Knowledge that Transforms

Support systems for early venturing efforts need to be harmonious with the emergent nature of those efforts. With current literature treating the conceptions of new ventures as exogenous, there has been limited focus on the transition of venturing efforts from nebulous, open-ended, and accidental toward becoming scalable, focused, and deliberate. We develop a dynamic model for organizing support systems for the early phases of new-venture creation, where scattered ideas evolve into venture concepts as tokens, frames, and premises for further action. By viewing venturing efforts and opportunities as emergent and drawing on the literature on complexity and organizational space, we propose openness, self-selection, visibility, and connectivity as the defining characteristics for organizing support systems. In contrast to literature's predominant focus on a predictive, linear approach, we expand the theoretical scope of support systems to include organizing that is more attuned to the uncertain and nonlinear nature of new venture creation that they support. Our work has broader implications for organizing uncertain early-phase development processes.

Capitalism works when actors are motivated to engage in joint value creation. Stakeholder theorists have long argued that this is most likely when firms “manage for stakeholders,” but have only recently explicitly recognized that stakeholders engaged in joint value creation face collective action problems: situations in which stakeholders may be tempted to pursue their own interest at the expense of maximizing joint value creation. We build on the work of Elinor Ostrom on solving collective action problems to develop theory about how to govern joint value creation when managing for stakeholders. Specifically, we use Ostrom’s design principles to contrast the hub-and-spoke form of governance central to much of the stakeholder literature with two alternative governance forms (lead role governance and shared governance) that we derive from Ostrom’s work, and we discuss the comparative effectiveness of these three governance forms as depending on the nature of the joint value creation activities. Our work contributes to stakeholder theory as an integrative perspective on the role of management and governance in fostering cooperation in modern capitalist systems, where joint value creation increasingly involves stakeholders outside the boundaries of the firm as traditionally understood.

status: Published

Employees form commitments to multiple targets, and the coordination of those multiple commitments has become a ubiquitous part of the contemporary workplace. However, commitments are still largely studied in isolation or in one-off combinations, and current commitment theory does not account for the dynamic interrelationships among multiple commitments. To address this deficiency, we propose commitment system theory (CST). We draw upon general systems theory to depict commitment systems as malleable and interconnected structures. We present the defining elements by which commitment systems can be described and studied, develop theory regarding when commitment systems will diverge or converge over time, and discuss how taking a systems perspective resolves discrepant findings in the literature. Specifically, CST advances the commitment literature by offering an alternative perspective to explain how commitments behave as parts of larger systems. Specifically, CST accounts for (a) why and when commitments have synergistic, neutral, or conflicting interrelationships; and (b) the temporal dynamics of those interrelationships as commitments develop, change, and dissipate. CST thus offers a new vocabulary and conceptual toolkit for understanding the evolving structure of commitments to multiple targets.

We review three books that examine three interrelated grand challenges: climate change, abusive power in the workplace, and unfair international trading relations. The main take-away is that decision makers’ moral compass is centrally important to bring about more equitable and sustainable outcomes. Although the three books differ in structure and style, the shared wisdom that emerges from them is that we should abandon utilitarian approaches and embrace morality and self-governance at both the individual and organizational level in order to overcome the profit-making logic that dominates much of corporate action in today’s capitalist systems.

We critically assess the comparative efficiency advantages and disadvantages of capitalist and cooperative firms using team production as a frame of reference. We revisit the debate about such (dis)advantages in the context of open team production (OTP), a situation where team members are both internal and external to the firm. In contrast to the case of traditional (closed) team production, which focuses on the problem of monitoring team members within the firm, open team production, requires incentivizing both internal and external team members to commit to firm-specific cospecialized investments, as well as orchestrating and monitoring these continued investments. We identify some comparative efficiency (dis)advantages of traditional cooperative and capitalist firms in dealing with the novel challenges posed by OTP and we conclude that, in its context, a new type of a hybrid firm can possess comparative efficiency advantages visà-vis both types of traditional firms.

In this article we propose a conceptual model of the processes that regulate theory selection and retention in Management and Organization Studies. Considering the many sources of theoretical variety that characterize our field, what requires explanation is both the proliferation of theories as well as the decline of some schools of thought. We argue that research programs (ordered sequences of theories) lose momentum when the research movements that develop and maintain them fail to attend to some organizing priorities. By conceptualizing theorizing as form of organizing, we describe how research movements dynamically arrange sociomaterial elements (grammars, thought styles, material artefacts and empirical craft), arguing that their sustainability depends on their capacity effectively to navigate the paradoxical tensions that derive from these organizing efforts.

Profiting from innovation typically involves a choice between commercializing a patented technology in the product market to exploit proprietary advantage (i.e., competition) or licensing the technology to an incumbent in the market for ideas (a form of cooperation). A firm may thus deploy a patented technology in ways that may differ in their aggressiveness toward, or accommodation of, competitors. We analyze the deployment of patented technology employing either competition or collaboration modes, or both together (i.e., coopetition), as well as switching among them across demand states or over time, or delaying these choices until more information is available. We thus view a patent as a bundle of real options that enables a firm manage not only the classic tension between commitment and flexibility but also the tension between competition and cooperation. We develop theory and propositions to predict which of these patent deployment modes will be chosen by an innovator facing an established firm as a function of the strength of the technology, market or bargaining power and other market conditions, particularly the level and volatility of market demand.

In this dialogue paper, we consider Zellweger and Zenger’s (2021) conceptualization of entrepreneurs as scientists, rooted in pragmatism. While we agree that pragmatism provides a useful but neglected foundation for studying the entrepreneurial journey, we maintain that entrepreneurs are more than scientists – in addition, they are engineers, artists, and designers. Our view is predicated on enfolding considerations of time, emergence, and the associated unsurmountable epistemological barrier of unknowability, which enable entrepreneurs to not only describe (predict) the world as scientists do, but also actively shape the future to fit their “mind.”

We explain how and why people become motivated to participate in institutional processes. Responding to recent efforts to address the micro and meso in institutional analysis, we introduce two interrelated constructs, a person’s embodied world of concern and a community’s shared world of concern, which shape how people experience, evaluate, and participate in institutional arrangements. The world of concern, which is the product of people’s sedimented experiences of thriving and suffering, becomes the basis for their commitments to antagonisms towards certain social arrangements. The world of concern, as a lens, sheds light on the complex ways the macro, meso, and micro levels are co-implicated in constructing commitments and attachments that animate action in institutional arenas by providing a new metaphor, one that links the realism of participant concerns to the micro dynamics that underpin institutions. We conclude with a discussion of the implications of these ideas for future research.