Showing papers in "Journal of Management Studies in 2014"

Signalling theory and equilibrium in strategic management research: an assessment and a research agenda

Abstract: Actors within organizations commonly must make choices armed with incomplete and asymmetrically distributed information. Signalling theory seeks to explain how individuals are able to do so. This theory's primary predictive mechanism is ‘separating equilibrium’, which occurs when a signal's expectations are confirmed through experience. A content analysis finds that most strategic management signalling theory studies have not fully leveraged separating equilibrium. This presents two possible paths for future research. First, some researchers may wish to incorporate separating equilibrium. We illustrate how doing so can uncover new relationships, generate novel insights, and fortify the theory's application. Others who want to theorize about signals, but not examine separating equilibrium, could integrate ideas from signalling theory with other information perspectives. Here a signal becomes one stimulus among many that corporate actors interpret and act upon. We provide research agendas so strategy scholars can apply signalling theory most effectively to meet their research objectives.

Placing Strategy Discourse in Context: Sociomateriality, Sensemaking and Power

Abstract: There has been increasing interest in the discursive aspects of strategy over the last two decades. In this paper we review the existing literature, focusing on six major bodies of discursive scholarship: post-structural, critical discourse analysis, narrative, rhetoric, conversation analysis, and metaphor. Our review reveals the significant contributions of research on strategy and discourse, but also the potential to advance research in this area by bringing together research on discursive practices and research on other practices we know to be important in strategy work. We explore the potential of discursive scholarship in integrating between significant theoretical domains (sensemaking, power, and sociomateriality), and realms of analysis (institutional, organizational, and the episodic), relevant to strategy scholarship. This allows us to place the papers published in this special issue on Strategy as Discourse: Its Significance, Challenges, and Future Directions among the body of knowledge accumulated thus far, and to suggest a way forward for future scholarship.

Playing on Two Chessboards: Reputation Effects between Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) and Corporate Political Activity (CPA)

Abstract: It has recently been argued that corporate social responsibility (CSR) is �political�. It has been neglected however, that firms also operate politically in a traditional sense, in seeking to secure favourable political conditions for their businesses. We argue that there are potential synergies between CSR and corporate political activity (CPA) that are often overlooked by firms and that recognition of these synergies will stimulate firms to align their CSR and CPA. We develop a conceptual model that specifies how various configurations of a firm's CSR and CPA � alignment, misalignment, and non-alignment � affect the firm's reputation beyond the separate reputation effects of CSR and CPA. This model has important implications for understanding how and why firms should pay attention to their CPA and CSR configurations, and thereby contributes to the broader issue of why firms should make sure that they are consistent in terms of responding to stakeholder concerns.

Gender in academic networking: : the role of gatekeepers in professorial recruitment

Abstract: The aim of this study is to build a theoretical framework to understand how gendered networking practices produce or counter inequalities in organizations. We introduce a practice approach combined with a feminist perspective in organization network studies. The notions of gender and networking as social practices allow better insights into what people say and do in networks, and the ways that networking produces or counters gender inequalities. We draw on empirical material about professorial appointments in Dutch academia and analyse the accounts of gatekeepers illuminating their networking practices. The accounts show which networking practices gatekeepers routinely use in recruitment and how these networking practices are intertwined with gender practices. We use the notion of mobilizing masculinities to understand the self-evident identification of men gatekeepers with men in their networks, and to understand how both men and women gatekeepers prefer the male candidates that resemble the proven masculine success model. Furthermore, this study provides the first empirical insights in mobilizing femininities in which women search for and support women candidates. We show how the gender practice of mobilizing femininities is a more precarious and marked practice than mobilizing masculinities. Mobilizing femininities in networking is intended to counter gender inequalities, but is only partially successful. Through constructions of �who you can trust� or �who is a risk�, gatekeepers exercise the power of inclusion and exclusion and contribute to the persistence of structural gender inequalities.

Categorizing Categorization Research: Review, Integration, and Future Directions

Abstract: This paper offers a systematic review of the literature on organizational categories and categorization published in the last 14 years (1999�2012). After identifying a core of roughly 100 papers on categories that appeared in management, organization, and sociology journals, we classified them based on several key dimensions, and analysed a few trends within the categorization literature. Our most surprising finding may be the fact that until recently, there was no mutual recognition of the existence of a distinct �literature on categories� despite the wealth of published material on the topic. After summarizing some core theoretical features of that emergent literature, we propose integrative definitions of its core constructs and suggest several areas of research that could further enrich it in the future.

Rethinking institutions and organizations

Abstract: In this Point–Counterpoint article we argue that institutional scholarship has become overly concerned with explaining institutions and institutional processes, notably at the level of the organization field, rather than with using them to explain and understand organizations. Especially missing is an attempt to gain a coherent, holistic account of how organizations are structured and managed. We also argue that when institutional theory does give attention to organizations it inappropriately treats them as though they are the same, or at least as though any differences are irrelevant for purposes of theory. We propose a return to the study of organizations with an emphasis upon comparative analysis, and suggest the institutional logics perspective as an appropriate means for doing so.

Methodological Wishes for the Next Decade and How to Make Wishes Come True

Abstract: We discuss seven methodological improvements that would stimulate important advancements in management research. We refer to these improvements as �wishes� that we hope will materialize within the next decade. To promote the implementation of these improvements, we offer concrete and actionable recommendations that researchers can apply when designing and conducting empirical research and that journal editors and reviewers can consider when evaluating manuscripts for publication. These improvements address: (1) accelerating theoretical progress; (2) improving the construct validity of measures; (3) strengthening causal inferences; (4) incorporating multilevel design, measurement, and analysis; (5) balancing trade-offs between internal and external validity, (6) understanding the nature and impact of outliers; and (7) offering a realistic and useful description of a study's limitations

Legitimation of New Ventures: A Review and Research Programme

Abstract: Research on how new ventures (NVs) achieve legitimacy is fragmented and rests on taken-for-granted assumptions that require problematization. Following a systematic literature review, I identify five distinct perspectives on NV legitimation: an institutional perspective, a cultural entrepreneurship perspective, an ecological perspective, an impression management perspective, and a social movement perspective. After comparing and contrasting these perspectives, I synthesize them into a generative and integrative typology. Based on this typology, I develop a new research programme. The programme widens the extant scholarship agenda by challenging its shared assumptions and contributes to further integration of the literature by building bridges between perspectives.

Emotional Dynamics and Strategizing Processes: A Study of Strategic Conversations in Top Team Meetings

Abstract: An important but largely unexplored issue in the study of strategy-as-discourse is how emotion affects the discursive processes through which strategy is constructed. To address this question, this paper investigates displayed emotions in strategic conversations and explores how the emotional dynamics generated through these displays shape a top management team's strategizing. Using microethnography, we analyse conversations about ten strategic issues raised across seven top management team meetings and identify five different kinds of emotional dynamic, each associated with a different type of strategizing process. The emotional dynamics vary in the sorts of emotions displayed, their sequencing and overall form. The strategizing processes vary in how issues are proposed, discussed, and evaluated, and whether decisions are taken or postponed. We identify team relationship dynamics as a key mechanism linking emotional dynamics and strategizing processes, and issue urgency as another important influence.

Passion Isn't Always a Good Thing: Examining Entrepreneurs' Network Centrality and Financial Performance with a Dualistic Model of Passion

Abstract: We propose a conceptual model that links entrepreneurs' passion, network centrality, and financial performance, and test this model with small business managers in formal business networking groups. Drawing on the dualistic model of passion, we explore the relationships that harmonious and obsessive passion have with financial performance, mediated by network centrality. Results indicate that harmoniously passionate entrepreneurs had higher out-degree centrality in their networking group (i.e., they were more inclined to seek out members to discuss work issues), which increased the income they received from peer referrals and, ultimately, business income. Obsessively passionate entrepreneurs had lower in-degree centrality (i.e., they were less likely to be approached by peers), and in turn received less income from referrals and less business income. These findings highlight that entrepreneurial passion does not always result in positive financial outcomes � the type of passion makes a difference. Implications for research and practice are discussed.

Local Venturing as Compassion Organizing in the Aftermath of a Natural Disaster: The Role of Localness and Community in Reducing Suffering

Abstract: In contrast to models of compassion within existing organizations, this grounded theory study examines how ventures emerge relying on localness and community in direct response to �opportunities� to alleviate suffering in the aftermath of a natural disaster. While a natural disaster is a surprising disruptive event devastating a local community, that local community is nested within a broader community, which can be a source of abundant resources. Ventures created in the aftermath of a natural disaster, given local knowledge and unencumbered by pre-existing systems, procedures, and capabilities, are highly effective at connecting the broader community with the local community through customizing resources to meet victims' needs and to quickly delivering these resources to alleviate suffering.

Opportunity Evaluation as Rule‐Based Decision Making

Abstract: We draw from cognitive science literature on rule-based thinking to develop and empirically test a theoretical framework of entrepreneurial opportunity evaluation. We argue that entrepreneurs make use of socially constructed rules to discern the attractiveness of an opportunity, for them, specifically. Using conjoint analysis data of 498 decisions made by 62 entrepreneurs, we find that entrepreneurs' use of rules regarding opportunity novelty, resource efficiency, and worst-case scenario significantly influences entrepreneurs' evaluations of opportunities and that individual differences in opportunity market and technology knowledge augment the effect of the rules on opportunity attractiveness. Additionally, we document that the worst-case scenario diminishes the positive effect of other rule criteria (e.g. novelty, resource efficiency) on opportunity evaluation and that market and technology knowledge further influence the negative effects of the worst-case scenario.

The contraction of meaning: : the combined effect of communication, emotions, and materiality on sensemaking in the stockwell shooting

Abstract: In this paper, we seek to understand how individuals, as part of a collective, commit themselves to a single, and possibly erroneous, frame, as a basis for sensemaking and coordinated actions. Using real-time data from an anti-terrorist police operation that led to the accidental shooting of an innocent civilian, we analyse how individual actors framed their circumstances in communication with one another and how this affected their subsequent interpretations and actions as events unfolded. Our analysis reveals, first, how the collective commitment to a framing of a civilian as a terrorist suicide bomber was built up and reinforced across episodes of collective sensemaking. Second, we elaborate on how the interaction between verbal communication, expressed and felt emotions, and material cues led to a contraction of meaning. This contraction stabilized and reinforced the overall framing at the exclusion of alternative interpretations. With our study we extend prior sensemaking research on environmental enactment and the escalation of commitment and elaborate on the role of emotions and materiality as part of sensemaking.

When do Non-Family CEOs Outperform in Family Firms? Agency and Behavioural Agency Perspectives

Abstract: Family firms represent a globally dominant form of organization, yet they confront a steep challenge of finding and managing competent leaders. Sometimes, these leaders cannot be found within the owning family. To date we know little about the governance contexts under which non-family leaders thrive or founder. Guided by concepts from agency theory and behavioural agency theory, we examine the conditions of ownership and leadership that promote superior performance among non-family CEOs of family firms. Our analysis of 893 Italian family firms demonstrates that these leaders outperform when they are monitored by multiple major family owners as opposed to a single owner; they also outperform when they are not required to share power with co-CEOs who are family members, and who may be motivated by parochial family socioemotional priorities.

Strategy, Discourse and Practice: The Intensification of Power

Abstract: We adopt a Foucauldian approach to discourse to show how power relations shape the constitution of strategy. By exploring two particular discourses associated with the strategy of a global telecommunications company, our study shows how the power effects of discourses are intensified through particular discursive and material practices, leading to the production of objects and subjects that are clearly aligned with the strategy. In this way, our study contributes to understanding: the mechanisms whereby discourse bears down on strategy through intensification practices; different forms of resistance; and the way in which strategy objects and subjects reproduce (or undermine) discourse.

The Double Edge of Ambiguity in Strategic Planning

Abstract: While the communications and strategy literatures have suggested that ambiguity embedded in texts such as strategic plans many enable the accommodation of divergent perspectives and contribute to building consensus and commitment, little is known about the consequences of such ambiguity for the consumption of strategy discourse or for the enactment of planned strategy. In a case study of strategic planning in a cultural organization, we identify three forms of ambiguity embedded in the strategy text, and show how these features generate different forms of consumption among organization members. We find that strategic ambiguity initially plays an enabling role as participants engage in enacting their respective interpretations of strategy. However, over time, the mobilizing effects of strategic ambiguity lead to internal contradiction and overextension. The study contributes by exploring empirically the double-edged nature of strategic ambiguity, and by identifying the underlying mechanisms by which its paradoxical consequences emerge. We show that while ambiguous strategy discourse enables strategic development and change, it may contain the seeds of its own dissolution contributing to cyclical patterns of strategy development and reorientation.

CEO Succession Mechanisms, Organizational Context, and Performance: A Socio-Emotional Wealth Perspective on Family-Controlled Firms

Abstract: This article extends the literature on CEO succession and financial performance by addressing corporate owners' mixed motives and desires to protect their interest in being in business. We draw on a Socio-Emotional Wealth (SEW) perspective to investigate how the choice of one of three succession mechanisms – relay succession, ‘horse races’ among internal CEO candidates, and hiring from outside – may effectively balance trade-offs between corporate owners' non-financial SEW motives and the firm's financial performance. We find that implementing one of these succession mechanisms reduces the negative impact that typically characterizes CEO transitions in family firms. We also show that family presence on the board of directors offsets the benefits of having selected these balancing succession mechanisms, in either placing too much emphasis on SEW, or creating negative dynamics that make the chosen succession mechanisms less effective.

Does Institutional Theory Need Redirecting

Abstract: Greenwood, Hinings and Whetten (2014) present two major criticisms of current institutional scholarship, and see need for a broad redirection: institutional organization theory, they argue, has lost sight of the claim to study organizations and, with its overwhelming focus on isomorphism and similarity, has fallen short on adequately theorizing differences across organizations. In our article, we offer support as well as a riposte. First, while we agree that the organizing of collective efforts needs to be at the core of organization research, we warn that focusing on formal organization – a rationalized cultural product itself – may direct attention away from studying alternative modes of organizing, and underestimates the dynamic developments that have transformed contemporary organizations into increasingly complex objects of inquiry. Second, we are concerned that, by abandoning the analysis of similarities in favour of differences, institutional theory may eventually lose sight of its pivotal quest: to study institutions.

Legitimacy‐as‐Feeling: How Affect Leads to Vertical Legitimacy Spillovers in Transnational Governance

Abstract: Transnational governance schemes (TGSs) are interorganizational networks of public and/or private actors that jointly regulate global public policy issues, such as the prevention of human rights violations and the protection of ecosystems. Considering that TGSs mainly address issues of public concern, the general public represents a major source of legitimacy in transnational governance. We theorize how members of the general public, whom we conceptualize as intuiters, apply heuristics to bestow legitimacy on TGSs. Given the difficulty of assessing TGSs, we argue that intuiters draw on affect-based responses towards a TGS's better-known network affiliates, such as participating business firms, to judge the legitimacy of the TGS as a whole. This substitution produces a �vertical� legitimacy spillover. More specifically, we examine the heuristic process of judgment underlying vertical spillovers in TGSs and derive implications for the legitimacy construct and the analysis of spillover phenomena.

Moving Forward: Developing Theoretical Contributions in Management Studies

Abstract: How do we, as management researchers, develop novel theoretical contributions and, thereby, potentially break new ground in management studies? To address this question, we review previous methodological work on theorizing and advance a typology of the reasoning processes that underlie theoretical contributions and significant advances in management studies. This typology consists of various types of analogical and counterfactual reasoning, ranging from focused thought experiments aimed at prodding existing theory in the direction of alternative assumptions, constructs, and hypotheses to more expansive efforts for inducing new theoretical models and alternative explanations. Applying this typology, we detail the mechanisms behind the formation of novel theoretical contributions and illustrate the currency of our typology through a review of 24 major theoretical breakthroughs in management studies. We conclude the paper by discussing the implications of this typology for our collective efforts in building, elaborating, and expanding theory in management studies.

The Discursive Construction of Strategists' Subjectivities: Towards a Paradox Lens on Strategy

Abstract: Until recently, the field of strategy has neglected the question of what it means to be a strategist. Based on an analysis of 68 interviews with strategy practitioners, our results highlight four main tensions that emerge from strategists' discourses on strategizing work: the social tension, the cognitive tension, the focus tension, and the time tension. This tension-based representation of strategy enables us to differentiate between three forms of strategists' subjectivities, i.e. the ways by which strategists discursively cope with tensions as a means of constituting their identity and legitimacy: the mythicizing subjectivity, the concretizing subjectivity, and the dialogizing subjectivity. Such results shed light on what a strategist is, suggesting that strategizing can be conceptualized as the art of balancing tensions and that multiple strategists' subjectivities within a paradox lens on strategy may in fact co-exist.

Micro-Level Discursive Strategies for Constructing Shared Views around Strategic Issues in Team Meetings

Abstract: Management scholars have explored how certain actors in meetings – especially leaders – shape social processes of interaction and use different linguistic devices, as methods, to affect how sense is made of strategic issues. Less attention has been paid to interactions between members of the team as a whole and the repertoire of discursive strategies, or goal-directed behaviours, that they deploy to create shared views around issues. We analyse rare empirical episodes of team discussions of strategic issues in board meetings to inductively conceptualize how this is achieved. To do this we use the Discourse-Historical Approach (DHA) to critical discourse analysis (CDA). We reveal five discursive strategies teams use to develop shared views around strategic issues (Re/defining, Equalizing, Simplifying, Legitimating, and Reconciling) and demonstrate how they are skilfully operationalized through a range of linguistic devices or means.

How Does Project Termination Impact Project Team Members? Rapid Termination, ‘Creeping Death’, and Learning from Failure

Abstract: Although extant studies have increased our understanding of the decision of when to terminate a project and its organizational implications, they do not explore the contextual mechanisms underlying the link between the speed at which a project is terminated and the learning of those directly working on the project. This is surprising because perceptions of project failure likely differ between those who own the option (i.e., the decision maker) and those who are the option (i.e., project team members). In this multiple case study, we explored research and development (RD (2) rather than obstructing learning from project experience, negative emotions motivated sensemaking efforts; and (3) rather than emphasizing learning after project termination, in the context of rapid redeployment of team members after project termination, delayed termination provided employees the time to reflect on, articulate, and codify lessons learned. We discuss the implications of these findings.

Framing and interorganizational knowledge transfer: A process study of collaborative innovation in the aircraft industry

Abstract: This article explains how and why organizational actors' decisions about interorganizational knowledge transfer might change over time. We find that organizational actors' framing of future innovation developments, as either an opportunity or a threat, motivates them to engage or disengage in interorganizational knowledge transfer activities. Shifts in framing lead organizational actors to leverage their relational context and knowledge base in new ways, thereby emphasizing the role of agency in drawing upon these structures. These findings are incorporated into a process model that explains discontinuous change in interorganizational knowledge transfer.

Dreaming of Flying When Grounded: Occupational Identity and Occupational Fantasies of Furloughed Airline Pilots

Abstract: This article analyses the effects of job loss on the occupational identities of a group of United States pilots, laid off (or �furloughed�) twice by their employer in the decade following 9/11. Using a narrative methodology, the paper examines how the childhood dream of flying, referred to as the Phaethon dream, serves as an identity anchor that sustained their occupational identities. When the circumstances of the aviation industry (restructuring, outsourcing, and downsizing) led to extensive lay-offs, this identity anchor functioned in two contrasting ways. Some pilots moved on to retrain and start new careers, without abandoning their occupational identities or relinquishing the dream of flying. Another group of pilots, however, were stuck in occupational limbo waiting to be recalled by their employer, unwilling to forsake this dream and refusing to contemplate a move that would decisively take them out of their pilot seats. The paper's contribution lies in theorizing how a dream originating in childhood, linked to a long-standing archetype of flying and subsequently hardened into a shared occupational fantasy, acts as an identity anchor and how this shapes responses to the trauma of job loss. The paper concludes by linking the Phaethon dream to its mythological counterpart in order to highlight its enduring, shared, and unconscious character.

Antecedents and Employee Outcomes of Line Managers' Perceptions of Enabling HR Practices

Abstract: To learn more about the role of line managers in the implementation of HR practices, we propose and test a model of line managers' perceptions of enabling HR practices on the one hand and employee outcomes on the other. In a field study of 89 line managers and 631 employees, we observed that the relationship between line managers' perceptions of enabling HR practices and employees' intrinsic motivation, affective organizational commitment, and turnover intention was mediated by employees' perceived supervisor support. Line managers' perceptions of enabling HR practices, in turn, were predicted by line managers' perceived quality of the HR training they received. Theoretical and practical implications and directions for future research are discussed.

Activism for corporate responsibility: : conceptualizing private regulation opportunity structures

Abstract: In this article, we examine how private regulatory initiatives (PRIs) – which define standards for corporate responsibility (CR) issues and sometimes monitor their application by firms – create opportunities and constraints for activist groups aiming to push firms towards more stringent CR activities. Drawing on social movement theory, we conceptualize how private regulation opportunity structures affect such CR-based activist groups' targets and tactics at both the firm and field levels. At the field level, we argue that both radical and reformative activist groups direct most of their time and resources towards PRIs with comparatively more stringent standards. At the firm level, while radical activist groups are likely to target firms participating in more stringent PRIs, reformative activist groups target firms participating in less stringent PRIs, or those that do not participate in PRIs at all. When facing unfavourable opportunity structures, CR-based activist groups tend either to advocate the creation of new PRIs or to shift their activities to pressure other focal points. This article contributes to moving beyond extant literature's emphasis of PRIs as settlements of contentious firm–activist interactions towards also viewing them as starting points for activist groups aiming to push firms towards a more substantive CR engagement.

Debating the future of management research

Abstract: The Editors of JMS invited four leading scholars in research on management and organizations to have an open discussion on the current state and future prospects of management research. Our four contributors discuss, among other things, the growing influence of economics, psychology, and sociology on current management research, and the danger of an increasingly fetishistic and formulaic approach to management research that they believe may lead to stale and narrow contributions. Such an approach carries a risk in the long run of seriously dampening the intellectual vigour and impact of management research. Our contributors conclude their discussion with a number of recommendations for management researchers. These recommendations include asking bigger, better, and more challenging questions compared to the orthodoxy in our management research and engaging in modes of research that are not only intellectually challenging but that also have the potential of making a real impact on management practice.

Contracts, Negotiation, and Learning: An Examination of Termination Provisions

Abstract: Taking a temporal view of learning in partnerships, we argue that learning to contract from prior relationships can be manifested not only in an increase in the level of contractual detail but also in a decrease in negotiation time for a given level of contractual detail. We analyse the influence that the length of prior relationships and the detail of termination provisions have on negotiation time, or the time period that it takes for partners to reach a mutually acceptable agreement. We find that: (1) the length of prior relationships has a curvilinear, U-shaped effect on negotiation time, suggesting the possibility of diverse learning mechanisms as the relationship unfolds; (2) the impact of the detail of termination provisions on negotiation time varies across different types of termination provisions; and (3) it takes a shorter time to negotiate certain types of termination provisions when partners have longer prior relationships. Beyond suggesting the need to investigate the consequences of contractual provisions for collaborators, our study proposes negotiation time as an additional indicator of a learning-to-contract effect that complements existing ones.

Co-worker exclusion and employee outcomes: An investigation of the moderating roles of perceived organizational and social support

Abstract: When does social support alleviate or exacerbate the effects of being excluded by colleagues in the workplace? This study integrates belongingness and social support theories to predict and demonstrate the differential effects of work-related support (i.e., perceived organizational support; POS) and non-work-related support (i.e., family and social support; FSS) on employee reactions to co-worker exclusion. Consistent with our predictions, we found that employees reporting high levels of co-worker exclusion and high levels of perceived organizational support demonstrate higher levels of performance and increased levels of self-worth than those reporting low levels of POS. Alternatively, support from family or friends intensified the negative relationship between co-worker exclusion and self-esteem and the positive relationship between co-worker exclusion and job-induced tension. Unexpectedly, FSS did not influence the supervisor-rated task performance of excluded workers, nor did POS mitigate the relationship between co-worker exclusion and job-induced tension. Implications for theory, research, and practice are discussed.