Knowledge that Transforms

We develop an integrative framework that sheds light on managing multiple targets of employee identifications—specifically, coworker, workgroup, and organizational identifications. Drawing from cross-cultural and gender studies, we distinguish between individual tendencies (self-concept orientations) and self-definitions with specific relationships or groups (identifications). We explicate the role of individualist, relationist, and collectivist self-concept orientations, as well as identification motives, on organizationally relevant identifications and conclude with a discussion of the implications for identification in organizations.

In order to adjust, expatriates working abroad must form network ties in the host country to obtain critical informational and emotional support resources. We present a five-stage process model that delineates how expatriates form adjustment-facilitating support ties in a culturally unfamiliar context. We then provide propositions about how the progression of each stage is influenced by various expatriate-, actor-, and context-related factors. We conclude by discussing our model's implications for future research and managerial action.

Generational phenomena underlie several complex organizational challenges. Yet many fundamental questions regarding what generations mean and what the implications of generational differences in organizations are remain unanswered. The framework proposed in this paper allows us to incorporate multidisciplinary conceptualizations of generations as various dimensions of a generational identity, to specify conditions under which these dimensions may be activated in organizational contexts, and to derive implications for intergenerational interactions.

What happens when an employee generates a new idea and wants to further explore it but is instructed by a manager to stop working on it? Among the various possibilities, the employee could choose to violate the manager's order and pursue the new idea illegitimately. I describe this action as creative deviance and, drawing on the creativity literature and deviance literature, propose a theory about its organizational conditions and implications.

Board interlocks are frequently examined as conduits of practices between firms. I propose that variance among the individual directors who create these linkages affects the likelihood information is transmitted across them. Further, I discuss organizational characteristics that shape how receptive a board is to the diffusion of practices. I conceptualize a model to investigate, first, which directors are more likely to transmit experience or knowledge about organizational practices and, second, what factors influence how that information is received.

Academy of Management Review

Incompleteness of inductive reasoning presents an enduring dilemma to organizational research. We examine two practical reasoning strategies—idealization and contextualization—that can be used at the pinnacle of this dilemma: when theoretical conclusions are drawn from empirical data. Understanding the two strategies can lead to more effective argumentation and evaluation. Appreciating the methodological incompleteness of both strategies in turn helps us distinguish between the methodological and the policy dimensions of organization-scientific debates.

We present a model that distinguishes among different types of commitments by crossing self-identity levels (collective, relational, and individual) with regulatory foci (promotion and prevention). This model is important because it specifies the ways in which convergent and discriminant validity exist among different types of commitment and because it accounts for commitment to multiple constituents (e.g., commitment to one's organization and supervisor). We conclude by discussing implications of our model and proposing directions for future research.

When is open innovation superior to closed innovation? Through a formal simulation model we show that an open approach to innovation allows the firm to discover combinations of product features that would be hard to envision under integration. However, when partners have divergent goals, open innovation restricts the firm's ability to establish the product's technological trajectory. The resolution of the trade-off between benefits of discovery and costs of divergence determines the best approach to innovation.

Research suggests that as one acquires domain expertise, one loses flexibility with regard to problem solving, adaptation, and creative idea generation. Here, I reconsider this trade-off between expertise and flexibility by examining the concept of cognitive entrenchment—a high level of stability in one's domain schemas. Proposing that cognitive entrenchment varies not only with expertise but also with one's task environment and attentional focus, I contend that the inflexibility-related limitations of expertise can be circumvented.