Explanation Industrial Managers’ Actions Surrounding Equipping with Organizational Slack: Grounded Theory Strategy with Emergent (Glaserian) Approach

Document Type : Research Article (Original Article)

Authors

1 PhD in Organizational Behavior Management, Faculty of Economics and Administrative Sciences, Ferdowsi University of Mashhad, Mashhad, Iran.

2 Professor, Faculty of Economics and Administrative Sciences, Ferdowsi University of Mashhad, Mashhad, Iran.

3 Associate Professor, Faculty of Economics and Administrative Sciences, Ferdowsi University of Mashhad, Mashhad, Iran.

Abstract

The resent research scrutinized and explained industrial managers’ actions toward organizational slack, because there is a significant gap among various experts’ points of views on this subject. Due to such contradictory viewpoints on this concepty, it will benecessary to scrutinizethe actions and viewpoints of several experienced managers who have been operating in real organizational context in order to obtain a sound insight into this paradoxical concept. To do so, using emergent approach of grounded theory methodology, deep interviews were conducted with 16 managers of private industries in the province of Khorasan Razavi. The findings of the theoretical and substantive coding exercises which were undertaken in this study showed that these managers mainly provide their employees with organizational slack from the following four approaches: “human approach”; “strategic approach”; “reactive approach”, and “contradictory approach”. To sum up based on this domestic research, providing organizational slack would have usage and harm that should be considered precisely. So we cannot surely accept or reject creating organizational slack. Therefore managers should estimate an optimized level of organizational slack using deep studies.

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