Knowledge that Transforms

Members of work groups are highly interdependent and often share incompatible values, objectives, and opinions. As a result, conflict frequently arises. Given the profound impact of conflict on group effectiveness, scholars have sought to identify strategies that can mitigate its downsides and leverage its upsides. Yet research on conflict management strategies has accumulated inconsistent results. In this Perspectives piece, we argue that these inconsistent findings can be resolved if scholars take a more expansive view of the consequences of conflict management strategies: whereas existing research considers how individual strategies influence a single group conflict type (relational, status, process, or task), we consider the impact of individual strategies on all four conflict types. After building a typology by organizing strategies according to the conflict type that each is best equipped to manage, we argue that the strategies most appropriate for managing one type of conflict may systematically backfire by escalating other conflict types. For example, the adoption of a superordinate identity is likely to resolve relational conflict, yet exacerbate status conflict. In addition to uncovering these instances of “negative spillovers,” we shed light on the rarer phenomena of “positive spillovers,” which occur when conflict management strategies resolve conflict types they were not originally designed to influence. By highlighting how individual conflict management strategies influence multiple conflict types—often in contrasting ways—this Perspectives article reconciles conflicting findings and redirects the literature by providing scholars with new recommendations on how to study conflict management in work groups.

Past research has established that new firms can enhance their attractiveness to prospective resource providers by affiliating with more reputable firms. But research on this process has yet to fully account for two critical realities underscored by recent research: (1) firms need to acquire resources from different groups of resource providers and (2) reputation is multidimensional. Drawing on the organizational reputation literature and on information processing theory, we propose that two groups of resource providers will respond differently to new firms’ affiliations in accordance with differences in the groups’ abilities to recognize and interpret reputation-related signals. We also propose that within a single group of resource providers, distinct characteristics of the affiliate will exert different influences. We test these propositions using longitudinal data from Belgian firms that affiliated with venture capital (VC) investors. Consistent with our predictions, we find that characteristics of a VC affiliate exert more influence on prospective financiers than on prospective employees. We further find that prospective financiers were more influenced by a VC’s industry-specific experience than by its media prominence, whereas prospective employees were more influenced by a VC’s media prominence than by its industry-specific experience. Taken together, the findings show that new firms’ resource attraction trajectories are shaped by their affiliates in more complex ways than past research has accounted for.

Analogies to financial markets have proven powerful in establishing novel or potentially controversial business concepts, even in contexts that deviate significantly from financial markets. This phenomenon challenges theory that suggests analogies work best when elements from a source and target domain map closely to each other. To develop a theory that explains how organizations make initially imperfect analogies “work,” we use a case study of online advertising exchanges, a market-inspired model for buying and selling online advertising space. We find that as organizations stretch an initially misfitting exchange analogy from financial markets to online advertising, they iteratively bend their activities in superficial, structural, and generative ways to match the analogy and position themselves for advantage in the new space being created. Whereas prior studies emphasize shared cognition about familiar domains as the reason why analogies work, our study offers a dynamic account in which stretching, bending, and positioning combine to not only establish the financial market analogy but also subtly change the understanding of markets.

When organization members strive to radically change routines, they face a puzzle: How can they bring about change in performances when these are guided by pre-existing ideas on how to perform the routine, that are themselves recursively reproduced? Drawing on insights from longitudinal case studies of two initiatives to change patient processes in hospitals, this paper suggests that two types of “spaces”—bounded social settings characterized by social, physical, temporal, and symbolic boundaries—are important mechanisms through which actors engage in deliberate efforts to alter both performances (performative aspect) and abstract understandings (ostensive aspect) of a given routine. Specifically, whereas reflective spaces are set apart by social, physical, and temporal boundaries and involve interactions that are geared toward developing novel conceptualizations of a routine, experimental spaces enable the integration of new actions into routine performances by locating them within the original routine, while establishing symbolic and temporal boundaries that signal the provisional and localized nature of experimental performances. As both types of spaces contribute to achieving change in complementary ways, they need to be enacted iteratively in relation to each other. The study offers a model of intentional routine change that articulates the role of spaces in interrupting and reorienting their recursive dynamics.

Organizational network research has demonstrated that multiple benefits accrue to people occupying brokerage positions. However, the extant literature offers scant evidence of the process postulated to drive such benefits (information brokerage) and therefore leaves unaddressed the question of how brokers broker. We address this gap by examining the information-brokerage interactions in which actors engage. We argue that the information-brokerage strategies of brokers differ in three critical ways from those of actors embedded in denser network positions. First, brokers more often broker information via short-term interactions with colleagues outside their network of long-term relationships, a process we label “unembedded brokerage.” Second, when they engage in unembedded brokerage, brokers are more likely than are actors in dense network positions to intermediate the flow of information between the brokered parties, consistent with a tertius gaudens strategy. Conversely, and third, when they broker information via their network of long-term ties (embedded brokerage), brokers are more likely than are densely connected actors to facilitate a direct information exchange between the brokered parties, consistent with a tertius iungens strategy. Using a relational event model, we find support for our arguments in an empirical analysis of email communications among employees in a medium-sized, knowledge-intensive organization, as well as in a replication study. The theory and evidence we present advance a novel, temporal perspective on how brokers broker, which reconciles structural and process views of network brokerage. Our findings substantiate the notion of brokers as a dynamic force driving change in organizational networks, and they help to integrate within a unitary explanatory framework tertius iungens and tertius gaudens views of brokerage.

Prior research often focuses on how many entrepreneurial firms are created, rather than on institutions that encourage specific types of firms or entrepreneurs. This paper identifies institutional changes that reduce barriers to growth as an important factor influencing the propensity of individuals to start a business. The findings suggest that the impact of lower barriers to growth is shaped by the extent of the reduction in barriers to growth and the level of human capital of the individual. Only a large reduction in barriers to growth has a stronger impact in increasing the likelihood of founding at higher levels of human capital. I capitalize on two reforms lowering barriers to growth as natural experiments. One reform, in 1988, only slightly lowered barriers to growth. The second reform, in 1999, more strongly lowered barriers to growth with an amendment to the Chinese constitution reversing regulations that favored firms with foreign investors. This made it easier for domestic entrepreneurs to compete. I collected data through a survey of 2,966 alumni who graduated from a top Chinese university. Results show that reducing the institutional barriers to growth differently affects college-educated individuals with different levels of human capital.

This paper examines how routine patterns are recognized as either stable or flexible and which mechanisms are enacted to maintain this patterning work. We address this question through an ethnographic case study analyzing how a catastrophe management organization enacts routines in a highly dynamic setting. Our findings first of all reveal that patterns described by the participants as either stable or flexible were nevertheless both performed differently in each iteration of the routine. Our microlevel analysis shows that to enact patterns that participants perceive as stable, participants had to carry out specific aligning and prioritizing activities that lock-stepped performances. In contrast, participants perceive patterns as flexible when they enact specific selecting and recombining activities. Building on these observations, we add to extant routine literature by (1) differentiating between stability, standardization, flexibility, and change of routines and by (2) providing new insights on mindfulness in accounting for the microlevel activities enacted to orient toward a pattern that enhances standardization or flexibility in dynamic contexts. Moreover, (3) our insights point to the centrality of knowing for the enactment and recognition of patterning work.

Recent scholarship on entrepreneurship suggests that the pre-entry know-how of start-ups, embodied in their founders, affects not only entry, but also performance. Although prior work focuses on new entrants from the focal industry (i.e., employee spinouts) and academic organizations (i.e., university spinoffs), this study identifies and examines a hybrid category of start-ups from downstream user-industries, which we call “user-industry spinouts.” We draw from the literature on evolutionary theory, user innovation, and industrial dynamics to propose that, given the unique combination of knowledge inherited by these entrants, their choices at entry and their ability to survive in the focal industry will differ with respect to other start-ups. We do this by extending existing work on new firm creation to investigate entry and performance in different product markets. Our findings, based on a dataset of start-ups in the semiconductor industry over a 10-year period (1997–2007), show that user-industry spinouts are more likely both to enter and to survive in market-specific product categories. We suggest that the pre-entry knowledge resources of spinouts may support entry and survival across industry boundaries. However, the specific nature of these resources will influence which product markets they choose to enter. Our results have theoretical implications for the literatures on entrepreneurship, industrial dynamics, and strategy.

Organizations that compete in institutional environments in which oppositional logics compete for dominance face a risk-return trade-off between maintaining ideological purity versus pragmatism by borrowing template elements from the rival ideology. Deviating from ideological purity might improve a firm’s competitive strength, however, at the same time, it might also undermine its very identity and legitimacy. Although such decisions are of strategic importance, research about why, how, and where these trade-offs are made is still limited. We develop the argument that organizations will be more likely to deviate from ideological purity when the potential return of borrowing from the oppositional template exceeds the perceived risk of doing so. The more organizations aspire to be ideologically pure, the more they are constrained by the moral codes that define the category, and, therefore, the higher the risk associated with deviating from purity. However, given the potential benefits of pragmatism, pure organizations will be particularly sensitive to contextual cues that reduce the perceived risk of borrowing, tilting their trade-off balance toward pragmatism. Specifically, we expect that pure (compared to less pure) organizations will be particularly tempted to seize the opportunities offered by pragmatism when (1) they perform below aspiration, (2) the relevant market attaches less importance to ideological purity, and (3) pragmatism is becoming taken-for-granted. We test our hypotheses on detailed data of the hiring process of branch managers of Turkish Islamic banks analyzing when and in which communities Islamic banks hire managers from conventional banking in order to implement their geographical expansion strategy in the period 2003–2016.

Organizational life consists of an ever-changing world of encounters, experiences, and complex sociomaterial relations. Within this context, standard routines can be seen as a solution to problems of inefficiency within organizations, especially when associated with images of stability, repeatability, and standardization. This can bring a sense of order where there is disorder, and stability in the face of change. However, whereas standard routines may be seen as providing solutions within complex and ever-changing organizational worlds, they can also be viewed as sources of organizational problems. Through an ethnographic examination of two routines within a newspaper-printing factory, our paper seeks to build on and add to contributions within routine dynamics (RD) by highlighting the emergence and coexistence of change and stability and the enactment of standard routines through a performative process of difference and repetition. In particular, our paper examines how organizational stability and change emerge through the dynamic relations underlying the enactment of difference and repetition and how these relations involve various—sometimes hidden—microprocesses that include the simplification and amplification of facts, scripts, and concerns. By drawing together the findings from our ethnographic research, studies within the area of RD, and concepts relating to a Deleuzian and Latourian perspective, our paper therefore contributes to the work on the repetition of routines by further unpacking the generative sociomaterial dynamics, creative forces, and microprocesses that underlie the emergence of stability and change through difference and repetition.