Knowledge that Transforms

AbstractDigital 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.

AbstractOrganizational 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.

AbstractAlthough management research has a rich tradition of both descriptive and prescriptive theorizing, the latter is often (and erroneously) viewed as unscientific, purely practice‐oriented, or simply a corollary of descriptive analysis. Prescriptive theorizing concerns how things should be and how they can be achieved, as opposed to descriptive theorizing, which focuses on why or how things are (interrelated). Accordingly, prescriptive theorizing has strong normative and instrumental properties, which are especially relevant when addressing pressing societal, ecological, and ethical concerns, also referred to as grand challenges, that demand a re‐evaluation of established norms and behavioural patterns. However, this opportunity is currently underutilized in the management literature, and there is a lack of guidance on how to leverage the principles of prescriptive theorizing. Therefore, I clarify its main characteristics, outline how scholars can construct rigorous prescriptive arguments, and show how normative and instrumental reasoning can promote positive social change. Embracing prescriptive theorizing as a vital complement to descriptive theorizing in management research provides scholars with an intellectual toolkit to actively engage in the urgent discourse on grand challenges and develop compelling new and impactful theories.

AbstractThis 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.

AbstractUsing a meta‐analysis based on 147 primary studies from 27 countries, we synthesize extant knowledge on the relationship between business model innovation (BMI) and firm performance. Our results show that the positive BMI‐firm performance relationship is robust across various conceptualizations of and measures for BMI. Building on prior research suggesting that not all companies benefit equally from engaging in BMI, we set out to study important institutional‐level contingencies for the BMI‐performance relationship. We build on the institution‐based view as theoretical perspective and combine it with insights from the innovation literature to theorize that the magnitude of the positive effect of BMI on firm performance depends on institutional contingencies, specifically national culture and pro‐market institutions, because these national institutions affect BMI‐driven organizational learning processes. Specifically, we argue and show that the positive relationship between BMI and performance is weaker in countries characterized by high levels of masculinity and individualism, and stronger in countries characterized by high levels of customer orientation, economic freedom, and education. Besides the country‐level contingencies, the inclusion of various control variables in our meta‐analysis also reveals that, even if located in the same institutional environment, start‐up firms benefit more from BMI than mature firms and that there are no observable differences regarding BMI benefits among different industries. Moreover, a nuanced analysis shows that the positive effect on performance is stronger when BMI rely on changes in cognitive schemas compared to BMI that are of more technical nature.

AbstractWith recent management studies of organizational purpose concentrating on the reactions of corporate elites to external change stimuli, little attention has been given to the emergent phenomenon of internally‐driven business school re‐purposing. Breaking with a tradition of incremental change in the field, re‐purposing denotes a transformational process that arises from business school leaders' attempts to focus their organizations on the pursuit of their purpose to enhance the public good, from management scholarship and the way that business schools operate. This paper frames business school re‐purposing as the endogenous enactment of a purpose logic, and it draws from early cases in the UK and France to present an analysis of the leadership activity involved. The potential for further business school re‐purposing is assessed critically with reference to general challenges of infusing purpose into organizations, and the specific threats posed by a field that is dominated by a countervailing logic of purpose, a conservative approach to management, and increasing financial pressures.

AbstractManagement is a global phenomenon. Yet, the vast majority of empirical investigations and theoretical explanations of management, managers and those being managed that are published in leading management journals are based on research that predominantly originates from Western contexts, particularly the USA and the larger European countries. Non‐Western contexts, in turn, reside at the periphery of mainstream management scholarship. This is problematic for multiple reasons. It provides an inherently limited view on the contextual factors that may explain variation in management practices across the globe, and it leads to a reductionist view of non‐Western contexts to offer little more than a means for teasing out the boundary conditions of mainstream ‘Western’ theories. This exclusion of non‐Western contexts has resulted in a marginalization of non‐Western scholarly voices, who are often hesitant to submit their research to leading scholarly journals. To address these interrelated problems, we use this introduction to the Thematic Collection on ‘Embracing non‐Western contexts’ in the Journal of Management Studies to call on scholars to more fully embrace non‐Western contexts in their research, and in doing so, to unleash the explanatory potential of these contexts for our understanding of management.

AbstractDespite 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.

AbstractWhile economic and non‐economic goals may converge in the long term, they often lead to tensions for organizational decision‐makers in the short term, especially in family firms that place much emphasis on family‐related goals. We draw on a sensemaking approach to investigate such potential tensions in the decision‐making of family firms. Based on a qualitative analysis of 59 interviews, 501 items of archival data and 39 observations from eight private Irish firms, we explore the perceived goal tensions of family firm decision‐makers as they seek to balance economic and non‐economic goals. We identify three sensemaking mechanisms – ensuring continuity in the family firm, preserving family cohesion, and delegating responsibilities to trusted advisors – that assist family firm decision‐makers in managing these goal tensions. Moreover, we identify that sensegiving based on three different values – sense of commitment, community embeddedness, and family firm identity – helps family firm decision‐makers to justify and communicate their decisions. Our model contributes to a more granular understanding of the management of goal tensions and of decision‐making in family firms by going beyond the question of whether family firms prioritize economic or non‐economic; instead, it reveals concrete processes showing how firms balance and aim to incorporate both goals. Furthermore, we advance knowledge on sensemaking in family firms by revealing how sensemaking can explain idiosyncratic family firm behaviour and by showing how family firm decision‐makers use specific values when ‘giving sense’ to justify their decisions.

AbstractResearch on corporate social responsibility (CSR) and corporate social irresponsibility (CSIR) has long argued both affect firms' legitimacy, for good or bad. Such research has ignored how ex‐ante corporate trustworthiness and associated attributions affect the association of CSR and CSIR on corporate normative legitimacy. Focusing on two unique aspects of corporate normative legitimacy evaluations – affect and misconduct – we argue that ex‐ante perceptions of firm trustworthiness moderate the associations among CSR and CSIR and different aspects of normative legitimacy. Utilizing comprehensive panel‐data analytical approaches for S&P 500 firms from 2000 to 2015, MSCI‐KLD data, mass‐media‐based measures of firm trustworthiness, including normative affect‐based legitimacy, and normative misconduct‐related‐legitimacy, our proposition is mostly supported, with surprising caveats. A post‐hoc analysis shows these associations vary based on public versus investors' affective‐legitimacy views. The findings of this study critically challenge extant scholarship and call for a nuanced view of the impact of CSR and CSIR on firm legitimacy.