Papers by Luca Giustiniano
Academy of Management Proceedings
International Journal of Innovation Management
Firms jointly conduct business model innovation (BMI) through business model innovation alliances... more Firms jointly conduct business model innovation (BMI) through business model innovation alliances (BMIAs). However, the understanding of how BMIA partnerships evolve and how different partners contribute to the inter-organisational BMI process remains vague. Building on process theory, our study addresses this gap by adopting a processual stance towards the evolution of a successful BMIA. Three main propositions emerge from our findings. First, BMIA evolution follows the progression of an alliance-level BMI process that can entail nested firm-level BMI processes aimed at making the partners’ BMs more functional within the overarching inter-organisational BMI. Second, relatively small changes in BMs at the member level can lead to significant and novel changes in the BM at the alliance level. Third, BMIA evolution builds on leveraging complementarities amongst firms of different sizes and at different stages of development, and on resolving conflictual attitudes amongst similar partn...
European Management Review
Computers in Human Behavior
Management Decision, 2017
Journal of Environmental Management, 2016
The use of crowds in research activities by public and private organizations is growing under dif... more The use of crowds in research activities by public and private organizations is growing under different forms. Citizen science is a popular means of engaging the general public in research activities led by professional scientists. By involving a large number of amateur scientists, citizen science enables distributed data collection and analysis on a scale that would be otherwise difficult and costly to achieve. While advancements in information technology in the past few decades have fostered the growth of citizen science through online participation, several projects continue to fail due to limited participation. Such web-based projects may isolate the citizen scientists from the researchers. By adopting the perspective of social strategy, we investigate within a measure-manipulate-measure experiment if motivations to participate in a citizen science project can be positively influenced by a face-to-face interaction with the scientists leading the project. Such an interaction provides the participants with the possibility of asking questions on the spot and obtaining a detailed explanation of the citizen science project, its scientific merit, and environmental relevance. Social and cultural factors that moderate the effect brought about by face-to-face interactions on the motivations are also dissected and analyzed. Our findings provide an exploratory insight into a means for motivating crowds to participate in online environmental monitoring projects, also offering possible selection criteria of target audience.
Management Decision, 2016
Purpose – Considering the ongoing international debate on the role of public administrations in e... more Purpose – Considering the ongoing international debate on the role of public administrations in economic systems, the interest around public service motivation (PSM) has significantly grown among practitioners and scholars in the past two decades. Following the research streams that have investigated topics of organizational behavior within the public context, the purpose of this paper is to examine the influence of PSM on public employees’ feelings of job satisfaction. The novelty of the study lies in linking some characteristics of the work context presumed to be more prevalent in public organizations with specific job characteristics, regarded as relevant antecedents of job satisfaction. Design/methodology/approach – The study is based on two complementary studies conducted in an Italian public administration. The paper shows how PSM influences job satisfaction, job engagement, and life satisfaction. Findings – This paper shows how PSM influences job satisfaction, job engagement,...
This paper attempts to give some hints for human resources management that are founded on a motiv... more This paper attempts to give some hints for human resources management that are founded on a motivation-based economic analysis of incentives and the idea of relational capital. It is argued that cross-fertilization between traditional economic literature on incentives, experimental economics and research in cognitive psychology can provide useful insights on how best to design incentives schemes in firms. This analysis promotes a diffused style of leadership which could render human resources development more sustainable while the traditional hierarchical one is losing grasp with reality.
The aim of this paper is to explain how the social process of sensemaking can be supported adopti... more The aim of this paper is to explain how the social process of sensemaking can be supported adopting causal maps. Even if the opportunity and the possibility to manage organizational identity during the post-acquisition integration has been argued by previous papers, the evolution of organizational identity remains a social process that takes place during the interaction among people. In fact, an acquisition creates conditions in which differences among identities are emphasized. This social process is based on sensemaking, that can be defined as the capability to link daily activities with large patterns. The effectiveness of such a process within an organization depends on the presence of "common points" across cognitive maps of knowledge that each employee develops. After an acquisition these "common points" decrease because of a higher ambiguity. A managerial response that is based on clear communication and coherent managers' behaviour can reduce this ambiguity and improve sensemaking effectiveness. Based on a case study of a M&A in the European banking industry, we argue that after an M&A, a managerial response that clarifies organizational identity perception, enhancing weaker relationships, improves the effectiveness of sensemaking process reducing the ambiguity in multiple identities. People from the acquired bank were requested to elaborate a casual map of organizational identity before and after the acquisition. Then common points on maps were measured and a "trend of ambiguity" has been calculated. This paper illustrate how it is possible to describe the initiatives that the acquiring bank used during integration process by using cognitive map and network measurements; similarly, the effects on the level of effectiveness of sensemaking have been calculated. We also described how the acquired bank could measure and monitor the level of comprehension of corporate strategy. In doing that, the bank can clarify strategic issues related to organizational identity that shows a weak level of comprehension. In addition, this paper has three main outcomes. First, we explain why the evolution of organizational identity is a social process based on sensemaking and how appropriate managerial responses must be monitored and supported at social level in order to be effective. Second, it clarifies how cognitive maps can be a managerial tool to achieve that result. Cognitive maps allow representing the expected organizational identity in a form closer to the mental representation that people build about the new reality. Third, it shows that sensemaking process can be measured in terms of effectiveness using network measurements. These results can be interesting for both academic and practitioners. More in details, managers dealing with acquisition could adopt casual maps in order to facilitate sensemaking process and measuring effectiveness of their integration strategy.
ABSTRACT Following Boxall, Purcell, and Wright (2007) international human resource management foc... more ABSTRACT Following Boxall, Purcell, and Wright (2007) international human resource management focuses on companies operating across national boundaries. Globalization forces multinational companies (MNCs) to be overexposed to social and economic shifts and jolts. As a consequence, to survive they need to develop capacity for resilience to be able to anticipate, respond, adapt to, and/or rapidly recover from negative events that may occur. Resilience can be analysed at a macro-, meso- and micro-level (organization, organizational units, individual). Similarly, the HR system of a MNC is designed at the macro-headquarter level (HR philosophy, strategy, guidelines), executed at a meso-subsidiary level (HR local policy and practice) and enacted and perceived at a micro-individual level. Symmetrically, international mobility (IM) might be used to activate companies’ local responsiveness, aimed at the final goal of enhancing the ability of companies to perform globally as they try to balance (horizontal) coordination amongst local subsidiaries and (vertical) control. Within this framework we posit that HR mobile professionals can play a crucial role in translating the general international HR (IHR) policy at the local level, enacting the local responsiveness. The paper moves from the mechanical definition of resilience, trying to ‘integrate’ different perspectives borrowed from other fields via proposing a multi-level framework posing on the interplay of IHR management along three different levels of execution: headquarter, subsidiary, individual.
ABSTRACT In consequence of a major administrative reform in 2007, the Danish emergency care syste... more ABSTRACT In consequence of a major administrative reform in 2007, the Danish emergency care system is undergoing the largest reorganization in decades (MHP, 2008; Vrangbaek, 2013). The number of acute hospitals has been reduced from more than 40 to 21 and the new emergency departments (EDs) have been established (MHP, 2008; Wen et al., 2013, Mattsson, Mattsson & Jørsboe, 2014). The EDs are the cornerstones of the Danish National Health System (NHS), since up to 70% of all acute care patients are evaluated there, where they can be treated and discharged, or admitted for further care (MHP, 2008; Wen et al., 2013). The EDs therefore play a crucial role in determining the design of the overall health assistance, being a critical pathway for acute care and for hospital crowding. The Danish emergency care system represents an organizational field (DiMaggio & Powell, 1983) in which highly specialized healthcare actors such as Primary Care Physicians (PCPs), systems of off-hours care clinics, ambulance systems and hospitals have to coordinate their actions with the ultimate objective to be timely and appropriately responsive towards the collectivity. On the other hand, following the general reform of 2007, the National Board of Health in Denmark (NBHD) has recommended that the delivery of emergency care through fewer, larger, and more centralized EDs. That in order to concentrate specialists and provide a higher level of care in a more efficient way, in a system in which the patient overall impression of the hospitalization has traditionally been positive (MHP, 2008). Moreover, the overall reform generated (external) financial crunches towards healthcare providers that predictably turned into internal pressures towards efficiency (e.g. Louis et al., 1999; Lega & DePietro, 2005; Reay & Hinings, 2005, 2009). The search for efficiency via the maximization of economies of scale, by concentrating specialized knowledge and equipment, is generating three symbiotic organizational effects, that can be studied at different level of analysis (Hackman, 2003): a) at a macro-level, via a general rationalization of the public expense, in two ways: a1) since the regions are in charge the planning and delivery of health care, new regional mechanisms for governance and funding, the diffusion of new performance appraisal approaches; a2) via the exploitation of operational positive spillovers among agents, through coordination mechanisms based on healthcare networks (Lomi et al., 2014) with several interdependent providers covering the various phases of emergency care ; b) at a meso-level, via the definition of structures, roles and procedures of emergency care: in fact, each hospital is designing its own ED, with different level of managerial autonomy, human resource specialization, technological endowment, design of internal processes. In short, the Danish emergency care system is trying to change towards more cost-effective but also more patient-oriented configurations; c) at a micro-level, via the design of appropriate incentives for professionals. To say with Fearlie and Shortell “A multilevel approach to change and the associated core properties can provide a framework for assessing progress on these and related issues over the next several years” (2001: 307). The paper presents the preliminary results of a larger research project called DESIGN-EM aiming at designing effective and efficient EDs. In a dynamic environment, in which each of the 21 Danish hospitals is still configuring its own ED , the research project aims at understanding if differences in organization designs affect efficiency, effectiveness, quality of patient care, and resource utilization. This paper reports on the part of the project which is trying to investigate the meso-level of analysis (hospitals/EDs) and focuses on the research gap related to the adoption of the multy-contingency approach (Burton & Obel, 1988; 2004) in the design of emergency care, with a specific focus on the EDs (Tab. 1). Such a research addresses the following research questions: How can hospitals design their EDs to adapt to the institutional, technological, and clinical dynamics?
Business Horizons, 2015
High-reliability organizations operate in highly regulated sectors in which the main concern is e... more High-reliability organizations operate in highly regulated sectors in which the main concern is ensuring the safety of people and goods. Despite high levels of formalization, organizations have to be sensitive to contingent situations and ready to face the unexpected, so the role of the people in command remains crucial. When unanticipated events and contingencies arise, organizational improvisation comes into its own. Improvisation is the deliberate fusion of design and execution in a novel production entailing the cognitive, rational, and event intuitive interpretation of prescribed rules and standards of conduct at various levels of aggregation. Standardization and improvisation are often represented as two conflicting demands rather than as necessarily interdependent; hence, the possible presence of improvisation in high-reliability organizations has been left underexplored. While most of the extant studies on improvisation have stressed the wisdom of improvised choices, not all improvisations are so successful. In this article we illuminate the dark side of organizational improvisation by analyzing the notorious case of the sinking of the Costa Concordia. The case shows how conformity to the formal adoption of standards and compliance to them can provide a shelter under which impromptu adaptation can be pursued, expressing the negative side of improvisation.
Abstract Merger and Acquisition (M&A) activity is expanding exponentially in ... more Abstract Merger and Acquisition (M&A) activity is expanding exponentially in Europe in several industries. The Italian banking industry is following this trend and in a few years there will be not more than four global players. But do sheer size, scale and scope bestow an ...
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Papers by Luca Giustiniano