Knowledge that Transforms

Genetics has emerged as a promising avenue for explaining differences in management outcomes, attracting attention from leadership, entrepreneurship, and organizational behaviour scholars. Nonetheless, the field has faced scepticism and made only limited progress, stagnating in the pursuit of a so‐called ‘management gene’ (e.g., leadership gene and entrepreneurial gene). We argue that framing research around the search for a management gene has been theoretically limiting and empirically counterproductive, and that the genetic perspective could realize its promise through a nuanced understanding of how genetics relate to management outcomes. Drawing on five core genetic concepts (penetrance, phenocopy, polygenicity, pleiotropy, and epigenetics), we develop a framework comprising three intertwined stages that organize genetic methods according to their inferential strength. The stages focus on establishing whether genetic variance exists, identifying where it resides, and explaining when and why genetic predispositions become organizationally expressed. In doing so, the framework reframes non‐detections as theoretically informative, revealing when and why genetic predispositions go unexpressed. It thus turns what were previously seen as dead ends into evidence that advances theory. It positions gene–environment relationships as a core theoretical concern, redirecting the field away from the search for a management gene and towards understanding why individuals produce divergent outcomes.

Interdisciplinary research (IDR) is widely promoted as essential for addressing complex societal challenges, yet its enactment remains fraught. We argue that dominant typological and structural approaches miscast IDR and underplay the practical work through which it unfolds. Drawing on practice theory, we reconceptualize IDR as bundles of practices enacted across landscapes of practice. We theorize three guiding constructs: sensitization, reflexivity, and mobilization that support the coordination of IDR without collapsing its ontological multiplicity through misplaced attempts at epistemological integration. A practice lens clarifies why structural and typological interventions supply conditions that support IDR but do not guarantee outcomes; foregrounds the fragility, temporality, and politics of doing IDR; and reframes evaluation around practices rather than proxy measures such as bibliometrics. We outline implications for organizing and leading IDR and a research agenda linking IDR to wider debates in management and organization studies. Our contribution shifts attention from what IDR is to how it is enacted, sustained, and sometimes unravelled in practice.

Organizations torn by significant contradictions may struggle to maintain internal legitimacy. Taking a narrative perspective, and drawing on a case study of Walgreens, a Fortune 500 retail pharmacy, we develop a process model that shows how organizations with an entrenched conflict in their official narratives manage the resulting polyphony of members' personal narratives through the development of myths that sustain internal legitimacy by making the contradiction ‘liveable’. The model reveals how myths that represent contradictions as temporary and project a future in which they will be satisfactorily resolved help people to cope with inconsistencies in processes of organizing and support the status quo . Our theorizing suggests that internal legitimacy is constituted by the narratives that individuals author about the desirability, propriety, and appropriateness of their organization and its practices. From a narratological perspective, rather than existing on a continuum from high to low and being a resource that can be stockpiled, internal legitimacy may be theorized as a polyphony of distinctive narratives that while discursively dynamic is also generally durable.

We examine how the two dimensions of VC managers' personal reputation, that is, ‘being known’ and ‘being known for quality’, jointly influence the formation of initial syndication ties. We propose that VC managers follow a two‐stage cognitive process. In the first stage, the ‘being known for quality’ dimension – a reflection of their abilities‐must enter their ‘consideration set’. The ‘being known’ dimension is crucial to draw attention to potential candidates. In the second stage, lead VC managers evaluate the signal conveyed by the ‘being known for quality’ dimension of prospective partners' reputation. The ‘being known’ dimension is also important at this stage, as it allows for a more accurate assessment of what is otherwise a noisy signal. We test our hypotheses on a pairwise dataset of 1686 realized and 14,395 counterfactual initial syndication ties between VC managers. We find that lead VC managers are more likely to form initial syndication ties with VC managers with similar reputations. This effect is stronger if they share a previous common employer, have a similar industrial or geographic investment focus, or work at VC firms that have previously syndicated one or more investments with each other or with the same VC firm.

Governments have become increasingly active players in corporate social responsibility (CSR), with many countries adopting more stringent regulations for firms to pursue goals not limited to profit‐making. However, more recently, some jurisdictions have seen a backlash against CSR, which implies that the state's role in CSR is reversing from facilitating, encouraging, and mandating to prohibiting or undermining CSR. We study one such case of backlash against CSR in Bolsonaro's Brazil. We introduce the concept of state de‐orchestration to capture the reversal of the government's role in CSR in Brazil. We contribute to processual perspectives on state‐business interactions, the government and CSR literature, and the orchestration literature, by identifying the mechanisms by which the state loosens the constraints on and support for firms to pursue public good objectives. We also contribute to the government and CSR literature by demonstrating and theorising the impact de‐orchestration has on corporate discretion. We argue that corporate discretion needs to be conceived as both the liberty to adopt or not adopt CSR practices and the ability to do so. We further show that for some firms, domestic de‐orchestration may impair the exercise of corporate discretion, particularly among those exposed to pressures stemming from transnational CSR norms.

The recent Point article by Wu (2026) calls for a better understanding of factors that could lead to the development of AI systems that are likely to perpetuate social inequality. The Point article introduces the idea that computational beliefs interact with computational inequalities in a more systematic manner that develops AI systems which perpetuate biases. We present our counterpoint and show where we agree with Wu (2026) but also present areas that are not accounted for in the Point article. Specifically, using cases from financial services and HR systems, we highlight how algorithmic transparency driven by organizational governance and regulatory intervention can mitigate many of the issues, leading to the development of AI systems that could potentially be bias free.

While we know that rivals' activities in product markets are an important source of information, we know little about how firms set expectations and react to information emerging from competitors in strategic factor markets. Our theoretical framework examines this question and explains how rivals' actions in factor markets shape a firm's own resource‐picking decisions. We consider that rivals can utilize a factor of production for different applications and distinguish three distinct rival actions that lead to strategic responses, which are explained by the mechanism of herding. Further, we consider that rivals' actions beyond information also convey competitive pressure that firms react to. We show that considering both informational and competitive cues determines whether firms respond by picking resources from factor markets or by building internal capabilities. The theoretical framework, hence, helps understand the role of rivals when firms decide to pursue new strategic factors and how they obtain such factors. We test our predictions using a fine‐grained dataset of new product development of global bio‐pharmaceutical firms from 1993 to 2018. Overall, the paper provides an important step towards a better understanding of how rivals shape firms' expectations in strategic factor markets.

This study investigates the consequences of corporate divestitures from the largely neglected perspective of the divesting firm's remaining employees. Drawing on social exchange and psychological contract theory, we argue that divestitures – despite not involving direct job losses – can be perceived by the remaining employees as breaches of implicit employer obligations. We develop and test a theoretical framework that explains when and why the remaining employees perceive divestitures as breaches of psychological contracts, thereby weakening their organizational commitment. Specifically, we theorize that perceptions of psychological contract breaches are shaped by the organizational proximity between the divested unit and the remaining employees (i.e., divestiture proximity), with the financial performance of the divested unit and the remaining employees' reciprocity norms moderating this relationship. Using 1.8 million employee‐year‐level observations, we find a positive association between divestiture proximity and turnover as a behavioural outcome of reduced commitment, which is even stronger when the divested unit performed poorly and employees place greater value on reciprocity. Our findings contribute to a more nuanced understanding of divestitures by redirecting attention toward the employee–firm relationship and advancing theory on how individuals adjust their commitments after organizational restructuring.

Social enterprises are frontrunners in social innovation, yet our understanding of how they can scale their social impact beyond local, contained contexts remains nascent. To transform the institutional environment that gives rise to social problems, social enterprises must mobilize actors with divergent interests, values, and beliefs to change their practices – a process often complicated by incumbents who resist social innovation efforts and marginalize or co‐opt social innovators. Drawing on the social innovation and social movement scaling literatures, we identify a significant puzzle: how can social enterprises avoid marginalization and co‐optation while scaling their social impact? We address this question through an in‐depth case study of Tony's Chocolonely, a social enterprise dedicated to eradicating child labour in the chocolate industry. Our study offers two contributions. First, we show how social enterprises can scale their social impact beyond local, contained contexts by unpacking how different types of interactions and associated scaling outcomes create moral and competitive pressures for incumbents to change their practices. Second, we show how social enterprises can fend off risks of being pushed into a niche market or of being pressured to weaken the robustness of their solution, thus avoiding marginalization and co‐optation while scaling their social impact.

Newly appointed CEOs often enter office with a mandate to initiate strategic change, yet such change disrupts established routines and interests, frequently provoking resistance from organizational stakeholders. This creates a fundamental leadership transition dilemma: the strategic change new CEOs are expected to undertake may also threaten their early survival. We argue that strategic change increases the likelihood of CEO early dismissal because boards, facing uncertainty about a new CEO's competence, may interpret negative stakeholder reactions as signals of weak leadership or poor fit. Drawing on the strategic communication literature, we propose that new CEOs can mitigate this tension by building resonance, defined as alignment between their communication and stakeholders' emotional concerns and cognitive frames. In particular, charismatic visions and expressions of optimism generate emotional resonance by reducing anxiety and uncertainty and strengthening affective commitment to change; linguistic simplicity and language concreteness create cognitive resonance by making change initiatives clearer and more credible. Through these communication tactics, new CEOs can build stakeholder support for strategic change even before they have established a firm power base. Using a sample of CEO successions in S&P 1500 firms from 2002 to 2015, we find support for these predictions.