Scandinavian Journal of Management最新文献

Recent research has shown that the liberated firm is associated with better performance and can address the emerging needs in our hypermodern society for autonomy, self-esteem, commitment, and well-being. While research on liberated firms has been increasing, the concept remains widely debated among academics, especially in management and organisational behaviour fields as well as in the press and on social media. The coexistence of related notions (sociocracy, holacracy, spaghetti organization, management 3.0 and teal organization) accentuates the need for a theoretical framework. This research aims to fill this gap. Specifically, we conduct a systematic literature review and comparative analysis. We therefore demonstrate that the concept of the liberated firm integrates the five other notions (as modalities or different stages of liberation); that is, it presents the highest degree of humanist values and operates at the highest corporate level.

Even though the practice perspective on innovation acknowledges that ambiguity is a key defining characteristic of innovating, it has rarely been considered conceptually. This paper argues that to fully consider ambiguity, it is necessary to focus on the situations in which those practices are enacted. Building on the work of Lucy Suchman, thus, this paper conceptualizes the innovation process as a chain of interrelated situations. Each situation is (partially) ambiguous at first and requires actors to define it. The paper elaborates on two mechanisms—focusing on matters of concern and drawing on formal procedures—that may be utilized to achieve this. The paper contributes to prior research by (a) shedding new light on the barriers to innovation, (b) reframing the meaning of ‘context’ in innovation research, and (c) emphasizing the role of ‘the mundane’ in innovating.

While normative control practices aim to raise employee motivation and commitment to professional standards in professional service firms, there is much debate on when and for whom such practices remain motivational. Based on interviews with 18 self-employed consultants who left elite consultancies, we find that, for them, normative control practices, such as learning opportunities and social events, lose appeal over time. This paper contributes to the literature on normative control by conceptualising how consequences, like lack of autonomy, reduced learning and growing work-life conflict, increasingly undermine the motivational impact of normative control practices during a consultant career. Self-employment can help consultants avoid these unwelcome effects because independence solves autonomy issues and improves their work-life balance. Mapping this underexplored but very common move from employment to self-employment in the consulting industry introduces the concept of occupational careers to the debate on boundaryless careers.

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.