This study examines changing employment brands in the context of a multinational acquisition, specifically the implications for current employees. Using a sample (N = 251) from both the acquired and acquiring workforces, employees are tracked across 12 months following acquisition. The study explores predictors of identification with the acquiring organization, intent to quit, and discretionary effort. We focus on employment brand–related predictors, specifically perceptions linked to the provision of unique employment experiences, organizational identity strength, perceived prestige, and judgments of whether the acquiring organization acts in accordance with its corporate identity claims. The study showed that perceptions of prestige immediately after acquisition predict identification 12 months hence, as do judgments of whether the organization acts in accordance with its corporate social responsibility–based corporate identity claims. These judgments also predict subsequent levels of discretionary effort and long-term intent to leave, as do perceptions linked to the provision of unique employment experiences. Perceived change in these unique employment experiences is also related to change in identification and intent to leave across time. Importantly, these elements have a varied effect on the adjustment outcomes when comparing the two workforces.

Available online 24 January 2013
Publication year: 2013
Source:Technological Forecasting and Social Change



Intensifying global urbanization and environmental changes bring about the imperative of sustainable urban development and decisions upon inescapable pressures and risks, but knowledge integration between disciplines is a limiting contextual challenge. This paper proposes a reformulation, in terms of urban risk management, of an earlier developed ontological scenario generation method. The procedure consists of several steps: (i) identification-and-prioritization of main pressures, (ii) paired discussion of pressures using four-cell matrices, (iii) re-visit of the pressures' priority order, (iv) articulation of short-listed pressures as decision-making questions, and (v) generation of scenarios via “yes/no” responses to each question, in their order of priority. In this article, the method feeds upon the general context described in recent multi-disciplinary urban studies and public strategic plans in the city of Iasi (Romania), to propose a formal procedure for enabling the acceleration of productive decision making towards city sustainability. Answering three top priority questions, namely “Implement a business-friendly and efficient governance system?”, “Develop a resource management system?”, and “Carry out a human capital accelerator strategy?” results in a 4-scenario set: Receding City, Wanting City, Promising City, Inspiring City. The scenarios are discussed in terms of systemic risks at the end of post-communist transition and beginning of the socio-economic convergence with Western Europe.

Highlights

► Real gains towards sustainable cities require new knowledge management approaches. ► The author applies dynamic decision trees for developing city sustainability. ► The “Inspiring City” scenario represents a ‘snapshot’ on the path toward prosperity. ► The city of Iasi will need to recover its own identity as a cultural pivot. ► In particular, prioritization is sought to address and prevent systemic risks.

Available online 21 January 2013
Publication year: 2013
Source:Futures



This paper tells the story of the implementation in the early 2000s of a European Project called VISIONS. The project organised conversations about sustainability ideas for some cities in Europe, including Venice, and for Europe as a whole. For the city of Venice four different scenarios were built, illustrated and debated through a social research process. The project is emblematic of many discussions about anticipation, foresight and “futuring” activities taking place today in many places. In this paper we discuss how conversations about the future are indeed enquiries in the present; we also use Borges Aleph invention and post-normal science to argue that “futuring” conversations need to pull in often neglected types of knowledge; we also argue that the ways in which plausibility of “future” scenarios is argued needs to be deliberated by all concerned and not relinquished to a specific elite. Eventually, we argue that a post-normal framework and its associated concept of fitness for purpose contains the necessary elements for making “futuring” activities a fundamental step on humans’ desirable constant self-reflection.

Highlights

► This project has explored ways in which different audiences can engage in conversations highly framed by scientific arguments, experimenting with different ways of communicating scenarios. ► This paper argues that futuring activities, should happen in a post-normal context, i.e. involving all relevant social actors in safe and legitimate debate spaces. ► This paper examines plausibility of scenario work and the importance of the narrator voice. ► This paper suggests that different spaces for studying complexity have to be created, including experiential forms of sensing the knowledge action paradoxes.

Tom Falk, chairman and CEO of Kimberly-Clark Tom Falk is basically a lifer at Kimberly-Clark, the global manufacturer of essential consumer products. He’s been with Kimberly-Clark for 29 years and was named CEO in 2002 and chairman in 2003. Sustainability has become as interwoven into the company’s culture as safety, says Falk. “We have to operate [...]