CEO Ambivalence and Responses to Strategic Issues

2009 | Organization Science | Citations: 8

Authors: Plambeck, Nils; Weber, Klaus

Abstract: We examine how executives' ambivalent evaluation of a strategic issue relates to ... Expand

Abstract: We examine how executives' ambivalent evaluation of a strategic issue relates to organizational actions taken in response. Ambivalence occurs when a decision maker evaluates an issue as simultaneously positive and negative, a state that has received scant attention in organizational research. We integrate findings in social psychology with the behavioral theory of the firm to suggest how executives' ambivalence prompts wider and more vigorous search for action responses and enables broader participation. Data from a two-wave survey of 104 German CEOs who evaluated the enlargement of the European Union in 2004 and reported their organizations' responses show that organizations whose CEOs evaluated the event as both positive and negative were more likely to take action when both evaluations were also strongly held. The reported actions were also of greater scope, novelty, and riskiness. The study contributes to research on organizational decision making by theorizing the role of top executives' ambivalence and by providing a first systematic test of how ambivalence affects responses to strategic issues. Collapse

Topics: database system decision making organizational productivity accounting telephone

Methods: survey survey design theory development statistical hypothesis test data transformation

Theories: behavioral theory of the firm organizational theory theory of bounded rationality

Technological switchbacks: the transition to Western information systems in privatised firms of the former East Germany†

2004 | European Journal of Information Systems | Citations: 0

Authors: Marble, Robert P.

Abstract: The work of this paper centres on a study of business organisations of the forme ... Expand

Abstract: The work of this paper centres on a study of business organisations of the former German Democratic Republic (GDR), whose continued existence after the reunification of Germany was accomplished by management buyout (MBO), rather than through acquisition by Western firms. The goal was to investigate the circumstances surrounding the sudden and total upgrade of information technology and systems enabled (and necessitated) by the end of Eastern Block isolation from the West. The paper reports on 1992 contacts and site visits with four MBO privatised firms and 1999 follow-up contacts and site visits with the two surviving firms of that group. Analyses are presented, which draw on literature devoted to IT transitions and IS implementation. The notion of technological switchback is introduced to characterise the unique circumstances embodied by the situation under study. It involves a necessary and sudden advance in information technological capabilities, which comes at the expense of a significant and undesirable regression in information system effectiveness. Parallels are drawn to the plights of firms in other transitional economies and firms facing emerging 'technological imperatives.' Conclusions are elucidated, regarding effective short- and long-term adjustment to such situations. Collapse

Topics: systems implementation IT workforce IS effectiveness

Methods: qualitative interview survey cross sectional research field study