Knowledge that Transforms

Highly educated refugees who have been uprooted from their country of origin often struggle to secure employment that matches their abilities. Overcoming this sudden loss of achieved work identity is crucial for refugees’ future well-being and integration in the host country. In this study, we identify the behavioral and cognitive practices used by highly educated refugee entrepreneurs to resolve the incongruence between their selves and the host country environment and delineate core conditions that explain why only some complete these identity transformations successfully. Based on an in-depth ethnography at an incubator designed for refugees with entrepreneurial ambitions, we develop theory about how and when highly educated refugees’ past identities enable or constrain their ability to create new work identities in alignment with the new environment. Our findings reveal the critical role played by identity flexibility and a refugee’s attributions of premigration work attainments in this process. Surprisingly, we find that those who attribute prior career accomplishments internally—and are, thus, driven by self-perceptions of being resourceful and adaptive in the past—exhibit only limited identity flexibility. As a result, they struggle the most with reconstructing their identity in ways that aid their integration in the host country. History: This paper has been accepted for the Organization Science Special Issue on Migration & Organizations.

As the world grapples with intensifying geopolitical competition and ideological conflict, many organizations face the daunting task of navigating the complexities of geopolitics and fostering effective cross-border partnerships. For members of these organizations, such political dynamics might create new barriers to their ability to carry out collaborative activities. In a historical case study of the Apollo–Soyuz Test Project—an unprecedented partnership between the space programs of the United States and the Soviet Union at the height of the Cold War—we identify how organizational members navigated the turbulent geopolitical environment. We found that collaborative meetings between organizational members were limited to a supervised space that ensured government oversight but created interactional barriers. Organizational members realized that their ability to overcome these challenges would require them to develop practices outside of the organization, using boundary work to carve out free space outside the purview of political supervision. The free space served as a laboratory in which they reconciled informational, techno-cultural, and ideological differences and created solutions to the challenges they faced in the supervised space through translation work. Our study theorizes how geopolitics complicates the interactional processes of cross-border partnerships and underscores the importance of free space for fostering collaboration amid geopolitical rivalry.

This research develops a theory of team adaptation to disruptive events (the extent to which an event transforms usual activities). Our theory is based on a comprehensive investigation of firefighting teams, documenting how disruptive team task changes (i.e., disruptive events) create a lack of correspondence between what team members expect to happen (preexisting task mental models or TMMs) and what is happening in the situation (emergent team situation mental models or TSMs) and the reactions that assist in their adaptation to these changes. We find that teams navigated the lack of correspondence by shifting from implicit to explicit coordination processes to effectively adapt. In Study 1, we gathered data from 350 firefighters in Chile composing 46 teams performing emergency missions. We find that the more disruptive the events experienced, the less the TMM-TSM corresponded; this relationship was influenced by procedural rigidity as highly rigid procedures impair sensitivity to situational modifications. When teams had low TMM-TSM correspondence, explicit coordination enabled them to save more property and lives. Study 2, employing a laboratory experiment, confirmed that, when low correspondence between TMMs and TSMs resulted in explicit coordination, simulated firefighting teams were better able to accomplish their missions. Across both field and experimental settings, our results extend theory and offer practical guidance to managers regarding how to support teams coping with disruptive events to avoid the dysfunctional consequences of overly rigid protocols.

Entrepreneurs making decisions under uncertainty are encouraged to evaluate their initial ideas through hypothesis testing, but entrepreneurial approaches vary in their emphasis on ex-ante theory development prior to collecting evidence. In this paper, we examine whether and how entrepreneurs benefit from adopting an evidence-based approach or a theory-and-evidence-based approach to decision making. We conducted a field experiment with Tanzanian agribusiness entrepreneurs by randomly assigning entrepreneurs to two different training conditions. We find that entrepreneurs in the theory-and-evidence–based condition have higher economic performance during the observation period following the intervention. We conjecture this result stems from differences in the types of changes enacted: entrepreneurs in the theory-and-evidence–based training make more coordinated changes that encompass both core and operational elements of their business models.

This paper shows that high-skilled immigrants strategically increase their workplace efforts in response to identity-based career concerns that intensify following national conflicts between their countries of origin and host countries. Leveraging the rapid escalation of the U.S.–China conflict following the 2016 U.S. presidential election in the difference-in-differences framework, we show that Chinese-descent inventors in the United States significantly increased their workplace efforts compared with their Korean- and Japanese-descent counterparts. Consistent with our theory, this effect is more pronounced among Chinese-descent inventors more vulnerable to identity-based career concerns, including midcareer migrants, those with ethnically distinctive first names, corporate inventors more dependent on immigration sponsorship than academic counterparts, and those residing in counties with higher levels of Trump support. Furthermore, using a nationally representative survey, we find that Chinese-descent college-educated workers in the United States reported working significantly more hours than their Korean and Japanese counterparts following the conflict. This study contributes to our understanding of how high-skilled immigrants adjust their workplace efforts in response to geopolitical tensions.

How can the selection of innovation projects be designed to reduce false positives and false negatives? Prior research has provided theoretical insights into organizing to reduce errors, yet we know little about how organizations adapt selection over time and the effects of this on selection outcomes. Drawing from qualitative data from 126 interviews conducted over several years, we explore how an accelerator evolved through three selection regimes for high-stakes funding decisions, focusing on the organizational changes and their underlying reasons. We then analyze quantitative data from all 3,580 submissions they received, assessing false positives and false negatives across these regimes. Our findings reveal a persistent occurrence of both types of errors, with relatively small differences across the regimes despite deliberate efforts to enhance the process. In the final regime, which increased submission quality by emphasizing applicant track record and adding additional layers of screening, evaluators surprisingly became more prone to making selection errors. This finding stands net of accounting for (1) differences in the pool of submissions, (2) differences in treatment effects through training and resources provided, (3) learning, and (4) market evolution. By combining qualitative and quantitative data, we explain this through two mechanisms: (1) mean reversion in combination with increased emphasis on applicant track record and (2) within-type adverse selection enabled by a more stringent selection process. The study reveals that evolving an organization’s selection regime may require adjustments across multiple aspects, resulting in unintended consequences.

Despite the psychological benefits of authenticity, Black employees within predominantly White organizations often face the dilemma of whether to downplay versus highlight their social identity. Our research introduces social uncertainty as a unifying lens to understand the reluctance of these employees to express their social identity. Highlighting the central role of social uncertainty also helps identify novel factors at both the organizational level (authenticity climates) and individual level (perspective-taking) that can encourage Black employees to engage in social identity affirmation—authentic expressions of the positive aspects of their social identity. To test our hypotheses, we conducted two survey studies, two experiments, qualitative interviews, as well as coded text responses to our experimental prompts. Across our studies, authenticity climates were associated with greater social identity affirmation by Black employees, and this relationship was strengthened when these employees engaged in perspective-taking. Consistent with our theorizing, social certainty mediated these direct and moderated effects. In addition, social identity affirmation increased Black employees’ organizational involvement. Our experimental studies offer causal evidence for the roles of both authenticity climates and Black employees’ perspective-taking, our qualitative interviews vividly illuminate our hypotheses, and our text response analyses provide insight into how authenticity climates operate. Overall, the current research highlights how organizations can help Black employees feel comfortable emphasizing and expressing their true selves by increasing their social certainty. These findings also have direct implications for organizational leaders, providing them with actionable strategies to create more inclusive environments.

Crowdsourcing contests allow firms to seek ideas from external solvers to address their problems. This research examines solvers’ use of developmental feedback from different sources and of different constructiveness when generating ideas in contests. I theorize a source effect in solvers’ feedback use where they use seeker feedback more than peer feedback, even if both give identical suggestions for their ideas. I also show how the source effect affects solvers’ use of constructive and less constructive feedback from the respective sources. An insight is that compared with their use of peer feedback, solvers’ use of seeker feedback is more extensive at any level of, but less sensitive to, feedback constructiveness. An implication is that solvers may underuse constructive peer feedback and overuse less constructive seeker feedback. Such behaviors can be solver optimal (in terms of improving solvers’ winning prospects) but not seeker optimal (in terms of enhancing ideas for seekers’ problems), as constructive feedback is likely to improve idea quality, whereas less constructive feedback may hurt it. I propose a priming intervention of a feedback evaluation mechanism to mitigate the source effect in solvers’ feedback use—in a way, the intervention can cause solvers to behave more optimally for the seekers. A field survey and three online experiments test the theorizing and proposed intervention. I discuss the contributions and implications of this research for various stakeholders in crowdsourcing contests.

Prior research on the performance effects of hiring immigrants has mainly considered people who choose to move to other countries. We shift attention to forced migrants (i.e., refugees) and study the relationship between their employment and firm performance. We focus on the specific labor market conditions that refugees face and theorize that performance improves among firms that hire refugees. We explain this relationship using two interconnected mechanisms that revolve around refugees’ limited outside options. First, as refugees have strong incentives to remain employed, they put extensive effort into their jobs, work long hours, and, thereby, reduce the employer’s labor costs related to worker turnover (effort mechanism). Second, as refugees are generally willing to accept low pay, hiring them reduces the employer’s labor costs related to salaries (remuneration mechanism). Moreover, we theorize that greater job insecurity at the hiring firm strengthens both mechanisms because it increases refugees’ perceived risk of being fired and their fear of being unemployed. We find support for our theoretical predictions in a matched sample of 27,782 firms in Denmark covering the period from 2001 to 2016. History: This paper has been accepted for the Organization Science Special Issue on Migration & Organizations.

We use evidence from a disruption of clinical documentation routines to propose a novel, predictive mechanism for routine dynamics based on path coherence. Path coherence refers to the continuity of situational attributes from one event to the next along a path, for example, a set of activities conducted by the same person has high actor coherence. Situational attributes include classic descriptors such as who, what, when, where, and why. To be recognized as a path, a minimal level of coherence is required, but path coherence can vary along a path. For example, in a medical clinic, typical paths flow from place to place (e.g., reception, waiting room, exam room) and involve different clinical staff (e.g., receptionist, nurse, physician). Using latent factor network models, we compare clinical documentation routines in five outpatient clinics before and after a technological disruption (an upgrade to the electronic health record system). We show that coherent paths are up to 14 times more likely to persist and up to 40 times more likely to form than less coherent paths. We use these findings to theorize about the role of path coherence in routine dynamics. Path coherence in narrative networks is like homophily in social networks, but with a completely different underlying mechanism. We discuss the implications of our findings for organizational path dependence, resilience, and inertia.