Category Archives: Journal of Management Studies

Emergence of Hybrid CSR Models as a Conflict‐Driven Communicative Process in a Nordic Welfare State

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Abstract

This paper offers an understanding of how hybrid models of corporate social responsibility (CSR) – models combining society-centric mandatory (implicit) and business-centric voluntary (explicit) approaches to CSR – are communicatively constructed through institutional struggles over the roles and responsibilities of business in society, in the context of a Nordic welfare state. We develop a model of hybridization as a dialectical process of communicative activity, framing and counter-framing, in which conflict and contestation over normative understandings about CSR drive the process. The model explains the emergence of hybrid models of CSR in terms of gradually evolving issue development and frame changes that are driven by discursive struggles over moral obligations of business in society, appropriate configuration of legitimacy relationships, and appropriate institutional arrangements for CSR governance. In contrast to prevailing accounts, which tend to theorize hybridization as resulting from isomorphic, mimetic, and normative pressures, our account explicitly attends to the politics of hybridization.

Overconfident CEOs in Dire Straits: How Incumbent and Successor CEOs’ Overconfidence Affects Firm Turnaround Performance

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Abstract

As a well-studied executive bias, CEO overconfidence usually has negative connotations – although empirical evidence of its performance effects remains inconclusive. By theorizing on CEO overconfidence in a turnaround situation, we propose that CEO overconfidence can either help or hinder turnaround performance, depending on whether the overconfident CEO is the incumbent who steered the firm into dire straits, or a successor hired during decline. Our empirical findings suggest that overconfidence in an incumbent CEO damages turnaround performance; replacing overconfident incumbents improves turnaround performance and overconfident successors hired during decline enhance turnaround performance. Exploratory post-hoc analyses further suggest that these effects are driven by the divergent ways in which overconfidence biases incumbent and successor CEOs’ assessment of organizational decline. Comprehensive implications for research and practice on CEO overconfidence are discussed.

Coordinated Interdependence: How Patterning Governs Flexibility in a Routine Cluster

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Abstract

Adopting a routine dynamics perspective, we use an ethnography of agile project work to explore how emergent and effortful performances of single routines influence dynamics within a cluster of interdependent routines. We find that emergent accomplishments in single routines constrain cluster-level dynamics, thereby inhibiting flexibility. However, effortful accomplishments in single routines facilitate cluster-level dynamics, thereby enhancing flexibility. We make three contributions to the literature on routine dynamics and process studies. First, we show how coordinated interdependence based on chaining, orchestrating, and reflecting creates and maintains clusters of routines, and uncoordinated interdependence based on stumbling, irritating, and detaining endangers clusters of routines. Second, we analyse how cluster-level flexibility results from maintaining a stable pattern across routines, despite pressures to vary routines. Finally, our findings contribute to practice and process studies by analysing interdependence and coordination together as ‘(un)coordinated interdependence’.

Do Hybrid Goals Pay off? Social and Economic Goals in Academic Spin‐Offs

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Abstract

New ventures often pursue both economic and social goals, known as goal hybridity. Yet, we know less about how organizational goal hybridity influences the performance and governance of new ventures. Goal hybridity is common among academic spin-offs (ASOs) seeking to commercialize scientific research from universities. We hypothesize that ASOs’ goal hybridity influences their subsequent performance and their governance structure. We also hypothesize that ASOs who enrol multiple stakeholders with investment goals aligned with their hybrid goals outperform the ASOs who do not. By combining several data sources, we follow Norwegian ASOs longitudinally and find that goal hybridity explains their subsequent performance differences, such that ASOs relying on both economic and social aspects of their business when formulating their goals outperform those who rely purely on economic or social goals. We also find that ASOs with hybrid goals outperform when they enrol multiple stakeholders who are aligned with their hybrid goals. Our findings have implications for theorizing in hybridity, stakeholder enrolment, and the organizational goals literatures. We also provide a fuller understanding on performance heterogeneity of ASOs, and we offer a set of practice and policy implications to academic entrepreneurship and public-private partnership literatures.

Competitive Actions under Analyst Pressure: The Role of CEO Time Horizons

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Abstract

Leveraging upper echelons theory and the Awareness-Motivation-Capability (AMC) framework of competitive dynamics, we investigate the moderating influence of CEO time horizons on the relationship between negative analyst recommendations and the temporal patterning of competitive actions. We argue that negative recommendations are associated with less intensity but greater irregularity in competitive actions. Moreover, CEO time horizons weaken these effects, such that CEOs with longer time horizons are less influenced by such recommendations. Results from a longitudinal study of 296 CEOs from 2004 to 2015 support these arguments. Our study contributes by underscoring CEO time horizon as a critical contingency in studying the impact of analyst pressures.

Smart Tech is all Around us – Bridging Employee Vulnerability with Organizational Active Trust‐Building

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Abstract

Public and academic opinion remains divided regarding the benefits and pitfalls of datafication technology in organizations, particularly regarding their impact on employees. Taking a dual-process perspective on trust, we propose that datafication technology can create small, erratic surprises in the workplace that highlight employee vulnerability and increase employees’ reliance on the systematic processing of trust. We argue that these surprises precipitate a phase in the employment relationship in which employees more actively weigh trust-related cues, and the employer should therefore engage in active trust management to protect and strengthen the relationship. Our paper develops a framework of symbolic and substantive strategies to guide organizations’ active trust management efforts to (re-)create situational normality, root goodwill intentions, and enable a more balanced interdependence between the organization and its employees. We discuss the implications of our paper for reconciling competing narratives about the future of work and for developing an understanding of trust processes.

How do Status Differentials Affect the Unplanned Dissolution of Alliances?

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Abstract

Previous research suggests that firms tend to form alliances with counterparts of similar status. However, it remains unclear whether the principle of status homophily helps or hinders the alliance process. In this study, we contend that status differentials, rather than status similarity, can reduce the likelihood of the unplanned dissolution of an alliance, as a clearer order of status helps to resolve interfirm discrepancies and conflicts during collaborative processes. The results based on a sample of joint ventures in the US computer and telecommunications industries support our arguments. Further, we find that the effect of status differentials on the unplanned dissolution of alliances is strengthened when the high-status firm performs better than the low-status firm and when the two firms are from more related industries. Our findings call into question the emphasis on status homophily in the management of alliances following their formation.

The Impact of Sustainable Investing: A Multidisciplinary Review

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Abstract

We conduct a multidisciplinary review of how sustainable investing impacts the environment and society. Our review starts from the insight that shareholders can create impact not only through (1) portfolio screening and (2) shareholder engagement (two impact strategies most used by mainstream shareholders) but also through (3) field building (an impact strategy most used by shareholders at the periphery of the financial sector). Based on this framework of three impact strategies, we integrate insights from four disciplines (management, finance, sociology, and ethics/sustainability) to reconstruct how each impact strategy influences corporate sustainability. We identify 15 impact mechanisms through which the impact strategies produce three types of impact: portfolio screening and shareholder engagement mostly create direct impact on companies, while field building creates indirect impact via other shareholders and indirect impact via the institutional context. Our review suggests that shareholder impact emerges gradually as different types of shareholders build on each other's efforts, which we use to outline a research agenda on shareholder impact as a distributed process.

How Professionals Adapt to Artificial Intelligence: The Role of Intertwined Boundary Work

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Abstract

The rise of artificial intelligence (AI) has generated extensive debates about the future of work in the professions. However, few studies take account of the potential for AI's disruptive effects to trigger robust defence by professionals of their interests and resources. By examining the adoption of AI in accounting and law professional service firms (PSFs), we show how professionals respond through intertwined boundary work, this being the process by which professionals respond to disruptions and protect interests and resources by engaging in multiple interdependent modes of boundary work. We also examine the way professionals collaborate with other groups as part of intertwined boundary work, and the implications for some key features of PSF organization. Our study reveals that the responses of professionals to AI are leading to new types of professional work and services. This means that rather than spelling the ‘end of the professions’, AI is leading to reconfigured forms of professional activity, jurisdiction, and PSFs.

The Elites‐Mutual‐Attraction Effect: How Relative Reputation Influences Employee Flows between Organizations

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Abstract

In this study, we draw on signalling theory to examine the organization-level relationship between reputation and employee movement in and out of organizations. Focusing on organizations’ media reputations relative to their peers, we map all employee flows between organizational dyads in a population of English hospitals. We find support for our main argument that an organization's relative reputation predicts employee mobility above and beyond what can be explained by its absolute level of reputation. In particular, our findings suggest that the number of employees moving between two organizations is highest when both organizations have a high reputation. We refer to this as the elites’ mutual attraction effect (EMA-effect). We also find that the motives of voluntary leavers and geographical distance between two organizations influence the strength of this EMA-effect. Overall, this study shows that developing and testing dyadic theory can extend research on organizational reputation and collective turnover in meaningful ways.