mechanisms through which some sensemaking becomes legitimate whereas others remain marginalised. We specifically explore the ideological resources that shape the terrain within which a diverse workforce interpret, enact and emotionally experience diversity management in a local branch of a global retail chain store. The study used in-depth interviews and participant observations to provide insight into the complex mechanisms that are employed to control the definition of a specific situation, mapping out a hierarchical system of dominant, hidden and forbidden sensemaking of diversity management. The article concludes that the political processes of sensemaking deeply implicate emotions as a central force that facilitates the ongoing reproduction of social order. Our study, therefore, highlights the need to conceive of sensemaking, power and emotions as a complex nexus of the micro-political practices in which certain terrains of action unfold, allowing collective organising to occur.
Journal: Organization
Published: 2019
Read more
Contact CBS researcher: Elisabeth Naima Mikkelsen
Ships and Relationships: Competition, Geographical Proximity, and Relations in the Shipping Industry
ABSTRACT: Geographical and industry proximity are positively correlated with the likelihood of relationship formation. However, studies of this interrelationship are scarce, have yielded mixed results, and have failed to unveil the mechanisms behind the effects of different types of proximity and their links with tie formation. This paper investigates the roles of geographical proximity and industry proximity with a focus on competitors. It examines the interplay of these two types of proximity in the context of relationships in the shipping industry. Based on a quantitative case study, I find that geographical proximity is not a prerequisite for relationship formation. On average, shipbrokers are more likely to enter into new deals with counterparties external to the industry than with shipping parties or competitors. However, geographical proximity positively moderates the likelihood of dealing with competitors. I explain this on the basis of coopetition, simultaneous competition, and cooperation among firms within local clusters.
Journal: Journal of Business Research
Published: 2019
Read more
Contact CBS researcher: Agnieszka Nowinska
Organisering af finansielt tilsyn
ABSTRACT: Der pågår aktuelt diskussioner om organiseringen af Finanstilsynet. Denne artikel analyserer forskellige tilsynsmodeller. Formålet er at bidrage til overvejelserne om at optimere tilsynet med den finansielle sektor i Danmark. Artiklens første del refererer konklusioner og diskussioner fra den akademiske litteratur på området. Artiklens anden del perspektiverer og konkluderer med hensyn til organiseringen af det finansielle tilsyn i Danmark. Artiklen foreslår, at robusthedstilsynet med systemisk vigtige finansielle institutioner fremover varetages af Nationalbanken. Fordele og ulemper diskuteres, herunder om yderligere tilsynsopgaver bør varetages af Nationalbanken.
Journal: Finans/Invest
Published: 2019
Read more
Contact CBS researcher: Jesper Rangvid
How Corporate Headquarters Add Value in the Digital Age
ABSTRACT: How will digitalization influence the role of corporate headquarters (CHQs) and their relationships with their operating units? We recently asked 67 senior CHQ managers this question. The results suggest that CHQs expect to become more powerful and more involved in their operating units. These conclusions seem to be driven by perceptions that the ongoing digitalization will provide CHQ managers with more timely and better information. In this “Point of View,” we discuss the potential pitfalls of such a narrative. We also offer ideas for how to avoid mistakes and ensure that CHQs increase their value-added in times of digitalization. In particular, we suggest that CHQs place emphasis on social interactions for data to be effectively collected and analyzed, for decision-making power to be adequately allocated, and for CHQ involvement to be informed and necessary.
Journal: Journal of Organization Design
Published: 2019
Read more
Contact CBS researcher: Phillip Christopher Nell
Current Advancements of and Future Developments for Fourth Party Logistics in a Digital Future
ABSTRACT: This paper aims to analyze the potential future of the 4PL concept based on expert opinions with special regard to the influence of digitalization coming with a disruptive trans-formation of supply chains. Service arrangements, provider capabilities and benefits resulting from a 4PL partnership are compared in current and future configurations. The research follows an explorative mixed methods approach with semi-structured interviews followed by an expert panel. This builds a basis for an online survey questionnaire to inquire on important future aspects for the 4PL concept by a sample of respondents from multinational companies. Our results show a clear trend away from simply organizing transportation and logistics activities towards the provision of an IT platform as well as further value-added service activities such as planning, analytics and monitoring. Along with this, IT capabilities appear to be an important differentiator for 4PL providers in the future. Moreover, relationships between 4PL providers and their clients become closer and more strategic, which leads to a customer valuing not only direct cost reductions but rather improvements resulting from optimized operations through superior analysis and planning functions.
Journal: Logistics
Published: 2019
Read more
Contact CBS researcher: Hans-Joachim Schramm
Individual Competences for Sustainable Purchasing and Supply Management (SPSM): A Literature and Practice Perspective
ABSTRACT:
Purpose: Implementing sustainability into global supply networks remains a challenge for companies. Purchasing and supply management (PSM) interacts closely with supply network actors, thus influencing how the firm’s value creation is delivered. While previous sustainable PSM (SPSM) research has shed light on how to manage sustainability on an organizational level, the individual competences PSM professionals require are less understood. The paper aims to discuss this issue.
Design/methodology/approach: The authors conducted a systematic literature review to determine the current research coverage of specific competences and knowledge required to implement sustainability. The authors complemented this with data from 46 interviews with practitioners. From coding the data with NVivo, a first comprehensive competence overview for SPSM was developed.
Findings: The literature review results, complemented with interview data, highlight that functional-oriented, cognition-oriented, social-oriented and meta-oriented competences form part of a comprehensive SPSM competence model. We propose a framework that includes these, and integrates two behavioral moderators on the organizational level, i.e. situational enabling, as well as empowerment and obligation.
Research limitations/implications: While the proposed framework provides a basic first systematization of SPSM competences, further research is needed to extend it. There is ample opportunity to shed further light on both individual and organizational-level factors that influence the application of SPSM competences, and therefore SPSM behavior.
Practical implications: The results have implications for higher education and professional training programs in companies. The framework provides an overview of competences needed for SPSM. The discussion highlights the need to apply education and training methods for different types of competences that are suitable for conveying implicit knowledge apart from explicit knowledge.
Originality/value: Adressing a current research gap in sustainability-related competences in PSM, the overall framework highlights SPSM competences of interest to both scholars and managers alike.
Journal: International Journal of Physical Distribution & Logistics Management
Published: 2019
Read more
Contact CBS researcher: Lydia Bals
Storytelling and Cultural Learning: An Expatriate Manager's Narratives of Collaboration Challenges in a Multicultural Business Setting
ABSTRACT: This paper focuses on cultural learning processes in an international business context. The empirical material is an in-depth narrative interview with a European expatriate manager who emplots challenging cultural encounters in an Asian subsidiary of a Western European multinational company. We seek turning points and discoveries in her stories to show how and what she learned from her critical incidents. We found that the new business and cultural context posed a huge challenge during the early stages of her assignment and that prior (explicit) knowledge and international experience did not ensure smooth collaborations. Successful collaborations required creating new context-specific (tacit) knowledge embedded in organizational culture and locals' behaviors. We found that extrapolating from social interactions led to cultural misinterpretations and inhibited cross-cultural interactions and learning, but continued interactions led to better understandings of cultural others' behaviors as their attributions could be renegotiated. Moreover, we found transformative potential of storytelling for expatriate post-experiential learning. We contribute methodologically to the narrative approach in cross-cultural research. We found that collecting stories by the interviewer who shares a nationality, language, and culture with the interviewee may impose an ethnocentric lens on the experiences related and limit the interviewee's reflection on cross-cultural communication and collaboration.
Journal: Learning, Culture and Social Interaction
Published: 2019
Read more
Contact CBS researchers: Michal Wilczewski
Contact CBS researcher: Anne Marie Søderberg
Internationalization and Hotel Performance: Agglomeration-related Moderators
ABSTRACT: This study provides a comprehensive analysis of the impact of internationalization on hotel performance. We focus on two distinct facets of internationalization (i.e., international intensity and international diversity), and analyze the impact of internationalization within the context of two interesting moderating variables (positive differentiation within the cluster and location of the cluster). The reasoning behind investigating these moderators relies on arguments from both agglomeration and internationalization theories. The results support distinct relationship patterns between internationalization and hotel performance. In particular, we show how international hotels face different kinds of costs and benefits at different levels of international intensity and diversity. Further, the selection of new international locations needs to be carefully aligned with the type of internationalization strategy.
Journal: International Journal of Hospitality Management
Published: 2019
Read more
Contact CBS researcher: Alexander Josiassen
Contact CBS researcher: Florian Kock
A Within-sibling Pair Analysis of Lifestyle Behaviours and BMI Z-score in the Multi-centre I.Family Study
ABSTRACT: Background and aims: By investigating differences in lifestyle behaviours and BMI in sibling pairs, family-level confounding is minimized and causal inference is improved, compared to cross-sectional studies of unrelated children. Thus, we aimed to investigate within-sibling pair differences in different lifestyle behaviours and differences in BMI z-scores in children and adolescents.
Methods and results: We examined three groups of sibling pairs 1) all same-sex sibling pairs with maximum 4 years age difference (n = 1209 pairs from 1072 families in 8 countries, mean age 10.7 years, standard deviation 2.4 years), 2) sibling pairs discordant for overweight (n = 262) and 3) twin pairs (n = 85). Usual dietary intake was estimated by 24-h recalls and time spent in light (LPA) and moderate-to-vigorous physical activity (MVPA) was measured by accelerometers. Screen time, sleep and dieting for weight loss were assessed by questionnaires.
Within all 3 groups of sibling pairs, more time in MVPA was associated with lower BMI z-score. Higher energy intake was associated with higher BMI z-score within twin pairs and within all sibling pairs who were not currently dieting for weight loss. Regarding LPA, screen time or sleep duration, no or inconsistent associations were observed for the three groups of sibling pairs.
Conclusions: MVPA and energy intake were associated with BMI differences within sibling and twin pairs growing up in the same home, thus independent of family-level confounding factors. Future studies should explore whether genetic variants regulating appetite or energy expenditure behaviours account for weight differences in sibling pairs.
Journal: Nutrition, Metabolism & Cardiovascular Diseases
Published: 2019
Read more
Contact CBS researcher: Lucia Reisch
For more information please contact: