Knowledge that Transforms

We argue that power and politics provide the social energy that transforms the insights of individuals and groups into the institutions of an organization. Moreover, we propose that different forms of power in organizations are connected to specific learning processes—intuition is linked with discipline, interpretation with influence, integration with force, and institutionalization with domination—and that an examination of these different forms of power provides a basis for understanding why some insights become institutionalized while others do not.

This article discusses the July 2004 “Academy of Management Review” Special Topic Forum on the Future of Work Motivation Theory. The author feels that, while the forum opens up new research directions to help understand what motivates workers to work, it says little about why workers should be motivated to work. There is a direct connection between early developments in motivation theory and the history of philosophical and psychological ethics. It is noted that motivational efforts may exert control over individual moral autonomy. Making the link between meaningful work and work motivation theory will supposedly stimulate further inquiry and research into meaningful work. The author notes the connection between worker motivation and productivity within individual and group performance.

I argue that attempts to adapt structure to contingencies will be unsuccessful unless there is also rhetorical congruence, which has two parts. First, rhetorical congruence exists if rhetoric is appropriate to contingencies. For example, decentralization aimed at increasing local initiative will lead to more requests by headquarters for advice from subsidiaries. Second, it exists if the various rhetorical processes are in balance with one another. For example, as the environment becomes more uncertain and as more differentiation rhetoric is used in response, further integration rhetoric will be prompted to reestablish balance.

A review is presented of the book ?Corporate Collapse: Accounting, Regulatory and Ethical Failure,? by Frank Clarke, Graeme Dean and Kyle Oliver.

A review is presented of the book ?Selling China: Foreign Direct Investment During the Reform Era,? by Yasheng Huang.

Executive jobs vary widely in the difficulty they pose for their incumbents, yet research on top executives and strategic decision making has largely ignored this reality. We build on work in industrial/organizational psychology to develop the construct of executive job demands; discuss its major determinants; propose some of its key implications for strategic choices and leadership behaviors; and propose the usefulness of this construct in advancing research on numerous fronts, including agency theory, executive compensation, and upper echelons.

Multinational enterprises (MNEs) often encounter government corruption when operating in host countries; however, in the international management literature, it is typically assumed that government officials pursue national interests rather than their own. We introduce a two-dimensional framework to further the understanding of public sector corruption and identify its implications for MNEs. Using an institutional perspective, we examine how the pervasiveness and arbitrariness of corruption can affect an MNE's organizational legitimacy and strategic decision making. We apply our analysis to the mode of entry decision.

Coordination is the process people use to create, adapt, and re-create organizations. We propose a theory of coordination as energy-in-conversation to help organizational scholars comprehend the emotional and motivational dynamics of coordination. Our model describes how people generate and diminish their energy in their attempts to coordinate, how this energy affects attempts to coordinate, and how coordinating affects the effort devoted to the activities in the process. This account of the coordination process presents a new approach for understanding performance in interdependent situations.

Presents a bibliography of books on accounting and management including “The Behavioral Foundations of Strategic Management,” by Philip Bromiley, “Building Great Customer Experiences,” by Colin Shaw and John Ivens, and “Contemporary Strategy Analysis,” by Robert M. Grant.

The article reviews the book ?The Necessary Nature of Future Firms: Attributes of Survivors in a Changing World,? by George P. Huber.