Scandinavian Journal of Management最新文献

We study strategic change as a visible and substantive action by examining the circumstances under which firms launch corporate change programs. Drawing on prior literature and corroborated by insights from interviews with executives, we propose a contingency perspective on the launch of corporate change programs (i.e. that different types of programs are launched under different circumstances). To do so, we combine arguments for three general motives for launching a corporate change program with two distinct types of corporate change programs. More specifically, we argue that firms are more likely to launch growth-oriented programs when the market situation is buoyant, when they have prior experience, and when they are underperforming. Furthermore, we argue that firms are more likely to launch efficiency-oriented programs when there is a new CEO, when they are underperforming, and when they are facing high levels of organizational complexity. To test our hypotheses regarding the motives for launching programs, we conducted a large-scale empirical study. Using hand-collected data for the European financial services and insurance industry over a ten-year period, we found support for our predictions. We discuss the implications of these findings for strategic change research.

Scholars have underscored that the organization studies are afflicted by dualism which impedes new theoretical developments. To overcome dualism which considers all aspects in opposition, we adopt a philosophical approach to explore in depth its origins. We reveal that dualism has ontological origins and emerges from the progressive abandonment of the Aristotelian ontological framework and specifically his conceptualization of the four primary causes that are bound together in pairs by a reciprocal and total causality. Based on this observation, we then argue the need to scrutinize not only our epistemology and methods, but first and foremost, our ontological assumptions as they shape our structure of thought. We suggest two complementary ways to help us make these assumptions explicit and thus enable us to expand organization studies.

The Baradian optical metaphor of diffraction grounds a methodology at the core of Feminist new materialism. It considers materiality, included the corporeal materiality of the body, as vital and vibrant and thus it may be the entry point for exploring embodiment in sensemaking. Diffraction is put to work to explore embodied sensemaking of researchers by performing a diffractive reading-writing of two notable sensemaking texts that make use of the Mann Gulch disaster, Weick’s (1993) account of the Mann Gulch disaster with sensemaking breaking down, and Introna’s (2019) re-appreciation of this disaster, which develops sensemaking as always already present. Based on two neologisms, comprising a noun and a verb - fire-burning and death-dying - a diffractive grating is built for discussing reading and writing as embodied sensemaking activities. As a result, the concept of sensemaking may be appreciated not only as a cognitive but also as a material and affective process. Diffractive reading-writing, as a methodology, contributes to organization theory an ethical alternative to critique and grounds a corporeal ethics of more-than-human care in academia that may help researchers to make embodied sense of the research phenomena they study.

Greening public organizations demands the acknowledgment and reconciliation of tensions and conflicts between core values. This is a challenge that public pension funds have come to face as the call for sustainability has reached the finance sector. Building on the value pluralism debate and institutional theory this article provides a theoretical elaboration of strategies for managing value conflict in public organizations, discussing how value conflict management may promote or inhibit institutional change. The empirical analysis explores how sustainability-related value conflicts are managed within Swedish public pension funds. Political goals and ideals of sustainable finance are pushing funds to promote sustainability through their investments, thus, to consider and promote further values than financial return. Previous research has mainly focused on the financial profitability of sustainability concerns. This study shows that economic value calculation remains the dominant approach within funds, downplaying any conflict between environmental and financial goals. However, to maintain institutional legitimacy under increasing external pressure, the funds have implemented complementary strategies, such as organizational separation of value-related tasks, and different principles for prioritizing value-based actions. The funds thereby avoid ethical reasoning which they fear would lead to subjectivity. In conclusion, the implications for organizational change are discussed.

In this article, I elaborate that human resource management (HRM) prevents the emergence of processual leadership practices in organisations that aim to have a wider positive impact on the common good. The main reason for this is the ideological individualism that permeates HR practices such as leadership development, performance evaluation and talent management. The increasingly complex forms of organising defined by technology, networks, unpredictability, and uncertainty that characterise the contemporary organisational environment require new approaches to leadership that can foster the contribution and collaboration of multiple interdependent agents. At the same time, the need to respond to the grand challenges of our time requires organisational practices to be reoriented towards their positive impact on the common good. This requires a change in the orientation towards self-interest that prevents the expression of ‘relationality’ inside organisations. I argue that HRM should approach leadership in a new way, challenging the traditional leader-centric view and moving towards a more ‘decentred’ understanding of leadership while addressing it more as a processual and communicative endeavour. Implications for the reorientation of HRM and leadership practices are considered, specifically for their impact on the common good, in terms of rebuilding the quality relationships that collectivity, commonality and relationality pronounce.

The accelerating need for sustainable development across the globe has put firms under great pressure to play their role in social sustainability by working on several objectives. Among them, achieving life satisfaction for their employees is at the forefront. The study aims to examine sequential mediating roles of organizational trust and proactive behavior in transformational leadership and life satisfaction relationships. It draws on social exchange theory and explores investment in relationships within the organization through mutual support and reciprocity. Data were collected through self-reported questionnaires of employees associated with different public and private sector organizations in Pakistan. The study opted for a three-wave time-lagged design. For results, Process macro by Hayes is performed on a sample of 211 employees via 2000 re-samples bias-corrected bootstrap method. The findings reveal that in the presence of a transformational style of leading, when trust is inseminated in followers, their proactivity increases, leading them towards satisfaction in life. Theoretical and practical implications are also discussed in light of the findings.

Despite previous efforts to deal with the ontological split between human subjects and reality, sensemaking has remained human-centered. We argue that human-centered sensemaking risks omitting constitutive elements of reality. To escape the ontological split, we decenter sensemaking and thus extend it in such a way that it allows seemingly unrelated and independent humans and nonhumans to become connected and interdependent with what is made sense of. Doing so allows us to demonstrate how a decentered understanding of reality can produce a radically different understanding of research phenomena. As a means to show the consequences of a decentered sensemaking, we revisit the Mann Gulch disaster and show that not all disasters can be avoided by better sensemaking or good management.

This introduces the reader to the Great Reset of management and organization theory. Concepts are discussed and six cases are presented, provoking thought, debate, and dialogue for or against a Great Reset of management and organization theory. We conclude that management and organisation theorists might rather study than advocate or co-perform resets great or small that aim at privileging this development goal or that minority over others.

Situated in the car insurance sector, this study investigates the implementation of a smartphone app interface aimed to realise an IT-enabled competitive advantage by engaging customers whilst simultaneously collecting data for a future transformation of the company’s control systems. Unfolding three dimensions of the performativity of the app, namely codes, visualisations, and narrations, the study shows how different actors and interests, within and outside the organisation, negotiated the features, scope, and value of the digital offering. The study finds that the company favoured marketing concerns over internal control concerns because the analytical possibilities of the data collected were too uncertain. The results suggest that digital innovations are accompanied by an increased agency of the customers that can cause negative intra-organisational control consequences and, thus, can contradict the general promise of digital offerings, hindering a realisation of a competitive advantage.

While there is a lot of research on emotions at the small group level, we lack an understanding of the role of emotions at the large group level, including in interorganizational relationships. This study contributes to filling this important gap in the literature by studying the emotions in an interorganizational network longitudinally over a period of six years. The data reveal how the network offers a particular kind of space in which relational energy emerges, amplifies, can deplete, and can be re-set and turned around. The findings show how network emotions are recursively related to network outcomes, specifically the extent to which the common goal is achieved. This paper contributes to the growing literature on emotions in organization studies by shifting attention toward the important role of context, and it theorizes the interorganizational network as a particular kind of context where individuals interact in a semi-structured manner, with important implications for the interdependent relationship between individual emotions, relational energy, and network properties and outcomes.