A large literature addresses the practices and challenges surrounding knowledge reuse within organizations. Yet organizations frequently attempt to reuse knowledge from outside their boundaries, which may be even more challenging. The practice is so prevalent that an entire industry—the consulting industry—has developed to support it. Unfortunately, we understand little about how knowledge embedded in one organization is used to intervene in another and about what challenges follow from the attempt to do so. In this paper, we aim to address these questions. On the basis of an analysis of four months of ethnographic fieldwork and extensive archival data surrounding an engagement between a leading consulting firm and a multihospital healthcare system, we find that partners and senior executives created generalizations based on their experience and encouraged junior consultants and hospital employees to apply these generalizations and reuse old solutions. Yet junior consultants, who had different backgrounds...
{"title":"When the General Meets the Particular: The Practices and Challenges of Interorganizational Knowledge Reuse","authors":"I. Waisberg, Andrew J. Nelson","doi":"10.1287/ORSC.2017.1196","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1287/ORSC.2017.1196","url":null,"abstract":"A large literature addresses the practices and challenges surrounding knowledge reuse within organizations. Yet organizations frequently attempt to reuse knowledge from outside their boundaries, which may be even more challenging. The practice is so prevalent that an entire industry—the consulting industry—has developed to support it. Unfortunately, we understand little about how knowledge embedded in one organization is used to intervene in another and about what challenges follow from the attempt to do so. In this paper, we aim to address these questions. On the basis of an analysis of four months of ethnographic fieldwork and extensive archival data surrounding an engagement between a leading consulting firm and a multihospital healthcare system, we find that partners and senior executives created generalizations based on their experience and encouraged junior consultants and hospital employees to apply these generalizations and reuse old solutions. Yet junior consultants, who had different backgrounds...","PeriodicalId":93599,"journal":{"name":"Organization science (Providence, R.I.)","volume":"10 1","pages":"432-448"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2018-04-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"81893947","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
A key insight from research on hybrid organizing is that the joint pursuit of competing goals exposes an enterprise to potentially problematic tensions and trade-offs. Yet while studies have examined the former, the actual trade-offs that these organizations face—and how these might vary among enterprises and contexts—has been largely overlooked. Focusing on social enterprise, we address these gaps by (1) developing a framework that can be used to predict the compatibility of social outreach and financial sustainability for different types of enterprises and (2) arguing that the acuteness of trade-offs will vary based on the cultural roots of the issue an enterprise addresses, the market conditions where it operates, and the quality of its management. We test our arguments by studying 2,037 microfinance organizations in 115 nations between 1995 and 2013. Results support our predictions. Social–financial trade-offs are amplified when a social issue is intertwined with deep-seated cultural problems, such as...
{"title":"Taking Trade-offs Seriously: Examining the Contextually Contingent Relationship Between Social Outreach Intensity and Financial Sustainability in Global Microfinance","authors":"Tyler Wry, Eric Zhao","doi":"10.1287/orsc.2017.1188","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1287/orsc.2017.1188","url":null,"abstract":"A key insight from research on hybrid organizing is that the joint pursuit of competing goals exposes an enterprise to potentially problematic tensions and trade-offs. Yet while studies have examined the former, the actual trade-offs that these organizations face—and how these might vary among enterprises and contexts—has been largely overlooked. Focusing on social enterprise, we address these gaps by (1) developing a framework that can be used to predict the compatibility of social outreach and financial sustainability for different types of enterprises and (2) arguing that the acuteness of trade-offs will vary based on the cultural roots of the issue an enterprise addresses, the market conditions where it operates, and the quality of its management. We test our arguments by studying 2,037 microfinance organizations in 115 nations between 1995 and 2013. Results support our predictions. Social–financial trade-offs are amplified when a social issue is intertwined with deep-seated cultural problems, such as...","PeriodicalId":93599,"journal":{"name":"Organization science (Providence, R.I.)","volume":"57 1","pages":"507-528"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2018-04-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"83978371","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Personal finances are becoming an increasingly prominent source of distress for a substantial proportion of the population in many developed economies. In this paper, we examine the organizational ...
{"title":"The Price of Financial Precarity: Organizational Costs of Employees' Financial Concerns","authors":"Jirs Meuris, Carrie R. Leana","doi":"10.1287/orsc.2017.1187","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1287/orsc.2017.1187","url":null,"abstract":"Personal finances are becoming an increasingly prominent source of distress for a substantial proportion of the population in many developed economies. In this paper, we examine the organizational ...","PeriodicalId":93599,"journal":{"name":"Organization science (Providence, R.I.)","volume":"118 1","pages":"398-417"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2018-04-30","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"80221149","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Research in management and related fields largely assumes that host-country state (“state”) ownership in investment projects raises risk for private coinvestors. We question that assumption in theorizing that minority state ownership may actually decrease investment risk in host countries where policy stability is low. Noncontrolling but still substantial state ownership signals to private coinvestors that states will maintain initial investment project terms yet limit interference in project management under those same initial terms. Analyses of 1,373 investment projects announced in 95 host countries from 1990 to 2012 support this proposition: (1) low policy stability in the host country increases investment risk, measured as the percentage of equity comprising all project capital funding on the announcement date, but (2) minority state ownership diminishes the risk-increasing impact of low policy stability, and (3) the risk-diminishing effect is greatest when policy stability is low and the state holds...
{"title":"Minority Rules: Credible State Ownership and Investment Risk Around the World","authors":"Barclay E. James, Paul M. Vaaler","doi":"10.1287/orsc.2017.1186","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1287/orsc.2017.1186","url":null,"abstract":"Research in management and related fields largely assumes that host-country state (“state”) ownership in investment projects raises risk for private coinvestors. We question that assumption in theorizing that minority state ownership may actually decrease investment risk in host countries where policy stability is low. Noncontrolling but still substantial state ownership signals to private coinvestors that states will maintain initial investment project terms yet limit interference in project management under those same initial terms. Analyses of 1,373 investment projects announced in 95 host countries from 1990 to 2012 support this proposition: (1) low policy stability in the host country increases investment risk, measured as the percentage of equity comprising all project capital funding on the announcement date, but (2) minority state ownership diminishes the risk-increasing impact of low policy stability, and (3) the risk-diminishing effect is greatest when policy stability is low and the state holds...","PeriodicalId":93599,"journal":{"name":"Organization science (Providence, R.I.)","volume":"71 1","pages":"653-677"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2018-04-27","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"72835465","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
This paper explains and tests empirically why people employed in product promotion are less willing to trust others. Product promotion is a prototypical setting in which employees are mandated to express attitudes that are often not fully sincere. On the basis of social projection theory, we predicted that organizational agents mandated to express insincere attitudes project their self-perceived dishonesty onto others and thus become more distrustful. An initial large-scale, multi-country field study found that individuals employed in jobs requiring product promotion were less trusting than individuals employed in other jobs—particularly jobs in which honesty is highly expected. We then conducted two experiments in which people were tasked with promoting low-quality products and either were allowed to be honest or were asked to be positive (as would be expected of most salespeople). We found that mandated attitude expression reduced willingness to trust, and this effect was mediated by a decrease in the p...
{"title":"Mandates of Dishonesty: The Psychological and Social Costs of Mandated Attitude Expression","authors":"Marko Pitesa, Zen Goh, Stefan Thau","doi":"10.1287/orsc.2017.1190","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1287/orsc.2017.1190","url":null,"abstract":"This paper explains and tests empirically why people employed in product promotion are less willing to trust others. Product promotion is a prototypical setting in which employees are mandated to express attitudes that are often not fully sincere. On the basis of social projection theory, we predicted that organizational agents mandated to express insincere attitudes project their self-perceived dishonesty onto others and thus become more distrustful. An initial large-scale, multi-country field study found that individuals employed in jobs requiring product promotion were less trusting than individuals employed in other jobs—particularly jobs in which honesty is highly expected. We then conducted two experiments in which people were tasked with promoting low-quality products and either were allowed to be honest or were asked to be positive (as would be expected of most salespeople). We found that mandated attitude expression reduced willingness to trust, and this effect was mediated by a decrease in the p...","PeriodicalId":93599,"journal":{"name":"Organization science (Providence, R.I.)","volume":"86 1","pages":"418-431"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2018-04-26","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"75703262","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Numbers such as output controls drive action in organizations, yet we know little about how key numbers are created and take on authority. Using qualitative data from multiple properties managed by a hotel management firm, we find that individuals develop and then become committed to achieving budget goals through a ritual of quantification. The budget numbers serve as output controls for the properties and employees. We find that the strength of the budget number as an undisputed future projection emerges from the ritualistic intertwining of process and normative controls in the course of producing a robust output control. Process controls delineate stages in the budgeting cycle, while normative controls (performative work and emotional investment) operate at each stage, propelling people from one stage to the next while also increasing commitment to both the process and the outcome. The result is a single reified budget number. This ritual of quantification further fosters collective solidarity and an u...
{"title":"\"Making\" Your Numbers: Engendering Organizational Control Through a Ritual of Quantification","authors":"Melissa Mazmanian, Christine M. Beckman","doi":"10.1287/orsc.2017.1185","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1287/orsc.2017.1185","url":null,"abstract":"Numbers such as output controls drive action in organizations, yet we know little about how key numbers are created and take on authority. Using qualitative data from multiple properties managed by a hotel management firm, we find that individuals develop and then become committed to achieving budget goals through a ritual of quantification. The budget numbers serve as output controls for the properties and employees. We find that the strength of the budget number as an undisputed future projection emerges from the ritualistic intertwining of process and normative controls in the course of producing a robust output control. Process controls delineate stages in the budgeting cycle, while normative controls (performative work and emotional investment) operate at each stage, propelling people from one stage to the next while also increasing commitment to both the process and the outcome. The result is a single reified budget number. This ritual of quantification further fosters collective solidarity and an u...","PeriodicalId":93599,"journal":{"name":"Organization science (Providence, R.I.)","volume":"78 1","pages":"357-379"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2018-04-13","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"72843735","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
At small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), cash-strapped employees frequently request loans from employers because they cannot obtain money on reasonable terms elsewhere for exigent needs. In turn, employers decide whether to lend the money through formal (i.e., written, contractual) loans or more informal “off-the-book” (OTB) loans. Our exploration of this understudied source of credit unearths important questions about the reasons employers lend money to employees, the manner in which they decide to make formal or informal loans, and the coveted benefits employers derive from lending to their workers. Considering the pervasiveness and significance of loan choices among small firms, and the absence of studies on the topic, we tackle these questions through an analysis of 459 informal and formal loans issued by 83 small business owners to their employees. The results show that the issuance of OTB loans is a key tactic for employers to manage resource dependencies with valued workers.
{"title":"Value Creation Through Employer Loans: Evidence of Informal Lending to Employees at Small, Labor-Intensive Firms","authors":"R. Hunt, Mathew L. A. Hayward","doi":"10.1287/orsc.2017.1182","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1287/orsc.2017.1182","url":null,"abstract":"At small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), cash-strapped employees frequently request loans from employers because they cannot obtain money on reasonable terms elsewhere for exigent needs. In turn, employers decide whether to lend the money through formal (i.e., written, contractual) loans or more informal “off-the-book” (OTB) loans. Our exploration of this understudied source of credit unearths important questions about the reasons employers lend money to employees, the manner in which they decide to make formal or informal loans, and the coveted benefits employers derive from lending to their workers. Considering the pervasiveness and significance of loan choices among small firms, and the absence of studies on the topic, we tackle these questions through an analysis of 459 informal and formal loans issued by 83 small business owners to their employees. The results show that the issuance of OTB loans is a key tactic for employers to manage resource dependencies with valued workers.","PeriodicalId":93599,"journal":{"name":"Organization science (Providence, R.I.)","volume":"5 1","pages":"284-303"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2018-04-04","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"89113746","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
J. Knoben, L. Oerlemans, Annefleur R. Krijkamp, K. Provan
A growing body of network studies argues that firms purposefully act based on the network structure and their relative position in it. In this paper, we assess the validity of one of the core assumptions underpinning these arguments: that managers have accurate information about the structure of the network in which their organizations are embedded. We extend theory on interorganizational networks by developing novel hypotheses regarding the antecedents of differences in this network information accuracy between organizations. We test these hypotheses by drawing on a unique data set of two whole networks in the healthcare industry in the Netherlands in which both the “objective” network structure and the organizational perceptions of that structure are assessed. The empirical analyses revealed considerable differences among organizations in terms of the accuracy of their network information, especially with regard to accuracy about different parts of the network. A key finding is that the network position...
{"title":"What Do They Know? The Antecedents of Information Accuracy Differentials in Interorganizational Networks","authors":"J. Knoben, L. Oerlemans, Annefleur R. Krijkamp, K. Provan","doi":"10.1287/orsc.2017.1180","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1287/orsc.2017.1180","url":null,"abstract":"A growing body of network studies argues that firms purposefully act based on the network structure and their relative position in it. In this paper, we assess the validity of one of the core assumptions underpinning these arguments: that managers have accurate information about the structure of the network in which their organizations are embedded. We extend theory on interorganizational networks by developing novel hypotheses regarding the antecedents of differences in this network information accuracy between organizations. We test these hypotheses by drawing on a unique data set of two whole networks in the healthcare industry in the Netherlands in which both the “objective” network structure and the organizational perceptions of that structure are assessed. The empirical analyses revealed considerable differences among organizations in terms of the accuracy of their network information, especially with regard to accuracy about different parts of the network. A key finding is that the network position...","PeriodicalId":93599,"journal":{"name":"Organization science (Providence, R.I.)","volume":"109 1","pages":"471-488"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2018-04-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"83365347","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
D. Maslach, O. Branzei, Claus Rerup, Mark J. Zbaracki
Firms increasingly have access to information about the failure events of other firms through public repositories. We study one such repository that accumulates reports of adverse events in the medical device industry. We provide qualitative evidence that shows how firms select a sample of adverse events and then engage in inferential learning. We show that firms use the reports of others to extract new valid knowledge from the adverse events in other firms. We use quantitative evidence to explore how a public repository can be used to provide more direct evidence of vicarious learning. Our findings challenge some standard assumptions about vicarious learning. First, we show that the learning in a repository does not come from referent others. Instead, it emerges directly from failure events that might ordinarily be dismissed as noise. Second, we show that the learning does not come from copying others. Instead, it is constructed by firm members as they assemble individual failure events to identify possi...
{"title":"Noise as Signal in Learning from Rare Events","authors":"D. Maslach, O. Branzei, Claus Rerup, Mark J. Zbaracki","doi":"10.1287/orsc.2017.1179","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1287/orsc.2017.1179","url":null,"abstract":"Firms increasingly have access to information about the failure events of other firms through public repositories. We study one such repository that accumulates reports of adverse events in the medical device industry. We provide qualitative evidence that shows how firms select a sample of adverse events and then engage in inferential learning. We show that firms use the reports of others to extract new valid knowledge from the adverse events in other firms. We use quantitative evidence to explore how a public repository can be used to provide more direct evidence of vicarious learning. Our findings challenge some standard assumptions about vicarious learning. First, we show that the learning in a repository does not come from referent others. Instead, it emerges directly from failure events that might ordinarily be dismissed as noise. Second, we show that the learning does not come from copying others. Instead, it is constructed by firm members as they assemble individual failure events to identify possi...","PeriodicalId":93599,"journal":{"name":"Organization science (Providence, R.I.)","volume":"111 1","pages":"225-246"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2018-04-02","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"81066153","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
Organizations, as is true with social systems more generally, tend to be nearly, not fully, decomposable. However, analyses of nearly decomposable systems have tended to be at a single level of analysis and have generally neglected the vertical element of nearly decomposable systems. Critical to the notion of nearly decomposable systems is the property that the details of a particular subproblem may be encapsulated and captured by more aggregate parameters and that those subproblems interact in an aggregate way. We explore these issues in reference to the role of three canonical organizational structures in facilitating adaptation in the presence of near decomposability: a traditional hierarchy in which a subordinate reports to a single boss, an autonomous form in which the subordinate does not have a direct reporting relationship, and a multiauthority structure in which the subordinate reports to multiple bosses. Despite the ubiquity and potential benefits of multiauthority structures in coordinating highly interdependent tasks, our understanding of the mechanisms that determine the performance of those structures is still relatively modest. Scholars have noted conflicting empirical findings and have called for a more rigorous approach to study these organizational forms. To help address these issues, we develop an agent-based computational model that compares the performance of these three canonical types of organizational forms in settings characterized by different degrees of complexity and near decomposability. The online appendix is available at https://doi.org/10.1287/orsc.2017.1177 .
{"title":"When Two Bosses Are Better Than One: Nearly Decomposable Systems and Organizational Adaptation","authors":"Daniel A. Levinthal, Maciej Workiewicz","doi":"10.1287/orsc.2017.1177","DOIUrl":"https://doi.org/10.1287/orsc.2017.1177","url":null,"abstract":"Organizations, as is true with social systems more generally, tend to be nearly, not fully, decomposable. However, analyses of nearly decomposable systems have tended to be at a single level of analysis and have generally neglected the vertical element of nearly decomposable systems. Critical to the notion of nearly decomposable systems is the property that the details of a particular subproblem may be encapsulated and captured by more aggregate parameters and that those subproblems interact in an aggregate way. We explore these issues in reference to the role of three canonical organizational structures in facilitating adaptation in the presence of near decomposability: a traditional hierarchy in which a subordinate reports to a single boss, an autonomous form in which the subordinate does not have a direct reporting relationship, and a multiauthority structure in which the subordinate reports to multiple bosses. Despite the ubiquity and potential benefits of multiauthority structures in coordinating highly interdependent tasks, our understanding of the mechanisms that determine the performance of those structures is still relatively modest. Scholars have noted conflicting empirical findings and have called for a more rigorous approach to study these organizational forms. To help address these issues, we develop an agent-based computational model that compares the performance of these three canonical types of organizational forms in settings characterized by different degrees of complexity and near decomposability. \u0000 \u0000The online appendix is available at https://doi.org/10.1287/orsc.2017.1177 .","PeriodicalId":93599,"journal":{"name":"Organization science (Providence, R.I.)","volume":"7 1","pages":"207-224"},"PeriodicalIF":0.0,"publicationDate":"2018-04-01","publicationTypes":"Journal Article","fieldsOfStudy":null,"isOpenAccess":false,"openAccessPdf":"","citationCount":null,"resultStr":null,"platform":"Semanticscholar","paperid":"84793743","PeriodicalName":null,"FirstCategoryId":null,"ListUrlMain":null,"RegionNum":0,"RegionCategory":"","ArticlePicture":[],"TitleCN":null,"AbstractTextCN":null,"PMCID":"","EPubDate":null,"PubModel":null,"JCR":null,"JCRName":null,"Score":null,"Total":0}
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