Knowledge that Transforms

Organizational structure is conceptualized as an enduring and persistent configuration of activities related to how work is divided and integrated within organizations. Yet, a growing body of research has investigated why and how organizational structures change. Initially, these questions were investigated using a macro-oriented approach and generated insights about organizational structure change in response to top-down initiatives designed to align the structure with changes in the environment or strategy. However, an increasing number of studies have investigated additional factors that prompt or inhibit structure change (e.g., founder imprinting, turnover) and the nuances of the change process (e.g., bottom-up effects of employee behavior). Thus, conversations about organizational structure change are shifting from alignment to adaptation, and from describing the nature of a change event to unpacking the change process. As these emergent insights expand and challenge understanding of why and how organizational structures change, it is necessary to take stock and construct a more comprehensive knowledge base for the domain. Accordingly, we synthesize the research on organizational structure change, uncover underlying and facilitating mechanisms, and advance a unifying framework. We also offer multiple avenues for future research to address unresolved areas and accelerate novel theoretical development by using a micro-oriented approach.

Greed, one of the oldest social constructs, has been lauded for driving competition and economic ambition that stimulates economic growth and enables technological progress. It has also been ostracized as the root cause of economic inequality, global poverty, and climate change as it prioritizes short-term profits over sustainable, equitable development. While the concept of greed informs a wide range of disciplines, including organizational behavior, psychology, strategic management, marketing, political science, economics, and finance, it lacks construct clarity and a commonly accepted definition. Our bibliometric review of the greed literature reveals that it is characterized by 10 major, loosely connected communities that consider greed at varying levels of analysis. We propose a conceptual definition of greed incorporating acquisitiveness, excess, and harm, which appear across these communities. We categorize research communities based on level of analysis and critically review each community’s core disciplines, treatment of greed, and focal economic, social, and psychological outcomes. Our multilevel framework integrates scholarly work on greed and serves as a basis for future research.

We review the literature (n = 184) on “socially oriented informal organizational communication”—informal, discretionary, social communication that occurs outside formal organizational channels and that does not convey information core to purposeful action—to synthesize existing work and present an agenda for future research. Although informal social communication makes up about two-thirds of conversations and is the “social glue” of the workplace, it is often treated as a disruptive or negative force and is a taken-for-granted part of most work activities. This “backstage” category of workplace communication is ripe for a review and synthesis: we have witnessed a proliferation of various forms of informal communication from a diverse set of disciplines; informal communication has demonstrated significant, yet inconsistent and even competing, impacts on employee outcomes; and some of the most significant workplace trends and disruptions are affecting employees’ “in between” interactions. This calls for taking stock of the conceptual landscape to differentiate forms, features, functions, and implications of informal communication for employees to help move the literature forward theoretically and methodologically. We discuss conceptualizations and dimensions of informal communication; present a framework to organize, unify, and advance the literature; and unpack how it influences inter- and intrapersonal mechanisms and production outcomes. We also extend this review and framework to guide directions for future research and practice.

Substances (e.g., alcohol, cannabis, illicit drugs) are an inevitable part of organizational life. Despite their prevalence in workplaces, the research on substances at work, while significant, generally adopts a narrow focus on the negative implications of substance use and remains fragmented, with limited integration across conceptual levels. Yet, substances can surface in the workplace—that is, become present, perceptible, and influential—in ways that go beyond substance use, and their implications are not always negative. Based on a multidisciplinary synthesis of 361 articles, we organize the ways in which substances surface in the workplace within three meta-categories. Each meta-category is situated on a different conceptual level: involvement with substances (i.e., experiential surfacing), informal norms around substances (i.e., contextual surfacing), and formalized official policies and practices (i.e., structural surfacing). Expanding the scholarly discourse on substances, within each meta-category our review identifies a spectrum of narratives around substances, from negative to somewhat positive. Building on these foundations, we propose an integrative framework that shifts attention from substance use to controlling substances in the workplace, which involves establishing, responding to, or escaping from substance-related control. Our framework provides theoretical and methodological recommendations to further advance research on substances in the workplace.

Increasing shareholder and consumer activism, rapid technological developments, and broader social, geopolitical, and environmental discontinuities are reshaping understandings of board effectiveness in contemporary settings. Despite sustained interest in the topic, prescriptive practitioner-oriented writings and scholarly research provide insights that are incomplete and siloed. Scholarship on board effectiveness is extensive, yet it focuses narrowly on select dimensions of board effectiveness and often lags the contemporary challenges facing boards highlighted in practitioner-oriented literature. Conversely, easily accessible practitioner-oriented literature commonly used by boards and their advisors overlooks relevant scholarly research. Few efforts have been made to merge insights from both literatures to develop a more complete and shared understanding of board effectiveness. To address this gap, this review integrates empirical findings from board scholarship with prescriptions from practice to develop a unified conceptual model of board effectiveness. In doing so, it (1) reconceptualizes board effectiveness as a teleological process linking board attributes, processes, task actions, and outcomes, (2) clarifies the essential functions of boards in contemporary settings, and (3) foregrounds the importance of board micro-processes (i.e., internal practices, relational dynamics, and cognition). The review concludes by discussing the implications of our evidence-based conceptual model for board research and practice.

Organizations have long relied on experiments to guide decision-making. Yet, a comprehensive synthesis of this rich and timely empirical literature remains lacking. In this integrative review, we identify two primary streams of research (problem-solving-based experimentation and causal inference-based experimentation), which we organize using the classic variation–selection–retention framework. The problem-solving stream emphasizes iterative experimentation, learning from failure, and navigating organizational challenges, while the causal inference stream focuses on sharp identification, structured experimental designs, and bounded experiments, each rooted in distinct disciplinary traditions. Despite the differences, these perspectives offer complementary insights into how organizations experiment, learn, and adapt. By analyzing 177 empirical studies across several disciplines and integrating these parallel streams, we develop a unifying framework that highlights the key drivers, processes, and outcomes of organizational experimentation. We conclude by outlining promising avenues for future research, including deeper retention in shaping experimental effectiveness and organizational learning, overcoming cognitive biases, expanding the scope of experiments to strategy, organizational design, and people processes, and the possibility of the two streams to cross-feed: problem-solving to generate broad hypotheses that causal inference sharpens, and causal inference experiments to trigger reframing of the problem-solving experiments.

Defensiveness is a pervasive challenge in organizational life. It emerges when leaders resist feedback, when teams deflect accountability, and when organizations develop routines that insulate them from change. Yet, research on defensiveness is fragmented, with four different perspectives that have developed in parallel: (1) psychodynamic research on defense mechanisms, (2) social cognitive studies on defensive reasoning, (3) behavioral research on observable defenses, and (4) organizational research on defensive routines and social defenses. In this integrative review of 523 peer-reviewed articles, we synthesize findings across the four perspectives to address the following questions: What is defensiveness? What triggers defensiveness? How does defensiveness unfold in organizations? What are effective ways to manage defensiveness? Across perspectives, we uncover a core paradox: defensiveness may offer short-term relief to individuals, but it creates dysfunction in the systems it aims to protect. Understanding this paradox is key to managing defensiveness and interrupting reinforcing defensive cycles in organizations.

Private capital decisions—across private equity and private credit—shape innovation, firm transformation, and capital allocation. Yet, how investors decide remains underintegrated across theories and methods. Scholarship has developed along three metatheoretical traditions—economic rationality, social embeddedness, and psychological boundedness—and has relied heavily on factor–outcome designs, making it difficult to distinguish durable mechanisms from behavioral bias or context-bound artifacts. We review 936 articles spanning more than 80 years. We synthesize them into a staged, multilevel framework that maps the three logics to core modules: investors’ strategies and characteristics; decision-making cues and approaches; mechanisms; decision focus (selection, structuring, portfolio management, and exit); performance and broader implications; and external contingencies. This integrative lens organizes what is known—clarifying which factors matter, through which mechanisms, and under what conditions—and specifies how the logics that jointly govern private capital decision-making might act as complements or substitutes. In doing so, it provides a common architecture for a more cumulative research program on private capital and a template for studying judgment under uncertainty more broadly.