Investigating the Role of Executive Intrafirm Alumni Networks in Top Management Fraud: Multilevel Study in China's Construction Industry

To explore factors that influence the likelihood of committing fraud in the construction industry, this study concentrated on senior executives and tested whether some characteristics at the individual and firm levels have impacts on the likelihood of fraud committed by top management. Based on social network theory, this study first proposes...

Managing Leadership Development from a Gender Equity perspective: A case study approach in a typical materials company

Diversity, Equity, and Inclusion are one of the latest topics getting attention among companies and universities. This reflects societal representation for gender ratios and many organizations have set goals on gender equality in creating a sustainable and innovative workplace. However, the statistics show that there is sluggish growth for women...

Impact of Institutional Pressures on External Program Manager Involvement: Evidence from Large Projects in China

External program manager involvement can provide professional and systematic management services to owners. It can help to manage and coordinate different subprojects and ensure the achievement of the overall strategic goals of large projects. The promotion of external program manager involvement is not only efficiency-driven, but the...

Unifying weak signals definitions to improve construct understanding

The research into the perception of early signals, the so-called weak signals, started in the field of strategic planning in the 1970s. Soon, research dispersed into new, specialized fields, such as foresight, sense-making, and entrepreneurial alertness. Each field used different terms for weak signals and framed the research in its own...

Straws That Tell the Wind: Top-Manager Perception of Distant Signals of the Future

This dissertation was prompted by its author’s amazement that only a handful of financial experts had read the arrival of the 2009 recession in the subprime mortgage problems in the American housing market. Despite hefty confrontations in the media between investment experts during the years leading up to the recession, it took the fall of...

Compensating for perceptual filters in weak signal assessments

The effect of ambiguous and non-salient information on the managerial interpretive process is rarely investigated, although this information is considered to be the basis for strategic decision-making and requires a different process due to its ill-defined nature. This paper explores the process that outperforming managers used to detect and...

Exploration of ambidexterity among SMEs in the Dutch Maritime sector: How SMEs align exploitation of existing products and pursue exploration of product innovations

Small and Medium-sized Enterprises (SMEs) tend to focus upon short-term profit in a crisis period, however the EU advised SMEs’ to invest in innovation and quality of products. How SMEs balance between these two contradicting strategies is seldom addressed. Therefore, this study explores how SMEs align their organization upon short term...

The Road to Success: Effects of Top Management Supervision on NPD Processes and Outcomes

In this project the author studies the effect of top management supervision on two NPD structural elements, namely customer orientation and portfolio management processes, and on NPD success factors: new product innovativeness, NPD speed and costs. Additionally, the effect of the two aforementioned structural elements on the noted NPD success...

Phase-driven launch strategy as an uncertain practice: An explorative study into strategic launch decision-making

Companies often struggle with complex decisions regarding their R&D output and how to market and distribute subsequent innovations. It is of increasing importance to expand the knowledge on how strategy behind product launch is developed. Preparing an appropriate strategy for the launch of a product requires decisions taken early on in the...