Journal of Management Studies最新文献

The Journal of Management Studies, founded in 1963, is celebrating its 60^th year. Clark et al. (2014) conducted a bibliometric analysis for its 50^th anniversary assessing whether the journal had maintained its leading international ranking and sustained its mission to serve as a broad-based management outlet. In this review, we build on and extend their findings by examining trends in the journal over the past decade (2012–22). We present a broader analysis of JMS by exploring its unique identity within the management journal ecosystem and examining its scope and breadth in terms of topics, methods, and author demographics to document JMS's evolution, impact, reach, and accessibility. We develop a new bibliometric framework that employs a mix of qualitative and quantitative analyses (including regression, text, and language analysis) to cover a broad range of considerations for a journal and its stakeholders. In so doing, we contribute to the bibliometric and review research areas by proposing new metrics (related to diversity, equity, and inclusion) and analysis tools to assess the relative position of an academic journal. Employing this framework, we conclude that JMS has retained and enhanced its position as a leading, cutting-edge general management journal.

According to the ‘Point’ essay, management research's reliance on corporate data threatens to replace objective theory with profit-biased ‘corporate empiricism’, undermining the scientific and ethical integrity of the field. In this ‘Counterpoint’ essay, we offer a more expansive understanding of big data and algorithmic processing and, by extension, see promising applications to management theory. Specifically, we propose a novel management metaphor: organizations as algorithms. This metaphor offers three insights for developing innovative, relevant, and grounded organization theory. First, agency is distributed in assemblages rather than being solely attributed to individuals, algorithms, or data. Second, machine-readability serves as the immutable and mobile base for organizing and decision-making. Third, prompting and programming transform the role of professional expertise and organizational relationships with technologies. Contrary to the ‘Point’ essay, we see no theoretical ‘end’ in sight; the organization as algorithm metaphor enables scholars to build innovative theories that account for the intricacies of algorithmic decision-making.

In this Counterpoint, we introduce a conceptualization of the symbol that constructively contrasts the ideas presented by Phillips and Moser. We do not see the need to mobilize ideas and vocabularies from evolutionary biology, as they do, but instead propose to return to cultural approaches to the symbol that resonate more deeply and profoundly within our discipline. Specifically, we revisit the work of German philosopher Ernst Cassirer on the symbolic foundation of culture and society. To fully harness the potential of such a renewed approach in organization research, we encourage a conversation with foundational and more recent work in institutional organization theory. The aims of our article are to (a) offer an alternative understanding of the symbol; and (b) elaborate how such understanding can reinvigorate organizational and institutional analysis.

Although management research has a rich tradition of both descriptive and prescriptive theorizing, the latter is often (and erroneously) viewed as unscientific, purely practice-oriented, or simply a corollary of descriptive analysis. Prescriptive theorizing concerns how things should be and how they can be achieved, as opposed to descriptive theorizing, which focuses on why or how things are (interrelated). Accordingly, prescriptive theorizing has strong normative and instrumental properties, which are especially relevant when addressing pressing societal, ecological, and ethical concerns, also referred to as grand challenges, that demand a re-evaluation of established norms and behavioural patterns. However, this opportunity is currently underutilized in the management literature, and there is a lack of guidance on how to leverage the principles of prescriptive theorizing. Therefore, I clarify its main characteristics, outline how scholars can construct rigorous prescriptive arguments, and show how normative and instrumental reasoning can promote positive social change. Embracing prescriptive theorizing as a vital complement to descriptive theorizing in management research provides scholars with an intellectual toolkit to actively engage in the urgent discourse on grand challenges and develop compelling new and impactful theories.

In this paper we provide a counterpoint to the view that prescriptive theorizing reflects a viable means for enhancing the practical impact of management theorizing towards addressing some of the most pressing societal concerns and grand challenges of our times. To do so, we first contextualize the roots of prescriptive theorizing in management research, arguing that the approach developed by Hanisch is reflective of the wider ‘positive’ prescriptive turn in social science theorizing. Second, we problematize the presumptive basis upon which much prescriptive theorizing as well as related ideas around utopian thinking are based. In doing so, our broader aim is to draw attention to the bases upon which prescriptive claims are made and we specifically highlight the dangers of implementing decontextualized, overly simple and stylized prescriptions in the face of complex grand challenges. In contrast to prescriptive theorizing, we propose that the practical impact of management theory may rather be enhanced through a tempering of instrumental rationality with a deep(er) concern for phenomena and experience. We conclude the paper by offering a number of ways in which this can be done.

Managing the nexus between societal and political demands represents an important challenge for today's organizations. While non-market strategy research debates the relationship between corporate social responsibility (CSR) and corporate political activity (CPA), it remains unclear how and why this relationship varies across different contexts. Based on a literature review, we address this question by developing a multi-contextual framework that allows us to organize existing literature and generalize beyond it. We contribute to non-market strategy research by conceptualizing a theoretically grounded set of single contexts covering different country and industry environments, transitional contexts considering the dynamic nature of non-market environments, and cross-context settings to conceptualize environments multinational and diversified domestic firms operate in, and associate those with different CSR-CPA relationships. We further contribute to broader non-market strategy research by shedding light on the varying meanings of CSR and CPA, exploring novel epistemological and methodological perspectives, and developing a future research agenda.

In this essay, we approach the question of what it means for something to be symbolic in a different way from the usual answers rooted in philosophy, sociology or anthropology: we argue that the symbolic is, first and foremost, rooted in human biology and human evolution. We discuss how the development of the capability to create and share symbols was a key moment in human evolution that underpins our capability to communicate and store knowledge through language, to think abstractly about problems, and to live and work together effectively in large groups. It also underpins the unique ecological niche – the cognitive niche – that Homo sapiens construct using our capability to create and share symbols. We go on to explore some of the implications of an evolutionary understanding of the symbolic for management and organization research.

We contribute to the literature on acquisitions by examining how investors’ cognitive schemata codifying their beliefs concerning the attributes of deal success (‘recipes’) are impacted by systemic crises. Specifically, we examine how and why configurations of attributes signalling deal attractiveness, acquirer competence, and acquirer corporate governance shape investors’ reactions to acquisition announcements before, during, and after the Great Financial Crisis of 2008–9. We apply temporally bracketed fuzzy sets qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA) on a sample of 1867 acquisition announcements. Our results show that investors not only assess acquisition signals holistically, but also that their preferences change when a crisis uproots orthodox deal ‘recipes’ that were once believed to produce successful outcomes. We show that the explorative nature of investor behaviour changes when systemic crises strike, with investors becoming more explorative – as evidenced by a greater number of ‘recipes’ eliciting positive reactions – during crises than before or after. Second, we find that investors do not simply favour deals with a maximum number of safeguards, but rather employ a compensatory logic that matches attributes signalling deal risk with specific assurances. The importance of offering assurances increases following crises, suggesting that investors progressively prefer acquirers to protect their interests.

The future of theory in the age of big data and algorithms is a frequent topic in management research. However, with corporate ownership of big data and data processing capabilities designed for profit generation increasing rapidly, we witness a shift from scientific to ‘corporate empiricism’. Building on this debate, our ‘Point’ essay argues that theorizing in management research is at risk now. Unlike the ‘Counterpoint’ article, which portrays a bright future for management theory given available technological opportunities, we are concerned about management researchers increasingly ‘borrowing’ data from the corporate realm (e.g., Google et al.) to build or test theory. Our objection is that this data borrowing can harm scientific theorizing due to how scaling effects, proxy measures and algorithmic decision-making performatively combine to undermine the scientific validity of theories. This undermining occurs through reducing scientific explanations, while technology shapes theory and reality in a profit-predicting rather than in a truth-seeking manner. Our essay has meta-theoretical implications for management theory per se, as well as for political debates concerning the jurisdiction and legitimacy of knowledge claims in management research. Practically, these implications connect to debates on scientific responsibilities of researchers.