49 research outputs found
"Thank me therefore": Social Prestige, Probity and Self-determination of Nymue's character in Malory's "Le Morte Darthur"
No full textThe influence of context on the strategic decision-making process : a review of the literature
No full textThis paper critically reviews the strategic decision-making process literature, with a specific focus on the effects of context. Context refers to the top management team, strategic decision-specific characteristics, the external environment and firm characteristics. This literature review also develops an illustrative framework that incorporates these four different categories of contextual variables that influence the strategic decision-making process. As a result of the variety and pervasiveness of contextual variables featured within the literature, a comprehensive and up-to-date review is essential for organizing and synthesizing the extant literature to explicate an agenda for future research. The purpose of this literature review is threefold: first, to critically review the strategic decision-making process literature to highlight the underlying themes, issues, tensions and debates in the field; second, to identify the opportunities for future theory development; and third, to state the methodological implications arising from this review
Do Emotions Matter?:The Roles of CEO Emotion Regulation and Affectivity in Strategic Decision Making
No full textHigh stakes strategic decision-making is inherently emotive, yet theoretical understanding of the role of emotions in strategic management remains limited, with senior executives seen as impervious to emotional influences. While cognitive and behavioral insights have informed knowledge of the determinants of firm performance, this study seeks to develop new theory by examining how CEO emotion regulation and affectivity (both positive and negative) shape strategic decision-making and, ultimately, firm performance. Drawing on theories of emotion regulation and affective appraisal, we theorize that CEO affectivity is a major influence on strategic decision-making, with these effects moderated by prevailing environmental conditions. Our model offers a theoretically grounded approach to understanding the mechanisms by which CEO emotional tendencies affect organizational outcomes, contributing to the literature on strategic decision-making. Using a longitudinal sample of 160 firms with triadic data from CEOs, CEO spouses, and CFOs alongside objective performance metrics, our findings substantiate these relationships, adding new theoretical understanding of the role of affectivity in strategic decision-making
Playing Politics:An Upper Echelons' Perspective on Political Behaviour During Acquisition Decision Making
No full textThe pre-deal phase of an acquisition is complex, with high stakes and high uncertainty. Consequently, acquisition decision making can be seen as an inherently political process. While political behaviour is a central concept in organizational theory, and despite its inevitability during acquisition decision making owing to the contested nature of the pre-deal phase, there is a shortage of theory and evidence concerning the antecedents, consequences and moderators of political behaviour. To address these theoretical shortcomings, we develop and test a theoretical model of political behaviour focusing on the psychological context of the top management team (TMT). We argue that while political behaviour risks undermining acquisition performance, the degree of board involvement during the pre-deal phase can enable some TMTs to attenuate the damaging effects of political behaviour. Further, we theorize two key antecedents variously fuelling and constraining political behaviour. We contend that while TMT cohesion reduces political behaviour, cognitive diversity increases political behaviour while suppressing the potential for TMT cohesion to prevent political behaviour. We test our theoretical model using a field-based sample of 109 UK acquisitions, combining multiple informants with objective secondary data
Deciding Fast:Examining the Relationship between Strategic Decision Speed and Decision Quality across Multiple Environmental Contexts
No full textRapid innovation, shortened product life cycles and fierce competition place great pressures on top managers to make fast strategic decisions. However, a key question in strategic decision-making research is whether decision speed helps or harms decision quality, and there is a shortage of theory and evidence concerning the consequences of decision speed across different environmental contexts. We develop new theory by considering the effects of decision speed on decision quality under conditions of environmental munificence, under conditions of dynamism, and under the joint conditions of munificence and dynamism. We test our theory through analysis of multi-informant survey data drawn from top management teams and secondary databases, in 117 UK firms. Our findings demonstrate that munificence is the central generative mechanism which moderates the relationship between decision speed and decision quality, and markedly alters the previously theorized positive effects of decision speed in dynamic contexts
A question of belonging : imagining the Chinese in the British West Indies
No full textThis study examines what effect the presence of the Chinese in the West
Indies had on understandings of belonging in terms of nation. It examines the
construction of the category "Chinese" across different modes, particularly literary
texts, from the nineteenth century to the present, and from the positions of colonial,
creole and Chinese spaces. The results of this research challenge the common view
that the Chinese have had a marginal impact on the perception of nationhood in the
West Indies. Instead, images of the Chinese were, and continue to be, a key means of
exploring the ambiguities, potentialities and limitations of nation as it developed in
the West Indies. In particular, they reveal that neither "nation" nor "belonging" are
static positions; rather, they signify continuing renegotiations of power relationships
and cultural identities.
Several factors impact on representations of the Chinese. In the nineteenth
century, such images were molded by the specific aims of colonial enterprises,
entangled at the intersection of the discursive constructs of "East" and "West" during
a period of mass migrations and the peculiar tensions of post-emancipation West
Indian societies. In the twentieth century, "the Chinese" have been created in response
to a need to assert ownership of what was once colonised space and to perform nation
before a global audience. Of late, Chinese West Indians have taken a more visibly
active role in the construction and dissemination of images of themselves and their
communities. In the process they have sometimes radically redefined the imaginative
nation space of the West Indies and, in the process, challenge established boundaries
of belonging, and contest "belonging" itself
Political Behavior Does Not (always) Undermine Strategic Decision-Making:Theory and Evidence
No full textPolitical behavior pervades strategic decision-making, often damaging decision quality and undermining organizational performance. However, little is currently known about how top management teams (TMTs) cope with such behavior. To address this shortfall, we draw on the upper echelons literature to advance a contingent account of the factors that differentiate well-functioning and dysfunctional TMTs. Focusing on the psychological context surrounding the TMT, we theorize that cognitive consensus, power decentralization, and behavioral integration are key generative mechanisms that enable TMTs to countermand the potentially deleterious consequences of political behavior. We corroborate our theorizing using a field study of 117 strategic decisions, drawn from multiple TMT informants and secondary databases. Confirming the majority of our hypotheses, our findings indicate that behaviorally integrated and decentralized TMTs are better equipped to attenuate the potentially damaging effects of organizational politics, thereby safeguarding the quality of their decision processes
Identity and dislocation in Caribbean women's literature: a study of the writings of Velma Pollard
No full textJamaican-born Velma Pollard has been publishing poetry and short stories for nearly
thirty years. Her first poems appeared in the 1970s, her first volume of short stories in
1989, and her first novel in 1994. Despite this considerable literary output, in the evergrowing
critical literature on Caribbean women's writing Pollard's work has not attracted
any of the scholarly treatment accorded to other writers. Given this lack of critical
attention to Pollard's considerable body of work, this thesis aims to provide the first
detailed and contextualised study of her writings (excluding the majority of her poetry
and of her writings on linguistics), and to accord Pollard the recognition her work
deserves.
Chapter 1 of this thesis situates Pollard's writings in the context of Caribbean
(women's) literature, and writings on identity, dislocations and (Caribbean) migration. I
argue that Pollard's principal contribution to Caribbean literature is found in her
engagement with two main subjects, return migration and relationships (male-female and
female-female), within a wider context of debates on identity and dislocation.
Chapter 2 introduces Pollard's work by way of a general discussion of her novella
Karl, which won the Casa de las Americas literary award in 1992. I consider Karl to be
central to Pollard's work, not least because it features many of the themes explored by
her later writings, including her novel, Homestretch, which is the subject of Chapter 3.
Pollard's first novel, Homestretch, which was published in 1994, explores the themes
of identity and dislocation through the experiences of 'return migrants' and 'repeat
migrants' and their comparison of life in England, the United States and Jamaica. The
novel chronicles how these migrants come to reconnect with and accept their cultural
heritage.
In chapters 4 and 5 I discuss selected stories taken from Pollard's two collections
of short stories, Considering Woman ('Cages', 'My Sisters', 'My Mother', and 'Gran') and
from Karl and Other Stories ('A Night's Tale', 'Miss Chandra', 'Betsy Hyde', and 'Altamont
Jones'). In these stories Pollard explores male-female relationships and the lives of
several generations and a wide range of Caribbean women and men. Pollard utilises the
West Indian setting, speech, situations and conflicts in these stories to graphically
describe familiar Caribbean role models and to provide a narrative and literary
examination of the frustrations and conflicting desires of women in the region.
In my conclusion, I address the ethnographic quality and significance of her work,
and its contribution to an understanding of the Caribbean
