CSM Associate Director Dr Ian Hodgkinson has recently published two articles (in press) in world-leading outlets in their respective fields (ABS 4).

The first article titled ‘Strategy development: Driving improvisation in Malaysia’ (I.R. Hodgkinson, P. Hughes, D. Arshad) and published in Journal of World Business, extends improvisation research to the unexplored competitive settings of an emerging middle-income economy. Drawing on survey data from Malaysian research-intensive firms, findings reveal that organisational risk-taking and manager expertise are common antecedents of improvisation, but additional relationships arise under high (flexibility) and low turbulence (learning, manager tenure), developing capacity to inform practice, which is critically lacking in international business and management theory. Full text available: http://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1090951615000401

The second article titled ‘Institutional, Ideological and Political Influences on Local Government Contracting: Evidence from England’ (J.M. Alonso, R. Andrews, I.R. Hodgkinson) and published in Public Administration, explores whether mimetic pressures as well as ideological and political motives shape the decision to contract out service provision in English local governments and with whom (e.g., a commercial firm or a not-for-profit provider). The statistical results suggest that the decision to contract out is spatially dependent, and hence reflective of institutional forces. By contrast, political motives and market size considerations shape with whom local governments contract. Full text available: http://onlinelibrary.wiley.com/doi/10.1111/padm.12216/abstract