Knowledge that Transforms

The working poor are situated in a very powerful context—the nexus of poverty and low-wage work. Our central premise is that this context represents a “strong situation” that powerfully affects work-related outcomes, but it has been largely overlooked by organization science, even as the working poor comprise a sizable segment of the workforce. In this paper we briefly review categorical, compositional, and relational theories of poverty from other disciplines, and we describe three key mediators from organizational research that may explain how the working poor are adversely affected in terms of job attachment, career attainment, and job performance. Our goals are to encourage further thinking about the working poor among organizational scholars, encourage future research in this domain, and call attention to the need for research-based interventions.

This article introduces a model of the development of instrumental networks inside organizational groups. We provide a theoretical framework and empirically test a series of hypotheses pertaining to the relationships between socialized charismatic leadership (SCL) and its consequences in terms of cooperative and sanctioning group behavior. We then examine whether these behaviors predict the density of instrumental networks inside groups and, consequently, their performance. Our findings, based on assessments of 70 group leaders and their approximately 500 subordinates, colleagues, and supervisors, show that SCL is associated with heightened levels of cooperation and lower levels of sanctioning in groups. Cooperation, in turn, is associated with the instrumental network density of the group. Our findings also demonstrate that under conditions of physical proximity, instrumental network density predicts group performance. The study provides an understanding of group social psychological processes in relation to the development of instrumental networks inside organizational groups.

We study how collaboration and internal resources drive knowledge creation and application in university research programs. Academic collaboration with fellow university scientists drives knowledge creation, whereas collaboration with industry partners drives knowledge application. Nevertheless, contrary to prior research that has underscored the merits of collaboration, we identify an optimal level of collaboration beyond which collaboration undermines both processes. Furthermore, the availability of internal resources can either complement or substitute for collaboration depending on the level of collaboration. In particular, we find that availability of internal resources mitigates the effect of academic collaboration on knowledge creation when collaboration is moderate and complements it as collaboration becomes excessive. Thus, our study reveals the contingent value of collaboration and the interplay between internal and network resources. It enhances understanding of collaboration in nascent science-driven industries and advances the resource-based view and knowledge management research.

We examine the extent to which performance effects of firms' network positions vary with the ages of the ties comprising those positions. Our analysis of Canadian investment banks' underwriting syndicate ties indicates that the performance benefits of closure ties increase with age, whereas benefits of bridging ties decrease with age. We also find that benefits yielded by hybrid network positions, combining elements of both closure and bridging, are greatest when old closure ties are combined with either very young or very old bridging ties. Our findings support the idea that the advantages firms gain (or do not) from their network positions depend on the relational character of the ties comprising them, highlighting the risk of theorizing structural network effects without also considering the relational and temporal dynamics associated with network positions.

Practice transfer processes in organizations often do not proceed as planned. Prior literature has viewed unplanned deviations as undesirable, emphasizing ways to reduce or overcome them. Performative deviations refer to such unplanned deviations in the actual performance of practice transfer processes from the prescribed intentions of the organization. In this research, we seek to provide a fine-grained analysis of the nature of performative deviation paths through which practice transfer processes unfold by focusing on the role of power differentials. We find that power differentials among transfer participants can cause the unfolding practice transfers to deviate from prescribed processes along one of two alternative paths—the agency-based performative deviation path or the knowledge-based performative deviation path. Although the agency-based performative deviation path hinders successful practice transfer, the knowledge-based performative deviation path can actually be helpful to organizations. We draw on the dual-nature framework of organizational routines and the pluralist lens of power as our theoretical foundation and evidence-based medicine in healthcare as our empirical context to derive a set of propositions about the different performative deviation paths through which practice transfer processes unfold, based on the nature of power differentials among work roles involved in practice transfer and the different outcomes that result. The roles of outcome uncertainty and information technology are also presented.

This paper extends the contextual perspective of network evolution to account for a more complete process of network evolution by showing that the impacts of fads and fashions on the formation and dissolution of interorganizational networks are asymmetric. Building on contact theory, this paper proposes that direct contact affords a flow of knowledge that counters tendencies to social conformity. Network dissolution differs from network formation in that partners have already obtained direct information. As a result, network dissolution is not as responsive to fads and fashions as network formation, and network structures induced by fads and fashions often survive beyond the life cycle of a fashion. An analysis of the interlocking ties of S&P 1500 firms with Internet companies from 1996 to 2006 supports the view that fads and fashions have asymmetric effects on the evolution of networks and also shows that (1) fads and fashions have a strong impact on the formation of networks but not on their dissolution, (2) the networking behaviors of organizations with direct contact are less induced by fads and fashions, and (3) the networks formed by organizations with direct contact during the heyday of a fashion survive longer.

Prior research about the interaction between private firms and the scientific community has largely viewed firms' articles in scientific publications as a means to improve research and development productivity—by encouraging their researchers to publish scientific papers, firms can maintain linkages with the scientific community, attract talent, and access external knowledge on which they can build to create innovations. This paper, in contrast, emphasizes the role of scientific publications in firms' battles for market dominance and examines how competitive conditions shape firms' propensities to publish scientific articles about their innovations. Focusing on the context of pharmaceutical drugs, we develop propositions about how the competition that one drug faces from similar drugs and potential substitutes influences the innovating firm's inclination to publish articles in the top medical journals about that drug to facilitate its assessment by the U.S. Food and Drug Administration and the medical community. We also propose that scientific articles about competing drugs compel a firm to highlight its own drug in scientific papers to assert the drug's uniqueness and mitigate the threat of substitution. Whereas prior research has elucidated how science contributes to enhancing firms' competence at creating innovations, which is critical to their ability to compete in technology-intensive environments, this paper draws attention to how competition, in turn, permeates into the scientific arena, creating inducements for firms to use scientific publications to position their innovations in the marketplace.

This study uses data from the National Basketball Association to explore organizational mechanisms that affect the division of firm surplus in human-capital-intensive activity. It builds on the idea that reciprocal interdependence among team members creates the potential for complementarity. Complementarity, in turn, translates into higher firm surplus. The division of this surplus is subject to bargaining between the firm owner and labor. We argue that when complementarity increases, the firm owner's share of surplus will grow if interdependence among team members is symmetric. Furthermore, we identify three levers that make complementarity amenable to managerial design: the nature of interaction among team members, the relative dominance of team members, and the composition of a team. We find that greater interaction among team members and higher recruitment of team-oriented individuals are associated with increased complementarity, whereas dominant team members are associated with reduced complementarity. The study contributes to the literature on organization design by extending its implications to the division of surplus in human-capital-intensive activity.

This paper builds on Granovetter's distinction between strong and weak ties [ Granovetter, M. S. 1973 . The strength of weak ties. Amer. J. Sociol. 78(6) 1360–1380] in order to respond to recent calls for a more dynamic and processual understanding of networks. The concepts of potential and latent tie are deductively identified, and their implications for understanding how and why networks emerge, evolve, and change are explored. A longitudinal empirical study conducted with companies operating in the European motorsport industry reveals that firms take strategic actions to search for potential ties and reactivate latent ties in order to solve problems of network redundancy and overload. Examples are given, and their characteristics are examined to provide theoretical elaboration of the relationship between the types of tie and network evolution. These conceptual and empirical insights move understanding of the managerial challenge of building effective networks beyond static structural contingency models of optimal network forms to highlight the processes and capabilities of dynamic relationship building and network development. In so doing, this paper highlights the interrelationship between search and redundancy and the scope for strategic action alongside path dependence and structural influences on network processes.