Knowledge that Transforms

Since its emergence within the field of organization studies around the start of the 1990s, discourse analysis (DA) has moved from the margins to become a well-established and institutionalized approach to understanding a variety of organizational phenomena. Of course, this approach has not been without its critics. One particularly persistent criticism has been that in its focus on the discursive and emphasis on social-constructionist ontology and epistemology, DA has failed to engage with non-discursive aspects of organizations. This argument has been made in particular by scholars influenced by critical realism and has come from within DA (e.g., Fairclough, 2005), as well as outside (e.g., Reed, 2000; Thompson and Harley, 2012). In this Point–Counterpoint, three papers address the relationship between the discursive and the material in organization studies. Hardy and Thomas (2015) begin the Point–Counterpoint by arguing that critics who assail DA for ignoring the material have misunderstood this approach. In making this argument, the authors revisit the work of Michel Foucault – one of the major influences on DA within management studies – and argue that in fact a concern with the material is integral to his approach. Thus, they argue, Foucauldian DA necessarily engages with both the discursive and the material. Hardy and Thomas illustrate their argument with reference to four aspects of materiality commonly discussed by DA scholars: bodies; objects; spaces; and practices. They conclude their piece by arguing that if DA is to advance knowledge, particularly of power in and around organizations, it must necessarily involve empirical research on the material effects of discourse and the discursive effects of materiality. In the second paper, Orlikowski and Scott (2015) respond by supporting the turn to materiality in organizational research and endorsing Hardy and Thomas' argument that DA can be used to research aspects of materiality. They then move to map out their own approach, informed by Barad's concept of agential realism (Barad, 2007). They emphasize the role of researchers in acting upon that which they study, rather than simply generating representations of reality from an external vantage point. A key point of divergence from Hardy and Thomas' argument is that Orlikowski and Scott do not see practices as an aspect of materiality. Nor do they accept that practice and discourse are separate, if intertwined, phenomena. Rather, they conceptualize practices as constitutive of reality and consider these always and everywhere as material-discursive. Thus, while their approach complements that of Hardy and Thomas, it differs from it in important ways which have significant implications for research practice. In the final paper in this collection, Putnam (2015) also applauds the increasing focus on materiality in organization studies, but also diverges from Hardy and Thomas' approach. She argues that many Foucauldians do indeed privilege the discursive over the material. She also differs from Orlikowski and Scott by asserting that the discursive and the material are empirically distinct, while at the same time being indivisible. Thus, she argues, they should properly be understood as being held together in a mutual tension – a dialectical relationship – while being studied as empirically separate phenomena. In setting out her argument, Putnam considers five approaches to understanding this dialectical relationship between discourse and materiality which can be found in the literature: Foucauldian analysis; materiality and performativity; imbrication; plenum of agencies; and the mangle. Based on comparing and contrasting the five approaches, she draws out a series of implications for future research on materiality and discourse. Collectively, these three papers demonstrate the growing importance of materiality, as well as highlighting the challenges and opportunities of studying the materiality within broadly social constructionist frameworks. We hope and expect that this Point–Counterpoint will stimulate scholars working on discourse and materiality as well, no doubt, as generating new critiques from within and outside the DA community.

This paper adopts a contingency approach to the resource-based view (RBV) of the firm and seeks to establish boundary conditions for the value of certain information technology (IT) capabilities. We first identify inter-organizational alliances as a specific strategy context in which IT capabilities are particularly valuable. We then consider more detailed boundary conditions that can shape the value of these capabilities within the alliance context. Our study shows that firms with better IT capabilities can derive greater value from an alliance, yet this effect also varies across different types of alliances depending on an individual alliance's characteristics. Specifically, IT capabilities are more valuable for alliances with a non-equity governance structure, as well as those involving a high degree of interdependence between partners. We highlight the implications of our findings for opportunities to advance the RBV.

This study examines organizational path constitution from an institutional regime view. The research setting is the conversion of military firms to the civilian market in China since the country's economic reform in 1978. We begin with a questionnaire survey to better understand the situation and context of military conversion, and then conducted an embedded multiple‐case study method that shows how different patterns of organizational path constitution arise from a process of change efforts, change outcomes and opportunity space. Our context further allows us to examine how heterogeneous locally‐based institutional regimes affect the opportunity space of embedded organizations, enabling or constraining their change actions. The overall contribution is a theoretical model that reveals the relations between heterogeneous institutional regimes, opportunity spaces and organizational path constitution. Our findings have implications for the path dependence literature.

Does acquisition of low‐cost capital through market timing improve the likelihood of a firm's internationalization? Under what circumstances will the above relationship be stronger? These questions are the focus of our study. We integrate the arguments of the resource‐based view and the market timing theory to answer these questions. We constructed a sample of capital‐raising moves and international investments by 905 listed Chinese firms spanning the 1992–2012 period. Based on random‐effects regression analyses, we find that firms deploying market timing are indeed more likely to internationalize. We also find that this effect is stronger for initial entries than subsequent expansions in a country.

The sustainability of cooperatives versus corporations is hotly contested. We propose that strategic choices at entry can help to explain the endurance of these two governance modes. We hypothesize that cooperatives have a survival advantage if their major drawback – high coordination costs – is curbed by high levels of member engagement at founding. Our analysis of survival rates in the US bio‐ethanol industry shows that cooperatives outlive corporations (1) if investment size at founding is large (strong financial engagement), (2) if they enter de novo instead of de alio (strong product‐market engagement) and (3) if the cooperative venture has been carefully planned from the start (greenfield entry) instead of built upon the acquisition of an existing plant (strong venture‐building engagement). These findings caution against the view that a particular mode of governance is superior or inferior to another in all circumstances.

Factors that affect a firm's ability to achieve an advantage may differ from those that affect its ability to sustain that advantage. Moreover, if advantage is a relative concept then studies that relate resource stocks to ‘absolute’ outcomes say little about how resources contribute to enduring differences among firms. We explore these issues in the global semiconductor industry by analyzing how a firm's resource stocks contribute to the persistence of an innovation advantage (a relative outcome). The findings demonstrate that a firm's own production experience and the experience held by its partners contribute to temporary innovation advantages. The results also show that a firm's own production experience yields a more durable innovation advantage as compared to the experience held by a firm's partners and that the experience held by a firm's partners provides a more enduring advantage than a firm's patent stock.

A belief in the importance of available and relevant information to managers and stakeholders has propelled significant accounting change, motivating the development of new forms of reporting argued to provide more useful accounting information. However, accounting is not inherently useful. Accounting information is a heterogeneous agglomeration that is made useful in practice. We overview research, illustrating the experimental, emotional, imaginative and complementation stratagems that practitioners adopt in making accounting information useful. This research shows that diverse stakeholder interests are mobilised in processes making accounting information useful. The ethical implications of accounting for stakeholders are then considered, particularly the problematic consequences of greater transparency. The critical possibilities of accounting for stakeholders are outlined next. We conclude by arguing that further research problematizing the usefulness of accounting information, including the networks of interests accomplishing this, is vital to advance debate on accounting for stakeholders.

Although transition economies experience significant institutional transformations that vary in their degree and pace, scholarly knowledge of what distinguishes more successful foreign subsidiaries from less successful ones in such environments is limited and inconsistent. We enhance the understanding of this subject by examining how variations in the institutional development of transition economies influence the usefulness of a subsidiary's intangible assets and capabilities and, in turn, their effectiveness in enhancing its growth. Prior research assumes that foreign subsidiaries that operate in any given environment are always better off when they possess strong intangible assets and capabilities. Our analysis of more than 33,000 observations in 14 transition economies challenges this view and enables us to explain why some subsidiaries grow more quickly in less‐developed institutional environments, whereas others more quickly in countries with institutions that are more developed. More specifically, we show that although a subsidiary's intangible assets enhance its growth in transition economies with stronger institutions, these effects are particularly weak or insignificant in transition countries with less developed institutional environments. Conversely, a completely different pattern emerges for subsidiary capabilities, with their marginal effects on subsidiary growth being significantly higher in countries that are institutionally less developed than in transition countries with more developed institutions.

Scholars increasingly recognize that organizational fields contain minority identities , linked to alternative logics. Extant work has been largely silent on how such minority identities are maintained, and what their implications are for organizational agency. I contribute to filling this gap by examining how organizations cultivate minority identities, and how such identities both enable and constrain agency. Employing the foreignness of multinational enterprise subsidiaries as a particular case of minority identity, I find that managers actively cultivate minority identities by embedding into niche networks, reinforcing alternative expectations, and categorizing themselves into distinct collective identities. These elements of the minority identity enable particular forms of agency – internal experimentation and an external license to deviate – while constraining others – adaptation to the dominant logic and positioning in mature market segments. The findings extend theory by highlighting how minority identities are generated and sustained, as well as their implications for agency.

The co‐existence of multiple, often contradictory, institutional demands pose challenges to organizations. Despite the intriguing context that multinational enterprises (MNEs) present for the study of organizational action to such demands, research has focused on organizational fields. To more deeply consider the MNE context, we argue that MNEs offer an opportunity to examine the role of society in the ‘management’ of multiple institutional logics. Further, we highlight organizational attributes such as economic ties, foreignness, and location strategy that filter institutional complexity in the context of MNEs. The papers in this Special Issue explore how the dynamic interaction between MNEs and the varying institutional demands across their multiple environments creates avenues for active agency.