Showing papers in "Administrative Science Quarterly in 2016"
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors examine the mechanisms used to limit expropriation of firm wealth by large shareholders among S&P 500 firms with founding-family ownership, and find that the most efficient mechanism is the one that limits the number of shareholders with founding family ownership.
Abstract: We examine the mechanisms used to limit expropriation of firm wealth by large shareholders among S&P 500 firms with founding-family ownership. Consistent with agency theory, we find that the most v...
909 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors compare two alternative approaches for evaluating the potential of a work group or team: one that focuses on team members' demographic characteristics and the other one focusing on the members' social networks.
Abstract: We compare two alternative approaches for evaluating the potential of a work group or team: one that focuses on team members' demographic characteristics and one that focuses on the members' social networks. Given that people's network contacts often share their demographic attributes (i.e., the network is homophilous), the two approaches seem equivalent and the first seems preferable because it is easier to implement. In this paper, we demonstrate several important limits to this rationale. First, we argue and show, in an analysis of 1,518 project teams in a contract research and development firm, that even when internal organizational networks are significantly homophilous with respect to demographic variables, the very logic of the causal structure that underlies theories of demographic diversity carries ambiguous performance implications. This ambiguity is due to the fact that demographic diversity has opposing effects on two social network variables—internal density and external range—each of which h...
645 citations
TL;DR: This paper conducted a qualitative study of Nokia to understand its rapid downfall over the 2005-2010 period from its position as a world-dominant and innovative technology organization, and found that top...
Abstract: We conducted a qualitative study of Nokia to understand its rapid downfall over the 2005–2010 period from its position as a world-dominant and innovative technology organization. We found that top ...
318 citations
TL;DR: In this article, an accepted and copyedited manuscript that was published online before print on March 17, 2016, in Administrative Science Quarterly was presented, which is the first accepted and published manuscript of the year 2016.
Abstract: This is an accepted and copyedited manuscript that was published online before print on March 17, 2016, in Administrative Science Quarterly.
233 citations
TL;DR: In this article, the authors use data from career histories of technical contractors to explore how they experience, interpret, and allocate their time and whether they take advantage of the temporal flexibility purportedly offered by contract work in the market.
Abstract: This paper uses data from career histories of technical contractors to explore how they experience, interpret, and allocate their time and whether they take advantage of the temporal flexibility purportedly offered by contract work in the market. Technical contractors offer a unique opportunity for examining assumptions about organizations, work, and time because they are itinerant professionals who operate outside any single organizational context. We find that contractors do perceive themselves to have flexibility and that a few achieve a kind of flexibility unattained by most permanent employees doing similar work, but rather than take advantage of what they call “beach time” and “downtime,” the majority work long hours and rarely schedule their time flexibly. The contractors' use of time is constrained by the cyclic structure of employment, the centrality of reputation in markets for skill, the practice of billing by the hour, and the nature of technical work. Our research suggests that markets place ...
196 citations
TL;DR: It is found that ventures have the highest chances of success if their syndicating investors have either open-specialized or closed-diverse networks, and the effect of investors’ social capital on the success of their portfolio ventures is tested.
Abstract: Open networks give actors non-redundant information that is diverse, while closed networks offer redundant information that is easier to interpret. Integrating arguments about network structure and...
149 citations
TL;DR: In this article, the authors examined the conditions for accurate creative forecasting, focusing on the effect of creators' and managers' roles and found that creators were more accurate than managers when forecasting about others' novel ideas, but not their own.
Abstract: Betting on the most promising new ideas is key to creativity and innovation in organizations, but predicting the success of novel ideas can be difficult. To select the best ideas, creators and managers must excel at creative forecasting, the skill of predicting the outcomes of new ideas. Using both a field study of 339 professionals in the circus arts industry and a lab experiment, I examine the conditions for accurate creative forecasting, focusing on the effect of creators’ and managers’ roles. In the field study, creators and managers forecasted the success of new circus acts with audiences, and the accuracy of these forecasts was assessed using data from 13,248 audience members. Results suggest that creators were more accurate than managers when forecasting about others’ novel ideas, but not their own. This advantage over managers was undermined when creators previously had poor ideas that were successful in the marketplace anyway. Results from the lab experiment show that creators’ advantage over managers in predicting success may be tied to the emphasis on both divergent thinking (idea generation) and convergent thinking (idea evaluation) in the creator role, while the manager role emphasizes only convergent thinking. These studies highlight that creative forecasting is a critical bridge linking creativity and innovation, shed light on the importance of roles in creative forecasting, and advance theory on why creative success is difficult to sustain over time.
146 citations
TL;DR: In this article, the authors examine how organizations collaborate with multiple partners, such as when they develop innovative and complex product platforms like smartphones, servers, and MRI machines that rely on multiple partners.
Abstract: This paper examines how organizations collaborate with multiple partners, such as when they develop innovative and complex product platforms like smartphones, servers, and MRI machines that rely on...
138 citations
TL;DR: In this article, the authors investigate how state capacity, the administrative ability to formulate and implement policy, affects the institutional adoption of new policies and the decoupling of those policies from their original purpose in the face of pressures from professions, multilateral agencies, and imitation among countries.
Abstract: We investigate how state capacity—the administrative ability to formulate and implement policy—affects the institutional adoption of new policies and the decoupling of those policies from their original purpose in the face of pressures from professions, multilateral agencies, and imitation among countries. We expect state capacity to reduce the effect of professional and imitation influences, to increase the impact of coercive effects by multilateral agencies, and to lessen decoupling between policies’ adoption and desired outcomes. We tested these predictions using a unique longitudinal dataset on the adoption of minority shareholders’ legal protections and the development of the stock market in 78 countries between 1970 and 2011. We found evidence consistent with the moderating effects of state capacity on institutional adoption and on lessening policy–practice decoupling. Our findings suggest that the strength of state capacity influences which policy models policymakers select and adopt, whether they implement them effectively, and what the consequences of such adoption are.
135 citations
TL;DR: This paper conducted an in-depth longitudinal study of the multiple institutional logics used by organizations to create and pursue new market opportunities, and found that organizations combine conflicting institutional logic strategically to create market opportunities.
Abstract: To understand how organizations combine conflicting institutional logics strategically to create and pursue new market opportunities, we conducted an in-depth longitudinal study of the multiple eff...
117 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, a case study of the Italian spirit grappa is used to examine status recategorization, the vertical extension and reclassification of an entire market category, which occurs through three mechanisms: category detachment, category emulation, and category sublimation.
Abstract: Using a case study of the Italian spirit grappa, we examine status recategorization—the vertical extension and reclassification of an entire market category. Grappa was historically a low-status product, but in the 1970s one regional distiller took steps that led to a radical break from its traditional image, so that in just over a decade high-quality grappa became an exemplar of cultured Italian lifestyle and held a market position in the same class as cognac and whisky. We use this context to articulate “theorization by allusion,” which occurs through three mechanisms: category detachment—distancing a social object from its existing category; category emulation—presenting that object so that it hints at the practices of a high-status category; and category sublimation—shifting from local, field-specific references to broader, societal-level frames. This novel theorization is particularly appropriate for explaining change from low to high status because it avoids resistance to and contestation of such ch...
TL;DR: In particular, the authors responds to, largely concurs with, and extends the concerns Jerry Davis expressed in his June 2015 editorial essay in ASQ about the state of research in organizational theory.
Abstract: This essay responds to, largely concurs with, and extends the concerns Jerry Davis expressed in his June 2015 editorial essay in ASQ about the state of research in organizational theory. In particu...
TL;DR: The authors proposed ways to improve editorial evaluations of manuscripts and to make published research more reliable and trustworthy by making more allowance for reviewers' human limitations and identifying some troublesome properties of prevalent methodology, such as statistical significance tests, HARKing and p-Hacking.
Abstract: This essay proposes ways to improve editorial evaluations of manuscripts and to make published research more reliable and trustworthy. It points to troublesome properties of current editorial practices and suggests that editorial evaluations could become more reliable by making more allowance for reviewers’ human limitations. The essay also identifies some troublesome properties of prevalent methodology, such as statistical significance tests, HARKing, and p-Hacking, and proposes editorial policies to mitigate these detrimental behaviors.
TL;DR: In this paper, the origins of variation in the structures of interorganizational networks across industries across industries are investigated, combining empirical analyses of existing interorganization networks in six different industries.
Abstract: This study investigates the origins of variation in the structures of interorganizational networks across industries. We combine empirical analyses of existing interorganizational networks in six i...
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors examine a case of task segregation where a group of workers is disproportionately allocated, relative to other groups, to spend more time on specific tasks in a given job.
Abstract: In this article, we examine a case of task segregation—when a group of workers is disproportionately allocated, relative to other groups, to spend more time on specific tasks in a given job—and arg...
TL;DR: In this article, the authors explore whether and how social activists' challenges affect politicians' willingness to associate with targeted firms, and study the effect of public protest on corporate political activ...
Abstract: This paper explores whether and how social activists’ challenges affect politicians’ willingness to associate with targeted firms. We study the effect of public protest on corporate political activ...
TL;DR: This paper combined primary survey data collected from a probability sample of U.S. advertising agencies and semi-structured interviews with advertising practitioners and tested a novel link from class backgr...
Abstract: Combining primary survey data collected from a probability sample of U.S. advertising agencies and semi-structured interviews with advertising practitioners, I tested a novel link from class backgr...
TL;DR: The authors examines the effect of status loss on organizations' price-setting behavior and predicts that a status loss is counter to current status theory and aligned with performance feedback theory, and shows that status decl...
Abstract: This paper examines the effect of status loss on organizations’ price-setting behavior. We predict, counter to current status theory and aligned with performance feedback theory, that a status decl...
TL;DR: The authors argue that a specialist discount may occur in the return to labor market specialization, and that being specialized is not always advantageous for job candidates, but rather beneficial for some job candidates.
Abstract: Recent scholarship on the returns to labor market specialization often claims that being specialized is advantageous for job candidates. We argue, in contrast, that a specialist discount may occur ...
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors examine how organizations select some routines to be changed, but not others, during organizational search and find that organizational roles shape selection by influencing both politics and frames in organizational search.
Abstract: We examine how organizations select some routines to be changed, but not others, during organizational search. Selection is a critical step that links an exogenous trigger for change, change in individual routines, and larger processes of organizational adaptation. Drawing on participant observation of an initiative to improve perioperative efficiency in seven Ontario hospitals, we find that organizational roles shape selection by influencing both politics and frames in organizational search. Roles shape politics by defining the role-specific goals of the people who have authority to change a routine. Organizations will not select a routine for change unless at least some elites—people with role-based authority—frame the existing routine as negatively affecting their role-specific goals. Roles also shape individuals’ frames. Because people are only partially exposed to interdependencies between routines in their day-to-day work, they may not be fully aware of the diverse impact that an existing routine ca...
TL;DR: This 12-month ethnographic study of an early entrant into the U.S. car-sharing industry demonstrates that when an organization shifts its focus from developing radical new technology to incrementally improving this technology, the shift may spark an internal power struggle between the dominant engineering group and a challenger occupational group such as the marketing group.
Abstract: This 12-month ethnographic study of an early entrant into the U.S. car-sharing industry demonstrates that when an organization shifts its focus from developing radical new technology to incrementally improving this technology, the shift may spark an internal power struggle between the dominant engineering group and a challenger occupational group such as the marketing group. Analyzing 42 projects in two time periods that required collaboration between engineering and marketing during such a shift, we show how cross-occupational collaboration under these conditions can be facilitated by a radical flank threat, through which the bargaining power of moderates is strengthened by the presence of a more-radical group. In the face of a strong threat by radical members of a challenger occupational group, moderate members of the dominant engineering group may change their perceptions of their power to resist challengers’ demands and begin to distinguish between the goals of radical versus more-moderate challengers...
TL;DR: The authors discuss acts of conjecture, differentiation, attachment, affirmation, complication, discernment, interruption, and representation to illustrate that meaningful contributions are generated by actions associated with connecting perceptions to concepts, and ASQ's 60th anniversary is an opportune time to make these interim contributions more explicit.
Abstract: Jerry Davis’s (2015) question “What is organizational research for?” is ill-served by the narrow answer “settled science.” Constraints of comprehension may give the illusion that organizational research represents settled science. But the experience of inquiring actually comprises a greater variety of actions that increase the meaning of present research experience and the contributions it makes. I discuss acts of conjecture, differentiation, attachment, affirmation, complication, discernment, interruption, and representation to illustrate that meaningful contributions are generated by actions associated with connecting perceptions to concepts. ASQ’s 60th anniversary is an opportune time to make these interim contributions more explicit.
TL;DR: This paper investigated the role of individual-level embedded relationships in the dissolution of interorganizational ties and found that managers who form close interpersonal relationships with clients can stabilize market ties but these relationships can also be a source of increased market tie dissolution in the event of an exchange manager's departure from the firm.
Abstract: In this study we use a social embeddedness perspective to investigate the paradoxical role that individual-level embedded relationships have on the dissolution of interorganizational ties. Prior studies have found that managers who form close interpersonal relationships with clients can stabilize market ties, but these relationships can also be a source of increased market tie dissolution in the event of an exchange manager’s departure from the firm. Using data on all state-level lobbyists and clients in the Texas lobbying industry from 2001 to 2009, we confirm that a client is more likely to remain with a firm than to follow a departing manager to a new firm, but the depth, focus, and shared ownership of a manager’s client relationship moderate the impact of his or her mobility on market tie dissolution. We find that the tenure of the relationship with a manager, the number of clients on a manager’s roster, the level of attention received from a manager, and the presence of an additional manager relation...