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Catalytic alliances (CA) are temporary network organizations created to effect long-term social change through media-based "campaign" efforts to increase public awareness and commitment to action on social problems. Two CA organizations - Hands Across America and the Partnership for a Drug-Free America - are profiled in this paper. Each illustrates the catalytic alliance phenomenon and delineates a number of critical management dimensions. The paper then uses these examples to more precisely define the organizational features and characteristics of catalytic alliances, and to develop a process model of how such alliances are formed.

This paper presents the early findings of a pilot study of the power and influence of part-time board members in the top 200 U.K. industrial and commercial firms by turnover and the top 50 U.K. financial institutions. The part-time board members hold multiple roles of either chairman and/or non-executive director of these organizations. The findings are presented around a tripartite model of power and influence. The results indicate that the power and influence of part-time board members is shaped by the simultaneous and interactive effects of a set of structural and contextual factors, position and skill in mobilizing a constellation of power sources, and skill and will in converting potential power into actual influence.

This study investigates whether the agency cost of corporate crime leading to executive pay is greater when monitoring and incentive alignment activities by principals is low. The results indicate that executive compensation is positively associated with the incidence of corporate crime in manager controlled firms but not in owner controlled firms. Implications for the monitoring of business activities in owner and manager controlled firms are developed.

Many organizations are currently implementing self-managing work teams. Supervision of these teams is particularly challenging in that leaders are expected to lead others to lead themselves. Grounded primarily in the positivistic paradigm of research, a typology of leadership approaches is thus developed to explain team leader behaviors and their impact on team self-management. A model incorporating leader and organizational characteristics is then presented to illustrate antecedents of team leader behavior.

This paper compares organization culture assessments in two high reliability organizations (HROs) with each other, with similar assessments done in other HROs, and with assessments done in other kinds of organizations. It then assesses the consistency of the culture assessments in the two HROs reported here with the theoretical typology of HROs offered by Schulman, and compares the relationship of culture norms to attitudes and role perceptions found in this research with similar relationships found in the HROs. Finally, the paper provides field data from the two organizations reported on here that support Schulman's model.

The paper describes the application to longitudinal research of a method of data collection which combines quantitative and qualitative material. It is claimed that Group Feedback Analysis (GFA) helps to validate data collected by various methods and produces additional ethnographic material and insight into the process under investigation. When the people who supply the data are experienced in the subject matter, as is the case with managers and other employees in organizational research, GFA makes it possible for them to help with the interpretation of the data instead of leaving it entirely to the researcher. The method, which has previously been used in cross-sectional research, is shown to have utility in a longitudinal design where it can facilitate organizational learning. It can also contribute to the refinement of a theoretical model.

Within the nursing organization of four hospital wards, a new work design was introduced, which was primarily characterized by the delegation of responsibilities from head nurses to nurses and by the participation of patients. First, it was hypothesized that the participation of patients in health care would enhance their perception of both their own and the nurses' control over their stay in the hospital. Second, it was hypothesized that, in the perceptions of head nurses, nurses, and doctors, the new work design would enhance the perceived control of nurses and reduce the perceived control of head nurses over nursing care. Over 1000 patients, nurses, head nurses, and doctors completed questionnaires. The data support the hypotheses and the results are discussed in terms of participation and decentralization effects of work design changes. It was further observed that doctors evaluated some practical aspects of the new work design negatively, but measures have been taken to overcome these problems. Some organizational and management implications are briefly discussed.

The field of organizational learning (OL) has been characterized by a wide diversity of opinions, definitions, and conceptualizations. After discussing difficulties associated with previous conceptualizations of organizational learning, this paper suggests a broader conceptualization which is consistent with and integrates diverse perspectives in the field of OL. To the extent that organizations continuously act and enact their environments, cognitive processes associated with learning continually take place whether the organization recognizes it or not. OL cannot be understood without taking into account the continuous ongoing change of organizational cognitive structures. However, learning is only recognized when an observer identifies and contextualizes those changes. Thus, organizational learning can be interpreted as a social construction which transforms acquired cognition into accountable abstract knowledge. The paper concludes by discussing the implications of this conceptualization of learning on management practice and organizational research.

This article addresses a matter of potentially great social significance-Virtual Reality (VR) as a communication environment-from the point of view of social psychology. While it is easily recognized that technological research is deeply involved in the ongoing development of VR systems, there is no equal agreement about behavioral sciences having good reasons for both interest and concern in VR as medium. This paper reviews current research on the quality of VR experience and integrates it in a theoretical framework centered on self identity processes. The main issues are: which sense may be ascribed to the "consensual hallucination" experienced in VR? Which sort of fiction is peculiar to VR? Which influence can VR as a medium have on the construction of the self? We cannot reject in principle the idea that VR could, when fully developed, create alternative realities almost paralleling, in sensory richness, "conventional" realities. The "cyber" view, stressing the capability of VR to supply alternative, disembodied forms of community, cannot be dismissed as irrelevant: technologies nurture specific political, ideological, and also mystical beliefs as essential aspects of their moral foundation (and vice versa, ideologies can inspire specific technological projects).

This study investigates the interaction effect of information asymmetry and decentralization on the job satisfaction level of sub-unit managers. Responses gathered by means of a questionnaire survey from 42 managers in Singapore were generated and analyzed using regression analysis. The findings indicate the presence of nonmonotonic relationship between information asymmetry and job satisfaction over the range of the degree of decentralization in the organizations. More specifically, the results indicate that a higher level for information asymmetry was associated with a higher level of job satisfaction for managers working under conditions of high decentralization.

Charitable giving is a topic that has received little attention in the literature to date, in spite of the recent growth of the voluntary sector in the U.K This paper uses data from interviews with 49 people about their preferences for ways of giving, for kinds of causes, and their beliefs about the role of charity in society. Two main themes are selected for analysis: (a) the kinds of experience that people have had of others in need, and (b) the organization of giving, formally or informally, within social institutions. These themes are used to construct a conceptual framework showing that charitable giving reflects variations in the relationship of individuals to the community of which they are a part. This is a critical alternative to explanations of charity based upon either individual motive, social norms, or the setting in which the solicitation of gifts occurs.

Social loafing is the decline in member effort that often occurs in groups. This paper discusses factors that may contribute to social loafing, and proposes a model integrating these factors. The model attempts to move social loafing research from the laboratory to the workplace. Recommendations are offered for reducing social loafing in work groups.