Showing papers by "Danny Miller published in 1991"

Stale in the Saddle: CEO Tenure and the Match Between Organization and Environment

Abstract: It has often been argued that an organization's strategy and structure must be tailored or matched to the challenges posed by its environment. Our research shows that this match is less likely to be achieved by long-tenured CEO's than by their counterparts with less tenure. It also suggests that the failure to match strategy and environment hurts financial performance. More specifically, CEO tenure related inversely to the prescribed match between organization and environment, especially in uncertain settings and where ownership was concentrated. The match between environment and strategy was in turn positively related to financial performance.

The Myth of Primitivism : Perspectives on Art

Abstract: This book explores the fusion of myth, history and geography which leads to ideas of primitivism, and looks at their construction, interpretation and consumption in Western culture. Contextualized by Susan Hiller's introductions to each section, discussions range from the origins of cultural colonialism to eurocentric ideas of primitive societies, including the use of primitive culture in constructing national identities, and the appropriation of primitivist imagery in modernist art. The result is a controversial critique of art theory, practice and politics, and a major enquiry into the history of primitivism and its implications for contemporary culture.

The Evolution of Crises: Crisis Precursors

Abstract: Industrial crises, or organizationally based technological disasters that cause major harm to human life and/or the natural environment, may be triggered by industrial accidents, environmental pollution incidents, product injuries, or occupational hazards. While past explanations of crisis causes focusing on technological organizational and interorganizational failures, as well as simultaneous failures of technological organizational and societal systems provide us with a good understanding of immediate causes of events that trigger crises, the authors point out that we still lack an understanding of how preconditions for crises arise. Arguing that the precursor conditions of industrial crises are rooted in the historical development of organizations, and interactions between organizations and their environments, the authors attempt to determine why these precursors arise. Using an analysis of data on the Bhopal and the Three Mile Island crises, they trace the evolution of crisis precursor conditions, and present the patterns and logics of change in organizational and environmental variables observed in the two cases studied.