Knowledge that Transforms

We examine how a CEO's sudden death influences competitors' strategic investments. Consistent with the literature on death awareness and the expectancy‐valence model, we suggest that a CEO's unexpected death can trigger competitors' competitive moves. Using a difference‐in‐differences methodology, we show that a competitor increases strategic investments after its peer firm experiences a CEO's sudden death. This effect becomes stronger when the competitor and its peer firm share similar resource allocation profiles or the competitor possesses greater organizational slack. Our supplementary analysis shows that a competitor increases its strategic action intensity following a CEO's sudden demise at a peer firm. This study contributes to the competitive dynamics literature by highlighting how critical events affecting the cognitive base and values of strategic leaders expose strategic vulnerability and in turn evoke competitive moves by competitors in response to the events.

E‐petitions have evoked an important debate about the potential for digital activism to pressure firms to change social policies and practices. One prevailing perspective is that slacktivism, a tendency of online supporters to provide only token support, undermines any possible impact. An alternative perspective is that social media dynamics underlying digital activism offer new pathways for social activists to pressure firms toward social change. To explore this debate, we combine insights from research on social movements, social media, and the logic of connective action to theorize the impact of social media mechanisms such as e‐petition connectivity and velocity. With a hand‐coded database of 1587 e‐petitions targeting Fortune 500 firms from 2012 to 2017 through the platform Change.org , we empirically evaluate whether these e‐petitions matter. Our empirical results strongly suggest that e‐petitions do matter, and we explain when digital activism has impact. The activation of social media mechanisms spreads negative information and directly intensifies the threat to the targeted firm's reputation, pressuring firms to concede to e‐petitioner demands. Furthermore, our findings indicate that firm visibility and resource availability can represent boundary conditions for the firm's vulnerability and ability to respond to digital activism.

This paper draws on a phenomenological perspective to explore how people develop and enact skill in work at through ecological knowing – a sensuous form of knowing in one's being embedded in and across place and time. In doing so, we abductively interweave the work of Finnish architect Juhani Pallasmaa and British anthropologist Tim Ingold with an empirical study of two industrial museums and two contemporary illustrations of choral conducting and motion capture performance. Our contribution is threefold: first, we expand theories of knowledge and corporeality by theorizing ecological knowing as encompassing emplaced wisdom and embodied skill – thus elevating embedded and embodied human agency in contrast to studies that focus on the body, skill, and knowledge as objects. Secondly, we present an alternative way of understanding how expertise develops and is enacted in work activities. Finally, we offer methodological resources, currently underutilized in management studies, for studying this sensorial form of knowing in a way that is consistent with its underlying phenomenological commitments.

Previous research suggests that firms tend to form alliances with counterparts of similar status. However, it remains unclear whether the principle of status homophily helps or hinders the alliance process. In this study, we contend that status differentials, rather than status similarity, can reduce the likelihood of the unplanned dissolution of an alliance, as a clearer order of status helps to resolve interfirm discrepancies and conflicts during collaborative processes. The results based on a sample of joint ventures in the US computer and telecommunications industries support our arguments. Further, we find that the effect of status differentials on the unplanned dissolution of alliances is strengthened when the high‐status firm performs better than the low‐status firm and when the two firms are from more related industries. Our findings call into question the emphasis on status homophily in the management of alliances following their formation.

Communities around the world face increasing risks of climate disasters such as floods, hurricanes, and droughts. What drives firms’ heterogeneous responses to a climate disaster, and what could be the consequences for community resilience? To address these questions, we theorize how different aspects of sensemaking (sense of place, time, certitude, and loss) affect firm responses. Then, aided by an elaborate thought experiment – a narrative scenario of a future flood hitting the Dutch coast – we theorize how heterogeneity in firms’ initial responses can trigger sensemaking‐sensegiving cycles that spiral a community towards reconstruction or unplanned retreat. Our article advances understanding of firms’ heterogenous disaster responses, the drivers of community resilience, and uncovers potential tensions between organizational and community resilience. We also contribute to sensemaking theory by relaxing the popular assumption that sensegiving requires deliberation. Finally, our article showcases how narrative scenarios of future events can expand the methodological toolkit of organization theory and points to new opportunities for future interdisciplinary work.

This study attempts to address the question of under what conditions political ties buffer firms from, or bind firms to, political pressure. We draw attention to the institutional divide between the executive and legislative branches of a presidential democracy. Using the case of Taiwan, a ‘third wave’ democracy with relatively strong state intervention, we argue that the two branches differ in their respective institutional roles, basis of legitimacy, and resources in a context in which the regime is seeking to fulfil its national agenda and please floating voters. We posit that corporate ties to these respective branches exert divergent influence on the adoption of government‐initiated but highly contested corporate governance reforms. Ties to the executive branch push firms to reform because they depend on the government for resources, while ties to the legislative branch act as a buffer to reform as legislators court the support of firms in pursuit of electoral gains. Empirical analysis of reforms to enhance board independence from 2002 to 2005 supports our thesis. Our study contributes to research on corporate political strategy and corporate governance reform, revealing how the structural fragmentation of the state can give rise to conflicting roles of political ties to different branches.

By applying a dynamic approach to field‐level institutional complexity, we explore how growing institutional complexity affects fields over time. We examine field transition processes, which are shaped by the number of logics, the nature of their relationships and the shifts in dominance. Focusing on Germany's energy field, our analysis identifies a variety of conflicts that arose among up to seven institutional logics in the context of the German energy transition, i.e., the transition towards a low carbon energy market. The paper makes two theoretical contributions to the institutional complexity and field literature. First, we develop a process model explaining the field‐level consequences of two different types of growing complexity, namely increasing and accelerating complexity. Second, we identify conflicting logic constellations as a distinct form of complexity that we term constellation complexity. We discuss our contributions in light of the literature on institutional logics and fields and show how applying a dynamic perspective to institutional complexity supports scholars in conceptualizing field transition processes.

The literature indicates that the board of directors exists to provide resources and strategic direction (service task) and monitor top managers (control task), often tending to overgeneralize board tasks. Using a unique sample of 36 elite family firm directors having served on 615 boards with an aggregate 1447 years’ experience, and integrating interview and secondary data with observations, we capture how the multiple role identity struggles experienced by family directors are managed in the board. Our data indicate that effective boards resolve multiple role identity struggles (i.e., family director ‘pathos’) through the mechanisms that boardroom structural forces trigger and the resulting bridge and buffer tasks enacted (i.e., board ‘ethos’), going beyond the traditional service and control tasks.

This paper investigates the eristic legitimation of managerial decisions – managerial interactions to win without reasoned persuasion of the counterparty – in the context of career‐advancement disputes. This mode of legitimation can be ethically questionable, particularly when powerful managers have the licence for it, while less powerful subordinates may have ‘no other choice’ than reasoned persuasion to address their concerns. The present study involves two sets of interviews to explore eristic legitimations and associated moral and political processes. The first involves former employees who had career advancement disputes with their former managers, and the second, HR professionals with expertise in dealing with employee complaints. Our analysis suggests that managing unfairness concerns can be destructive when managerial authorities argue eristically by exploiting ambiguities around performance, tasks, goals and moral principles. The novelty of this study is that it explores how ambiguities shape managerial handling of employees’ justice concerns and how eristic legitimations during ethical decision‐making can have deleterious consequences for organizations and individual careers. While this study contributes to research on the rhetorical strategies of managers, it has important implications for interactional justice and ethical decision‐making research.

In this paper, we conceptualize CEO passion for organizational development (CEO POD) as CEOs’ strong inclination to continuously grow and improve their companies, which they find important and fulfilling. We draw from social information processing theory to articulate how and when CEO POD may trickle down to facilitate frontline employees’ creativity. Our research encompasses three studies employing different methodologies, including a multilevel, multisource, and multiphase survey and two vignette‐based experiments. The results consistently support our model, revealing that CEO POD inspires middle managers to exhibit transformational leadership, which subsequently fosters frontline employees’ creativity. Moreover, CEO self‐promotion skills augment the indirect effect of CEO POD on employee creativity via middle managers’ transformational leadership. Our findings generate valuable theoretical and practical implications to leverage CEO POD to foster employees’ creativity in the fast‐changing business environment.