2008 December 8

This Jour fixe will be starting at 5:00 p.m. in the House of Finance (Campus Westend).

[Dr. Andreas Schroeder, Research Fellow at the Institute of Applied Knowledge and Innovation Management, City University of Hong Kong]

Governance has returned as a topic of high interest for organizations. New business models and increased risk awareness requires organizations to rethink their control and guiding mechanisms. Established governance frameworks are generalistic and do not fully capture the idiosyncratic range of governance mechanisms that emerge in organizations. To investigate the governance situation of an organisation requires an innovative methodology which helps to elicit the actual range of mechanisms which control and guide activities and behaviors in an organization.

This presentation reports of a study which used the repertory grid method to investigate governance mechanisms in a virtual collaboration context. The repertory grid method proofed to be a very valuable technique which allowed the researchers to identify and prioritize a range of context specific mechanisms which help to control and guide activities and behaviors. The presentation provides examples of the use of the repertory grid method and discusses the opportunities the method provides for research in the financial industries.