International Journal of Management Reviews最新文献

Stakeholders increasingly expect to be engaged in corporate social responsibility (CSR) agendas through dialogue; the joint creation of meaning between firms and stakeholders, or among stakeholders. Dominant conceptions of stakeholder dialogue in CSR prioritize firm interests, and uncertainty as to what constitutes stakeholder dialogue, and how it should be practiced, permeates theory and practice. What is (and is not) stakeholder dialogue and how does it generate positive impacts for business and society? To unpack this question, we systematically reviewed 374 scholarly outputs across the CSR and stakeholder dialogue literatures over a 30-year timeframe. Operating at the intersection of these two literatures, we identify ‘conceptualizations’ of stakeholder dialogue in CSR as either integral (an intrinsic component of CSR) or incidental (a communicative response to CSR), as well as the ‘contours’ (i.e., boundaries) and ‘contexts’ of stakeholder dialogue in CSR. In doing so, we posit that the key to generating effective stakeholder dialogue for business and society lies not only in greater cohesion between CSR and stakeholder dialogue literatures, but in practicing dialogue that is ongoing, stakeholder (rather than firm) focused and avoids idealization. Herein, we stimulate a research agenda for scholars interested in communication and CSR at a time when the social and environmental demands placed on firms continue to escalate.

In expertise research, the focus is shifting from how one becomes an expert in a specific field towards understanding how workers sustain the value and recognition of their expertise by being flexible. This so-called flexpertise requires that workers meet new expertise needs within and across the boundaries of their current expertise domains and working contexts. The current study grounds a new theoretical paradigm regarding this individual adaptivity by introducing a ‘dynamic process model of flexpertise’. By deploying a system dynamics lens, it synthesizes the scholarly knowledge from different disciplines about flexible or adaptive forms of expertise. The model incorporates six categories of adaptation processes that involve intra-individual changes and social interactions over time, and that are interconnected by means of feedback loops without a single start- or endpoint. This enables scholars and practitioners to identify leverage points where small interventions can have a large effect on the individual's adaptivity. As such, the dynamic model provides a new paradigm on how to foster workers’ continued possession of expertise that is valuable to organizations’ competitive advantage and enables organizational and societal transitions and innovations, while safeguarding an individual's career sustainability.

Scholars have long debated the definition of social entrepreneurship, but disagreement persists. Despite sustained efforts to craft a universal definition, social entrepreneurship has been characterized as an ʻessentially contested concept’. However, little is known about the root causes of this ongoing contestation. Therefore, we delve into the literature's social entrepreneurship definitions to examine this complex issue. Our systematic literature review leverages insights from the philosophy of science and formal logic—specifically, a theory of definition—to present four rules for definitional evaluation in the social sciences. Accordingly, definitions should convey the essence of a concept (Rule 1: essence), differentiate between their defining and defined terms (Rule 2: expression), be phrased positively (Rule 3: explication), and avoid figurative and obscure language (Rule 4: eloquence). Using these rules to analyse 156 original social entrepreneurship definitions reveals varying interpretations of the concept's essence and sheds light on epistemological issues, such as tautological definitions. Integrating these findings into a practical ʻrulebook’ for definitional evaluation significantly contributes to the social entrepreneurship literature and other highly contested fields by helping to understand different sources of contestation. Guided by our rulebook, we suggest future research avenues and highlight diverse theorizing styles, the engagement of opposing and paradoxical definitional views and the role of academic language in shaping the social entrepreneurship field.

Social media has been around for 20 years and has profoundly affected the dynamics of interactions between companies and customers. Studies have increasingly focused on how firms effectively use social media in their marketing strategies. However, the literature appears highly fragmented. Scholars have tended to investigate individual facets of social media marketing (SMM) behaviours, adopting a narrow perspective on their antecedents and outcomes. This approach hinders a comprehensive understanding of the overall phenomenon. Against this background, we conducted a systematic literature review (SLR) of 169 articles to develop a causal-chain framework based on inputs, contingency factors, and outputs to illustrate the interrelationships among different research constructs explored so far. This framework contributes to overcoming the isolated perspectives of firms’ SMM that have characterized the extant knowledge, thus offering clarity and an overarching view of SMM in firms. The findings also provide concrete guidance for future research endeavours in this area.

Engagement has emerged as a significant focus in contemporary management research, widely acknowledged for its positive impact on wellbeing and performance. However, over 30 years since its introduction, the concept of engagement remains fractured with multiple definitions, ongoing theoretical debates, and inconsistent empirical evidence of practical value. This review addresses the evolving nature of work-related engagement, recognizing the need for fresh perspectives to better understand this complex phenomenon. To facilitate progressing the research agenda beyond current debates, we used a meta-narrative review as a systematic approach for synthesizing our findings and problematizing techniques to generate innovative ideas. Our review identified six distinct groups, each arguing for different conceptualizations of engagement. We illuminated opportunities for further research directions by mapping and challenging dominating narratives. Specifically, our review highlights the need to conduct research outside the predominant positivist/postpositivist perspective. It also identifies a need for additional research to understand how task-level engagement happens through the interplay of individuals and the environment. Our study makes significant conceptual contributions by offering clear boundaries of existing knowledge, an alternative conceptualization of engagement, and a platform for new directions. Contribution to literature review methodology using integrative and generative approaches is also discussed.

With the ascent of the concept of public value, the theory and practice of administration have shifted from a focus on management, effectiveness and efficiency (as espoused in New Public Management) towards an agenda of public value creation. This has resulted in a large, heterogenous number of scholarly publications on public value. In this paper, we review this important body of work from the period 1994 to 2019, discuss it critically and propose a few avenues for future research – especially in terms of conceptualizing public value. We do so by using a mixed-methods approach, incorporating semantic-network analysis, which allows a comprehensive quantitative and qualitative analysis of the field of public value. In this article we show in great detail how the literature on public value has evolved and is configured, categorize how value is defined and measured within the literature, introduce a novel mixed-methods approach for literature reviews, and provide three conceptual contributions including (1) digitalization in public value theory can expand our understanding of citizens, (2) public value is more than just public, and (3) visualizing public value through controversy maps. Finally, we provide suggestions for further research.

Across global supply chains, buyers enforce labour codes as a primary mechanism for ensuring suppliers’ social compliance with international labour standards and rights for workers in supplier facilities. Yet researchers have long documented empirical evidence of the inconsistent, weak implementation of labour codes. Therefore, the effective use of this social compliance mechanism requires examining what causes supply chain actors to exhibit failures in substantively implementing labour codes, or ‘social compliance decoupling’. We conducted the first systematic review of all available empirical evidence, both qualitative and quantitative, on the implementation of labour codes by actors at different stages of the supply chain, to identify and catalogue the root causes of social compliance decoupling. By integrating our findings, we propose a conceptual framework on ‘social compliance decoupling cascades’ that illustrates the causes of social compliance decoupling by supply chain actors at different stages and explains three pathways through which decoupling by an actor translates into decoupling by one or more adjacent actors (‘rewards–rights trade-off’, ‘compliance capital scarcity’ and ‘code acontextuality’). We recommend opportunities for research and best practice around the recoupling of social compliance through multi-stakeholder collaboration, mutual investment, relational sourcing and expansion of the scope of global supply chain social responsibility to drive effective labour code implementation.

Best practice advice for literature reviews abounds, yet little advice is available for how to infuse a literature review with theory-generative insights that break out of knowledge silos. To address this issue, we provide guidance on reviewing a range of literature for theory-generative insights through a process of knowledge transfers from a source domain onto a target domain. To do so, mainly building on work concerned with analogical reasoning, we put forward a ‘breakout’ review model, which consists of three iterative stages. While we illustrate the process model in a supply chain management context, we aim to assist any organizational scholar interested in exploring cross-disciplinary literature for new ways of thinking.

Leaders from typically privileged backgrounds, such as White, male, elite-educated and upper-class individuals, often find it easier to craft an authentic identity in professional settings than their atypical counterparts. These atypical leaders, which include women, LGBT+, ethnic minorities or those from less affluent socio-economic backgrounds, can indeed construct an authentic workplace identity. However, this often demands significant emotional investment and the navigation of challenges, such as reconciling conflicting identities, especially in institutions tailored predominantly for the typical leaders. While authenticity and diversity are highly desired qualities in leadership, we argue that authenticity remains a privilege primarily enjoyed by leaders from typical backgrounds. By drawing on Hochschild's notion of emotional labour and Castoriadis's concepts of autonomy and heteronomy, we shed light on the dynamic interplay between authenticity and atypicality. Further, we present a conceptual framework that outlines how atypical leaders can manifest authenticity in their roles, and the ensuing implications for driving organisational change rooted in diversity.

Patents as intangible assets are subjects of burgeoning empirical research. However, there is limited knowledge of how patent quality and patent value can be conceptualized, distinguished, and related. Distinguishing these concepts and relating them in a theoretical framework would enable the assessment and improvement of patent quality, which has implications for all the stakeholders in patents. We ground this study in the emergent ex-ante theory of patent value and conduct a systematic review of 340 papers that investigate patent quality or value. Based on a comparative analysis of the patentability standards adopted by the patent offices in the United States, Europe, and Japan, we delineate four dimensions of patent quality—subject matter, utility, non-obviousness or inventive step, and sufficiency of disclosure. Our study contributes to theory by providing an elaborated conceptual model that relates the different dimensions of patent quality and patent value and mapping the different types of indicators of patent quality and value onto the corresponding patent quality or value dimensions. Our study suggests that patent policymakers can incentivize innovators to file patent applications of high quality, which would reduce the incidence of poor-quality patents in the system and improve the efficiency and reputation of the patent office.