Showing papers in "Organization Studies in 2004"

Strategy as Practice: Recursiveness, Adaptation, and Practices-in-Use

Abstract: In this article, a social theory framework is developed to explain the common themes of recursive and adaptive practice underpinning the existing strategic management literature. In practice, there is a coexistent tension between recursive and adaptive forms of strategic action that spans multiple levels from macro-institutional and competitive contexts to within-firm levels of analysis to individual cognition. This tension may be better understood by examining how management practices are used to put strategy into practice. Such practices span multiple levels of context and are adaptable to their circumstances of use, serving to highlight both general characteristics and localized idiosyncrasies of strategy as practice. The article develops the concept of management practices-in-use into a research agenda and nine broad research questions that may be used to investigate empirically strategy as practice.

Building Project Capabilities: From Exploratory to Exploitative Learning

Abstract: This paper presents a model of project capability-building consisting of two interacting levels of learning. First, it describes the bottom-up, ‘project-led’ phases of learning that occur when a firm moves into a new technology/market base: an exploratory ‘vanguard project’ phase; a ‘project-to-project’ phase to capture lessons learned; and a ‘project-to-organization’ phase when an organization increases its capabilities to deliver many projects. Second, it addresses the ‘business-led’ learning (within which the project-led learning is embedded) that occurs when ‘top-down’ strategic decisions are taken to create and exploit the company-wide resources and capabilities required to perform increasingly predictable and routine project activities.

Project-Based Organizations, Embeddedness and Repositories of Knowledge: Editorial

Abstract: Project-based organizations refer to a variety of organizational forms that involve the creation of temporary systems for the performance of project tasks (Lundin and Soderholm 1995; DeFillippi 2002). Project-based organizations have received increasing attention in recent years as an emerging organizational form to integrate diverse and specialized intellectual resources and expertise (DeFillippi and Arthur 1998; Hobday 2000; Gann and Salter 2000; Keegan and Turner 2002; Lindkvist 2004). Recent interest in the emerging knowledge economy has reinforced the view that project organizations in their many varieties are a fast and flexible mode of organizing knowledge resources. Project-based organizations can circumvent traditional barriers to organizational change and innovation, since each project is presented as a temporary, relatively short-lived, phenomenon. As such, it does not pose the same threat to vested interests as would the creation of a permanent new department or division. Moreover, project-based organizations allow for low-cost experiments. Because of their limited duration, project-based organizations do not constitute irreversible resource commitments of fixed costs. Hence, companies and other types of organization may launch a variety of ventures through project-based organizations and may terminate unsuccessful ventures at low cost and little disturbance to the organizational sponsor (DeFillippi 2002). Project-based organizations are found in a wide range of industries. These include consulting and professional services (e.g. accounting, advertising, architectural design, law, management consulting, public relations), cultural industries (e.g. fashion, film-making, video games, publishing), high technology (e.g. software, computer hardware, multimedia), and complex products and systems (e.g. construction, transportation, telecommunications, infrastructure). For many of these industries, project-based organizations are employed to meet the highly differentiated and customized nature of demand, where clients frequently negotiate and interact with project organizers over the ofteninnovative design of products and services (Hobday 1998). However, firms in all types of industries are undertaking projects as a growing part of their operations even while their primary ‘productive’ activity might be volume-based or operations-oriented (e.g. Midler 1995; Keegan and Turner 2002). Hobday (2000) refers to these as project-led organizations and Organization Studies 25(9): 1475–1489 ISSN 0170–8406 Copyright © 2004 SAGE Publications (London, Thousand Oaks, CA & New Delhi) 1475 Authors name

A Meta-analysis of Innovation and Organizational Size:

Abstract: Findings regarding the direction and intensity of the relation between size and innovation in the literature are contradictory. In the journal Organization Studies in 1992, Damanpour proposed a meta-analytical study in an attempt to clarify the diversity of existing conclusions. The present article is a replica and an extension of that study using the same methodology. Our aim is to (1) bring the pool of accumulated knowledge up to date, examining the time span 1970–2001, and (2) review in greater depth the effects of alternative ways of measuring organizational size. The sample used was made up of 87 correlations drawn from 53 empirical studies published in the most important journals on business administration. The analysis enabled us to confirm the existence of a significant and positive correlation between size and innovation. It also provided evidence showing that the contradictory results obtained in previous studies are due to divergences in the methods used to operationalize one, or more, of the v...

Temporary Architectures of Learning: Knowledge Governance in Project Ecologies

Abstract: This paper is motivated by the intention to contribute to a contextual understanding of projects. More specifically, the analysis starts from the assumption that essential processes of creating and sedimenting knowledge accrue at the interface between projects and the organizations, communities, and networks in and through which projects operate. By adopting such a contextual perspective, the chief aim of the present study is to unfold a conceptual framework for analyzing processes of project-based learning. This conceptual framework is built around the notion of the project ecology. By consecutively disentangling the constitutive layers of project ecologies — the core team, the firm, the epistemic community, and the personal networks — the basic organizational architecture of project ecologies is revealed. This architecture is employed as a theoretical template for an exploration of learning processes in two ecologies which are driven by opposing logics of creating and sedimenting knowledge. In this comp...

Codes of Good Governance Worldwide: What is the Trigger?

Abstract: This article examines the mechanisms underlying the worldwide diffusion of organizational practices. We suggest that the two main theoretical explanations in the diffusion literature, efficiency and legitimation, can be complementary. More specifically, we argue that endogenous forces seek to enhance the efficiency of existing systems, while exogenous forces seek to increase legitimation. To assess our argument, we explore the worldwide diffusion of codes of good governance. These codes are a set of ‘best practice’ recommendations regarding the behavior and structure of a firm’s board of directors issued to compensate for deficiencies in a country’s corporate governance system regarding the protection of shareholders’ rights. We have collected data on codes of good governance for 49 countries. We operationalize efficiency needs in terms of the characteristics of shareholder protection, and legitimation pressures in terms of government liberalization, economic openness, and presence of foreign institutiona...

Project-Based Learning and the Role of Learning Boundaries:

Abstract: This paper seeks to analyse the extent to which organizations can learn from projects by focusing on the relationship between projects and their organizational context. The paper highlights three dimensions of project-based learning: the practice-based nature of learning, project autonomy and knowledge integration. This analysis generates a number of propositions on the relationship between the learning generated within projects and its transfer to other parts of the organization. In particular, the paper highlights the ‘learning boundaries’ which emerge when learning within projects creates new divisions in practice. These propositions are explored through a comparative analysis of two case studies of construction projects. This analysis suggests that the learning boundaries which develop around projects reflect the nested nature of learning, whereby different levels of learning may substitute for each other. Learning outcomes in the cases can thus be analysed in terms of the interplay between organizational learning and project-level learning. The paper concludes that learning boundaries are an important constraint on attempts to exploit the benefits of projectbased learning for the wider organization.

Process Transformation: Limitations to Radical Organizational Change within Public Service Organizations

Abstract: This paper draws on a study of the implementation of business process reengineering (BPR) in a UK National Health Service (NHS) hospital to examine the challenge of effecting a transformatory shift to a new form of process organization in a large and complex public service organization. The paper’s theoretical and empirical interests go beyond BPR by bringing together literatures about organizational transformation, new organizational forms and the new public management (NPM) in a novel way. Data reveal important limits to intended organizational transformation and develop findings about sedimented rather than transformational change and the limitations of radical top-down change strategies in professionalized public service organizations. Within the domain of public service organizations, the paper also advances a new argument about why intended moves to post-NPM forms may remain contained in scope.

Bringing Space Back in: Organizing the Generative Building

Abstract: In this article, we re.ect on architecture and management and organization theory, in terms of their mutual implications. We focus especially on a tacit implication in mainstream organization theory, which has an architectural genesis. In the past, management has been largely undergirded by a Cartesian rationality, one seen most clearly in the argument that structure follows strategy. Architecturally, this Cartesianism is present in the injunction that form follows function. Criticizing this point of view, we argue that organizations should be thought of as material, spatial ensembles — not just cognitive abstractions writ large. Linking space and organization in this way, we re.ect on the power that every spatial organization necessarily implies, both in negative and positive terms. After examining existing approaches to this issue, we discuss some positive power implications for management. We introduce the concept of the generative building that, instead of being a merely passive container for actions ...

Deconstructing Difference: The Rhetoric of Human Resource Managers’ Diversity Discourses

Abstract: This article analyses texts on diversity produced in 25 interviews with Flemish human resource (HR) managers from a critical discourse analysis and rhetorical perspective. Following critical discourse analysis, we analyse how HR managers define diversity, how their diversity discourses reflect existing managerial practices and underlying power relations, and how they reaffirm or challenge those managerial practices and power relations. Specifically, we examine how power enters HR managers’ local discourses of diversity through the very micro-dynamics of language by analysing the rhetorical schemes they use and the grand Discourses they draw from. This critical, text-focused approach to diversity discourses contributes to the development of a non-essentialist reconceptualization of diversity that acknowledges power.

Narrative Temporality: Implications for Organizational Research

Abstract: Our aim is to stimulate critical reflection on an issue that has received relatively little attention: how alternative presuppositions about time can lead to different narrative ways of researching and theorizing organizational life. Based on two amendments to Paul Ricoeur’s work in Time and Narrative, we re-story narrative research in organizations as Narrative Temporality (NT). Our amendments draw upon the temporality perspective of Jean-Paul Sartre in order to reframe narrative research in organizations as a fluid, dynamic, yet rigorous process open to the interpretations (negotiated) of its many participants (polyphonic) and situated in the context and point of enactment (synchronic). We believe an approach to narrative organizational research grounded in NT can open up new ways of thinking about experience and sense-making, and help us take reflexive responsibility for our research.

Theatrical Improvisation: Lessons for Organizations

Abstract: This article uses the improvisational theatre metaphor to examine the performance implications of improvisational processes in firms. We recognize similarities and differences between the concepts of performance and success in both theatre and organizations, and extract three main lessons from improvisational theatre that can be applied to organizational improvisation. In the first lesson, we start by recognizing the equivocal and unpredictable nature of improvisation. The second lesson emphasizes that good improvisational theatre arises because its main focus, in contrast to the focus of firms, is more on the process of improvising and less on the outcomes of improvisation. Lastly, in the third lesson, we look at the theatre techniques of ‘agreement’, ‘awareness’, ‘use of ready-mades’, and ‘collaboration’, and translate them into concepts that are relevant for organizations in developing an improvisational capability.

Postcards from the Edge: Local Communities, Global Programs and Boundary Objects:

Abstract: This paper considers the limitations of project management tools as boundary objects within dispersed or global programs of teamwork. The concept of boundary object is receiving growing attention in the management literature. These artefacts are argued to provide a basis for negotiation and knowledge exchange between differentiated communities of practice. The paper assesses these claims theoretically and empirically in the context of global projects. Theoretically it draws on the literatures on boundary objects, dispersed work and project management tools and organization. The paper then analyses a case study of a global program in a major computing corporation. The program spanned numerous geographical sites across the US, Europe and Japan as well as several functional communities of practice including production, services, sales, IT and company registry. The method involved interviews with 33 program managers at six sites and analysis of program management devices such as integrated timelines, online s...

Aristotle, Ethics and Business Organizations

Abstract: I have developed a theoretical framework which I call ‘an Aristotelian approach to business’ to talk about corporations and organizations in general. Although Aristotle is famous largely as an enemy of business, he was the first economist and he might well be called the first business ethicist as well. We can no longer accept the amoral idea that ‘business is business’ (not really a tautology but an excuse for being socially irresponsible and personally insensitive). According to Aristotle, one has to think of oneself as a member of the larger community—the Polis for him, the corporation, the neighborhood, the city or the country (and the world) for us—and strive to excel, to bring out what is best in ourselves and our shared enterprise. What is best in us—our virtues—are in turn defined by that larger community, and there is therefore no ultimate split or antagonism between individual self-interest and the greater public good. The Aristotelian approach to business ethics, rather, begins with the two-pron...

Authoritative Sensemaking in a Public Inquiry Report

Abstract: This article analyses the Cullen Report into the Piper Alpha disaster in order to research how public inquiry teams represent their efforts to make sense of events as authoritative. It is argued that inquiry reports are highly convention-governed sensemaking narratives that employ various forms of verisimilitude in order to bolster their authority. They are also monological storytelling performances that function hegemonically to impose a particular version of reality on their readers. The investigation of the means by which inquiry reports accomplish verisimilitude and hegemony are important as they may shed light on how this form of public discourse depoliticizes disaster events, legitimates social institutions, and lessens anxieties by concocting myths that emphasize our omnipotence and capacity to control.

Work Intensification and Emotional Labour among UK University Lecturers: An Exploratory Study

Abstract: Until the early 1980s relatively little research interest was devoted to the concept of emotional labour in organizational settings. Although it is now acknowledged that emotional labour is present at different hierarchical levels and among many occupational groups, no study has explored the issue of emotional labour in the context of work intensification among professional groups. This article presents evidence derived from interviews with university lecturers to assess (1) the frequency and propensity of emotional labour and the extent to which emotional labour is increasingly becoming part of the work of university lecturers, (2) the extent to which such emotional labour is derived from the intensifying changes to the work environment of university lecturers, and (3) the positive and negative consequences of such emotional labour and work intensification. The article finds evidence of emotional labouring among university lecturers. It is argued that the increase in such emotional labouring is largely a result of the heightened intensification of the academic labour process, which is exacerbated by the multiple and sometimes conflicting demands of various stakeholders. The effects of such emotional labour included both positive and negative consequences. These findings lead to a discussion of a series of implications and conclusions.

Embedding New Management Knowledge in Project-Based Organizations

Abstract: The embedding of new management knowledge in project-based organization is made particularly problematic due to the attenuated links that exist between organization-wide change initiatives and project management practice. To explore the complex processes involved in change in project-based organization, this paper draws upon a case study of change within the UK construction industry. Analysing the case study through the lens of structuration theory (Giddens 1984), the paper examines the complex, recursive relationship that links change in project management practice with the peculiarities of that context. The findings demonstrate that a number of features of project-based organization — namely, decentralization, short-term emphasis on project performance and distributed work practices — are critically important in understanding the shaping and embedding of new management practice.

Dynamics of Central Control and Subsidiary Autonomy in the Management of Human Resources: Case-Study Evidence from US MNCs in the UK

Abstract: This article revisits a central question in the debates on the management of multinationals: the balance between centralized policy-making and subsidiary autonomy. It does so through data from a series of case studies on the management of human resources in American multinationals in the UK. Two strands of debate are confronted. The first is the literature on differences between multinationals of different national origins which has shown that US companies tend to be more centralized, standardized, and formalized in their management of human resources. It is argued that the literature has provided unconvincing explanations of this pattern, failing to link it to distinctive features of the American business system in which US multinationals are embedded. The second strand is the wider debate on the balance between centralization and decentralization in multinationals. It is argued that the literature neglects important features of this balance: the contingent oscillation between centralized and decentralized modes of operation and (relatedly) the way in which the balance is negotiated by organizational actors through micro-political processes whereby the external structural constraints on the company are defined and interpreted. In such negotiation, actors’ leverage often derives from exploiting differences between the national business systems in which the multinational operates.

The Effects of Liminality on Individual and Organizational Learning

Abstract: This article uses an examination of the changing nature of organization in the UK television industry to reflect on the impact of liminality on learning. We take as our starting point Garsten’s (1999) use of the term ‘liminality’ (being situated ‘betwixt and between’) to examine individual and organizational learning in the context of organizational recomposition, where learning increasingly occurs at the limits of organizations within networks and teams that cross organizational divides. Garsten argues that the contractualization of work can be seen to challenge the old boundaries of organization and that it suggests new ways of organizing and experiencing work. By extending liminality to the concept of learning, we suggest that as more industries adopt temporary project teams as a way of organizing work, this not only challenges the concept of organization as an enduring social artefact, but also raises issues about how learning and knowledge development takes place. We examine the effects of liminal ep...

Cognitive Style and the Management of Small and Medium-Sized Enterprises

Abstract: A long-standing dilemma in theories of management surrounds the question of whether effective managerial action is better served by ‘rational analysis’ or ‘creative intuition’. In the present article, analysis and intuition are conceived within a framework of cognitive style in which a distinction is drawn between the processing of information (rational and intuitive) and the organizing of information in memory (local and global). Such styles are thought to affect a range of management behaviours (including decision-making). The relationship between managers’ cognitive styles and firm performance was examined from a contingency perspective in which environmental instability was hypothesized as moderating the relationship between style and performance. The study was based upon data obtained from owner-managers and managing directors of small and medium-sized firms in two contrasting sectors. There was a positive relationship between intuitive decision style and contemporaneous financial and non-financial p...

Learning Groups: What Types are there? A Theoretical Analysis and an Empirical Study in a Consultancy Firm:

Abstract: This article attempts to unpack the notion of ‘communities of practice’, in more detail than has been done before, and looks more generally at intra-organizational groups for learning. First, it gives a theoretical analysis of the relevant characteristics of learning groups which affect the possibilities and conditions for the sharing and joint development of knowledge. These characteristics include opportunities for learning (on the ‘competence’ side of relations), relational risk (on the ‘governance’ side of relations), and the effects on both from the ‘structural features’ of groups. On the competence side, it analyses the implications of different types of knowledge and learning, and the trade-off between stability of relations (for the sake of mutual understanding and trust) and flexibility of relations (for the sake of variety as a source of learning). On the structural side, it considers the effects on competence and governance of network density, the strength of ties, structural holes, and stabili...

‘It’s an Interesting Conversation I’m Hearing’: The Doctor as Manager:

Abstract: The aim of this article is to outline in discursive-linguistic terms how doctor-managers (or ‘physician-executives’ as they are termed in the USA) manage the incommensurate dimensions of their boundary position between profession and organization. In order to achieve this we undertook a discourse analytical study of both recorded, situated talk and open interview data focusing on one doctor-manager navigating between profession and organization. The doctor-manager at the centre of this study locates himself on the boundary of at least three discourses which, in many respects, are incommensurate. These are the profession-specific discourse of clinical medicine, the resource-efficiency and systematization discourse of management, and an interpersonalizing discourse devoted to hedging and mitigating contradictions. While this multi-vocality in itself is not surprising, data show that the doctor-manager positions himself across these discourses and manages their inherent incommensurabilities before a heteroge...

Introduction: Struggles with Organizational Discourse

Abstract: This special issue of Organization Studies was conceived with two ideas in mind: to show how studies of organizational discourse provide important insights into processes of organizing, and to take advantage of an opportunity to reflect on research practice at a time when discourse analysis is becoming increasingly influential within organizational studies. The following six articles play an important role with regard to the first objective. They are all empirical studies, and show how the application of discourse analytical methods can be used to study processes of organizing. In so doing, they highlight the ways in which dominant meanings emerge from the power-laden nature of organizational contexts, as well as indicating some of the discursive practices and rhetorical devices that are deployed in these struggles around meaning. In this regard, they contribute to the development of alternative ways of describing, analysing, and theorizing the processes and practices that constitute the ‘organization’ — something that has preoccupied those organizational scholars who have become disillusioned with mainstream theories and methodologies. With regard to the second objective of reflecting on research practice, we wish, in this introductory article, to pay attention to certain theoretical struggles that face researchers as they attempt to develop our understanding of organizational discourse. We also attempt to reflect more deeply in examining how the special issue represents an arena in which meaning is being negotiated around what constitutes organizational discourse. We suggest that these negotiations are indicative of a larger struggle facing particularly those who study organizational discourse from an empirical standpoint: that as interest in applying discourse analysis grows, one of its most important contributions (its propensity to encourage reflexivity on the part of the researcher) is at risk of being sidelined. In the remainder of this introduction, we define organizational discourse in terms of the struggles for meaning that occur in organizations. We then Organization Studies 25(1): 5–13 Copyright © 2003 SAGE Publications (London, Thousand Oaks, CA & New Delhi) 5 Authors name

The (Non)Sense of Organizational Change: An Essai about Universal Management Hypes, Sick Consultancy Metaphors, and Healthy Organization Theories

Abstract: The global business world is infected by a virus that induces a permanent need for organizational change, which is fed by the management consultancy industry. The nature of the organizational change hype changes colour frequently, through the emergence of new universal management fashions. An urge to change is understandable from the perspectives of the consultant and the manager, but often organizational changes are ineffective or counter-productive when implemented. In this context, this article’s purpose is threefold. First, on the basis of an interpretation of different literatures, we .esh out an argument about the nonsense of organizational change that is driven by sick consultancy metaphors. Second, we argue that the application of healthy organization theories offers ample guidelines for organizational change initiatives that make more sense than prominent management consultancy rhetoric. Third, pulling both strings together, we plead for the development of an evidence-based (change) consultancy p...

What Are We Playing at? Theatre, Organization, and the Use of Metaphor

Abstract: This article addresses the question of how metaphor works and illustrates this with an explication of the ‘organization as theatre’ metaphor It is argued that the so-called comparison account of metaphor that has dominated organization studies to date is flawed, misguided, and incapable of accounting for the fact that metaphors generate inferences beyond the similarities required for comprehending the metaphor and that metaphoric understanding is creative, with the features of importance being emergent rather than existing antecedently A new model of metaphor for organizational theorizing is therefore proposed in this article and illustrated through an extended discussion and explication of the ‘organization as theatre’ metaphor This explication shows furthermore that the ‘organization as theatre’ metaphor has not broken any new ground or led to any conceptual advances in organization theory, but has just provided a language of theatre (actors, scenes, scripts, and so on) for framing and communicating

Enron Spectacles: A Critical Dramaturgical Analysis

Abstract: Enron shows us dramaturgy gone amuck. In this article, critical theory and postmodern theory are crossed to form a critical dramaturgyresulting in two main contributions. First, critical dramaturgy is differentiated from other forms of dramaturgy, showing how ‘spectacle’ is accomplished through a theatrical performance that legitimates and rationalizes, and casts the public in the role of passive spectators. Second, critical dramaturgy has important connections with public relations theory. While contemporary public relations is concerned with the building of relationships, critical dramaturgy looks at how corporate theatrical image management inhibits relationships by erecting the barrier of the metaphorical proscenium. The Enron scandal is viewed as the collapse of a corporate spectacle illusion into megaspectacle fragments. These fragments include the naming of Enron, the Valhalla Rogue Traders scandal, the Gas Bank, Greenmail, Cowboy Capitalism, the Skilling–Mark rivalry, and the Masters of the Univer...

The Cross-National Diffusion of Work Systems: Translation of Japanese Operations in the UK:

Abstract: This article investigates the process of the cross-national diffusion of work systems to the affiliate firms of three Japanese multinational companies in the UK. It examines the degree to which structural, cultural, and control-related work systems of the source company are adopted by the recipient. The case studies highlight the interplay between institutional forces and organizational action through a process of work-systems translation. The study is based on a systematic comparative analysis of the ways in which Japanese work systems are implemented and sustained in the given firms. It concludes that firms attempt to translate alternative work systems rather than submit to environmental pressures toward isomorphism. The process of diffusing work systems is not driven by pre-existing legacies alone. There is room for social action in that actors, through their interaction, contribute actively to shaping the work organization.

Field Approaches to Institutional Change: The Evolution of the National Collegiate Athletic Association 1906–1995

Abstract: This article uses qualitative and quantitative data to examine the institutional change of an interest association. Interest associations are unique institutions in that they may be more concerned with membership growth than with economic gain. However, these associations play a vital role in the social control and evolution of organizational fields. After a discussion of the theoretical literature on institutional change, I examine the change of the National Collegiate Athletic Association (NCAA) as it competed for dominance in the US collegiate athletic field with a contender institution, the National Association of Intercollegiate Athletics. I hypothesize, and find support for the claim that to contend with the competing institution, the NCAA changed by changing its membership criteria. In the early period of the NCAA, it was a place for only high-status schools. After 1952, the NCAA attracted lower-status schools, which were previously not interested in joining the NCAA. This study advances institutio...

Intra-cultural Variation and Job Autonomy in 42 Countries:

Abstract: Intra-cultural variation (ICV)—dispersion of individuals within a culture—is not often the focus of international management compared to the cultural mean. However, researchers in international management and multi-level modeling have acknowledged the theoretical uniqueness of ICV, and have pled for its use in theory building and empirical testing. Responding to such a call, this paper explains at the societal level the theoretical importance of ICV of job autonomy. It also demonstrates, using secondary data from 42 countries, that the ICV of job autonomy influences organizational and social outcomes beyond the cultural mean of job autonomy. Specifically, the cultural mean and ICV of job autonomy exert different effects on job satisfaction and life satisfaction. The effect of the cultural mean is positive and that of the ICV is negative. Moreover, the effect of the ICV is independent of and similar in magnitude to that of the cultural mean. Research implications for international management and multi-leve...

The Characteristics of Chinese Personal Ties (Guanxi): Evidence from Hong Kong

Abstract: A widely held view in management is that guanxi(or Chinese personal connections) are a key element in the success of East Asian economies. In spite of their importance, very little is known about the various characteristics of guanxi. Using data obtained from Hong Kong respondents, we found that classmates, club members, and family friends are guanxibases from which the respondents developed close relationships. Contrary to expectations, associates who work with the respondents or are distant family relatives, or both, tend to have distant relationships with the respondents. We also found that the effect of gender on the closeness of relationships is asymmetrical, with female-to-female dyads being close and male-to-male dyads being distant. Further, our study shows that there is a tendency to request ‘costly’ favors from family members instead of nonfamily members. Lastly, we provide some evidence linking the size of one’s network to one’s ‘face’ in society. Overall, the results suggest a weakening of the...