Knowledge that Transforms

Social network research on creativity and innovation has primarily focused on the focal employee (i.e., ego), implicitly assuming that ego’s own network position determines the resources available for creative work. We advance an alter-centric perspective, arguing that what matters is not merely the availability of diverse information but the capacity of network contacts (i.e., alters) to make it usable. The brokerage characteristics of ego’s alters (i.e., secondhand brokerage) are decisive in that alters who are brokers are likely to have both valuable non-redundant information and the capability to convey it effectively. Prior work treating secondhand brokerage as a monolithic construct has yielded equivocal results; we reconcile these findings by decomposing it into distinct forms and matching each to the demands of a specific phase of the innovation process (i.e., idea generation, idea elaboration, idea championing, and idea implementation). We theorize that external secondhand brokerage facilitates idea generation, internal secondhand brokerage facilitates idea elaboration, internal alters’ network oscillation facilitates idea championing, and external alters’ network oscillation facilitates idea implementation, with ego’s knowledge integration capability, psychological ownership, organizational status, professional status, and tie strength serving as phase-specific and cross-phase boundary conditions. In doing so, we also challenge the prevailing view of brokers as default opportunists, specifying when cooperation, rather than opportunism, is the more rational strategy. By integrating the social network and innovation literatures, our framework clarifies how, when, and why the networks of others shape ego’s success across the innovation process.

The Occupational Information Network (O*NET) is a database of occupational descriptors sponsored by the U.S. Department of Labor. Since its release around the turn of the century, O*NET has taken on a broad and important role in management and organizational research as a key data source for occupational characteristics. It is common practice for researchers to combine or adapt descriptors from O*NET’s content model to measure constructs that O*NET does not capture directly (e.g., job complexity, emotional labor demands). This practice has enabled a great deal of research and poses potential extensions to O*NET’s content model, but has also come with challenges, including the proliferation of redundant measures with varying levels of validation. The purpose of this review is to synthesize the studies using O*NET-based measures and curate a database of measures with considerable evidence supporting their validity. In doing so, we contribute to the literature in three ways: (1) we introduce an extended content model that we call “O*NET Plus” and offer it as an expanded organizing framework for occupational description; (2) we review evidence for the psychometric soundness of O*NET Plus measures, highlight those with considerable evidence, and amass these measures in a central location to offer a “one-stop-shop” for researchers looking to leverage O*NET Plus; and (3) we offer guidance and implications for further expansions to O*NET Plus.

As organizations mature, standardized systems help meet increasing needs for efficiency. However, this often results in resources being used in rigid ways, compromising the flexibility necessary to leverage opportunities, create value, and address customers’ emerging needs. Here we address solutions to this drift to rigidity, focusing on how operational managers bundle resources to create value for the firm. Our qualitative study is based on data collected from an organization with operations across 252 locations. This data consists of 92 interviews with strategic and operational managers, ethnographic observations, and archival records. We uncovered three pathways for resource bundling that are focused on markets, customers, or organizational renewal. In each, senior-level strategic managers initially provided resources, including channels for standardization, information systems, and technical infrastructure that became rigid in their usage. When operational managers sensed this drift to rigidity, they seized flexible resources (connection, solution development, and employee development processes) to combine with the rigid resources. We refer to this as Operational Resource Bundling (ORB). Strategic managers collaborated with the operational managers to adapt how resources were used, helping to ratify, endorse, and mobilize the bundles to achieve value creation and competitive advantage. We extend earlier work by specifying how a particular type of resource orchestration—ORB—constitutes a value-generating micro-mechanism of dynamic capabilities. ORB uncovers the role of operational managers in balancing standardization versus customization through identifying and combining resources.

A central tenet of many leadership theories is that leaders treat their followers differently. Although leader differentiation is ubiquitous, its effects on leaders and followers are not well understood and theory and research have not simultaneously considered its three key properties: Leader–member exchange (LMX) differentiation, LMX quality, and LMX social comparison. We developed a theoretical model in which these three properties interact to influence followers’ supervisory interactional justice perceptions and subsequently their supervisor-directed deviance and supervisor-directed organizational citizenship behaviors (OCBs). To test our model, we conducted a pre-registered experiment (Study 1), a single-level, multi-wave study (Study 2), and a multilevel, multi-wave, multisource study (Study 3). Results consistently supported our theoretical model. First, LMX differentiation indirectly influenced supervisor-directed deviance and OCBs via supervisory interactional justice. Second, the three leader differentiation properties interacted to predict supervisory interactional justice. Specifically, when LMX quality and LMX social comparison were both high, the negative impact of LMX differentiation on followers’ supervisory interactional justice perceptions was the weakest and did not reliably differ from zero. Third, when LMX quality and LMX social comparison were both high, LMX differentiation’s positive indirect effect on supervisor-directed deviance, and its negative indirect effect on supervisor-directed OCBs, via supervisory interactional justice perceptions, were the weakest and not reliably different from zero. These are among the first studies to simultaneously theorize and investigate the interactive effects of the three central properties of leader differentiation, and to demonstrate its effects for both followers and leaders.

Contexts of adversity generate a wide range of challenges that expose entrepreneurs to compounding hardship yet paradoxically stimulate entrepreneurship as a means of regaining control. Existing research often portrays adversity in two distinct ways, either as a one-time disruptive event or as a persistent condition of the same underlying hardship, overlooking how adversity increasingly unfolds as chronic adversity compounded by multiple acute shocks—a setting that characterizes the lived reality of many entrepreneurs in today’s turbulent world. In such contexts, entrepreneurial resilience is not oriented toward recovery or thriving but toward enduring recurring crises, resource scarcity, and persistent uncertainty. We conducted an inductive, longitudinal study of 32 displaced entrepreneurs living in conflict-affected regions of Iraq. Our analysis reveals a process model of rhythmic resilience in a context of chronic adversity compounded by acute shocks. We show that resilience unfolds through dynamic cycles of withdrawal, reengagement, and adaptation over time that sustain survival across household, venture, and community levels. Yet these processes entail difficult trade-offs, giving rise to a resilience–survival paradox in which entrepreneurs protect survival at the expense of personal well-being, business growth, and social ties.

People are choosing to pursue entrepreneurship as a career at increasing rates; yet, we lack an overarching conceptualization of entrepreneurial career success. Instead, scholars rely on a fragmented set of measures and outcomes, limiting cumulative knowledge about the factors that shape persistence and long-term success in entrepreneurial careers. To address this gap, we integrate career success and entrepreneurship research to develop a multidimensional model of entrepreneurial career success. Drawing on an empirically validated multidimensional framework from career literature, we organize the variety of individual success measures that have been used in the entrepreneurship literature, distinguishing entrepreneurial career success from related constructs such as venture performance and well-being. We further identify entrepreneurship-specific dimensions, including legacy and venture satisfaction, that reflect the heterogeneity of entrepreneurial careers and extend existing career success models. Using the ability-motivation-opportunity (AMO) framework, we review antecedents of entrepreneurial career success and suggest patterns of relationships with different objective and subjective success dimensions. We conclude by presenting an integrative model of antecedents, mechanisms, and boundary conditions to guide future research on entrepreneurial career success.

Internationally experienced business leaders bring distinct human capital, social capital, and cognitive schemas into organizations, influence strategic orientation through their decision-making, and in turn shape organizations’ strategies and performance. The impact of the international experience (IE) of an organization’s upper echelon has been studied in various bodies of management literature, varying in terms of the theoretical perspectives, conceptualizations of the IE construct, and outcomes considered. However, the effects are not straightforward with regard to which elements of IE affect which aspects of organizational dynamics, and how. This review integrates separate streams of organizational research to develop a more holistic understanding of the role of the IE held by strategic leaders such as chief executive officers, entrepreneurial founders, top management teams, and boards of directors, and its impact on organizational strategies and performance. We refine the conceptualization of the IE construct at multiple levels of analysis and explore cross-level mechanisms suggested by multiple theories to develop an integrative framework that links strategic leaders’ IE to organizational decisions, strategies, and performance. On this basis, we propose an agenda for future research.

The use of earnings conference calls in management research has exploded over recent years, yet insights remain fragmented due to differing assumptions about how calls should be analyzed and interpreted. To synthesize this work, we review 207 articles across management, accounting, and finance journals and map how prior studies have drawn on specific call components—structural attributes, prepared remarks, and question-and-answer exchanges. Building on this anatomical mapping, we inductively identify three epistemic roles through which earnings calls have been mobilized in management research: communicative disclosure (“window”), performative communication (“stage”), and communicative trace (“fingerprint”). Each role reflects distinct assumptions about how earnings calls reveal, enact, or encode managerial and organizational phenomena, and each highlights different opportunities for future theorizing. By making these inferential logics explicit, our framework provides a conceptual foundation for more precise and cumulative use of earnings conference calls as a data source in management scholarship and outlines promising areas for future research.

Employees’ self-initiated and active behaviors to improve organizational change design and implementation (i.e., proactive support) are a critical determinant of effective organizational change. Despite organizational change being an inherently dynamic phenomenon, research has largely adopted a static view with little attention to the temporal development of employee responses to change. We build on appraisal theory to examine how shifts (increases vs. decreases) and stability (consistently high vs. low) in employees’ appraisals of work-related benefits of change are associated with proactive support over time. Using cross-level polynomial regression with two-wave survey data (Study 1; n = 267) from a technology firm undergoing change, we find the highest levels of proactive support when employees experience an increase in work-related benefit appraisals between Time 1 and Time 2, compared to all other patterns including a stable pattern of high benefits over time. Results further show that even a decrease in benefit appraisals, compared to consistently low benefit appraisals, predicts higher levels of proactive support for change. The relationships between shifts in benefit appraisals and proactive support are largely replicated in Study 2, an experiment (n = 523). This study also illustrates that positive emotions help to explain why the experience of shifting appraisals matters for employee proactive support for change. Our research highlights the role of temporal shifts in appraisals and provides important implications for organizational change-related theory, research, and practice.

In this paper, we seek to clarify competing perspectives on the relationship between workplace staffing conditions and organizational citizenship behaviors (OCBs). On one hand, workers may engage in more OCBs in the face of understaffing, reflecting a greater inclination to help during their organizations’ time of need. On the other hand, workers may engage in fewer OCBs due to understaffing, reflecting a withdrawal of effort under stressful circumstances to protect and conserve resources. Integrating social exchange principles with research on human resource (HR) attributions, we examine these two possibilities and their underlying mechanisms and boundary conditions across three multi-wave survey studies. We find some support for both perspectives. That is, manpower understaffing can prompt OCBs via greater felt challenge, whereas expertise understaffing can subvert OCBs via lower felt obligation to the organization but can also promote OCBs via greater felt obligation to one’s coworkers. Additionally, expertise understaffing can either enhance or diminish feelings of challenge, leading to downstream effects on OCBs, depending upon circumstances. Finally, relations between understaffing and proposed mediators varied based on perceived chronicity of staffing conditions and attributions regarding the degree to which staffing conditions were due to factors external to the organization (e.g., the COVID-19 pandemic), respectively. Implications of our results for theory and practice are discussed.