As artificial intelligence capabilities expand beyond pattern recognition to theoretical insight generation, interpretive qualitative research confronts a question of epistemic responsibility: how can scholars integrate AI capabilities while remaining accountable for their theoretical interpretations? This essay proposes ‘interpretive orchestration’ as a framework that transforms researchers from analysts into skilled orchestrators of human-AI collaboration. The framework addresses two challenges that become opportunities. The translation challenge of articulating tacit knowledge (theoretical orientations, contextual understanding, embodied intuition) into forms AI can process deepens researchers’ awareness of their own expertise. The judgment challenge of evaluating AI-generated patterns for theoretical significance highlights the accountability our scholarly communities require, particularly through “1.5 order data”: patterns invisible to human perception yet requiring human interpretation for recognized theoretical significance. Three strategic models guide this orchestration: Socratic tension surfaces implicit assumptions through deliberate contradiction; Euclidean documentation enables reproducible analysis through systematic context-building; Vitruvian mastery reads across independent analytical passes for synthetic insight. By embracing orchestration, researchers discover that AI can amplify rather than replace human capability. The future of interpretive research lies neither in rejecting AI nor surrendering to automation, but in systematic approaches to human-AI collaboration that preserve the scholarly-accountable judgment our communities require while drawing on AI’s capacity to generate theoretical insights across scales humans cannot process alone.

Innovation-oriented public–private partnerships (PPPs) are central to collaborative innovation, yet we know little about how governmental involvement reshapes firms’ organizational learning. This paper develops a multilevel framework explaining how governments—as collaborators and institutional rule makers—shape firms’ learning behavior. We argue that governmental participation operates through three governance mechanisms: changes in appropriability incentives, constraints on feasible governance instruments, and information credibility. These mechanisms shape learning across organizational, interorganizational, and population levels. Governments shift firms toward exploitation within PPP domains while encouraging exploration beyond them, favor knowledge accessing over acquisition, and strengthen complementarities between experiential and vicarious learning. These effects are moderated by knowledge diversity, public–private knowledge overlap, and institutional quality. By integrating organizational learning with governance perspectives, this study explains how public institutions systematically configure firms’ learning in collaborative innovation.

Previous research has widely recognized the importance of network diversity for entrepreneurial success. In this paper, we look at the role of local institutional intermediaries in this context, which provide another way to embed new ventures in their local environment. We propose two ways entrepreneurs engage with multiple entities in their localities—(a) by developing personal networks that connect with different actors and (b) by affiliating with institutional intermediaries—and examine how the two ways interplay to influence new venture performance. A longitudinal survey of 165 entrepreneurs in China found that the diversity of entrepreneurs' personal networks is positively related to new venture performance among those affiliated with public incubators, but not among those affiliated with private incubators. While private incubators can substitute diverse networks, public incubators complement diverse personal networks to improve new venture performance. The study makes new theoretical contributions to the literature on entrepreneurial networks and institutional intermediaries and provides implications for navigating entrepreneurial ecosystems.

Interest is growing in understanding the antecedents of reconciling exploration and exploitation, or ambidexterity. Research on the antecedents of ambidexterity has focused on formal organizational design (i.e., temporal cycles or structural means) or individual abilities (e.g., cognitive flexibility). However, research has overlooked the fact that individual abilities do not operate in a vacuum; how individuals perceive a situation can activate the abilities needed for ambidexterity. Thus, we bring a novel situational perspective to the study of ambidexterity. We examine how a manager’s situational perception of their capacity to influence others and control outcomes (i.e., sense of power) affects their ambidexterity. Across three studies with middle managers, we show that a higher sense of power increases ambidextrous behavior; cognitive flexibility emerges as a key mechanism explaining this relationship. We highlight the crucial role of situational perception in ambidexterity and open up opportunities for better understanding situational antecedents of important organizational behaviors.

In this article, we depart from prior research, which has typically focused on the acquiring firm CEO, and adopt a behavioral agency perspective to examine how self-interested target CEOs’ equity wealth shapes acquisition premium decisions. We argue that deal-specific windfall gains upon the acquisition announcement trigger immediate upward shifts in CEOs’ reference points, heightening risk aversion and motivating value-preserving behavior during the public pre-acquisition phase. Using a sample of 435 U.S. domestic acquisitions from 1994 to 2020, we find that larger windfall gains are associated with smaller increases in final acquisition premiums. Importantly, the type of prospective wealth available to the CEO moderates this effect in opposing ways: organizational prospects, such as strong revenue growth, weaken the pull of loss aversion and encourage more aggressive bargaining, whereas personal prospects, such as post-acquisition retention, amplify loss aversion. Our findings highlight the behavioral consequences of sudden, event-driven wealth shocks and reveal how different forms of prospective value shape target CEOs’ influence over acquisition outcomes after bids become public.

After acquisitions, target CEOs are often pushed into a second-fiddle role, experiencing a drop in relative standing that contributes to high turnover. These transitions hinge on post-acquisition hierarchies and expectations of deference, making traits linked to dominance consequential. We argue that second fiddle strain arises when trait-based dominance cues clash with these expectations, making the arrangement difficult for both target CEOs and acquiring executives to accept and sustain. Extraverted target CEOs are especially likely to generate such strain because their outgoing and assertive style conflicts with expected restraint. Because acquiring CEOs are central to enacting post-acquisition hierarchies, this strain is shaped by their extraversion. Highly extraverted acquiring CEOs more securely occupy the dominant position and grant greater behavioral latitude, easing constraints on extraverted target CEOs, whereas less extraverted acquiring CEOs rely more on formal authority, tightening these constraints, increasing target CEO turnover. Evidence from U.S. acquisitions supports these arguments.

Paradox theory increasingly acknowledges power, yet we still lack a clear account of how power dynamics shape the lived experience and constitution of organizational paradox. Addressing the question “what is the role of power in shaping organizational paradoxes?” we develop a power-performative model grounded in Clegg’s circuits of power to show how tensions become enacted, legitimized, or suppressed through interactions, institutions, and material infrastructures. The paper contributes to paradox theory by: (1) articulating an ontology of paradox as performed through situated, multilevel power relations; (2) theorizing how power dynamics influence when and how tensions are surfaced, framed, or rendered invisible; and (3) advancing a critical, reflexive agenda that asks whose contradictions are recognized, whose are silenced, and with what organizational effects.