International Journal of Management Reviews

Publisher:: Wiley
Publication date:: 2021-02-01

ISBN:: 1460-8545

Issue Number

No. 26-1, January 2024

Latest documents

Problematizing Strategic Alliance Research: Challenges, Issues and Paradoxes in the New Era
Strategic alliances have attracted substantial attention from industry and academia over the past three decades. However, due to rapid technological evolution, saturated marketplaces, globalisation of businesses on the one hand and de‐globalisation of the market on the other (as marked by Brexit and the trade war between US and China, COVID‐19 pandemic and the Ukraine war), the strategic environment of businesses is changing quickly. Fundamental and rapid changes in the wider environment necessitate the review of theoretical and practical insights of earlier and emerging studies ‐ to examine the new challenges, issues and paradoxes of strategic alliances. This special issue attempts to provide a forum to allow researchers to question the assumptions underlying existing theory a little further beyond just “gap‐spotting” or “gap‐filling”. This special issue includes four very interesting literature review pieces, which venture deeper into the phenomenon, and explore the opportunities, issues and paradoxes of strategic alliances while adopting alternative theoretical perspectives, methodological approaches and interpretations to address issues of managing strategic alliances and maximising returns from them in the new strategic context.
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What Changes and Opportunities Does Big Data Analytics Capability Bring to Strategic Alliance Research? A Systematic Literature Review
Strategic alliance theories have been studied widely over the past few decades. However, their key arguments may face new limitations and challenges brought by emerging technologies such as big data analytics capability (BDAC). This paper aims to identify the challenges BDAC brings to strategic alliance theories and the associated changes to strategic alliance research. Specifically, this paper systematically reviews and identifies how BDAC challenges the key arguments in the strategic alliances’ theories through the lens of three stages of strategic alliances: formation, governance and achieving alliance performance. Meanwhile, this study also finds some changes in strategic alliance research brought by BDAC. Finally, this study proposes promising directions for future research on strategic alliances under the influences of BDAC.
Alliance management capabilities in sustainability‐oriented collaboration: Problematization and new research directions
Sustainability‐oriented collaboration, a heterogeneous set of formal interorganizational arrangements that vary considerably in size, membership, focus and functioning, but share the same interest in addressing sustainability challenges of public concern, is becoming a mainstay of corporate agenda setting. Yet, the more firms interact on social and environmental issues, the more the burdens and tensions of collaborating for sustainability become apparent. Research and practice increasingly question whether an alliance management capability (AMC) perspective can be adopted to explain variability in collaboration effectiveness. With the aim to investigate whether, and to what extent, existing sustainability‐oriented collaboration research integrates or challenges mainstream theory on AMC, we adopt a problematization method to unpack the root assumptions underlying the AMC construct. We find that self‐interest in economic value creation and capture, the need for homogeneity to favour knowledge accumulation and learning on alliance management, and predictable patterns of AMC deployment are consistently assumed by scholars to predict success in alliance management. Accordingly, we analyse AMC assumptions’ current integration in the study of sustainability‐oriented collaboration, conducting a systematic literature review on collaborative capabilities developed for, during and in response to sustainability challenges. In so doing, we identify what distinguishes sustainability‐oriented collaboration from mainstream strategic alliances and the related implications on the collaborative capabilities firms should develop and deploy when dealing with sustainability challenges. We elaborate on these and their implications for AMC constructs to provide a future research agenda, which integrates further theoretical perspectives and broadens the scope of existing ones.
Relational dynamics in information technology outsourcing: An integrative review and future research directions
This paper reviews the literature on relational dynamics in information technology outsourcing (ITO) relationships, a type of interorganizational relationship (IOR) between client and vendor firms that can vary considerably in complexity. While relational dynamics are understood to reflect changes in an IOR ex‐post contract which can substantially influence relationship performance and development, prior IOR research is limited in its conceptualization. The extensive ITO literature offers fertile ground for exploring this limitation but has advanced different conceptualizations and is fragmented in empirical findings, which warrants a systematic assessment. We conduct an integrative review of 127 peer‐reviewed empirical studies to enhance our understanding of the constituents of relational dynamics. The findings reveal that relational dynamics involve the occurrence and management of tensions within and across four relationship development stages (transactional, strategic, transformational, and termination). For each stage and between stages, we identify the main tension, the firms’ strategies to manage the tension, and the outcomes. Based on these findings, we develop an integrative framework that offers a comprehensive and multifaceted conceptualization of relational dynamics, revealing that as ITO arrangements progress (or regress), partner firms are confronted with structural and transitional tensions inherent in relationship stability and instability. Based on this framework, we offer future directions for developing a more comprehensive understanding of relational dynamics in ITO and, more broadly, IORs.
The relationship between enterprise risk management and managerial judgement in decision‐making: A systematic literature review
Enterprise risk management (ERM) promises to improve decision‐making and help organizations avoid wicked problems. Consequently, risk artefacts may play a significant role in managers’ decision‐making processes, but little is known about the relationship between ERM and managerial judgement in decision‐making (MJDM). The purpose of this paper is to present a systematic literature review of ERM, thereby filling this knowledge gap and providing an evidence‐based foundation for improving practice and advancing knowledge and theory development. Based on an analysis and synthesis of 33 articles published between 2009 and 2021, we identify four contextual, five technical, three social and five cognitive factors that interact with MJDM. We find that regulation and corporate governance, ERM artefact design reconfiguration and use, social capital interactions and spaces and perceptions have the most support. We distinguish between three different modes of judgement: risk measurement, risk envisionment and risk qualculation. We find that risk qualculation, which employs quantitative and qualitative data and social interpretations of risks and uncertainties, is more likely to be useful in managerial decision‐making, particularly when attempting to address wicked problems. We also find that human cognition significantly impacts ERM design, implementation and use, and how those change over time. This paper also develops a new narrative and conceptualization of the relationship between ERM and MJDM, which is presented in an integrative framework. Finally, we encourage researchers to adopt cognitive theories and related concepts that are better suited for examining the ERM–MJDM relationship and to take a cognitive turn in future ERM research.
Ambidexterity in strategic alliances: An integrative review of the literature
Strategic alliances play a vital role in exploration and exploitation activities, otherwise known as the ambidextrous approach for value creation. This has led to an upsurge in studies on ambidexterity in strategic alliances by giving rise to various conceptualizations and theoretical challenges. However, we lack a systematic evaluation and synthesis of the theoretical and empirical insights from this growing body of research. In this paper, we use an integrative systematic literature review (SLR) approach to critically analyse 77 articles on ambidexterity in strategic alliances published in 38 leading journals across 13 disciplines. Findings from bibliometric and qualitative content analyses reveal three major research directions: (1) micro‐foundation and organizational antecedents of ambidexterity in alliances, (2) governance mechanisms of ambidexterity, and (3) relational and performance outcomes of ambidexterity. We integrate these findings into a unified framework which provides a foundation for future research on ambidexterity in strategic alliances, with implications for academics, policymakers and practitioners.
Traduttore, traditore? Gains and losses from the translation of the economies of worth
The economies of worth, a theory of moral cognition and coordination by sociologist Luc Boltanski and economist Laurent Thévenot, are increasingly used in organization and management studies. We critically review a broad selection of this literature to assess what has been gained from the interdisciplinary translations of the original theory. We identify in the literature multiple patterns that contribute from different angles to a consistent set of concepts for research at the intersection of organizations, socio‐technological change, and morality. We also indicate theoretical and methodological developments that would further enrich these gains.
Examining the Ability, Motivation and Opportunity (AMO) framework in HRM research: Conceptualization, measurement and interactions
Despite the increasing popularity of the Ability, Motivation, Opportunity (AMO) framework in the Human Resource Management (HRM) field, AMO research is at a crossroads in theoretical and empirical development. This is due to (a) a lack of clarity about the conceptualisation and measurement of AMO variables, (b) the construction of AMO articles that do not distinguish between AMO differences and AMO‐enhancing HRM practices and fail to integrate them, (c) a lack of understanding about how AMO variables at the individual and organizational levels interact to generate individual and organizational performance, and (d) a lack of consideration of the process (mediators and moderators) through which AMO generates performance gains. Based on the analysis of 104 quantitative HRM articles published between 1997 and 2022, this study helps to draw clearer distinctions among AMO variables and levels of analysis. The review of the empirical literature shows that there is excessive heterogeneity with regard to the conceptualization and utilisation of AMO variables, which in turn leads to scale proliferation. We find that research on AMO‐enhancing HRM practices and AMO differences is rarely combined and tends to be tested at a single level rather than more logical cross‐level effects between AMO‐enhancing HRM practices, AMO differences and performance. We also found that whereas Ability and Motivation differences mediate the relationship between AMO‐enhancing HRM practices and performance, opportunity appears to be a boundary condition in the relationship between Ability and Motivation with performance outcomes. The paper concludes with relevant avenues for future AMO research suggested for the field of HRM.
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