Cultural proximity consists in shared language, codes ,and norms of communication and exchange between actors. It is generally considered important for organizations, enhancing communication and facilitation interaction between actors. In such situation, diversity is often seen as a source of richness and originality. However, high levels of proximity might create some risk, leading to lock-in and inertia, with a negative impact on the innovativeness of the organization. While the role of cultural proximity is subject to much debate within organizations studies, a comprehensive understanding of cultural proximity remains elusive. This book explores the organizational implications of the concept of cultural proximity, delving into the managerial challenges posed by diversities and similarities in culture within a business environment using different levels of analysis. The key messages of the present book, grounded on original empirical evidence, can be summarized as follows: cultural proximity is a key factor for managing innovation in present times; innovation requires a deliberate orchestration of the dichotomy between cultural proximity/cultural diversity; there are specific circumstances where proximity can be beneficial for managers and entrepreneurs. The book will be of value to researchers, academics, managers, and students in the fields of management science, human resource management, innovation studies, and organizational studies.

The Oxford Handbook of Organizational Climate and Culture presents the breadth of topics from Industrial and Organizational Psychology and Organizational Behavior through the lenses of organizational climate and culture. The Handbook reveals in great detail how in both research and practice climate and culture reciprocally influence each other. The details reveal the many practices that organizations use to acquire, develop, manage, motivate, lead, and treat employees both at home and in the multinational settings that characterize contemporary organizations. Chapter authors are both expert in their fields of research and also represent current climate and culture practice in five national and international companies (3M, McDonald's, the Mayo Clinic, PepsiCo and Tata). In addition, new approaches to the collection and analysis of climate and culture data are presented as well as new thinking about organizational change from an integrated climate and couture paradigm. No other compendium integrates climate and culture thinking like this Handbook does and no other compendium presents both an up-to-date review of the theory and research on the many facets of climate and culture as well as contemporary practice. The Handbook takes a climate and culture vantage point on micro approaches to human issues at work (recruitment and hiring, training and performance management, motivation and fairness) as well as organizational processes (teams, leadership, careers, communication), and it also explicates the fact that these are lodged within firms that function in larger national and international contexts.

System, Actor and Process: Keywords in Organization Studies is intended as an epistemological 'compass' to navigate through the multifaceted key concepts typically used in organizational practice and research. The book illustrates thirty-four keywords using a tripartite structure: each keyword is briefly discussed from three points of view, namely the system-centered, actor-centered and process-centered conception of organization, which reflects the options emerging from contemporary epistemological debate in organizational studies and, more generally, in social sciences, namely objectivism, subjectivism, and the Weberian "third way". Primarily addressed to researchers and academics in organization studies, this book is also a useful resource for undergraduate or postgraduate students, for whom it may represent a thorough introduction to organizational concepts. It will also be a valuable tool for managers to apply in their everyday practice.

This book analyzes the impact of culture on employee justice judgments and reactions to perceptions of fairness and unfairness. I start this book with the following two questions. Why is a book on culture and organizational justice needed? What does such a book add to the extant literature on organizational justice, especially, after the publication of the landmark work of Colquitt and Greenberg (2005), Handbook of Organizational Justice? Although there are no easy answers to these questions, in the following lines, I explain the reasons why a book on culture and justice is not only needed but also timely. There are at least three reasons for which a book on culture and organizational justice is needed. First, a book on culture and organizational justice is needed because "there are indications that culture exerts very important and wide-ranging effects on justice behavior including even generally shaping the likelihood that individuals will experience feelings of injustice" (James, 1993, p. 22). Second, globalization has led to the interrelatedness of world economies. Thus, most organizations not only operate in several countries, but they also employ people from different nationalities and cultural backgrounds. The resulting challenge is to find new ways of managing a culturally diverse workforce. Third, justice is inherent to any organized social group. As examples of social systems, organizations are arenas of justice concerns because their members compete for limited resources. The resources for which they compete include tangibles, such as money but also intangibles, such as status, power, and prestige (e.g., Tajfel & Turner, 1979; Turner, 1985). In the following lines, I elaborate on the three reasons why a book on culture and organizational justice is needed and timely.

Business Intelligence Management and Decision Support Systems are vital tools for managers and practitioners to stay abreast of the latest techniques and methodologies currently successful in global businesses use. Organizational Applications of Business Intelligence Management: Emerging Trends offers a deep look into the latest research, tools, implementations, frameworks, architectures, and case studies within the field of Business Intelligence Management. Chapter authors from around the world have contributed to the latest research within the field, offering a vast range of ideas and implementations to help grow and manage global business. Through measurement, analytics, and knowledge management, the book s authors and editor have collected a vital resource for practitioners to stay up-to-date in the ever burgeoning field.

Businesses rely heavily on their culture to ensure sustainable success, and company culture is invariably influenced by national values. In an era of global hypercompetition, knowing the overall values that guide one's business ventures is crucial, as it allows for the greater understanding of other businesses and how they operate. Cultural Factors and Performance in 21st Century Businesses is a pivotal reference source that examines the relationship between culture and trade. Covering a broad range of topics including ethics, economic geography, and socialization theory, this book examines cultures around the world and their intersection with trade. This publication is ideally designed for executives, managers, entrepreneurs, social scientists, policymakers, academicians, researchers, and students.

As technology continues to evolve in organizations, it is vital to understand the impact that these advances will have on different aspects of the business environment as well as the opportunity for further improvement. Effects of IT on Enterprise Architecture, Governance, and Growth explores the influence of emerging technology on different viewpoints associated with contemporary enterprise. Emphasizing an interdisciplinary approach to the comprehension of organizational structure and dynamics, this book is an inclusive reference source for enterprise analysts, business managers, and IT managers, as well as upper-level students interested in a new framework for understanding business enterprise in the new digital era.

Corporatee Social Performance: Paradoxes- Pitfalls and Pathways to the Better World is authored by a range of international experts with a diversity of backgrounds and perspectives and provides a collection of ideas, examples and solutions on CSP implementation and problems that occur in this area of consideration. The last decade had abundant corporate, national and international ethical and financial scandals and crises. After this epoch of moral catastrophes stakeholders expect that corporations which are considered as the most powerful institutions today and which have enormous impact on our planet's ecosystems and social networks will take more active roles as citizens within society and in the fight against some of the most pressing problems in the world, such as poverty, environmental degradation, defending human rights, corruption, and pandemic diseases. Although Corporate Social Performance (CSP) has been a prominent concept in management literature and in the business world in recent years ""it remains a fact that many business leaders still only pay lip service to CSR, or are merely reacting to peer pressure by introducing it into their organizations."" (Bevan et al. 2004:4). So do really companies do "well" by doing "good" or maybe" companies engage in CSR in order to offset corporate social irresponsibility'? (Kotchen and Moony, 2012 p.4). I hope that we would agree that companies and CSR only by working together guarantee their own survival and we- the society and the planet -will be much obliged (Thome, 2009 p. 3).

The quality of working life has been central to the sociological agenda for several decades, and has also been increasingly salient as a policy issue, and for companies. This book breaks new ground in the study of the quality of work by providing the first rigorous comparative assessment of the way it has been affected by the economic crisis. It examines the implications of the crisis on developments in skills and training, employees' control over their jobs, and the pressure of work and job security. It also assesses how changing experiences at work affect people's lives outside of work: the risks of work-life conflict, the motivation to work, personal well-being, and attitudes towards society. The book draws on a rich new source of evidence-the European Social Survey-to provide a comparative view over the period 2004 to 2010. The survey provides evidence for countries across the different regions of Europe and allows for a detailed assessment of the view that institutional differences between European societies-in terms of styles of management, social partnership practices, and government policies-lead to very different levels of work quality and different experiences of the crisis. This comparative aspect will thus forward our understanding of how institutional differences between European societies affect work experiences and their implications for non-work life.

African Leadership is an edited collection enriched by the people who have lived and experienced indigenous leadership first-hand, demonstrating how African leadership is distinctive from usual Western hegemonic paradigms. Providing an indepth discussion of the components, context, followers, and skills that contribute to the success of African leaders, African Leadership concludes with meaningful applications for 21st-century leaders globally.

Utilizing Information Technology in Developing Strategic Alliances Among Organizations deals with two important topics for a firm's competitiveness in the framework of the information society: alliance strategies and the role played by IT in alliances. While technical solutions to distance work abound, there is a lack of a strong and theoretically-grounded approach on how best to implement these solutions. This book offers a theoretical framework, allowing strategic alliance managers to implement the IT required in these alliances, supported by their work teams. Utilizing Information Technology in Developing Strategic Alliances Among Organizations analyzes many important topics, such as: the development of global business-to-business electronic markets, and whether these markets are becoming a way of improving trust between organizations at an international level; problems in implementing interorganizational systems and their solutions; and how IT and alliance strategy are important both to multinational corporations and family firms, regardless of firm size.

South African organisations operate in an environment that is fast changing due to digital advancement, economic challenges, social complexities, and changing employee and customer values/expectations. In this environment, successful organisations empower talented employees to work in teams and make pivotal decisions that lead to innovation and exceptionally high performance. Success for these organisations is not by chance but is the result of adopting carefully planned and sophisticated interventions into the organisational structure, leadership and management orientations, culture, and processes and behaviours. In this respect, Organisational behaviour: a contemporary South African perspective provides a solid and scientific foundation for developing an integrated and holistic understanding of the individual and group processes in the modern organisation.

Organisational behaviour explores expectations that organisations and employees have of each other. It addresses contemporary issues related to organisational culture, change, engagement, performance excellence, changing communication technology, transformational and authentic leadership, diversity, business ethics, team excellence and globalisation. It contains many encounters, discussion questions, practical exercises and case studies with a southern African orientation to stimulate self-study, debate and reflective thinking.

Organisational behaviour is aimed not only at aspiring HR practitioners and managers, but also at established professionals who need to stay updated, irrespective of their field and nature of their organisation.

Just after 9:00 a.m. on February 1, 2003, the space shuttle "Columbia" broke apart and was lost over Texas. This tragic event led, as the "Challenger" accident had 17 years earlier, to an intensive government investigation of the technological and organizational causes of the accident. The investigation found chilling similarities between the two accidents, leading the "Columbia" Accident Investigation Board to conclude that NASA failed to learn from its earlier tragedy.

Despite the frequency with which organizations are encouraged to adopt learning practices, organizational learning -- especially in public organizations -- is not well understood and deserves to be studied in more detail. This book fills that gap with a thorough examination of NASA's loss of the two shuttles. After offering an account of the processes that constitute organizational learning, Julianne G. Mahler focuses on what NASA did to address problems revealed by "Challenger "and its uneven efforts to institutionalize its own findings. She also suggests factors overlooked by both accident commissions and proposes broadly applicable hypotheses about learning in public organizations.

The African Context of Business and Society traces the unique and often overlooked and unestimated contours of African business and society, abandoning the flawed assumption that western preconceptions can be directly transplanted- one that has often led to incorrect macro-theorisations. Africa's diverse economy has been influenced by historical and cultural change, and The African Context of Business and Society's novel indigenous viewpoints address topics such as female entrepreneurship, organizational culture, the role of religion on employee trust, authentic leadership and more. Understanding individual and organisational behaviour, the chapters examine the under-researched aspects of Africa's business and society and both opportunities and constraints. The New Frontiers in African Business and Society series provides innovative reflections on the nature of business and society across parts of Africa and its emerging economy. Distinguished scholars formulate important answers to the problems within the continent, discovering new avenues of research and pathways forward.

If you suspect that you and your organization are being hindered or stolen from in ways you don't know or understand; if you have problems that seem unsolvable; this book is for you. You will learn about the five negative spiritual roots underlying all organizational problems and how to remove them. You will learn how to apply Transforming Your Business principles to free your business into your organizational destiny.