Hospitals provide highly sophisticated services, but they are largely
steered by means of simplistic management models, which do not match the complexities faced by these organizations. The design of management models in hospitals and public organizations at large shows a bend toward reductionism. The reductionism of these models is rooted in their short-termism, and in the myopia of their designers. The purpose of our contribution is to draft a path by which steering
approaches can be developed, which are more effective in coping with organizational complexity than the short-termist, reductionist management models often in use. Using a generic model, we demonstrate that conventional approaches to steering entail unintended side effects leading to counterproductive system behaviors
and to results inferior to those coming from no steering at all. We suggest how more sophisticated steering models can be designed to induce desirable modes of system behavior.
In order to create unique customer value and stay competitive also in the long run, customer-centric firms need to develop capabilities to identify relevant trends. The scarce existent research, notably on absorptive capacities, and common management practice suggest that customer interactions and internal cooperation increase future readiness. With data from a cross-industry management survey, we confirm that both factors indeed fully mediate the relationship between customer-centric orientation and future readiness. Multi-group structural equation analyses help to specify how organizational factors impact the creation of future readiness and provide rich managerial implications for resource allocation.
Marketing managers are supposed to be highly professional in taking information about markets and customer preferences into account when making strategic decisions. However, following the literature on decision behavior, people constantly engage in identity-based decision making which leads to ignorance of relevant information. In the context of managerial decision making, such behavior might jeopardize a firm's market orientation. In three experiments the authors investigate managers' strategic decisions in marketing when one alternative is somehow related to the identity of the decision maker. The findings show that managers tend to make identity-based decisions and ignore relevant market information. Finally, evidence is demonstrated that managers misleadingly project their self-identity-driven preferences onto the preferences of the consumers which clearly points out a detrimental identity effect with regard to managerial decision making in marketing strategy.
