Category Archives: Journal of Management Studies

Period Power: Organizational Stigma, Multimodality, and Social Entrepreneurship in the Menstrual Products Industry

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Abstract

In this article, we contribute to the recent direction in the organizational stigma literature that focuses on stigma as providing opportunities for organizations. Drawing on a qualitative abductive study of 90 social enterprises in the menstrual products industry, we extend the literature by showing how the organizational form of social enterprises allows them to put the societal issue of menstruation stigma at the core of their ventures. Specifically, we find that these social enterprises take a disruptive strategy, and we elaborate on the tactics of normalization and moralization on which they draw by highlighting the essential role of multimodality in the process of destigmatizing menstruation. In light of the tabooed nature of menstruation, this multimodal approach is key to challenging existing hidden, taken-for-granted norms around menstruation and supplanting them with alternative ones. Our study has important implications for the literatures on organizational stigma, social enterprises, and multimodality and points to their strong conceptual complementarity for understanding processes of societal change.

Breaching, Bridging, and Bonding: Interweaving Pathways of Social‐Symbolic Work in a Flanked Healthcare Movement

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Abstract

This article explores how heterogeneous and distributed forms of social-symbolic work combine over time to yield synergistic relationships that precipitate institutional change. We study a collective effort by patient activists to change the technological and regulatory standards of Type 1 diabetes care. We offer contributions to radical flank theory by conceptualizing radical and moderate flanks as dynamic and overlapping pathways of action rather than fixed actor positions, and we show how a medial ‘bonding’ pathway can provide important social glue to connect the radical and moderate flanks. While in our case the material and discursive ‘hacking’ work in the breaching pathway disrupted institutions, triggered technology innovation, and created momentum for change, material and relational ‘bridging’ embedded these efforts into existing institutional structures and longer-term innovation trajectories. Values and amplification work in the bonding pathway served to keep the two other pathways aligned over time. By addressing how a complex social problem – patient-centric innovation – may be affected through heterogeneous social-symbolic work that leads to institutional accommodation, our study holds considerable policy and societal relevance.

Cross‐Border Knowledge Transfer in the Digital Age: The Final Curtain Call for Long‐Term International Assignments?

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Abstract

Digital technology has altered how multinational companies (MNCs) transfer knowledge across borders. With digital communication media (DCM), knowledge exchange can become more cost-effective, thereby reducing the need for face-to-face exchange. DCM's influence on long-term international assignment management for cross-border knowledge transfer remains unclear. Based on 71 interviews with German human resource (HR) managers and subsidiary HR counterparts, we investigated the use of DCM to exchange knowledge across country borders. Exploring these conditions alongside HR managers’ unique perspective on global mobility management prior to and during the global COVID-19 pandemic, we present two major findings. First, 12 facilitating conditions are necessary for digital knowledge transfer across borders to be accepted as a valuable alternative to long-term international assignments. Second, we identified individual connections between facilitating conditions and found that five conditions decreased in relevance, while the remaining seven became core aspects of successful digital knowledge transfer during COVID-19 and possibly beyond.

Different Feathers Embedding Together: Integrating Diversity and Organizational Embeddedness

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Abstract

Despite the increase of demographic diversity in organizational environments, little is known about how and why employees from distinct demographic backgrounds (e.g., gender, race, and/or ethnicity) become embedded in their work organizations, which is a reason why employees stay and perform in their jobs. To address this research gap, we integrate job embeddedness and social identification/self-categorization theories and draw from critical diversity studies to theorize on the effects of varying degrees of demographic diversity on the organizational embeddedness of diverse talent. Specifically, we theorize on how monolithic, pluralistic, and multicultural organizational stages, reflecting distinct degrees of heterogeneity, structural integration, and inclusion, affect the process by which employees from both dominant and marginalized social groups develop organizational embeddedness dimensions – links, fit, and sacrifice – with a distinct nature, order, degree, and speed. We further theorize how inclusive leadership can promote organizational embeddedness of employees from all social groups in the three organizational demography stages.

Configuring International Growth of Emerging Market Multinational Enterprises: A Compositional Springboarding View in the Context of India

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Abstract

The rapid international growth of emerging market multinational enterprises (EMNEs) has become widely researched in the international management field. The compositional springboarding view (CSV) provides a theoretical understanding of amalgamation-ambidexterity-adaptability elements that impact EMNEs' internationalization. Here we utilize the CSV to conduct a configurational analysis of factors explaining Indian firms' rapid international growth. Using fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA) of a survey-archival data set matched with a sample of listed manufacturing firms from India, we identify five configurational solutions for Indian multinational enterprises (MNEs) to achieve international growth. We further develop a taxonomy of Indian MNEs' CSV configurations supporting rapid international growth that we name as amalgamator, adapter, augmentor, explorer, and springboarder. Through the configurational approach, we extend the EMNE literature in the international management field by exploring the efficacy and complementarity of compositional springboarding factors that enable Indian MNEs' rapid international growth. We also contribute to the organization theory and strategy literatures by addressing the tension alleviation between reconfiguring existing resources and creating new ones. Our theoretical extension opens new opportunities for CSV to guide strategic analyses across various resource reuse and creation scenarios.

Family Control, Political Risk and Employment Security: A Cross‐National Study

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Abstract

Combining insights from the socioemotional wealth and institutional perspectives, we hypothesize that firms controlled by families offer greater job security to employees relative to non-family firms, and this positive employment effect is amplified in riskier institutional environments around the world. Using an unbalanced panel of 3181 listed firms from 33 countries over a 10-year period, we provide strong support for our hypotheses: family-controlled firms on average are less likely to reduce their workforce compared to their non-family counterparts, and this differential effect is magnified in weak institutional environments characterized by high political risk. These findings indicate that socioemotional wealth in family firms has a positive impact on employee welfare and that the use of a cross-country design serves to bridge discrepancies or inconsistencies in single country studies that have been done in the past. From a practical perspective we conclude that the beneficial role of socioemotional wealth on employment relations is more evident when it is needed the most, namely under a dysfunctional institutional environment.

Beyond the Feeling Individual: Insights from Sociology on Emotions and Embeddedness

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Abstract

Organizational scholars have treated emotions mostly as an individual-level phenomenon, with limited theorisation of emotions as an important component in social embeddedness. In this review essay, we argue for the need for a toolkit to study emotions as an inherently social phenomenon. To do so, we apply insights from sociology that have been under-utilized in management and organization research. We focus on three sociological concepts: collective emotions and social bonds, emotional energy and moral batteries, and emotional capital. We then develop an integrative model of emotional embeddedness to emphasize that emotions are socially constructed and socially authorized. We end the paper by setting out a research agenda for more research in management and organization that is informed by these three concepts.

Defusing Digital Disruption Through Creative Accumulation: Technology‐Induced Innovation in Professional Service Firms

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Abstract

How will digitalization change the future of work in professional service firms (PSFs)? And how can they adapt to new technology and avoid potential disruption? Building on an interview study in the Big Four auditing firms in Sweden, we contribute to research on the future of work in PSFs by unpacking the process through which PSFs expand their domain of expertise towards technology and complement competence-destroying innovations with competence-enhancing innovations. They do so by engaging in a process of ‘creative accumulation’ through ‘competence expansion’, consisting of three overlapping sub-processes – skill acquisition, skill dissemination, and skill integration – and intertwined cycles of service, process, and organizational innovation. We also contribute to the literature on innovation in PSFs by contradicting the view of PSFs as inert and technology-avert. Instead, we show how they proactively engage in both top-down and bottom-up technology-induced innovation to reshape their work and defuse the threat of digital disruption.

Missing the Impact in Impact Investing Research – A Systematic Review and Critical Reflection of the Literature

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Abstract

Impact investing (II) aims to achieve intentional social impact in addition to financial return. Our systematic literature review of 104 articles finds that the growing academic literature on II is scattered across a variety of disciplines and topics, with inconsistencies in terminology and concepts and a paucity of theoretical explanations and frameworks. To provide an overview of common research areas and findings, we integrate the articles on II in nine emerging topics and shed light on inconsistencies in the literature. The analysis reveals one major shortcoming in II research: Despite the fact that II aims to create a measurable societal impact, this impact of II, its raison d’être, is not scrutinized in the literature. We argue that investigating the impact of II requires a holistic lens, for which we propose systems theory. We suggest prospective future research avenues which combine socio-economic research approaches (esp. longitudinal qualitative studies and experimental methods) with socio-technical methods (esp. life cycle analysis) to enable a holistic systems perspective of II.