Context Management Approach to Value Co-Creation: Toward Developing a Dynamic and Emergent Process Model. Organizational Science. 2012 Volume 46 Issue 2 pp.38-52

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In this paper, we take a service-dominant logic perspective to discuss value co-creation process by which both a firm and its customers engage in value creation activities. We first compare and contrast the "simple, linear, and pre-deterministic" process typically described in the existing research and the "complex, dynamic, and emergent" process observed in our exploratory qualitative research. We then extend insights from our research toward developing a dynamic and emergent process model, based on such key concepts as "affordance," "context," and "culture."

Marriage, Cohabitation, and Happiness: A Cross-National Analysis of 27 Countries Journal of Marriage and Family 2012 Vol.74 No.5 pp.953-972

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The authors investigated how the reported happiness of married and cohabiting individuals varies cross-nationally with societal gender beliefs and religious context. They used the 2002 International Social Survey Programme data from 27 countries (N = 36,889) and specified hierarchical linear models with macro - micro level interactions in order to examine how the social - institutional context affects happiness at the individual level. Consistent with previous research, they found a happiness gap between married and cohabiting persons. In the case of women, this gap was moderated by the gender climate and the religious context in the country. This suggests that, at least for women, this gap is not intractable but is rather an outcome of the social context. For men, the relationship between marital status and happiness was less variable across the different social contexts studied.

Changing Organizational Designs and Performance Frontiers. Organization Science, Vol.23, No.4, pp.1055-1076.

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This paper develops and tests a multilevel organizational contingency theory for designing headquarters--subsidiary relations. We use frontier analysis to overcome problems that have hampered advancements in organizational contingency theory in general and headquarters--subsidiary relationships in particular. Based on a longitudinal study of a large medical group practice of 32 local community clinics, we compute the relative distance of clinics from a best-performance frontier, determine what proportions of changes in clinic performance are due to factors that are endogenous or exogenous to the clinics, and examine the organizational factors that may explain these performance changes. We find that uniform headquarters policies have differing effects on the performance of subsidiary units, benefiting some and hindering others through no fault of their own. We also find significant performance volatility with different types of unit designs, suggesting the need to examine the risks of changing organization designs.

Examination on the effect of cultural self-views towards consumer behavior: Dialectical self. Japan Marketing Journal 125 Vol. 32 No.1 (2012) pp.75-88

Dynamic Updating Process of Customer's Motivation for Participating in Value Co-Creation The 21st Frontiers in Service Conference 2012

Leadership in Organizational Knowledge Creation: A Review and Framework. Journal of Management Studies January 2012 Volume 49 Issue 1 pp.240-277

Corporate Governance and its Impact on the Type of Corporate Spin-off Choice in Korea. Journal of Strategic Management 2012 Vol.15 No.1 pp.65-87.

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The purpose of this study is to investigate the relationship between corporate governance and the type of spin-off--a business portfolio restructuring strategy to improve management efficiency--choice in Korea. Spin-off in Korea typically takes the form of either equity or captive, which is different from the spin-offs observed in the United States. Although the number of spin-off cases in Korea has shown a steady increase since the 2000s, it has received less attention in the academia and is in need for a further in-depth investigation. In particular, very little research has been conducted on the investigation of the determinants of choosing the captive spin-off strategy under family ownership structures. Using the binary logistic regression, this research investigates the types of corporate governance structure and its relationship with the firm's choice of spin-off strategy by looking at the share proportion of the controlling shareholder, existence of an outside blockholder, appointment of a CEO who is the controlling shareholder or a family-related member of the controlling shareholder, and outside board representation. Our findings suggest that as the share of controlling shareholder increases, the tendency to prefer equity spin-off strategy increases whereas, when the CEO is the controlling shareholder or a family-related member of the controlling shareholder, the tendency to prefer captive spin-off strategy increases. However, we found no empirical evidence of the outside blockholder and outside board member's impact on the firm's decision to choose any type of spin-off strategy.

I don't need an agreement on my inconsistent consumption preferences: Multiple selves and consumption in Japan. Advances in Consumer Research,2012, Vol. 40, pp.469-474.

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This paper explores multiple selves and their inconsistent consumption preferences among East-Asians. The findings from 28 depth-interviews in Japan illustrate that East-Asians, contrary to Westerners, experience less psychological tension facing their inconsistent consumption preferences. They therefore have less need to find an agreement among inconsistencies. Dialectical thinking theory is employed to understand cultural differences towards contradictions. East Asian cultures tend to more tolerate psychological contradiction, whereas Western cultures are less comfortable with contradiction. Our research also suggests the absence of consumers' need for a coherent identity narrative in Japan, whereas in Western cultures, particularly in North America, consumers seek to reconcile identity contradictions. From the childhood, Japanese learn to shift between multiple selves. This norm is called kejime, the ability to make distinctions. Hence, Japanese consumers are culturally accustomed to shifting among multiple selves than to pursuing a consistent global self-concept. Today, it has become common to view consumers' selves as involving multiplicity (Gergen 1981; Markus and Wurf 1987). We now have a great deal of information and choices about who we want to be. Multiple selves often involve inconsistent views and affect consumer behavior. Hence, many consumer studies have examined multiple selves and consumption (e.g., Ahuvia 2005; Bahl and Milne 2010; Firat and Shultz 2001; Firat and Venkatesh 1995; Schenk and Holman 1980; Schouten 1991; Tian and Belk 2005). Yet, little attention has been focused on the issue of whether the findings apply to consumers around the globe. Although consumers from different cultures may vary in their response to inconsistent consumption preferences, the majority of research has been conducted in the U.S. Indeed, recent studies in cultural psychology have identified that cultures differ in the tolerance towards contradiction (Peng and Nisbett 1999). More particularly, East Asian cultures tend to more tolerate psychological contradiction (Spencer-Rodgers, Williams, and Peng 2010), whereas Western cultures are less comfortable with contradiction (Festinger 1957; Lewin 1951). In this article, we explore the various implications of multiple selves and consumption among Japanese. This article is organized as follows. In the first section, we review the existing literature on the multiple selves and consumption; then we discuss synthetic versus dialectical thinking. In the second section, we describe our methodology used in this study. In the third section, based on the data gathered from the Japanese participants, we argue that Japanese consumers experience no significant psychological tension facing own inconsistent consumption preferences. In the fourth section, we discuss our findings. Finally in the fifth section, we provide limitations in our study and suggestions for future directions.