Knowledge that Transforms

A longitudinal event‐history analysis using complete data on the aircraft fleets of all B ritish airlines over the period 1919 to 1975 was applied to elucidating how a firm's internal resource demography can explain its resource divestiture decisions. The likelihood of divestiture for any particular aircraft was found to depend strongly on its age and size, but also on the age and size heterogeneity of an airline's entire fleet. The results constitute a demonstration of the utility of taking a demographic approach to studying the management of resource portfolios. This approach may also prove fruitful in the study of other types of strategic resources and their management.

10.1111/joms.12041

Recent years have seen a surge of interest in work on categorization and categories at the level of industries, markets, and firms. This interest can be explained by the ubiquity of categories and categorization in the world of organizations where we, as researchers and more generally as individuals exposed to organizations, assign organizations to classes or sets such as industries or markets, modes of production, forms of branding, types of technology, and the like. By engaging in such a categorization process, we set boundaries, invoke relevant knowledge, and create common understanding about organizations that guides and informs our perceptions and actions. A particularly prominent theme in past research has been the study of the priming or activation of certain categories on the reactions of relevant audiences (Zuckerman, 1999). The underlying aim of this line of work has been to identify the broader cultural cognitive infrastructure of categories that stakeholders have in their mind when they evaluate organizations, new entrepreneurial ventures, or innovative new products. The consequence of such a structure, it is assumed, is that when the subject cannot be easily assigned to a relevant category and seen as a prototypical member of it, there is the likelihood that the subject in question will be discounted. Whilst this has been a burgeoning line of research, particularly amongst researchers within economic sociology and organizational ecology, it black-boxes important and significant questions about the very process of categorization, and about the flexible and changing ways in which categories can be constructed, reconfigured, or even combined (Porac et al., 2011). It also does not flesh out the ways in which people, in a cognitive and social sense, derive meanings from categories and make use of them. With this Point–Counterpoint debate we hope to turn the gaze slightly away from work that assumes that categories simply exist ex ante and then sets out to model and explain how invoked categories to a greater or lesser extent prime certain reactions in relevant audiences. To illustrate this point, Hsu (2006) studied the categories used by film critics but did not explore the origins of the categories or how consensus over their defining features was reached. Similarly, Ruef and Patterson (2009) identified and defined the historical emergence of new business categories and how these were evaluated, but not how these categories arose in the first place. In other words, these studies primarily tend to establish the effects of categories, as culturally grounded cognitive schemas, that, once these are established, structure expectations and cue behavioural responses. As such, these studies mark how the ongoing thoughts and actions of actors in institutionalized settings exhibit regularity, in following established frames of reference, but have accordingly been less focused on understanding how such modes of understanding emerge in the first place (Durand and Paolella, 2013; Kennedy and Fiss, 2013; Navis and Glynn, 2013). As such, we believe there is value in broadening our understanding of the very subject of categorization by exploring the active construction and negotiation of categories and category-based meanings in context, which is a different but complementary interest to studying the activation and effects of a given category. In some senses, this refocusing harks back to the initial line of research by Porac and his colleagues (1989) on the socio-cognitive dynamics by which individuals construct broader categories of understanding about organizations and products (Porac et al., 1989; Rosa et al., 1999). The advantage that this turn more broadly brings is that it offers the prospect of deepening our understanding of the cognitive and sociological processes underpinning categorization processes. Further, it recognizes that human agency, thought, and action plays an important role in establishing and institutionalizing the structure and meaning of categories. Through this refocusing we aim to open up new vistas for research on categories and categorization. With this aim in mind, we asked three sets of authors to present a particular turn on existing research. The opening shot by Durand and Paolella (2013) rethinks the cognitive processes underlying categorization. They critique in particular sociological and ecological accounts of categories that treat them in effect as ‘feature lists’ (i.e., categorization models based on set theory or on an exhaustive listing of a category's individual features) and that therefore fail to represent dynamic, relational information. Drawing on Barsalou's (1991) work in cognitive psychology in particular, they demonstrate that individuals construct category meanings around organizations and products not strictly based on attributes or features but instead on causal or relational associations that connect causes and effects or actions and outcomes. The outcome of their reconsideration of the cognitive underpinnings of categories is a much roomier and more flexible framework that is better attuned to modelling fuzziness in categories and complex forms of categorization. Navis and Glynn (2013) take up the call next and argue for expanding our perspective even further away from a strict focus on the cognitive aspects of categorization and the force of their constraint at the individual level of analysis. Their main message is that categories, whilst cognitive, are generally socially and culturally embedded. The main implications that they highlight are that through this embedding, a category is a carrier of cultural meaning and identities; it intersects with other categories with which it culturally resonates; and it becomes in effect also a resource for individuals and collectives in giving meaning to organizational life and in actively construing alternative framings and categorizations. That is, categories, and specifically the labels and default meanings associated with them, present a kind of ‘toolkit’ that individuals can use to create or construe a meaning for an organization or product. Entrepreneurs, for example, will use prior categories as legitimizing devices to familiarize resource holders with the new venture, but will also simultaneously try to highlight how what they offer is different from other providers. Navis and Glynn (2013) provide a cultural and much more plastic perspective on categories that puts the focus on how actors mobilize the labels and meanings associated with categories to construe understanding of the changing and complex organizational world around them. The final paper in this debate is by Kennedy and Fiss (2013) who suggest that what the field generally needs is a shift in perspective to studying emergence rather than staying focused on the structure and effects of existing categories. This shift towards understanding how broadly shared cognitive categories in social and organizational settings emerge, or indeed change over time, hinges, they suggest, on understanding human agency not as opposed to, but as a constituent of categories as macro level structures. As they argue, it requires therefore an ontological shift in thinking, in the sense that as researchers we should try and probe our understanding of the cognitive and sociological processes that in a sense lie behind the taken-for-granted social realities presented by categories. In a very direct sense, this shift would bring an enlarged and much more process-driven perspective compared to prior research and provokes us as researchers to trace the rise and fall of categories, as well as the very processes that constitute why categories emerge or indeed fall out of favour over time. This obviously also requires a more nuanced theoretical vocabulary that stretches beyond considered notions such as legitimacy. Kennedy and Fiss (2013) present a model that should be helpful for this task. In short, the three papers in this Point–Counterpoint take stock of the current body of knowledge in categories research and suggest several important expansions along a number of different, yet potentially complementary, lines. As such, these papers expand our thinking on categories in a number of directions and in a number of ways. We trust that as such they spur empirical research as part of the broad research agenda on the topic of categories.

We introduce the concept of ‘individual action propensity’ to examine the approach of individuals towards solving situations for which they lack knowledge and/or experience about what to do. We focus on a naturally contrasting pair of responses: ‘thinking before acting’ or ‘acting before thinking’, and associate low action propensity with thinking one's way into understanding how to act, and high action propensity with acting one's way into understanding such situations. We build on regulatory mode theory – with its dimensions of locomotion and assessment and the trade‐off between speed and accuracy – to examine individual characteristics as predictors of individual action propensity. We find that individual action propensity is associated with being a woman, having fewer years of formal education, not relying on help‐seeking behaviours, and having a positive attitude towards spontaneity. Our findings shed light on why individuals take action, or not, and provide implications for research on organizational action propensity.

We present an analysis of the articles published in the J ournal of M anagement S tudies since its inception to assess to what extent JMS has: maintained its leading international ranking; maintained its founding mission as a broad based management journal; and remained a broad based management journal compared to other general management journals. In terms of its impact factor and citations despite reaching a low point in 2001, we find that JMS today ranks higher than it has ever done throughout its 50‐year history. From our content analysis covering the life‐cycle of JMS , we find four areas have been the most frequently represented, although their relative importance varies between decades: O rganizational M anagement/ B ehaviour, S trategy, H uman R esource M anagement, and G eneral M anagement, accounting for 67 per cent of articles published over the period. JMS has strengthened its international author distribution through the increase in authors from the EU especially; the period 2000–04 which saw the predominance of UK authors was an anomaly. There are marked differences between type of article and author country of origin. Our comparative analysis of the word networks between the journals JMS , AMJ , ASQ , and HRM shows that over each decade the papers in the first three normally form a single cluster, indicating that the words used in the papers in the different journals are similar, while papers from HRM often form an outlining group. Notably, in the early 2000s papers in JMS form a distinct cluster, with papers from HRM paralleling the anomaly identified in the content analysis. Overall, JMS has regained its distinctiveness as a broad‐based international management journal, not favouring any particular theoretical or empirical approach.

This study investigates acquisition antecedents during C hina's transition from a planned to a market‐based economic system. Because of contextual realities such as a lack of freely tradable targets for buyers, the seller's willingness to sell is critical for acquisition occurrence in transition economies. We therefore take the seller's perspective and examine factors underlying firms' willingness to sell. We posit that selling is a decision based on the evaluation of a firm's prospects determined by its embeddedness within the planned system, organizational changes it undertook during the transition, and its ability to adjust its strategy according to the evolving strengths of the planning and marketing institutions. Data from the C hinese beer industry from 1995 to 2004 show that acquisition likelihood is high for firms founded as SOEs , low for firms having attracted more private investment or undertaken multiple changes, and has a U ‐shaped relationship with firms' relative investment in marketing resources.

Using a discourse‐analytic approach, we examine the strategizing that occurred during an attempted acquisition in 2007/08 of R io T into by BHP B illiton. In doing so, we contribute to discursive studies of mergers and acquisitions in two significant respects. First, we show the importance of studying how actors external to, as well as those internal to BHP , exerted influence over the acquisition process and outcome. Their influence can be attributed, in part, to their use of rhetorical strategies during the negotiation of the meanings of three constructs that were central to the acquisition discourse. Second, our study shows how these rhetorical strategies were put into effect using not only linguistic, but also non‐linguistic modes of discourse such as imagery, indicators, and location. We conclude that obtaining a comprehensive understanding of the role of discourse in relation to a strategic activity – in this case an attempted acquisition – requires consideration of the multi‐modal rhetorical strategies brought to bear by both external and internal actors.

As well as specifying functional, business unit, and corporate levels of strategy, early strategy scholars delineated enterprise level strategy as the uppermost level of strategy. Enterprise strategy articulates how the firm engages with actors in its economic, social, and political environment to ensure long‐term corporate performance. As a growing body of evidence shows, heterogeneity in how firms identify, and engage with, their stakeholders can explain why some firms outperform their peers. However, my literature survey of more than three decades of published research reveals that enterprise strategy has stayed firmly in the shadows behind business and corporate strategy. Furthermore, many theories of firm–stakeholder relationships are normative (i.e. explain how firms should act) and do not inform strategy effectively. In this paper, I argue why enterprise strategy research is required as a cohesive body of work that connects with research in business and corporate strategy. I finish by proposing three research domains – strategic goals, organization design, and organization boundaries – that hold the potential to link stakeholder issues with mainstream concerns in strategy research and, thus, to revive a coherent research programme in enterprise level strategy.