Journal of Management Studies最新文献

Experts increasingly refine their expertise into specialties as they labour in and around organizations. Yet, previous research assumes that experts are organized in the workplace in ways that passively accommodate or mirror pre-existing specialties and focuses on organizational structures that codify the content of experts’ knowledge as an encroachment. Drawing on a qualitative field study in an aeronautical organization's engineering unit, this paper examines the organizational structures that chart the area of experts’ knowledge, i.e., their specialties. The findings show that organizational structures are generative, defining the contours of existing expertise and catalysing the formation of new ones (generating). However, organizational structures also encode criteria that implicitly rank some forms of expertise over others, thereby reinforcing status hierarchies (grading), and misalignment across organizational structures renders some forms of expertise invisible (ghosting). By showing the active role of organizational structures in shaping expertise rather than simply housing it, this paper contributes to our understanding of expertise development as well as status dynamics and access to resources among experts. Further, the paper reveals how misalignments across multiple organizational structures may impact the management of knowledge and human capital.

The symbol is one of the key concepts in organization and management scholarship. Yet as indicated by the authors in this debate, it has not been adequately conceptualized and as such it remains rather blunt and opaque. In what is the first systematic conceptual debate on this topic, the authors of this Point-Counterpoint debate seek to address this issue. The respective essays, despite marked differences in their approaches, offer novel and thought-provoking accounts of what the symbol is and how it works. Taken together, these contributions offer a series of exciting new avenues to guide and redirect future research in this area.

Research on how cross-sector partnerships (CSPs) contribute toward addressing societal grand challenges (SGCs) has burgeoned, yet studies differ significantly in what scholars analyze and how. These differences matter as they influence the reported results. In the absence of a comprehensive framework to expose the analytical choices behind each study and their implications, this diversity challenges interpretation and consolidation of evidence upon which novel theory and practical interventions can be developed. In this study, we conduct a systematic review of scholarly analysis in CSP management studies to develop a framework that contextualizes the SGC-related evidence and reveals scholars’ analytical choices and their implications. Conceptually, we advance the term ‘SGC interventions’ to illuminate the black box leading to SGC-related effects, thus helping to differentiate between transformative versus mitigative interventions in scholars’ analytical focus. Moreover, the framework stresses the logical interplay between the framing of the SGC-related problem and the reporting of the intervention's effects. Through this, we juxtapose what we call problem-centric versus solution-centric SGC analysis and so differentiate between their analytical purpose. We discuss the framework's implications for advancing an SGC perspective in scholarly analysis of CSPs and outline avenues for future research.

Descriptive and prescriptive theorizing are two sides of the same coin and fundamentally complementary, if not reciprocal in their relationship. Both have a place in management theorizing, yet this Point-Counterpoint debate takes issue with how they are currently performed in research. The Point makes the case for prescriptive theorizing to help tackle societal grand challenges and meaningfully impact practice, and it offers a recipe for doing this on a solid normative foundation. The Counterpoint cautions against the impact that such prescriptions may have and calls for more contextualized approaches. In this introduction to the debate, I intend to take the conversation that both the Point and Counterpoint have provoked even further by highlighting some under-emphasized but important theoretical avenues to examine the (un)intended consequences of both prescriptive and descriptive theorizing; namely by mobilizing research on performativity and counter-performativity.

Prior research highlights the disruptive and detrimental effects of chief executive officer (CEO) successions that involve a change of gender, i.e., from a male CEO to a female CEO and vice versa. In contrast, we contend that the effects of CEO successions with gender change depend on the context in which they take place. Drawing on expectation states theory, we identify contexts in which each type of CEO succession with gender change can have positive effects on strategic change and subsequent firm performance, depending on whether the degree of gender parity in the context is sufficient for the new CEO to enact strategic changes. Consistent with our arguments, we report findings from Chinese and US samples showing that in the presence of high environmental dynamism female-to-male CEO succession yields greater strategic change. Conversely, when environmental dynamism is low, it is male-to-female CEO succession that brings about greater strategic change. Furthermore, in the Chinese context, we found that female-to-male CEO succession in state-owned companies results in greater strategic change, whereas male-to-female CEO succession has the same effect in privately-owned settings. Moderated mediation analysis showed that the significant interaction effects on strategic change affect long-term downstream performance (i.e., Tobin's Q). We discuss implications for theory and practice related to CEO successions.

Creating a long-lasting impact is one of the defining goals of social entrepreneurship. Yet, social entrepreneurs often face a dilemma between sustaining their organization and offering a permanent fix to a social problem. We question the assumption that organizational permanence and growth are intrinsically desirable for social entrepreneurs and propose an alternative, an inductively grounded model of ecosystem leadership, which we term ecosystem catalysis. Through a single case study of social entrepreneurs addressing the lack of access to diarrhoea treatment in Zambia, we conceptualize ecosystem catalysis as a process through which an organization forms an ecosystem around a new value proposition while gradually making itself redundant, ultimately withdrawing from the ecosystem without compromising its functioning. Our work contributes to ecosystem literature by contrasting the key aims and mechanisms of an ecosystem catalyst to those of an orchestrator and identifying the conditions under which catalysing may be a better choice than orchestrating an ecosystem. We contribute to social entrepreneurship literature by decoupling social impact from organizational growth and permanence and presenting a more dynamic model of social impact resulting from distributed contributions in ecosystems.

This paper explores when and how middle managers (MMs) convey voice to the top during strategic change, when they do not have the time for lengthy persuasive upward influence tactics such as issue-selling. I investigate this phenomenon through a 33-month study of a risk management team in a large bank as it tried to overhaul its risk management systems and culture, after catastrophic money laundering scandals. I make three contributions. First, I complement the issue-selling literature by theorizing voice work as the purposeful efforts made by middle and lower managers to pass challenges from the bottom to the top during change. These efforts are grouped into three sets of moves: relational, reflexive and skip level. Second, I contribute to the voice literature by explaining when MMs decide to speak up through relational moves (balancing and integrating) and how they shape their voice message through reflexive moves (preparing and refining). Lastly, I refine our understanding of skip level voice by defining skip level moves (overriding and reinforcing), introducing nuance into how lower managers’ voice can strengthen or destabilize MMs. Voice work ultimately enriches our processual understanding of voice as a dynamic phenomenon worked on by multiple layers of management. Theory is built by amalgamating literatures on voice and on MMs’ upward influence, and by analysing them through the sociological lens of work.