Peter Cebon

A burgeoning corpus of research argues that a central role for educators is to help students acquire an appropriate identity (see Barbarà-i-Molinero et al., 2017; Reissner & Armitage-Chan, 2024; Tr...

We derive conditions under which limits on executive compensation can enhance efficiency and benefit shareholders (but not executives). Having its hands tied in the future allows a board of directors to credibly enter into relational contracts with executives that are more efficient than performance-contingent contracts. This has implications for the ideal composition of the board. The analysis also offers insights into the political economy of executive-compensation reform.

We derive conditions under which state-imposed limits on executive compensation can enhance efficiency and benefit shareholders (but not executives). Having the

Many aspects of product life cycle theory ? which underlies the theories of technical innovation in economics, strategy, marketing, operations management and product development ? are based on the implicit assumption that products are integrated wholes. We argue that the modularisation of products undermines specific synergies that are associated with integrated product designs and that have been characterised as driving the product life cycle. We suggest how this effect of modularity impacts the structure of organisations, the boundaries of industries and the structure of economies.

This study considers how organization‐level and field‐level meaning systems affect when firms adopt administrative innovations. We use a sample of over 1200 manufacturing sites to test hypotheses regarding the timing of adoption of Manufacturing Best Practice programmes. The results indicate that compatibility of the diffusing practice with the organization's internal meaning system is an important predictor of when firms adopt such programmes. However, the influence of such compatibility declines for later adopters – consistent with institutional pressures in the form of field‐level meaning systems playing an increasing role over time. We also find that this decline occurs for sites with high exposure to institutional pressures, but not for sites with lower exposure. The findings suggest that internal meaning systems and differential exposure moderate the role of institutional pressures in the diffusion of administrative innovations. We discuss implications for theory and research on institutionalization and the diffusion of innovations.

A central proposition of neo-institutional theory is that exposure to institutional fields shapes the meanings actors within the field hold. We test that proposition by asking whether variations in exposure to field-level processes will lead to variations in meanings held by actors. To do so, we examine the implementation of a managerial practice - Manufacturing Best Practices Programs - across a large sample of manufacturing sites in Australia and New Zealand. We assess exposure to field-level processes both indirectly (through structural characteristics such as site size and technological sophistication), and directly (as contact with theorizing agents and communities of practice). To assess variations in meanings held by managers, we draw on psychological research findings to do three things: 1) to conceptualize the cognitive representation of a practice as a category, 2) to recognise that categories are graded - that is, that some members (or components of the practice, in our case) are more representative of the category than others, and 3) to recognise that the grading of the category is driven by the way the category is theorized. We find that sites which are more exposed to field-level meanings - using both our direct and indirect measures - adopt, on average, more representative components in their Manufacturing Best Practice program. We discuss implications, especially for how categories are understood within institutional theory.

We ask how institutionalization affects the way managers understand novel practices, and how that understanding affects adoption behaviour. We argue that all managers act as sensemaking agents who construct theories about novel practices on the basis of the theories they learn, the discourse in which they engage, and the behaviours they observe. As a consequence of their theorization, they grade the categories relevant to the novel practice. That is, they come to see some members as better exemplars of the category than others, and, we argue, more valued members of the category. Institutionalization leads to managers across the field developing a coherent set of category gradings. Consequently, late adopters, being more subject to institutional processes, will be more likely to adopt the most representative members of the category. We test this idea, and compare it to the idea that managers select processes through inter-organisational monitoring and mimicry, by examining the adoption of Manufacturing Best Practice programs in Australia and New Zealand. Our data support our arguments regarding theorization, but not inter-organisational monitoring.

(2002). Book List. Innovation: Vol. 4, No. 1-3, pp. 70-73.