The article presents an overview of the foundational studies of academic knowledge in management highlighting the importance of research monographs written by professors Philip Selznick, Tom Burns and George Stalker; Paul Lawrence and Jay Lorsch. It is the author’s view that studies are still relevant today, but ignored, and that there are important insights to be learned from many early works, and that works are worth to revisit them as new.

Contributing to the sensegiving literature and organizational change literature, we set forth a theory for predicting the relative effectiveness, or ineffectiveness, of executive symbolism in advancing new strategic themes (specific new priorities) in organizations. Unpacking the concept of executive symbolism and describing why executive actions carry symbolic significance, we primarily assess the “theme-aligned symbolic action”—an executive action undertaken with the intention of sending a message in support of some new theme. We draw from social influence theory to develop an integrated set of propositions for predicting members’ reactions, or affective responses, to such actions. The predictive factors include attributes of the action itself, the reputation of the executive, and predispositions of respective members to the theme. As an outgrowth of this analysis, we conclude that theme-aligned symbols, no matter how artful, will almost always be ineffective in eliciting positive reactions from members who are antagonistic toward the theme. In turn, we introduce the concept of the “theme-muting symbol”— a symbolic action intended to minimize the prominence or apparent implications of a new theme—and we place this concept in the social influence framework as well. We discuss practical implications and present an agenda for future research.

To function optimally, most workgroups need an interdependent mix of members in strategically core and noncore roles who work together effectively. However, although researchers have investigated the contributions of star performers and strategically core group members, we know relatively little about individuals in noncore roles and how they may facilitate group functioning and contribute to the relational climate of organizations. In this article we develop a multilevel, bottom-up model that explains two paths through which employees in noncore roles facilitate the dissemination of relational coordination in organizations. We leverage insights from self-categorization theory and relational coordination theory to explain different ways noncore role incumbents attempt to enact their noncore role identities. We then describe how the relational stances of those occupying core roles can enable or hinder the identity validation of those in noncore roles, and how validating the role-based identities of members in noncore roles fosters relational coordination at the group level while fostering positive identification with noncore roles. Finally, we theorize about how relational coordination facilitated by noncore role incumbents contributes to the relational climate of the organization, which subsequently motivates core role incumbents throughout the organization to support their teammates in noncore roles.

Current scholarship on organizational practices that foster a sense of care and collaboration in work relationships has yet to fully account for the potential misalignment between the goals of a given practice and how it is actually experienced. To address this issue, we develop a theoretical framework of experiential organizing, which we define as an iterative process through which positive relational and bureaucratic goals of a practice are pursued via symbolically and experientially oriented work. We offer theory to explain how organizations move through the experiential organizing process, what different types of work are required, and how the different parts of the process inform each other. Experiential organizing offers a holistic approach for organizations to overcome issues of misalignment, thereby mitigating negative outcomes and ensuring that symbolic structures have the intended impact on employee experience.

The competitive dynamics literature offers important insights regarding competitive behavior; however, the critical question of how previously nonrival firms become more direct competitors remains unanswered. To address this question, we extend the strategic entrepreneurship construct to develop a theory-based model of competitive landscape shifts. We theorize that firms engaging in strategic entrepreneurship will be better able to recognize entrepreneurial opportunities outside of their competitive domain(s), which will enable them to enact radical competitive actions. In turn, radical competitive actions will lead to shifts where these firms increase their market commonality with competitors with dissimilar resources and/or decrease their market commonality with competitors with similar resources. In developing our model of competitive landscape shifts, we also consider several important boundary conditions that influence the proposed relationships.

We set forth a new theory for understanding the consequences of CEO celebrity. The fulcrum of our theory is the reality that CEOs attain celebrity because they are cast into specific archetypes, rather than for their general achievements. We present a typology of common celebrity CEO archetypes (creator, transformer, rebel, savior) and then detail a model highlighting the consequences associated with attaining celebrity of a given type. These consequences include an array of sociocognitive outcomes, which, in turn, constrain celebrity CEOs to those behaviors associated with their particular celebrity archetype. The sociocognitive outcomes’ main effects are moderated by the role intensity of the specific archetype, the CEO’s degree of narcissism, and the temporal arc (rate of ascent and duration) of celebrity. Finally, we argue that the effects of CEO celebrity on firm performance are contingent on the continuity of external and internal contextual conditions. If conditions change appreciably, the celebrity CEO’s rigidities become severe liabilities, explaining the documented tendency for CEO celebrity to bring about, on average, unfavorable firm outcomes.