An organizational digital footprint for interruption management: a data-driven approach

Purpose

Interruptions are prevalent in knowledge work, and their negative consequences have driven research to find ways for interruption management. However, these means almost always leave the responsibility and burden of interruptions with individual knowledge workers. System-level approaches for interruption management, on the other hand, have the potential to reduce the burden on employees. This paper’s objective is to pave way for system-level interruption management by showing that data about factual characteristics of work can be used to identify interrupting situations.

Design/methodology/approach

The authors provide a demonstration of using trace data from information and communications technology (ICT)-systems and machine learning to identify interrupting situations. They conduct a “simulation” of automated data collection by asking employees of two companies to provide information concerning situations and interruptions through weekly reports. They obtain information regarding four organizational elements: task, people, technology and structure, and employ classification trees to show that this data can be used to identify situations across which the level of interruptions differs.

Findings

The authors show that it is possible to identifying interrupting situations from trace data. During the eight-week observation period in Company A they identified seven and in Company B four different situations each having a different probability of occurrence of interruptions.

Originality/value

The authors extend employee-level interruption management to the system-level by using “task” as a bridging concept. Task is a core concept in both traditional interruption research and Leavitt's 1965 socio-technical model which allows us to connect other organizational elements (people, structure and technology) to interruptions.

The moderating role of Lean Six Sigma practices on quality management practices and quality performance in medical device manufacturing industry

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to explore the moderating role of Lean Six Sigma (LSS) practices in explaining the relationship between quality management practices (QMPs) and quality performance.

Design/methodology/approach

Partial least square-based structural equation modeling (PLS-SEM) was used to empirically examine the moderating effect of LSS practices on QMPs and quality performance in Malaysian medical device manufacturing companies.

Findings

Findings revealed that both QMPs and LSS practices have a significant and positive effect on quality performance. Furthermore, LSS practices served as a substitute for moderating the positive relationship between QMPs and quality performance in such a way that the relationship becomes weaker as LSS practices increase.

Originality/value

LSS is acknowledged as the most well-known hybrid methodology; however, due to its relative newness, it has not been studied in great detail. Unlike previous studies, this paper argued that Lean and Six Sigma practices are distinct from its predecessor TQM practices; moreover, both Lean and Six Sigma practices do not need to substitute QM/TQM practices instead of complimenting the QMPs. In addition, this study adds to the growing body of QM literature by empirically examine the effect of LSS practices in moderating the relationship between QMPs and quality performance.

Establishing the interplay between lean operating and continuous improvement routines: a process view

Purpose

Building on the routine dynamics literature, this paper aims to expand our philosophical, practical and infrastructural understanding of implementing lean production. The authors provide a process view on the interplay between lean operating routines and continuous improvement (CI) routines and the roles of different actors in initiating and establishing these routines.

Design/methodology/approach

Using data from interviews, observations and document analysis, retrospective comparative analyses of three embedded case studies on lean implementations provide a process understanding of enacting and patterning lean operating and CI routines in manufacturing SMEs.

Findings

Incorporating the “who” and “how” next to the “what” of practices and routines helps explain that rather than being implemented in isolation or even in conjunction with each other, sustainable lean practices and routines come about through team leader and employee enactment of the CI practices and routines. Neglecting these patterns aligned with unsustainable implementations.

Research limitations/implications

The proposed process model provides a valuable way to integrate variance and process streams of literature to better understand lean production implementations.

Practical implications

The process model helps manufacturing managers, policy makers, consultants and educators to reconsider their approach to implementing lean production or teaching how to do so.

Originality/value

Nuancing the existing lean implementation literature, the proposed process model shows that CI routines do not stem from implementing lean operating routines. Rather, the model highlights the importance of active engagement of actors at multiple organizational levels and strong connections between and across levels to change routines and work practices for implementing lean production.

Organizational life cycle models: a design perspective

New competitive and environmental challenges have fostered renewed attention towards organizational design. This scenario calls for a significant return to organizational design studies that embrace a holistic approach, especially those focusing on the simultaneous interaction of multiple design elements. Organizational life cycle (OLC) models provide a fitting response to this call. In this paper, we review the organizational design characteristics of five seminal OLC models. We show that according to these OLC models, growth in size—which is described as unavoidable—generates business issues that firms are forced to solve by adopting only one possible organizational configuration, here following a deterministic organizational approach. We challenge this approach and propose conceiving of OLC as an evolutionary process, which calls for a variety of equifinal organizational solutions. We conclude by proposing future research avenues.

Ensuring Adaptation While Seeking Efficiency: Tiered Outsourcing and Skip-Level Supplier Ties in the Airbus A350 Program

When outsourcing design tasks, firms want their suppliers to be both efficient and adaptive. Whereas efficiency is necessary to reap economic gains from outsourcing, adaptation is required to deal with interdependencies as the design evolves. Achieving both objectives simultaneously, however, is difficult because procurement contracts require a trade-off between providing incentives for efficiency and facilitating adaptation. In the presence of formal contracts that provide strong incentives for efficiency, ensuring adaptation thus requires effective relational contracts between the buyer and the supplier. But because the focus of prior research has been on dyadic buyer–supplier relationships, it is unclear how the efficiency–adaptation trade-off can be mitigated in the multitier supplier systems that are common in many industries. Addressing this gap, we argue that in hierarchical supplier systems, relational contracts between contractual partners become more important, but at the same time harder to establish, than in single-tier supplier systems. An in-depth case study of the adaptive frictions that arose in the Airbus A350 program allows us to illustrate this challenge of tiered outsourcing. Moreover, we show how Airbus came to resolve the frictions by leveraging skip-level ties—direct informal contacts to lower-level suppliers with which no contractual relationship existed, thus replacing the archetypal notion of a supplier hierarchy by a more complex relationship structure. We discuss the boundary conditions of our findings and suggest propositions for the emergence of skip-level ties in tiered outsourcing.

If Higher Pay Is Profitable, Why Is It So Rare? Modeling Competing Strategies in Mass Market Services

Several case studies suggest that firms targeting mass market services can align profitability with jobs offering a living wage, stable schedules, and engaging work. Yet, few do. To understand this puzzle, we draw on theories of firms as systems of interdependent choices. Building on a few cases, we map the processes connecting managerial choice to performance and formalize the resulting performance landscape. In a strategy space defined by two dimensions—task richness and compensation—two local profitability peaks emerge: one with low compensation and low task richness and one with high compensation and high task richness. The bimodal landscape results from complementarity among choices and is robust when the strategy space is expanded from two to six dimensions and under many alternative parameterizations. Exploring how firms discover, move to, and remain at the high-compensation–high-task richness peak, we find three challenges to this strategy: (a) contextuality—adoption, imitation, and replication are harder for strategies that rely on interdependences among components and thus, require significant customization for each context; (b) temporal complexity—strategies depending on long-term and synergistic investments and slow-moving reinforcing feedbacks are hard to learn owing to misleading performance feedback; and (c) variable demand with no inventory buffers—efforts to adjust labor supply to highly variable demand in services often lead to unstable schedules given with short notice that drive quality employees away and compromise the strategy. These mechanisms can undermine promising strategies even if the actual performance landscape includes a small number of local peaks.

It is not my job: exploring the disconnect between corporate security policies and actual security practices in SMEs

Purpose

This paper aims to present empirical results exemplifying challenges related to information security faced by small and medium enterprises (SMEs). It uses guidelines based on work system theory (WST) to frame the results, thereby illustrating why the mere existence of corporate security policies or general security training often is insufficient for establishing and maintaining information security.

Design/methodology/approach

This research was designed to produce a better appreciation and understanding of potential issues or gaps in security practices in SMEs. The research team interviewed 187 employees of 39 SMEs in the UK. All of those employees had access to sensitive information. Gathering information through interviews (instead of formal security documentation) made it possible to assess security practices from employees’ point of view.

Findings

Corporate policies that highlight information security are often disconnected from actual work practices and routines and often do not receive high priority in everyday work practices. A vast majority of the interviewed employees are not involved in risk assessment or in the development of security practices. Security practices remain an illusory activity in their real-world contexts.

Research limitations/implications

This paper focuses only on closed-ended questions related to the following topics: awareness of existing security policy; information security practices and management and information security involvement.

Practical implications

The empirical findings show that corporate information security policies in SMEs often are insufficient for maintaining security unless those policies are integrated with visible and recognized work practices in work systems that use or produce sensitive information. The interpretation based on WST provides guidelines for enhancing information system security.

Originality/value

Beyond merely reporting empirical results, this research uses WST to interpret the results in a way that has direct implications for practitioners and for researchers.

An integration team’s diagnosing of context, spanning boundaries and creating psychological safety within a multiteam system

Purpose

The purpose of this study is to explore how integration teams can build trusting relationships in component teams to enhance their leadership capability within multiteam systems to achieve common superordinate goals. The study investigates how an integration team diagnoses contextual dynamics to enhance understanding of goals in component teams and spans boundaries to create trusting relationships.

Design/methodology/approach

The proposed model was tested by surveying 396 respondents nested within component teams working within five South African manufacturing companies. Structural Equation Modeling was used to analyse the data.

Findings

The study reveals that by diagnosing the contextual dynamics within a multiteam system and through boundary spanning, an integration team builds trusting relationships, which will, ultimately, enable teams to achieve common superordinate goals.

Practical implications

This study offers organisations insights into how multiple component teams of different functional disciplines can work effectively towards achieving an overall or common superordinate goal. It offers insights on how to mitigate misalignment challenges by implementing an integration team within the multiteam system context.

Originality/value

Research participants were employees within a manufacturing context, which sets this study apart from many previous ones conducted in a simulated environment within a military context. The study investigates building trusting relationships among multiple component teams within a multiteam system through the implementation of an integration team, which has not been specifically addressed in previous studies.

The structural impact of supply chain management teams

Purpose

In today’s constantly evolving global business environment, multidivisional firms (MDFs) require an organizational structure for supply chain management (SCM) that facilitates the development of supply chain agility. This research aims to investigate what structural elements of an MDF’s SCM team contribute to supply chain agility.

Design/methodology/approach

A two-sample field study was conducted. Four MDFs with top-performing supply chains (Sample 1) were first studied to identify agility-supporting structural elements. Then, quantitative data from 35 MDFs with contrasting levels of supply chain agility (Sample 2) were collected to test the theoretical propositions advanced from Sample 1 findings.

Findings

The results reveal four structural elements that exert a positive impact on an MDF’s supply chain agility: hierarchical position of the divisional top supply chain executive, scope of divisional supply chain operations, hierarchical position of the top supply chain executive at the headquarters and scope of SCM coordination by the headquarters.

Originality/value

First, this study provides a comparatively comprehensive understanding of the SCM organization structure in MDFs. Second, this study is one of the first to provide empirically supported theoretical insights about the linkage between an MDF’s organizational structure for SCM and supply chain agility.

Effect of IoT Capabilities and Energy Consumption behavior on Green Supply Chain Integration

The Internet of Things (IoT) is the next generation of internet-connected information communication technologies (ICT). IoT typically integrates supply chain activities to enhance green supply chain performance (GSCP). Since every organization has different IoT capabilities in comparison with other organizations, GSCP can enable supply chain integration activities for enhanced performance. The implementation of an IoT system can reduce the consumption of organizational resources like energy, electricity, and time and can increase the operational speed to gain better logistics and, ultimately, improved supply chain performance. This study has developed and empirically tested the relationship between IoT capabilities, energy consumption behavior (ECB), supply chain integration, green training (GT), and supply chain practices. Such a multidisciplinary relationship has not previously been established in the literature. The proposed study can fulfill the literature gap and opens new horizons for interdisciplinary research. Data used in this study are collected through offline and online survey methods. A total number of 250 out of 400 respondents participated in the survey. Data has been analyzed through partial least square—structure equation modeling (PLS—SEM) technique. The results of this study empirically test the developed model. IoT has a positive effect on supplier integration (SI), and customer integration (CI). Furthermore, SI and CI have a mediating role between IoT and GSCP, and GT has a positive impact on GSCP. It is concluded that the implementation of IoT can integrate CI and SI to increase GSCP. GT and ECB can ultimately improve GSCP. Additionally, the use of technology and GT can motivate employees to save energy and protect the environment to increase GSCP.

Impact of TQM/Six Sigma practices on company’s performance: Tunisian context

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to explore the link between TQM/Six Sigma practices and their impact on performance.

Design/methodology/approach

Based on the literature review of research that investigated the TQM and Six Sigma best practices and performance, the TQM/Six Sigma practices are classified into three key categories: top management commitment and support (TMCS), infrastructure and core practices. This paper proposes a path model linking these practices and performance. The empirical data were obtained from a survey of 91 Tunisian companies in different sectors. The research model was tested using partial least squares (PLS) technique based on SmartPLS software.

Findings

The result shows that the implementation of Six Sigma practices is based majorly on the TQM practices. Also, it reveals the positive impact of TQM/Six Sigma practices on performance. Furthermore, the analysis of path model reveals the relative interdependence and significant link between TMCS, infrastructure, core practices and performance.

Research limitations/implications

The path model tested in this study combines the TQM/Six Sigma practices and reveals their link with performance, which enhance the research theory of both two approaches. Moreover, it will be a useful support for the quality expert on the effective integration of TQM and Six Sigma methods.

Originality/value

This study is the first one which studies the link between TQM/Six Sigma practices and company’s performance in the Tunisian context based on PLS technique.

Evolution of modularity literature: a 25-year bibliometric analysis

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to review and analyze the modularity literature to identify the established and emerging perspectives.

Design/methodology/approach

A systematic literature search and review was conducted through the use of bibliometrics and network analysis. The analysis identified structure within the literature, which revealed how the research area evolved between 1990 and 2015. Based on this search, the paper establishes the basis for analyzing the structure of modularity literature.

Findings

Factors were identified within the literature, demonstrating how it has evolved from a primary focus on the modularity of products to a broader view of the applicability of modularity. Within the last decade, numerous research areas have emerged within the broader area of modularity. Through core-periphery analysis, eight emerging sub-research areas are identified, of which one is the study of modularity in the context of services.

Research limitations/implications

Although bibliographic methods are limited as they are based on common citations within the field, they enable systematic analysis and the identification of structure within an emergent field of research. Such analysis has implications by for a growing and inter-disciplinary field like modularity by providing overview and suggesting future directions.

Originality/value

This paper contributes by conducting a systematic review based on the citation structure within modularity and identifies the established and emerging areas of research on modularity.

Modularizing specialized hospital services

Purpose

Modularity promises to relieve problems of complexity in service systems. However, limited evidence exists of its application in specialized hospital services. The purpose of this paper is to identify enablers, constraints, and outcomes of modularization in specialized hospital services.

Design/methodology/approach

A qualitative comparative study of a hematology unit with modular service architecture and an oncology unit with integral service architecture in a university hospital is performed to analyze the service architectures, enablers and constraints of modularization, and outcomes.

Findings

A framework and five propositions combining the characteristics of specialized hospital services, enabling activities, and outcomes of modularization were developed. Modular service architecture was developed through limiting the number of treatment components, reorganizing production of standardized components into a separate service unit, and standardizing communication and scheduling in interfaces. Modularization increased service efficiency but diluted ownership of services, decreased customization, and diminished informal communication. This is explained by the specific characteristics of the services: fragmented service delivery, professional autonomy, hierarchy, information asymmetry, and requirement to treat all.

Research limitations/implications

Modularization can increase efficiency in specialized hospital services. However, specific characteristics of specialized care may challenge its application and limit its outcomes.

Practical implications

The study identifies enabling activities and constraints that hospital managers should take into account when developing modular service systems.

Originality/value

This is the first empirical study exploring the enablers, constraints, and outcomes of modularization in specialized hospital services. The study complements literature on service modularity with reference to specialized hospital services.

The impact of quality management practices on performance: an empirical study

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to explore the relationship between quality management (QM) and performance, specifically how the infrastructure and core QM practices affect quality and business performance, in Indian manufacturing organizations.

Design/methodology/approach

In this study, the empirical data were drawn from 262 manufacturing organizations in India. The research model was tested using the structural equation modeling technique.

Findings

The findings of the empirical study revealed that infrastructure QM practices have a positive effect on core QM practices and indirectly on quality performance, whereas, core QM practices have a positive effect on quality performance. Also, quality performance has a positive effect on business performance.

Research limitations/implications

This study considered QM from two dimensions (infrastructure and core quality practices), the study further contributes to the understanding of the different roles played by diverse QM dimensions in determining business performance in terms of increased return on investment, shareholder and stakeholder value.

Practical implications

The study showed that infrastructure quality practices support the application of core quality practices. Therefore, managers must develop and maintain their organization’s quality system and sufficient resources need to be allocated to both types of practices in order to achieve the superior business performance.

Originality/value

This study considers both total quality management and Six Sigma practices for defining a new set of infrastructure and core QM practices in Indian manufacturing organizations.

Organizational structure and enterprise systems implementation

Purpose

– The purpose of this paper is to discuss the structural design of customer teams (CuTes) working with external teams to implement customized information systems (IS). Design consists of theoretically based measures and a first set of real-world, empirical values.

Design/methodology/approach

– A search in the organizational literature suggested that the adhocracy is the preferred structure for CuTes. Adhocracy-like measures were then developed and applied to a high-performance CuTe to reveal a first benchmark for a team’s adhocratic design.

Findings

– High-performance CuTes do not necessarily implement the adhocratic principles to the highest degree.

Research limitations/implications

– It is still open whether all the structural measures described here are necessary and sufficient to describe the adhocracy-like structural design of CuTes.

Practical implications

– The CuTe is highlighted as the key incumbent of cooperation with the technology supplier and consultants in terms of project authority and responsibility. A psychometric instrument and real-world values are proposed as a reference for the structural design of high-performance CuTes.

Social implications

– The performance of IS projects is a social concern, since IS products should be aimed at serving people better both inside and outside the organization. Professionals who work in CuTes to develop better IS should receive institutional recognition and management attention.

Originality/value

– This study seems to be the first to discuss the structure of CuTes in customized IS projects from a theoretical and applied perspective.

BALANCING COORDINATION AND AUTONOMY DURING POST-ACQUISITION WITHIN A HIGH-TECH FIRM

Extant literature suggests that acquisition of innovative capability is challenging: the acquired firm must be integrated to realise synergies, but such integration might jeopardise the ability to sustain its innovative capability within the acquiring firm. However, we know little about how managers address this coordination-autonomy dilemma post-acquisition. We therefore investigated how GlobalTech, a multi-national telecommunications solutions provider integrated SmartTech, a small, innovative firm with an adaptive infrastructure management solution and a customer-driven innovation approach. Drawing on dynamic capability theory (DCT) and focusing on structural integration and informal coordination, we reveal how the two management teams collaborated over a two-year period to sustain SmartTech’s innovation capability while at the same time leveraging it as part of GlobalTech’s position and future path. In conclusion, we present a process model with related action strategies for how organisations can orchestrate dynamic capability to manage the coordination-autonomy dilemma post-acquisition.

Best-value supply chains and firms’ competitive performance: empirical studies of their linkage

Purpose

– Best-value supply chains characterized by agility, adaptability, and alignment, have become a crucial strategic means for firms to create and sustain competitive advantage in today’s turbulent environment. The purpose of this paper is to investigate linkage between best-value supply chains and firms’ competitive performance.

Design/methodology/approach

– In Study 1, survey data from 76 firms is used to test the impact of the three qualities of best-value supply chains on firms’ competitive performance. In Study 2, to test if a firm’s competitive advantage can be sustained through building best-value supply chains, a long-run performance analysis is conducted, which is based on a stock portfolio of firms identified from the American Marketing Association’s annual list of “Supply Chain Top 25.”

Findings

– The results of Study 1 indicate that the three qualities of best-value supply chains are positively related to firms’ competitive performance. The results of Study 2 show that firms having best-value supply chains generate significant and positive abnormal returns for shareholders over time.

Originality/value

– This is a multiple-method research, providing two-level empirical evidence to the investigation of theoretical linkage between best-value supply chains and firms’ competitive performance.

Building knowledge integration in buyer-supplier relationships

Purpose

– There are two major objectives in the research. First, the authors investigate the impact of knowledge integration in terms of joint decision-making and joint sense-making, on relational performance, including operational efficiency and innovation. Second, the authors examine the key antecedents that might facilitate knowledge integration: strategic supply management and trust. The paper aims to discuss these issues.

Design/methodology/approach

– This paper expands and tests theory drawing upon survey data from 133 buyer-supplier relationships (BSRs). The authors employed a two-step process of analysis to evaluate first the measurement model and then the structural model. The measurement model test built upon confirmatory factor analysis, while the structural model quality test built upon path analysis.

Findings

– The results suggest that both integrative mechanisms, joint decision making and joint sense making, affect performance although in different ways. This study also finds that while trust has multiple significant influences and consequently must be viewed as an organizing principle, strategic supply management is required to jointly understand the dynamic and complex context but not to jointly make ongoing decisions.

Research limitations/implications

– Three limitations: first, this study was cross-sectional rather than longitudinal. Second, in line with accepted practice, the authors surveyed only one side of the relationship. The suppliers’ viewpoint is thus not fully taken into account. Third, another potential limitation of the study is that the sample stems from just one country and its size does not distinguish subgroups in the analysis of the path model.

Practical implications

– Managers should be advised that: first, a trusting partnership built on knowledge integration is a hard order, especially with a new, unknown supplier in a low-cost country, where intellectual property protection is less obvious; second, strategic supply management may not improve cost or operational performance, but in its absence, it is unlikely that a supplier has insight into the exact needs of its buyer and thus, may not add considerable value to their customers; third, building a dynamic knowledge integration capability (valuable, rare, and difficult to imitate) takes time, as does creating reliable learning mechanisms. Joint teams, visit partners’ workplace, early involve suppliers in developing new products or selection of supplier with high-learning capabilities may help to create a knowledge integration capability.

Social implications

– The authors suggest that companies should move from an arm-length relationship and turn their supplier relationships into a tool for innovating faster while cutting cost. In order to do this, joint sense-making and joint decision should be seen as institutionalized inter-firm routines rather than ad hoc activities. Thus, the authors recommend managers to proactively build certain knowledge-based capabilities that hinges heavily upon a strategic stance toward supply management and trustful relationships with selected suppliers.

Originality/value

– The major intent of this research is to expand understanding of knowledge integration by building a more testable, complex model around its creation. While previous research relied on a configuration approach to explore the relationship between knowledge integration and performance, the authors evaluate causal relationships at the level of the formative dimensions rather than higher order knowledge integration, as this has proven to be a superior analytical method. Second, although supply chain scholars have expressed great interest in trust, an in-depth examination of prior studies in knowledge integration indicate that trust has been analyzed alone. In contrast, the study empirically examines the simultaneous effect of trust and strategic supply management in BSRs.

Infrastructure and core quality practices in Indian manufacturing organizations

Purpose

– The purpose of this paper is to develop and validate a scale for infrastructure and core practices, including total quality management (TQM) and Six Sigma practices, in the Indian manufacturing organizations.

Design/methodology/approach

– In this study, a psychometric systematic scale development procedure has been adopted and executed, which includes three phases. Phase 1 includes item generation and selection through expert opinion. In Phase 2, scale refinement using item analysis, exploratory factor analysis, confirmatory factor analysis (CFA), and convergent and discriminant validity have been carried out. Finally, in Phase 3, scale validation through the replication of CFA and nomological validity assessment has been conducted. Also, a higher order measurement and structural model has been used to assess predictive validity of infrastructure and core practices.

Findings

– The findings of the empirical study resulted in a 45-item scale that measures Infrastructure practices (top management commitment, workforce management, supplier relationship, customer relationship management, Six Sigma role structure) and core practices (process management, product/service design, quality information and analysis, Six Sigma metric, Six Sigma structure), considering both TQM and Six Sigma practices. Also, the higher order predictive validity assessment model suggested that core practices have a higher impact on quality performance than infrastructure practices.

Research limitations/implications

– This study considered TQM and Six Sigma practices for defining infrastructure and core practices. However, future studies may include other quality tools in infrastructure and core quality practices such as Lean, Kaizen, and others in the measurement model to get more concrete results.

Practical implications

– This reliable and valid scale will help managers measure the level of QM in order to enhance business performance.

Originality/value

– This study symbolizes a first-time attempt for developing a validated tool to measure infrastructure and core practices in the Indian manufacturing organizations.

Extreme work, gendered work? How extreme jobs and the discourse of ‘personal choice’ perpetuate gender inequality

This review sets extreme jobs in the context of the institutional, occupational, organizational and individual drivers of long hours and work intensification and identifies the consequences for gender equality, human sustainability and long-term productivity. We suggest that extreme jobs derive not from the ‘nature’ of managerial and professional work but from working practices and occupational discourses which have developed to suit the gendered norms of ‘ideal workers’. These practices and discourses encourage long hours rather than working-hours choices. Extreme jobs extend the gendered division of labour and increase the separation of work and non-work spheres; they are a structure of gender inequality. This review suggests that future research should seek to identify alternative but business-neutral working practices which contest the extreme ‘nature’ of managerial and professional work, measure the social value of non-work activities and deepen our understanding of the personal and social significance of non-work identities other than motherhood, and disentangle situational motivation, work passion and workaholism as motives for devoting long hours to work so that impacts on well-being and productivity can be more clearly understood.

How to support sensing capabilities in highly volatile situations

In the scholarly debate on how to deal with hypercompetition, a dominant logic has become that investing in ‘sensing’, ‘seizing’, and ‘transforming’ dynamic capabilities offers organization’s the potential to repetitively initiate business innovations. Actual research into the micro-foundations of these dynamic capabilities has been limited. This study explores whether modular organizing and lateral coordination are typical processes that support an organization’s sensing function. Empirically the study investigates how these two variables help The Netherlands armed forces to deal with its volatile crisis response environment. The findings show that both predictors stimulate the development of a broad knowledge base from which the organization can operationally benefit. Yet, the study has also uncovered that, when modularity's demand of organizational autonomy is not sufficiently satisfied, the organization becomes preoccupied with its own internal functioning at the expense of its external lateral sensing capacity.

How to support sensing capabilities in highly volatile situations

In the scholarly debate on how to deal with hypercompetition, a dominant logic has become that investing in ‘sensing’, ‘seizing’, and ‘transforming’ dynamic capabilities offers organization’s the potential to repetitively initiate business innovations. Actual research into the micro-foundations of these dynamic capabilities has been limited. This study explores whether modular organizing and lateral coordination are typical processes that support an organization’s sensing function. Empirically the study investigates how these two variables help The Netherlands armed forces to deal with its volatile crisis response environment. The findings show that both predictors stimulate the development of a broad knowledge base from which the organization can operationally benefit. Yet, the study has also uncovered that, when modularity's demand of organizational autonomy is not sufficiently satisfied, the organization becomes preoccupied with its own internal functioning at the expense of its external lateral sensing capacity.