Browsing by Author "Liu, Yipeng"
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Item Open Access Cultural Antecedents of Sustainability and Regional Economic Development - A Study of SME 'Mittelstand' Firms in Baden-Württemberg (Germany)(Elsevier, 2020-01-20) Kraus, P; Cooper, Cary; Stokes, Peter; Liu, Yipeng; Moore, Neil; Britzelmaier, Bernd; Tarba, ShlomoThis paper examines behavioural and regional/geographic cultural antecedents of sustainability in SME contexts. The study identifies prevailing macro-representations of sustainability in the literature and highlights an over-focus on large firms constituting the predominant unit of analysis. Moreover, there is a propensity in the literature to view sustainability primarily in terms of ‘environmental’ – closely linked to a corporate strategic imperative narrative of economic competitiveness and profitability. Overall, this perspective tends to generate accounts which are acultural, apolitical and ahistorical in terms of innovative actions and sustainability practices. In response, using a conceptual framework of moral identity, the paper develops a more micro-foundational insight to sustainability (developing notions of ‘tangible’ and ‘intangible’) and examines regional economic development attitudes at individual owner-manager/managing director level in small-to-medium sized firms. Methodologically, an inductively-framed interview schedule was employed with owner-managers and managing directors (n= 30) of manufacturing SMEs in the Baden-Württemberg region (Germany). The study identified a range of micro-foundational behavioural antecedents operating in the sample companies. In particular, it underlined that many of the SME owner-managers/managing directors expressed views informed by a particular moral identity connected with a perspective rooted in regionally bound, longstanding and ‘expected’ behaviours of trust, fairness, honesty and community responsibility. They viewed themselves as distinctive from larger companies which they saw as pursuing a different orientation based on weaker value systems, short-term performance and market/shareholder returns. In contrast, the sample exhibited longer-term sustainability perspectives based on a deep historical linkage with local culture, community and a sense of obligation towards economic protection of employees.Item Open Access Managing talent across advanced and emerging economies: HR issues and challenges in a Sino-German strategic collaboration(Taylor and Francis, 2015-10-19) Stokes, Peter; Liu, Yipeng; Smith, Simon; Leidner, Sarah; Moore, Neil; Rowland, CarolineAbstract The human resource (HR) practices involved in global talent management continue to advance and evolve. A majority of talent management commentary is from multinational corporation (MNC) perspectives. However, the less commented small-to-medium-sized enterprise (SME) also confronts challenges grounded in economic (i.e. resources, finance), organisational (i.e. size, scope and structure) and consequent behavioural rationales (i.e. mindsets and stances). This paper establishes and examines a number of propositions which consider how these factors impact on an advanced economy SME’s talent management in emerging economy collaborations. An interpretive qualitative methodology is employed using interviews conducted within two cases – SME and an MNC comparator case. The SME case is used as the driving force of the paper and its theoretical focus and findings. The MNC is used to develop issues as a comparator case. The findings show SME economic and organisational drivers producing behavioural dynamics in relation to mimesis of planned actions yet informal serendipitous responses in reality; a predilection for the proximate and familiar; design configurations of short-term expatriate visits and inpatriates; cumulating in ongoing inpatriate acculturisation and re-acculturation oscillation. Consequently, the implication is that the SME needs a HR practices encompassing resignation to the situation, flexibility and resilience in order to survive and progress.Item Open Access The Micro-Dynamics of Intra-Organizational and Individual Action and their Role in Organizational Ambidexterity(Wiley Online Library, 2015-03-09) Stokes, Peter; Moore, Neil; Mathews, M.; Moss, D.; Smith, Simon; Liu, YipengAbstract Organizational ambidexterity has emerged as a valuable contemporary lens on organizational design and action, examining the dynamic relationships between exploitative (extant) and explorative (evolving) resources within organizational contexts and environments. This paper analyzes the literature pertaining to ambidexterity and underlines a number of recurrent preoccupations including: definition of the nature, characteristics and normative boundaries of organizational ambidexterity; a predilection towards considering inter-firm/unit comparisons of large-scale corporate organizations; and, a concentration on the significance of the managerialistic role of senior management team’s disposition and action-orientations. While a few calls have been made for a focus on the micro, predominant attention has remained on the macro-aspects of organizational ambidexterity. The aim of the paper, therefore, is to conduct a complementary study that considers the boundaries and transitions between exploitative and explorative modes at the intra-organizational, individual micro-behavioral level. To facilitate this, the paper surfaces and underscores the paradigmatic modernistic characterization of large areas of the current organizational ambidexterity literature and the implications of this. Moreover, it explores alternative potentially useful critical paradigms which assist in providing tools with which to examine the ‘micro’. The research conducts an ethnographic-style study of quasi-public training and development organization in order to illustrate the above background contexts and the micro-interface and boundary of explorative and exploitative modes of organizational ambidexterity in the intra-organizational situation. Within this, the study points up the significance of the role of sense-making in operational micro-moment individual and small-group situations, and their vital influence in ultimately underpinning, and contributing to, macro-organizational ambidextrous contexts. Keywords: organizational ambidexterity, intra-firm/unit, micro-moments, paradigms.Item Open Access Sustainability and organizational behavior: A micro-foundational perspective(Wiley, 2017-11-16) Cooper, C.; Stokes, Peter; Liu, Yipeng; Tarba, Shlomo Y.Abstract Organizational behavior is a well-established academic field comprising a comprehensive and wide range of extant literature. In contrast, sustainability and micro-foundational literature constitute significant but nevertheless more relatively recent emergent bodies of work with each having developed particular predilections in the manner in which they are cast and discussed. There is scope, therefore, to bring to bear a range of organizational behavioral insights in conjunction with these areas thereby creating a fusion which surfaces the drivers and antecedents that operate and play out in the dynamic between these domains. The mechanism employed to do this is through the development of a special issue of papers, drawing on a range of methodological approaches and sectorial perspectives. This is important and has the aim of generating fresh insights and challenging conventional ways of viewing the behavioral dimensions of sustainability and especially through a micro-foundational lens. The analyses in the special issue underlines and demonstrates the value of engaging a range of national contexts, sectorial settings and historical and contemporaneous perspectives which shed novel light on the confluences of sustainability, organizational behavior and micro-foundations. The Special Issue also suggests future directions that subsequent research may take in these arenas.Item Open Access Talent management and the HR function in cross-cultural mergers and acquisitions: the role and impact of bi-cultural identity(Elsevier, 2020-01-13) Liu, Yipeng; Vrontis, Demetris; Visser, Max; Stokes, Peter; Smith, Simon; Moore, Neil; Thrassou, Alkis; Ashta, AshokThis paper examines bi-cultural talent in relation to human resource management (HRM) practices in cross-cultural merger and acquisitions (M&A). The intersection of HRM, bi-cultural talent management and cross-cultural M&A literature proposes a conceptual framework to capture the complexity of bi-cultural talent management and reveals the dominant macro-characterization of the extant HRM literature focussing on a more micro-orientated perspective. The paper develops a matrix by underlining spatial dimensions (spanning micro-aspects of the individual employee through to the macro-entity of firm and its location in the macro-national cultural context) and temporal dimensions (consisting of pre-merger, during merger and post-merger phases). This provides a template which examines the multi-level dynamics of bi-cultural talent management. The argument identifies ways in which extant cross-cultural lenses require deeper understanding of bi-cultural talent management in M&A settings. Future research directions and agendas are identified.