Patent management: the prominent role of strategy and organization

PurposeThe purpose of this article is twofold; to verify the existence of different profiles of firms based on the level of sophistication of their patent management core processes and to test the impact of the interplay between two patent management supporting dimensions, namely patent strategy and organization for patenting, on the level of sophistication of patent management core processes.Design/methodology/approachThe method consists of a survey study, collecting data from a set of European patent management professionals. These data are analyzed with factor analysis, cluster analysis and regression analysis to test several hypotheses.FindingsThe results show that patent strategy positively and significantly impacts patent management sophistication, and that the patent organization positively moderates this relationship. In other words, a patent strategy, supported by a well-developed patent organization and culture, will positively influence the processes of managing a firm's patent portfolio.Originality/valueThis study is, to the authors’ knowledge, the first one to provide quantitative evidence that supports the notion that it is important to take a strategic and organizational perspective of patent management.

The Impact of Technological Developments on Remote Working: Insights from the Polish Managers’ Perspective

“Stay at home” orders during the COVID-19 pandemic radically changed the day-to-day operations of many organizations and moved employees from offices to homes. The sudden crisis forced companies to reformulate their operations. Enabling employees to work from home has become a necessity for both business continuity and survival. The unexpected crisis has also proved to be beneficial for some aspects of economic activity. This research focuses on identifying and measuring the benefits of and barriers to remote work from an organizational perspective, as perceived by managerial staff in Poland. We investigate the factors that influence the assessment of the scale of benefits of and barriers to remote working. The study examines the impact of various factors on the benefits of and barriers to remote working, such as a company’s previous experience with remote working, the support provided to employees by the company, the monitoring of remote working effects, and the implementation of new IT tools. These results suggest that the way the company and employees are managed in a crisis, the approach of superiors to the evaluation and control of effects on work, and the adaptation of support to the real needs of employees, all play fundamental roles. The factors examined that influence the perceived benefits of or barriers to remote working from an organization’s perspective contribute to adoption theory.

The Role of Cybersecurity Certifications

The chapter looks at the burgeoning field of certification for individuals in the field of information security or cybersecurity. Individual information security certifications cover a wide range of topics from the deeply technical to the managerial. These certifications are used as a visible indication of an individual's status and knowledge, used to define experience and status, used in job descriptions and screening, and may define expectations placed on the individual. This chapter examines how these certifications are produced, the subjects they cover, and how they integrate and the various audiences to which the certifications are aimed. The role, the perceived and real value, and benefits of certification within the field of information security both from an individual and an organizational perspective are discussed. Finally, some conclusions on certification are presented.

Women in Power? Examining Gender and Promotion in Policing Through an Organizational Perspective

Women bring important strengths to the field of policing, such as communication skills, the ability to lead teams, as well as the ability to coach and nurture subordinates. Despite these contributions, the rate of women entering policing has stagnated in recent years, and the percentage of women in supervisory, command, and leadership positions remains low. To explain this, we use an organizational structure perspective to explore how characteristics of police agencies (e.g., department size, officer demographics, and formalization) may influence the promotion of women to leadership positions. We make suggestions regarding hiring and retention and provide recommendations for further research.

The Failed Ba'thification of Iraqi Kurdistan: The Ideological and Organizational Strategies of the Ba'th Party in Northern Iraq, 1968–2003

Drawing on internal party documents, this article analyzes the history of Ba'thification efforts in Iraqi Kurdistan. Despite a growing literature on the Ba'th Party's ruling strategy, the often-overlooked Arabization of Kurdish communities constituted a significant ideological component of Ba'thification. From an organizational perspective, the cultivation of internal intelligence networks was used to compensate for the challenges associated with robust party recruitment in northern Iraq's Kurdish-majority governorates and among Kurdish communities in mixed areas.

Responsibility Assignment in Systems Engineering

The constantly increasing system complexity leads to various challenges in established companies, which can be controlled by using systems engineering processes. INCOSE defines explicit processes with concrete inputs and outputs (artifacts) for this purpose. Systems Engineering roles can be used to organize the tasks of the processes within the company. In this work, the responsibilities of the systems engineering roles on the process artifacts are evaluated by means of the RACI scheme and examined by means of cluster analysis. The work steps are accompanied by discussions and results of a systems engineering transformation project with a large German automotive OEM. The goal of the study is to identify the minimum size of a systems engineering team and prioritize the systems engineering roles. As a result, the (sometimes contradictory) requirements from the methodological perspective of systems engineering and the organizational perspective of project management become manageable in the control and execution of systems engineering projects.

The Counterproductive Effect of Pharmaceutical Marketing in Pakistan: A Qualitative Study

This study explores the effects of pharmaceutical marketing on patients and society in Pakistan. Pharmaceutical marketing is an integral part of the drug industry, which channels product-related information to healthcare professionals. Physicians are the target audience as they prescribe medicine to the users. The pharmaceutical industry mobilizes all resources to influence physicians’ prescriptions in favor of their brands. It is commendable from the organizational perspective, however; it leads to unintended negative consequences for society. The primary reason is the blind pursuit of commercial interest and near-total neglect of ethical behavior in marketing drugs. This study conducted open-ended 20 interviews from primary stakeholders of this issue that includes physicians, pharmaceutical managers, and officials of drug regulatory authority through purposive sampling. The findings show that misleading promotional strategies influencing physicians are responsible for the misuse and abuse of drugs and antibiotics. Pharmaceutical drug incentivization, the personal obligation for physicians, skewed data, and inappropriate promotions were the major categories developed during analysis. The study recommends various steps to minimize these ill effects.

Looking Beyond the Toxic Triangle: Connecting Sexual Abuse to Failed Governance

The authors aim to further theoretical conceptualizations of sexual abuse in college sport by providing a wider framework to better identify and combat abuse within organizations. Building on the Toxic Triangle of Destructive Leadership, the authors offer an analysis of destructive leadership from an organizational perspective that reconceptualizes destructive leadership as a group and organizational phenomena by centering governing board actions in previous cases of abuse. Through analysis of the NCAA governance structure and the governance structure of higher education at large, the authors provide rationale for advancing governing boards as a sport governing body and demonstrate how governing boards are inseparable from the governance structure of the NCAA. In analyzing the literature on organizational responses to sexual abuse in intercollegiate athletics, the authors posit a new framework to better identify, prevent, and combat abuse in sport and call for enhanced proactivity from institutional leadership to address sexual abuse.

Building Perspective-Taking as an Organizational Capability: A Change Intervention in a Health Care Setting

Perspective-taking, or engaging with the viewpoints of others, has been linked to a range of positive and negative interpersonal outcomes. However, it has only been researched infrequently in organizations, and questions remain about how it might be developed as a multidimensional cooperative process and problem-solving capability more widely. To better understand this, this article presents findings from a 2-year change intervention with 10 US hospitals. Interview data from three time points (393 interviews, 197 staff members) reveal dimensions and levels of understanding underpinning the development of organizational perspective-taking. Actors’ accounts suggested several major interrelated dimensions of perspective-taking operating at local and system levels, through affective concern, cognitive understanding, and motivational efforts to improve the sharing and interpretation of diverse perspectives. The study has implications for how organizations can better foster perspective-taking by building ecological structures and processes that assemble perspectives supportively, holistically, and frequently.