Management and Marketing - Research Publications

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    Publishing human resource management research in different kinds of journals
    Harley, B ; Clark, T ; Wright, M ; Ketchen, DJ (Edward Elgar Publishing, 2016-01-01)
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    Does Procedural Justice Increase the Inclusion of Migrants? A Group Engagement Model Perspective
    Adamovic, M ; Gahan, P ; Olsen, JE ; Harley, W ; Healy, J ; Theilacker, M (Academy of Management, 2018-07-09)
    Workforces have become more culturally diverse due to globalization, skilled labor shortages, aging societies, and hardships in developing countries. One critical challenge associated with managing a culturally diverse workforce is ensuring inclusion. Migrant workers often experience discrimination, social exclusion, and lower organizational identification. Further attention is required to address these challenges and create inclusive workplaces for migrants. We integrate research on migrant workers with research on the group engagement model to create a model for understanding and enhancing migrant worker inclusion. We test our model using data drawn from employees in a large-scale survey of Australian workplaces. The results of our multilevel moderated mediation analysis indicate that, consistent with the group engagement model, a procedurally fair work environment tends to increase organizational identification, which in turn is associated with higher levels of work engagement. Importantly, our results also indicate that procedural justice climate is more important for migrant than for native workers. Our work has clear implications for practice. Organizations should establish a procedurally fair work environment in which cultural minorities experience consistent and unbiased policies and procedures, are able to express their opinions, and participate in decision-making.
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    Reframing Rigor as Reasoning: Challenging Technocratic Conceptions of Rigor in Management Research Abstract Acknowledgments
    Harley, B ; Cornelissen, J ; Zilber, TB ; Amis, JM ; Mair, J (Emerald Publishing Limited, 2019-03-27)
    In this chapter, the authors critique dominant technocratic conceptions of rigor in management research and elaborate an alternative account of rigor that is rooted in methodology and involves a concern with the quality of scientific reasoning rather than a narrower focus on methods or measurement issues per se. Based on the proposed redefinition, the authors conceptualize how rigor, as an essential quality of reasoning, may be defined and the authors in turn qualify alternative methodological criteria for how they might assess the rigor of any particular piece of research. In short, with this chapter the authors’ overall aim is to shift the basis of rigor to an altogether more legitimate and commensurable notion that squarely puts the focus on reasoning and scientific inference for quantitative and qualitative research alike. The authors highlight some of the benefits that such an alternative and unified view of rigor may potentially provide toward fostering the quality and progress of management research.
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    Confronting the Crisis of Confidence in Management Studies: Why Senior Scholars Need to Stop Setting a Bad Example
    Harley, B (Academy of Management, 2019-06-01)
    There is an emerging crisis of confidence in management studies. This is expressed in growing disquiet about the lack of value in our research outputs and increasing frustration about the nature of teaching in business schools. This crisis of confidence can be understood as a response to a series of developments, including an apparent lack of practical or academic impact from most published research, a narrowing of focus in the field, increases in unethical behaviour, a downgrading of teaching and increased pressure in both publishing and teaching. Traditional academic values are coming into conflict with processes of rationalisation in business schools and universities. The changes driving these outcomes are long-run and reflect powerful institutional pressures, rendering them difficult to change. Nonetheless, established management studies scholars have a responsibility to address them. One way that they can show leadership in this regard is by setting a good example. Three suggestions can be made about how to do this: a rejection of the fiction that what we do is analogous to laboratory science; a rejection of the myth of what this essay calls ‘the heroic workaholic publishing machine’; and a refusal to promote flawed approaches to assessing academic success.
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    Leadership at Work: Do Australian leaders have what it takes?
    Gahan, P ; Adamovic, M ; Bevitt, A ; Harley, W ; HEALY, J ; Olsen, J ; Theilacker, M (Centre for Workplace Leadership, The University of Melbourne, 2016)
    Fuelled by the resources boom, the Australian economy has enjoyed an unprecedented 25 years of economic growth, more than doubling in real terms over that period. But, now, the Australian economy is slowing. Productivity is sluggish, employment growth is weakening, and consumer confidence is faltering. Many economists are now predicting an extended period of slow economic growth and recovery. Organisations need to adapt and adjust to this unfolding reality, improve productivity and reduce costs. However, this is just one of a number of critical challenges that Australia faces. Slower economic growth globally has intensified competitive pressures. The rate of technological change is accelerating and is having increasingly disruptive consequences. Automation is destroying jobs at a faster pace and is beginning to hollow out middle-skill jobs across sectors as diverse as manufacturing, professional services and financial services. Technological advances are leading to an unprecedented rate of innovation in products and services, creating new sources of competitive pressure – as well as enormous potential for future growth, profitability and cost reduction. Technology is spawning a new class of business models, which are disrupting established ways of working and doing business – from Uber in the taxi industry, AirBnB in accommodation services, and the emerging FinTech sector, to the spread of online training in education services and an array of service providers able to offshore increasingly complex work. At the same time, organisations have contended with a seismic shift in the competitive and regulatory environment - from competition policy and consumer protection, to the decentralisation of industrial relations and enterprise bargaining. These fundamental changes in the way organisations organise and compete will impact Australian workplaces of all shapes and sizes – small and large, private and public, for-profit and not-for-profit, and across industries. If Australia is to maintain national competitiveness and generate growth and jobs, organisations need to navigate through a phase of increased uncertainty and ambiguity, disruption and change. To survive, organisations need to innovate and adapt, and to develop new capabilities and new sources of growth. A critical question is whether Australian organisational leaders are ready to meet these new challenges. Or whether the extended period of economic growth driven by the resources boom has made Australian organisational leaders complacent and unprepared for the future? Have Australian organisations invested adequately in their leadership and management capabilities to navigate through these complex and uncertain times? If not, will these various changes have adverse and lasting effects on future growth and prosperity? These questions have informed the surveys developed for this study.
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    Creating a high performance leadership culture: The case of a leading Australian financial services firm
    OLSEN, J ; Fischer, M ; Harley, W ; Evans, P (Centre for Workplace Leadership, The University of Melbourne, 2016)
    The Centre for Workplace Leadership was invited by a leading Australian financial services firm to conduct research on the firm’s capacity to adapt and innovate in a rapidly changing economic environment. The research took place between 2014 and 2016. It involved analysis of proprietary documents, surveys, and interviews with employees and managers from frontline business to senior managers, the executive team and board members. Key Findings: The analysis of the firm’s systems for innovation and decision-making found the following factors were affecting the firm’s ability to innovate. These were: • Employees’ shared commitment to a strong, values-based culture created a stable and rewarding informal culture; • However, the firm’s culture was a ‘double-edged sword’: although it was a major strength in building cohesion, it also tended to block innovation and change; • In particular, ‘bureaucratic brakes’ impeded the spread of internal innovation and development; • Strong risk aversion tended to be used defensively against the possibility of change; • Positive examples of innovation highlighted the need to develop better mechanisms for knowledge diffusion and organisational learning. Each of these findings is described in more detail in the report, along with quotes from the interviews.
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    Middle Managers - Leading for Performance The case of a major Australian retail business
    OLSEN, J ; Fischer, M ; Harley, W ; Evans, P (Centre for Workplace Leadership, The University of Melbourne, 2016)
    The Centre for Workplace Leadership was invited by a major Australian retail business to conduct research on the company. The CEO wished to have a solid basis of evidence on which to improve communication, innovation and decisionmaking in the company. The research took place over a year between mid-2014 and mid-2015. It involved interviews with staff at all levels, from CEO to frontline business staff. Key Findings: The analysis of communication, innovation and decision-making processes found three main issues that were impacting organisational effectiveness. These were: • shifting to hierarchical leadership had reduced employee engagement; • increased bureaucracy had reinforced organisational silos; • top-down decision-making had crowded out collaboration and innovation. Each of these findings is described in more detail below, along with quotes from the interviews.
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    Employee responses to 'high performance work system' practices: an empirical test of the disciplined worker thesis
    Harley, B ; Sargent, L ; Allen, B (SAGE PUBLICATIONS LTD, 2010-12)
    This article considers the possibility that ‘high performance work system’ (HPWS) practices generate positive outcomes for employees by meeting their interests (specifically their interest in an orderly and predictable working environment). Utilising survey data on employees working in the Australian aged-care industry, statistical analysis is used to test the mediating effect of order and predictability on associations between HPWS practices and employee experience of work. The results suggest that positive outcomes arise in part because HPWS practices contribute to workplace order and predictability. In explaining this finding, the article highlights the importance of contextual factors, notably industry and employee characteristics, in shaping outcomes. The article concludes that socio-logically oriented analyses which apprehend the importance of employee interests provide a useful supplement to conventional psychologically oriented accounts of HPWS and provide a basis for continued development of labour process theory.