Dynamique des valeurs culturelles au travail en contexte gabonais : influence de la culture nationale et de la culture d’entreprise occidentale

More and more Western organizations settle in Africa and import their corporate culture. This contrasts strongly with local national culture. The present study examines the direct links and the interactive effect of Gabonese culture and Western corporate culture on workplace cultural values. A total of 650 Gabonese employees working in Western organizations answered a questionnaire. The results indicate that Gabonese national culture and Western corporate culture are differentially linked with collectivism at work, given that the former is positively associated whereas the latter is negatively associated. Moreover, an additive effect of both cultures on the distance to power. Thus, the cohabitation between Gabonese national culture and Western corporate culture leads to a mismatch of cultural values at workplace.     

The Company Man: A Case of White-Collar Crime

Insider trading scandals on Wall Street have focused public attention on the abuse of money and power in the service of greed. The analytic situation described in this paper involves a patient who was involved in a major white-collar crime in the 1990s and imprisoned on charges of fraud. Release from prison brought his anxieties about money, work, and masculinity into sharp focus. The paper explores the some of the emotional conflicts and confusion around corporate success and failure, and the particular issues that arise when people identify themselves with the company they work for, something that corporate culture has always encouraged.     

Corporate culture and the employment of persons with disabilities

This article addresses key questions arising from the economic and social disparities that individuals with disabilities experience in the United States. For instance, “What role does corporate culture play in the employment of people with disabilities?” “How does it facilitate or hinder their employment and promotional opportunities, and how can corporations develop supportive cultures that benefit people with disabilities, non‐disabled employees, and the organization as a whole?” Corporate culture can create attitudinal, behavioral, and physical barriers for workers and job applicants with disabilities. This research concludes that if the employment prospects of people with disabilities are to be improved significantly, attention must be paid to the ways in which corporate culture creates or reinforces obstacles to employees with disabilities, and how these obstacles can be removed or overcome. Ultimately, we will make the case that corporate culture and societal attitudes must change if people with disabilities are to be accepted and incorporated fully into the workplace. Copyright © 2005 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Neosecularization and Craft Versus Professional Religious Authority in a Nonreligious Organization

At the same time many religious organizations are apparently becoming more internally secularized, other nonreligious organizations appear to be going through a countervailing process of "sacralization" (Demerath). This study explores this development through a case study of a state university hospital that attempted to created a more "holistic" corporate culture. Extending research on the declining scope of religious authority (Chaves) and professional systems (Abbott), this study suggests that secular settings may be fertile ground for craft versions of religious authority to develop. Implications of the latter during an age when authority structures and caring tasks in general are being downsized and devolved are discussed.     

The quest to make accessibility a corporate article of faith at Microsoft: case study of corporate culture and human resource dimensions

This case study examines efforts by Microsoft Corporation to enhance the diversity of its workforce and improve the accessibility and usability of its products and services for persons with disabilities. The research explores the relation among the Americans with Disabilities Act of 1990, corporate leadership, attitudes and behaviors towards individuals with disabilities, and dynamics that shape organizational culture at Microsoft. Implications for Microsoft, other employers, researchers, and the disability community are discussed.     

examining the role of differential association and techniques of neutralization in explaining corporate crime

A limited number of studies have examined white-collar offending decision making patterns and virtually none have focused on testing Differential Association or Techniques of Neutralization theory in particular. This study evaluates the offending decisions of MBA students to commit corporate offending in the promotion/sales of a hypothetical pharmaceutical drug. The sample consisted of 133 MBA students enrolled at a university in the United States. Findings supported predictions that anticipated agreement of coworkers and the board of directors would be positively associated with decisions to further market and produce a hypothetical drug that was about to be recalled by the Food and Drug Administration. However, results also showed that the decision to commit corporate crime was inversely related to perceptions that close friends and business professors agree with the decision, which went against predictions based on differential association theory. Several neutralizing techniques—especially the beliefs that government exaggerates dangers to the consumer and profit is the most important priority—predicted the decision to further market the drug. Subsequent analyses showed that older respondents were more likely to employ techniques of neutralization in decisions to commit corporate crime, especially techniques relating to profits. Future research directions are outlined.     

企业社会责任活动中感知伪善的结构与量表开发

不当的企业社会责任(Corporate Social Responsibility, CSR)表现会让消费者感知企业伪善, 从而产生极负面的影响。但“伪善”概念刚经由社会心理学引入营销学领域, 亟需准确定义和科学的量表。为此, 将以中国文化为背景, 通过系列研究, (1)探究CSR活动中消费者感知企业伪善的内涵并与相关概念区分; (2)揭示企业伪善的构成结构, 开发多维度的企业伪善量表并进行严格的信度、效度检验; (3)探索其前因后果, 特别是实证检验其对消费者态度和行为三个层面的影响。     

Broadening Engineering Education: Bringing the Community In

Two issues of particular interest in the Irish context are (1) the motivation for broadening engineering education to include the humanities, and an emphasis on social responsibility and (2) the process by which broadening can take place. Greater community engagement, arising from a socially-driven model of engineering education, is necessary if engineering practice is to move beyond its present captivity by corporate interests.     

Are you ‘woman enough’ to control your leading cause of death?: an ethnographic content analysis of women’s cardiovascular disease and identities in media narratives

The Heart Truth^® campaign was implemented in the United States by the National Heart, Lung, and Blood Institute in 2002 to increase women’s awareness of heart disease and encourage risk reduction of cardiovascular disease. The present study explored representations of women’s cardiovascular disease, the meanings generated, and the implications for identity construction within one prominent corporate media partner of the campaign. The inaugural 2003 October issue of Glamour magazine was the focus of an ethnographic content analysis. Women’s cardiovascular disease was constructed within an overarching theme of a culture of consumerism, with meanings of cardiovascular disease emerging within two subthemes: (a) the oblivious, unknowledgeable, dependent woman at risk and (b) attaining a particular version of a healthy, feminine woman. Women’s identities were constructed as dependent on experts, purchasing fashion and fitness merchandise, and heteronormative roles for health management. These findings extend health psychology research that has called for more critical explorations of media to extend understandings of disease meanings and the implications for identity and women’s health.     

examining the informal sanctioning of deviance in a chat room culture

This study explores the nature of everyday deviance at the micro level, within the context of a particular chat room culture. It focuses on the normative structure of the Married Life chat culture through examination of the processes of informal social sanctioning of behavior that is defined as deviant within the culture. It is suggested that the nature of cyberspace produces environmental conditions analogous to social disorganization models of deviance and crime. Furthermore, mechanisms for sanctioning deviance within cyber cultures in general are identified.     

Low Self-Control Versus the Desire-For-Control: An Empirical Test of White-Collar Crime and Conventional Crime

Gottfredson and Hirschi's (1990) general theory of crime has been used to explain a wide variety of criminal and analogous behaviors, yet the few studies that have tested its ability to account for white-collar and corporate offending have yielded mixed results. One response to these mixed findings has been to explore the possibility that unique attributes may predict white-collar and corporate offending. In this vein, limited research examining the relationship between desire-for-control, a similar yet competing construct as low self-control, and corporate crime has revealed desire-for-control to be a stronger predictor of corporate crime than low self-control. The current study expands on existing research by examining the relationship between desire-for-control and low self-control in predicting conventional offending, white-collar or occupational offending, and corporate offending. Results indicate that desire-for-control is a stronger predictor of white-collar and corporate offending than low self-control, but that, as expected, this relationship does not hold true for conventional crime. Theoretical implications and future research directions are also discussed.     

Corporate Culture and Sales Force Management in Japan and America

Abstract

Managers' personal values are a key aspect of corporate culture. Sales representatives' agreement with their managers' values (hereafter “value congruence”) can be expected to influence sales performance, satisfaction, and propensity to quit. These propositions are investigated in two countries. One hundred seventy-five sales representatives and 93 sales managers from a Japanese firm and 146 sales representatives and 21 sales managers from a comparable American firm participated in the study. A questionnaire was distributed to the managers and representatives. Value congruence was found to be weakly related to performance, but strongly related to satisfaction and propensity to quit for both cultural groups. The Japanese group was found to be higher in value congruence and propensity to quit, but lower in satisfaction. Suggested are implications for future research and for managers.     

An Exploratory Assessment of Sales Culture Variables: Strategic Implications Within the Banking Industry

Growing, or even simply sustaining, profitability in today's rapidly changing environment is a daunting task. Today's firm must contend with increasing competition, changing customer requirements, and unprecedented technological change. Further, changing government regulations, such as the recent wave of deregulation, have dramatically changed the way business has traditionally been done in certain industries. In such a turbulent environment many firms have discovered that a total organizational sales effort is necessary. For many firms, this means a paradigm shift that involves strengthening their sales culture.

The purpose of this study is to empirically examine the sales culture (SC) concept and discuss its importance in contemporary business strategy. First, we will discuss market orientation from a corporate culture perspective. Second, the sales culture component of a market orientation will be defined and examined. Third, an exploratory investigation of constructs associated with sales culture will be investigated using an example taken from an industry that is experiencing rapid change, the banking industry. Finally, strategic implications, limitations and suggestions for future research will be shared.     

Do corporations have minds of their own?

Corporations have often been taken to be the paradigm of an organization whose agency is autonomous from that of the successive waves of people who occupy the pattern of roles that define its structure, which licenses saying that the corporation has attitudes, interests, goals, and beliefs which are not those of the role occupants. In this essay, I sketch a deflationary account of agency-discourse about corporations. I identify institutional roles with a special type of status function, a status role, in which the collectively accepted function is expressed in part through its occupier’s intentional expression of her agency in that role (where the occupier is part of the group whose collective acceptance underwrites her having the relevant function in social transactions). I identify institutions as systems of status roles and show how this is compatible with seeing the agency of institutions generally, even over time periods in which there is complete change in role occupiers, as a matter of the contributions only of individual agents. I explain how the reduction of the institution to its members is compatible with its potentially having had a completely different membership. I show in the case of the corporation in particular that, once we see its origins and function, the surface features of legal discourse about corporate agency are misleading and are compatible with a deflationary account of corporate agency. I show in connection with this that the corporation is to be identified with its shareholders, and that where a corporation separates ownership and control, its managers and employees are proxy agents of the shareholders doing business under the corporate form. Finally, I canvass the legitimate ways of construing ordinary talk about corporate intention, belief, and so on, in light of this, none of which support the attribution of genuine agency or intentionality to any group per se associated with the corporation.     

Perceived corporate ethical values and organisational justice in relation to employee commitment at a manufacturing company

This study investigated the relationship between employees’ perceptions of their organisation’s corporate ethical values and justice and their level of commitment. The study participants were 201 employees of a manufacturing company in the Democratic Republic of Congo (female = 32%%, general employees = 68%, mean years of service = 13 years; SD = 0.85 years). They completed measures on corporate ethical values, organisational justice, and organisational commitment. Findings following hierarchical regression indicated that employees’ perceptions of corporate ethical values and organisational justice significantly influence their affective and continuance organisational commitment. A work environment where a code of conduct is upheld and employees are treated fairly would encourage employees to extend their membership of the employing organisation.     

Brand names on packaging and their impact on purchase preference

This study examines whether appearance of corporate, product and dual brand names (or a combination of brand names used together) on packaging influence consumer purchase preference. The face‐to‐face survey consists of consumers rating their purchase preference on a 7‐point scale sixteen random brand names, and combinations of brand names on packaging along with three different prices, each for two product categories: chocolate and cereals – a total of 4032 observations are examined. Hypotheses are tested using multiple linear regression models. The findings show corporate, product and dual brand names have little impact on purchase preference per se, instead brand category dominance influence consumer choice, and corporate names do not add value as previously thought. The study suggests trends and contexts in which, a corporate name and a product brand name may be extended to optimise consumer brand associations and influence purchase, as well as strategies for extending in remote product categories. Future research needs focusing on international consumers' response on brand linkages in the international arena, and the issues of brand building and brand equity maintenance in international markets. The study makes contribution to brand extension, brand portfolio management and strategic brand management research. Copyright © 2011 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

《周易》与中国文化

本文立足中国文化独特性的视野,探讨了易学在中国文化中的地位问题,提出应该按照中国文化本身的结构、途径和方法来看易学带给它的作用,由之进一步地论述了易学对传统文化的深远影响,接着通过对简帛文献的分析,有力地说明了孔子对易学的开创性贡献.     

The politics of innovation

Previous studies of technical innovation in organizations have tended to neglect how power and political processes shape the development of new technologies. Our study of new product development at a successful computer graphics company suggests that corporate ideology and politics often determine the success or failure of new product ideas. Four stages of product development are identified along with the political activities and influence tactics used at each stage. W. Gibb Dyer, Jr. is associate professor of organizational behavior at Brigham Young University. He is on the editorial board ofThe Family Business Review. Robert A. Page, Jr. currently is enrolled in the doctoral program at the Graduate School of Management, University of California, Irvine. His research interests include organizational theory, ethics, innovation, organizational culture, and group norms.     

The Effect of Multiple Reference Points and Prior Gains and Losses on Managers′ Risky Decision Making

This study examines the impact of two contextual features of decision settings on managers′ risky behavior. Considerable research indicates that decision makers exhibit risk avoiding or risk taking behavior depending upon whether options are viewed as gains or losses with respect to a given reference point. We argue in this paper that multiple points of reference are important determinants of risky behavior in many decision contexts, and that research should explicitly consider their effect to fully understand and predict risky behavior. The analysis of contextual features is extended to consider the impact of prior gains and losses in the second part of the paper. Seventy-two professional corporate managers participated in two experiments that involved a corporate investment decision setting. The setting exemplifies a context that has both multiple important points of reference and prior gains and losses. The data indicated that the presence of multiple relevant reference points results in a complex pattern of risky behavior, where managers′ decisions to accept or avoid risk were affected by the relative positions of risky alternatives with respect to two important points of reference. In particular, a mixture of risk taking and risk avoiding occurred for options between the relevant reference points. The managers were also found to be more willing to accept risk after experiencing a prior gain as opposed to a prior loss. These findings point to the importance of considering such task characteristics when attempting to predict and understand risky behavior across a variety of task contexts.     

Branding the brain: A critical review and outlook

The application of neuroscience to marketing, and in particular to the consumer psychology of brands, has gained popularity over the past decade in the academic and the corporate world. In this paper, we provide an overview of the current and previous research in this area and explain why researchers and practitioners alike are excited about applying neuroscience to the consumer psychology of brands. We identify critical issues of past research and discuss how to address these issues in future research. We conclude with our vision of the future potential of research at the intersection of neuroscience and consumer psychology.