John P. Ulhøi

• Professor
• Professor (Full) at Aarhus University

The study explores whether the introduction of robots in job interviews influences candidate’s assessment and hiring recommendation, and applicant’s fairness perceptions. Competence ratings is examined using Howard and Ferris’ (Journal of Applied Social Psychology 26(2):112–136, 1996) model of job interview in a social and situational context, and...

Purpose The purpose of this study is to examine how existing supply chain finance challenges confronting SMEs are affected by the emergence of smart fintech providers. In so doing the paper aims at uncovering critical role of fintech service provision in SCF and associated mechanisms that affect the SCF partners. Design/methodology/approach An in-...

This Perspective Paper discusses a special case of digitalization, namely social robots. Adding sociophysical and agentic properties to robots is likely to trigger new organizational and work dynamics. Despite high market expectations and increasing interest in robotics-related and broader interdisciplinary outlets, robotic technologies have attrac...

This research examines the perceived fairness of two types of job interviews: robot-mediated and face-to-face interviews. The robot-mediated interview tests the concept of a fair proxy in the shape of a teleoperated social robot. In Study 1, a mini-public (n=53) revealed four factors that influence fairness perceptions of the robot-mediated intervi...

The wider impact of digital technologies on entrepreneurship has only recently begun to surface in the entrepreneurship literature. This situation invites for re-examining theory on digital technologies and theory on entrepreneurship while at the same time asking where to find critical bridging points that may allow for integrating the two domains....

Contrary to large enterprises, the environmental impact from small‐ and medium‐sized enterprises (SMEs) has not, to the same extent, attracted stakeholder attention and engagement. A similar lack of attention seems to have dominated management scholars who seem to have predominantly focused on the competitive implications of environmental sustainab...

Innovation-as-usual employs synthetic input as the key source of inspiration to bring about innovations, whereas unusual innovation is inspired by designs in nature. The use of nature as a key stimulus for innovation represents a fundamental shift in management and business studies. It involves the translation of natural designs into cross-domain a...

A more comprehensive conceptualization of performability, beyond pure economic, technological, and environmental performance, is needed. Adopting and using a technological innovation in its socio-cultural context is likely to have performative impacts well beyond techno-economic and environmental conditions. Examples, as discussed in this chapter,...

The United Nations Sustainable Development Goals (SDGs), adopted by all UN Member States in 2015, provide a global platform that is increasingly being used by organizations to work strategically and take action in line with social responsibility. This study examines the case of a multinational corporation (MNC) that has moved from sustainability as...

It is well established in the literature that biases (e.g., related to body size, ethnicity, race etc.) can occur during the employment interview and that applicants’ fairness perceptions related to selection procedures can influence attitudes, intentions, and behaviors toward the recruiting organization. This study explores how social robotics may...

In the wake of robotics and the extensive use of IT for critical HR tasks such as personnel selection, the adoption of robots seems to be the next logical step for future e-HRM practices. Based on state-of-the-art literature in the field of human-robot interaction (HRI), two types of robots are discussed: (i) embodied physical agents and (ii) embod...

Purpose It does not always take a heroic CEO to initiate a major transformation such as business model innovation. A middle manager with a personal drive and a sense of need for change may well jump-start this process. This paper aims to offer a simple framework and a set of practical guidelines for engaging the broader organisation in business mo...

Purpose – Deliberate change is strongly associated with formal structures and top-down influence. Hierarchical configurations have been used to structure processes, overcome resistance and get things done. But is deliberate change also possible without formal structures and hierarchical influence? Design/Methodology/Approach – This longitudinal, q...

This paper reviews the insights that research offers on the impact of different leadership styles on innovation. To do so, we develop a framework, structuring research insights into four dimensions: people, means, effects, and goals/outcomes for innovations. Based on this framework, we review publications on: directive and participative leadership,...

In a task-executing environment of self-assignment, tasks that are less challenging but still important (for the overall work) face a risk of not being delivered on-time or executed at all. Based on longitudinal qualitative data collected over a period of four years, we seek to answer how deliberate changes are accomplished in an actor-oriented and...

The impact from corporate business activities on the natural environment and society at large has been in focus for quite some time. The focus has often been on corporate environmental sustainability initiatives reflecting industry's response to concerns expressed by key stakeholders as well as the potential influence on the bottom line and the com...

While industry leaders proactively address environmental issues as an integrated part of corporate strategy, small and medium enterprises (SMEs) often perceive it as a means of cost reduction. The aim of this paper is to track the development of motivators, environmental initiatives, and their perceived effects on competitive advantage among SMEs....

Based on longitudinal data, collected over a period of 16 years, this paper addresses how management responds to stakeholders' concerns about the natural environment by prioritizing their activities and thus improving the environmental performability of the firms. The paper specifically seeks to answer how stakeholders' perceived influence develops...

This paper discusses how design originally rooted in biology can be translated into applications outside its original domain (biomimetics), and thus become strategically important for commercial organisations. This paper will also discuss how concepts from organisation and management theory can help conceptualise opportunity exploration and exploit...

We survey existing literature in the fields of business development, turnaround, strategic renewal, corporate entrepreneurship, business model innovation and organizational change, and synthesize a business model renewal process at established firms, identify key enablers and brakes, and discuss future empirical interventions. We find that business...

Based on longitudinal data, collected in the Danish industry over a period of almost two decades, this paper addresses how strategic decision-makers have responded to the influence of stakeholders with regard to the natural environment in terms of prioritizing its relevance as manifested in their activities over time. More specifically, it seeks to...

The literature on open innovation portrays open business models as a contemporary and extremely useful tool, which can be used by companies to create and capture value in collaboration with external partners. This paper takes the discussion a step further by examining the effect of opening business models in the newspaper industry. Based on intervi...

Using theory on technology transfer and on trust and an indepth study of nine university departments and nineteen science-based small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), the authors explore the nature and direction of knowledge flows during university–industry R&D collaboration. More specifically, they examine the nature and direction of R&D techn...

Research on employee-driven innovation (EDI) is still in its infancy, and as yet there is no independent body of literature on the topic. The aim of this paper is to review existing insights into the key antecedents of EDI in other research contexts. In particular, we focus on: leader support, autonomy, collaboration, and organisational norms of ex...

In this paper, we look at how the major Danish newspapers are responding to the challenges posed by the decreasing sales of the printed newspapers and advertising space, through growing online advertising and various technological innovations. We approach the theme from the business model perspective and discuss how the move to online and mobile ne...

Research suggests that small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) can benefit from network collaboration by enhancing opportunities for innovation. Managing the necessary collaboration to benefit from network participation may however be particularly challenging for SMEs due to their size and their inherent shortage of resources. In this paper, we p...

This paper focuses on the initial questions of how and when to enter a market from the perspective of a firm. By entry mode is meant a firm's strategy (innovation or imitation) for entering the market in response to environmental changes. Entry order refers to the related issue of market timing (first-mover or follower). Invention is understood as...

Both small- and medium-size entrepreneurial firms face liabilities such as resource scarcity and scale diseconomies, making it difficult for them to innovate on a continuous basis. In response, experimentation with new ways of organizing for innovation has increased. One successful result is an organizational model called the collaborative communit...

The aim of this article is to develop an analytical framework for studying processes such as continuous innovation and business development in high-tech SME clusters that transcends the traditional qualitative-quantitative divide. The article's key contribution is the conceptual integration of four existing and well-recognized but separate approach...

Purpose This paper aims to discuss the need to dynamize the existing conceptualization of business model, and proposes a new typology to distinguish different types of business model change. Design/methodology/approach The paper integrates basic insights of innovation, business process and routine research into the concept of business model. The m...

Management research has consolidated around the idea that organic structures (typically found in start-ups and young firms) are better at generating novel ideas and products, while mechanistic ones (typically found in established companies) are better at generating incremental improvements. Therefore, the usual recommendation to established firms w...

This paper addresses two key questions. First, what keeps newspapers ’trapped in a business-as-usual mind-set’? Second, how can this challenge be overcome? The paper presents an outline of recent developments in the news industry, and attempts to explain the business-as-usual mentality by means of new institutional theory. Business model theory is...

Networks can offer SMEs a number of advantages, especially in terms of providing greater opportunities for knowledge activities that support innovation, but there is little in the literature to suggest how firms develop their innovation capacity through network participation. In this paper, we present an in-depth longitudinal case study of a small...

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to outline the “grand structure” of the phenomenon in order to identify both the underlying processes and core drivers of employee‐driven innovation (EDI). Design/methodology/approach This is a conceptual paper. It particularly applies the insights of contemporary research on routine and organizational decision...

Based on an in-depth literature review, the article argues that the literature on virtual organisations and the virtualisation of business activities is characterised by ambiguity and inconsistency. The article identifies a conceptualisation of organisational virtualisation and puts forward a set of propositions on how to understand and study it. W...

The new multifaceted collaborative organizational forms result in new challenges because of increasing collaboration, innovation and mutual interdependence. Apart from joint purpose and values, coordination is likely, from the point of view of human resource management (HRM), to be an important means to ensure that the involved actors are achieving...

It has become an unfortunate truism that most engineered change initiatives in organizations fail. One of the primary reasons that the expectations for especially large technological changes are so rarely realized is a lack of attention given to the necessary and unavoidable interactions that occur between technological and psycho-social dimensions...

Collective-value production theory is combined with trust theory and the theory of social exchange to explain why network organizations evolve and how they differ in terms of driving forces and key characteristics. The examples are based on field material collected in an egalitarian and team-oriented Scandinavian context. The ability to connect to...

The commercialization of positioning-based products and services (p-commerce) based on the existing GPS technology is growing rapidly throughout the world. In the near future, this will be fuelled by a 'second wave' of satellite-based positioning systems, developed in the European Union, Russia, China, India and Japan, and also by the improvements...

This paper calls for the need to address climate change within the concept of sustainable development, in recognition of the interrelationships between environmental, economic and social systems. So far, health- providing organizations such as hospitals have paid surprisingly little attention to the relationships between environmental change (e.g....

In this paper we propose a generic business model conceptualization emphasizing significant characteristics of the actors, activities, and relationships involved in the emergence phase of entrepreneurial ventures in the field of M-commerce. The paper begins with a review of the literature on business models, entrepreneurial and organizational emerg...

Collaboration in innovation networks is particularly important for small and medium enterprises (SMEs) to remain competitive in a rapidly changing environment. Collaboration may however be particularly challenging for SMEs, due to their size and their inherent shortage of resources. In this paper, we propose that Human Resource Management (HRM) may...

Organization design (OD) is a key feature of management theory and practice. It addresses the challenges of constructing and maintaining effective organizations. Essential to its application is the assumption that it can improve organizations and their performance. Faced with the ever-accelerating pace of technological change and the restructuring...

Purpose: The importance of entrepreneurial activities and the establishment of new ventures for economic growth and employment have long been recognized. However, the interactions of underlying mechanisms that influence this process have not been understood all that well. In the light of this, a deeper understanding of various mechanisms on which k...

An organization's ability to create, retrieve, and use knowledge to innovate is a critical strategic asset. Until recently, most textbooks on business and product development argued that managers should keep their new ideas to themselves and protect knowledge from getting into competitors' hands. Seeking, developing, and protecting knowledge is a c...

Den eksisterende teori om virtualisering af forretningsaktiviteter er endnu ny og i sin vorden. I stedet for at bruge betegnelsen 'virtuel' som et adjektiv man kan sætte foran organisation, vil nærværende artikel foreslå at bruge betegnelsen virtualisering. Det har flere fordele. For det første giver det mulighed for at inkludere tilfælde, hvor ikk...

Many countries have introduced comprehensive environmental protection laws during the last few decades in response to the direct, visible environmental impacts of industrial activities. This has often resulted in specific technical regulations, but it has gradually been recognized that a change of awareness and management principles is needed too....

Research suggests that barriers and constraints encountered by women are gender-specific, and that women are subject to discriminatory practices. However, by focusing on what women are prevented from doing, much research portrays women as victims of circumstance rather than as individuals with different identity constructions and value systems. Thi...

The field of MoT cannot continue indefinitely to ignore the importance of the natural environment as a fundamental basis for technological development. This paper will therefore focus on the various linkages between management of technology and sustainable development, discussing both the current situation in Danish companies, based on the results...

Corporate environmental management turned into a more formulated concept and a new managerial discipline two to three decades ago. Many companies have fully or partly adopted the concept in their efforts to eliminate or reduce the impacts on the natural environment caused by their business activities. The question is, however, if managers envisage...

The education and training of the workforce has long been recognised as an essential ingredient in promoting and implementing environmental management practices in business organisations. So far, however, even in leading companies, little information has been available on how environmental management practice and related educational and training re...

Purpose The aim of this paper is to investigate the role of online networking during the innovation process, including its role(s) in communication, cooperation and coordination. The paper neither implicitly assumes that online computer‐based networking is a prerequisite for the innovation process nor denies the possibility that innovation can emer...

About a decade ago Mitton (1989) suggested that success for start-ups not only depends on who you are but also on whom you know. Around the mid-90s research results were published showing that essential resources for start-ups were in fact acquired through the entrepreneurs' social networks including family, friends, pre-existing work relations, an...

Sustainable, economic, environmental and social development will require substantial improvements in the efficiency of present environmental and resource use, which in turn will increase the focus on a broader set of environmental, economic and social linkages. These are the result of dynamic interactions, in which changes in one set of factors wil...

The conservation of commonly held natural resources and the carrying capacity of the natural environment are increasingly recognised as important aspects of the company-society-nature relationship. In consequence, a growing number of business leaders have introduced environmental policy objectives and statements, signed various Environmental Busine...

This paper proposes an integrative framework to conceptualize important social dimensions of entrepreneurship. The paper reviews and evaluates the current status of research dealing with entrepreneurship, social capital and trust. The proposed framework rests on the recognition that entrepreneurial activities are results of social interactions and...

This paper addresses various financial issues in the context of knowledge-intensive entrepreneurship. The study can be seen as an empirical test of parts of a theoretical framework previously developed to identify and explain key factors affecting the survival and preliminary growth of new ventures in high-tech and knowledge-intensive sectors. The...

This paper addresses the extent to which the increasing demand for corporate environmentalism has found its way into the institutions of higher business and management education. The study presents results from an empirical study in 4 EU member states which is based on an analysis and findings of several thousand pages of materiel collected from 40...

The purpose of this paper is to address selected aspects of human capital in association with the entrepreneurial process in technology-based new ventures. Until recently, research investigating the founding of new businesses has mainly focused on the personal characteristics of entrepreneurs, but this trait approach tends to underestimate the exte...

In this paper we examine alternative strategies to innovation, in which sharing and co-operation play a critical part. The paper addresses the involvement of users in opening up the innovation process, which in turn gives the participating actors an interesting alternative for product development. We identify and classify four archetypal strategies...

This paper attempts to illustrate the breadth of strategic approaches which an increasing number of corporate heads have chosen in switching from a re-active towards a pro-active attitude to the environment and the corporate challenges it raises. The five cases discussed - four Danish and one American - represent individual as well as collective co...

The purpose of this article is to outline a rapidly growing source of corporate change. It is argued that mainstream economics and management theories cannot adequately handle the internalisation of environmental dimensions. The conclusion is therefore twofold. Firstly, industry - except from a few pioneers - is still far from having translated all...

From a wider perspective, the production and exchange of knowledge is the result of a dynamic and chaotic process of local actions and exchanges of knowledge which spread and interact in unpredictable and uncontrollable ways. At the micro level, however, it is possible to identify fundamentally different models of agency and hybrids thereof. One is...

This article analyses and discusses the development and achievements of the corporate technology management (TM) field. Based on an extensive survey, it is found that Technology Management in its presents form, has existed since the early 1980s, but its roots can be traced back to the early 1970s under such labels as Strategic Management, Engineeri...

In the following, my comments are organized as follows. Firstly, I make some general comments and observations on the general problems and limitations of the orthodox Principal-Agent [P-A] theory of Agency put forward by Jensen and Meckling (M-E) when seen through the lens of real-world organizations and human intentionality. Next, I address the so...

Although entrepreneurship in its broadest interpretation is as old as civilization . itself, and theory on the individual’s role in the organizational genesis can be dated back some centuries, entrepreneurship theory is still considered quite a young academic field (Bygrave 1989; Brazeal and Herbert 1999; Low 2001). Nevertheless, it has become an i...

"'There is no hiding behind the ramparts of dry scholarship here. The credibility of the theory being spoken of is not the stuff of constructed proofs, but alignments of critical insight and utility. This is where qualitative work can make a difference to the field, and where this book makes its mark.' - Robin Holt, International Journal of Entrepr...

This article examines the role of trust and government agency in the creation and evolution of interorganizational cooperation among entrepreneurial ventures in general and the influence of trust on development trajectories in particular. The multiple-case approach used draws on five in-depth case studies adopting a focal firm perspective. Trust is...

Purpose – To provide an in-depth empirical account demonstrating the danger of letting the innovative human resources of the business development function “slide” further out of orbit and thus becoming increasingly isolated from the rest of the organisation can be further reinforced by a lack of serious attention at upper echelon managerial levels...

Purpose – Based on a selective bibliography, the purpose of this paper is to provide an overview of ongoing changes among European postgraduate education, while at the same time offering a theoretical framework for interpreting the observations. Design/methodology/approach – A selected range of published works (1977-2002), based on solid empirical...

Recent years have seen the emergence of a new incubator model, the “networked incubator”, which is a hybrid form of the archetypal business incubator (BI), based on territorial synergy, relational symbiosis, and economies of scope. This paper looks at why this new model has emerged and what distinguishes it from the more traditional incubator model...

This study develops a tentative framework for conceptualizing important aspects of the social embeddedness of entrepreneurship. Following a brief review of entrepreneurship theory, the roles of social capital and entrepreneurial trust relationships are outlined. It is proposed that social networks consist of weak and strong tie-based social relatio...

This paper addresses innovations based on open source or non-proprietary knowledge. Viewed through the lens of private property theory, such agency appears to be a true anomaly. However, by a further turn of the theoretical kaleidoscope, we will show that there may be perfectly justifiable reasons for not regarding open source innovations as anomal...