Knowledge that Transforms

Abstract This study explores how social movement activists, engaged in constructing and expanding moral markets, sustain the integrity of their initial moral values, avoiding dilution or cooptation by conventional market practices. Through a qualitative case study of a telecommunications network, we show that activists can expand a moral market by a process of frame overlapping, which involves the mechanisms of frame amplification with plural moral values, frame bridging with a resonant economic frame and frame extension adapting cultural templates. This process stands in contrast to previously identified dynamics in moral markets literature, such as ‘mutual cooptation’ between movements and firms, de‐coupling and re‐coupling the initial values, and ‘frame divergence’. We also underline different contextual factors that shape frame overlapping. Finally, the article examines the nature of moral markets and proposes a dynamic view of what makes a moral market ‘moral’.

Abstract Critical Management Studies (CMS) has largely relied on one‐dimensional critique which focus on the negation of a dominant social order. This strong focus has made the field increasingly stale and preoccupied with standard objects for critique. This paper suggests that if CMS is to move beyond these problems, it needs to develop three‐dimensional thinking, including understanding, questioning, and reparation. Drawing on the idea of ‘reparative critique’ (Sedgwick, 1997), we outline what this looks like in practice and how it might be done by practitioners of CMS. We argue that reparative critique involves three steps of understanding, developed through empirical inquiry relaxing assumptions and thick description, critique developed through exploring dilemmas and examining ironies, and reparation which is created through deflation and concept creation. By working through these three steps, we think it is possible for CMS to move beyond identifying the ‘dark side’ and begin to identify positive visions for the future of management.

Abstract How contexts shape organizational phenomena has long been a focus of management and organization studies (MOS), as has how actors influence contexts. This paper deepens this debate using a rhythm perspective, developed against the backdrop of entrepreneurship research, which has made context a priority but not fully clarified how entrepreneurial agency alters contextual conditions. Drawing on Henri Lefebvre’s Rhythmanalysis , we argue that the everyday provides a privileged vantage point for understanding how contextual forces permeate entrepreneurship and, conversely, how they are affected by it. Specifically, we theorize that the everyday forms a diverse and shifting symphony of rhythms, and suggest that entrepreneurial agency includes the transformative capacity to shape these rhythms to create tangible value. We refine our theorizing through the example of the Brukman textile factory, an entrepreneurial squat taken over by its former workers. The vignette explores how agency is enacted through the cultivation of moments of rupture ( arrhythmia ) and moments of rhythmic harmony ( eurhythmia ). Our contribution is to develop a rhythm perspective to spark new ways of thinking about context, agency, and transformative change. While our theorizing is rooted in entrepreneurship research, we identify ways in which it can stimulate MOS more broadly.

Abstract This Point proposes an ontological reorientation of the Attention‐Based View from a focus on attention quantity to attention quality – that is, from a quantitative to a qualitative Attention‐Based View. This shift is motivated by developments in both academic research and contemporary management. Drawing on practice theory, we reconceptualize attention not as a resource to be allocated and rationed, but as a set of sociomaterial practices of attending. We identify five constitutive qualities of these attentional practices: sociality, discourse, embodiment, materiality, and historicity. This conceptual shift moves beyond viewing attention as a limited and homogeneous resource, instead framing attending as a crescive and differentiated set of practices. We argue that this qualitative Attention‐Based View offers a deeper understanding of attention, one particularly relevant to contemporary strategizing and organizing.

Abstract Entrepreneurship research has long focused on exceptional, high‐growth, venture‐funded firms while overlooking the everyday and modest ventures that make up most entrepreneurial activity. This Special Issue calls for a recalibration of the field by decolonizing its assumptions and embracing its pluralism. We distinguish between conventional entrepreneurship, shaped by ideals of technology‐driven innovation and venture‐capital funded growth, and unconventional entrepreneurship, which reflects diverse and contextually grounded practices. Focusing on everydayness, pluralism, and decolonization, we draw on Santos’ concept of abyssal line to invite a shift from studying outliers to studying the ordinary. Using the metaphor of moving from a microscope to a prism, we call for theories that capture the full spectrum of entrepreneurial life across contexts and cultures. We discuss how papers in this Special Issue exemplify this prism approach and, in doing so, cast new light on how entrepreneurship can be understood, studied, and imagined.

Abstract This Point introduces algorithmic status inequality that is, enduring disparities in social position, influence, and resource access reinforced by AI systems, as a critical lens for understanding technological stratification in organizations. I develop an integrative model showing how computational beliefs (i.e., cultural assumptions embedded in algorithmic design) interact with computational inequalities (i.e., disparities in technical capabilities) to produce persistent status hierarchies through self‐reinforcing feedback loops. Illustrative cases in recruitment, healthcare and legal assistance demonstrate these mechanisms in practice, producing three consequential patterns: status schisms within minority‐serving AI systems, status tensions between dominant and specialized algorithms and status disparities between AI systems and human experts. Unlike the Counterpoint perspectives that either emphasize market‐based dynamic capabilities as self‐correcting mechanisms for algorithmic disparities or locate the primary source of inequality in biased training data amenable to technical debiasing , I argue that neither purely technical approaches (such as diversifying training data) nor purely market‐based approaches (such as relying on competitive dynamics) are sufficient to address algorithmic status inequality. This sociotechnical perspective explains why isolated interventions typically fail and provides a theoretical foundation for developing comprehensive strategies that simultaneously target embedded cultural beliefs and material inequalities in AI development.

Abstract In an increasingly multipolar world, this Point–Counterpoint debate discusses the imperative for Management and Organization Studies (MOS) to embrace different contexts of socio‐economic systems, specifically varieties of socialism, and in doing so move beyond the predominant capitalist model as a central assumption in the literature. In their Point , Bruton, Li and Gautam argue that MOS has insufficiently embraced socialism as an empirical reality, despite nearly half of the world’s population living in nations reflecting some variety of socialism, in addition to modes of organization following an ethos closer to socialism than capitalism. This view is challenged by the Counterpoint of Foss, Klein, Holmes and Terjesen. While they agree that considering institutional context is vital, they reject the Point’s position, question its imputing of a widespread ‘capitalist bias’, and are concerned that its ethos‐based definitions are imprecise and politically charged. Based on their productive disagreement, collectively this Point–Counterpoint debate underscores the imperative for greater contextualization in MOS more generally, and in entrepreneurship research more specifically, and that organizational goals beyond pure financial profit maximization warrant deeper scholarly attention. This introduction concludes by sketching future research avenues, including configurational institutional analysis, exploring collective motivation in entrepreneurship, and analysing the mechanisms of state control.

Abstract Persistent gender and racial inequalities within elite professions remain inadequately explained by accounts focusing exclusively on either intra‐organizational processes or field‐level institutional dynamics. Relational inequality theory (RIT) provides a powerful account of closure within organizations but offers limited specification of how institutional environments shape variation in inequality outcomes. We bring RIT into dialogue with the institutional logics perspective (ILP), adopting a microfoundational lens to examine how demographic dominance and governance structures jointly shape career inequalities. Using longitudinal data on 3402 junior surgeons across 212 NHS trusts in England, we analyse promotion and exit outcomes across professional subspecialties and employing organizations. Intersectional inequalities are systematically associated with a dominant professional logic as captured by White male density (WMD). Higher WMD amplifies in‐group advantages and out‐group penalties. However, these effects vary across institutional contexts. Professional subspecialties exhibit stronger and more coherent dominance effects, whereas governance‐intensive trusts partially attenuate WMD‐associated advantages, particularly in formalized promotion processes, while exit patterns remain less responsive to governance constraints. In doing so, we clarify how the strength of relational inequality regimes varies systematically across institutional contexts and show that demographic dominance and governance centrality jointly shape when and where intersectional inequalities intensify or recede.

Abstract Based on over 25 years of studies on servant leadership and multiple meta‐analyses, we can safely say servant leadership positively affects individuals, teams, and organizations. Yet to reap these benefits, followers need to recognize leaders' behaviours as servant leadership. Because serving others requires time and energy, leaders may bear the costs of servant leadership without generating its benefits when those efforts go unrecognized. To address this concern, we draw on signalling theory to examine how leaders convey servant‐oriented intentions through observable, costly behaviours. We test our hypotheses across three experiments, two conjoint analyses and one between‐subjects video‐based study to examine how followers interpret multiple leader and organizational signals. Our findings help explain the behaviour–perception mechanism through which leaders come to be recognized as servant leaders, while highlighting the complexities leaders face in signalling their intentions to followers. We show that leaders signal servant leadership through observable, costly service‐oriented behaviours, such as helping followers grow and succeed, and need to engage in these behaviours frequently and consistently. We further show that the efficacy of these signals depends on followers' levels of prosocial motivation and the signalling environment in which the leader operates, providing evidence of how followers interpret multiple signals.