Organizational Scholars Research Articles

“It’s Not the CEOs, It’s Us”: On the Challenges of CEO Research and a Call for Deeper Engagement

Much of the upper echelons’ literature presumes that CEOs are unlikely and unwilling to participate in research regarding their roles and decision-making processes. In this opinion piece, we argue that the dearth of research utilizing primary data from the CEO population poses a challenge to the diversity and soundness of scholarship in this field, limiting our own capacity to truly know these crucial informants. Furthermore, we assert that the reluctance of organizational scholars to involve CEOs in their research is rooted in several assumptions that warrant re-evaluation. Drawing from a critical assessment of existing literature and our own experiences, we propose suggestions for effective strategies to engage with CEOs in our research endeavors.

Sustainable water resource management by business organisations: empirical investigation applying stimulus-organism-response theoretical perspective

PurposeThe purpose of this research was to study sustainable water resource management using a stimulus-organism-response (SOR) perspective.Design/methodology/approachThis research study was an exploratory qualitative study. Thematic content analysis was used based on semi-structured interviews with 30 experts operating in the USA, representing 26 water-intensive organisations across different industries. The study was anchored in the theoretical foundations of SOR perspectives.FindingsThe results of this study revealed several fundamental factors, processes and forces that were considered by organisations for sustainable water resource management. Managers evaluated risks relative to water resources and developed strategic initiatives regarding water management. The authors found that often organisations considered water resources management aspects while deciding business operations. This was especially true for substantive water resource-consuming organisations with wide geographical operations.Research limitations/implicationsThrough this study, the authors explained how the interrelationship between organisations and water resources presented risks and challenges. The authors applied SOR theoretical perspective in this research study. This was while factoring in an organisation’s present considerations and future plans regarding sustainable water resource management. Thus, the study findings were expected to further interdisciplinary research at the intersection of organisational and environmental studies.Practical implicationsThe finding that water sustainability challenges and efforts could act as strong motivating forces for innovation and technology was significant. Water sustainability challenges could also be a catalyst for synergistic collaborations amongst organisations and diverse groups of institutions. The study insights were relevant to organisational scholars, the water management industry regulators and managers involved with organisational sustainability programmes.Originality/valueOrganisational challenges regarding sustainable water resource management have been influenced by growing populations and climate change. Furthermore, the increasing context of scarcity was compounded by increased pressures from numerous stakeholders. Although critical water management issues were recognised by organisations, relatively little was known about how organisational managers were planning for and responding to these issues. This research study contributed towards addressing the mentioned research gap.

Enhancing Causal Pursuits in Organizational Science: Targeting the Effect of Treatment on the Treated in Research on Vulnerable Populations

Understanding the experiences of vulnerable workers is an important scientific pursuit. For example, research interest is often in quantifying the impacts of adverse exposures such as discrimination, exclusion, harassment, or job insecurity, among others. However, routine approaches have only focused on the average treatment effect, which encapsulates the impact of an exposure (e.g., discrimination) applied to the entire study population—including those who were not exposed. In this paper, we propose using a more refined causal quantity uniquely suited to address such causal queries: The effect of treatment on the treated (ETT) from the causal inference literature. We explain why the ETT is a more pertinent causal estimand for investigating the experiences of vulnerable workers by highlighting three appealing features: Better interpretability, greater accuracy, and enhanced robustness to violations of empirically untestable causal assumptions. We further describe how to estimate the ETT by introducing and comparing two estimators. Both estimators are conferred with a so-called doubly robust property. We hope the current proposal empowers organizational scholars in their crucial endeavors dedicated to understanding the vulnerable workforce.

Walking an extra mile: Determinants of organizational citizenship behavior—An exploratory study in faith‐based organizations

AbstractObjectiveOur study is intended to explore the factors that promote organizational citizenship behaviors (OCB) in faith‐based organizations, which has the potential to extend the scholarly conversation around a previously unexplored context.MethodsOur study used a purposive, homogeneous sampling technique in selecting the participants. We interviewed 30 employees who have at least 5 years of experience in faith‐based organizations. We conducted detailed interviews and subsequent analysis involved a rigorous six‐step thematic analysis process to better understand the phenomena being studied.ResultsOur study revealed the significance of OCB in faith‐based organizations and further elucidated those factors that determine the display of OCBs. Our findings have the power to enhance the existing comprehension of OCBs in different environments, specifically those present in faith‐based organizations. Our study broadens our conceptual understanding of OCB in faith‐based organizations by adding one more dimension to the existing framework of P. MPodsakoff et al. (1990).ConclusionOur findings have important implications for organizational scholars in faith‐based organizations. Our new conceptual framework offers insights into the distinct characteristics of OCBs in faith‐based organizations and suggests directions for future scholars to engage with OCBs from different contexts.

Cracking the Deck: National Origins and Promotions in the Dutch East India Company, 1700-1796

Organizational scholars highlight challenges in reducing inequality within organizations. Due to unanticipated consequences, many programs launched by organizations fail to accomplish these goals. We leverage historical data from the Dutch East India Company to claim that training programs may be an effective tool against inequality when coupled with teamwork incentives and included in broader programs for change. We study the effects of these programs on the unequal promotion rates between Dutchmen and non-Dutchmen across periods of time in which those programs were offered and in which they were not. Our analyses of promotions to top-ranked positions on the Company’s ships suggest a two-fold conclusion: first, the introduction of leadership training and teamwork incentives reduced the differential weights given to the experience of Dutchmen and non-Dutchmen; and, second, those benefits disappeared when the policies were rescinded after a change in top leadership. The results underscore the opportunities and difficulties that organizations face in implementing durable interventions against inequality.

Simulating Virtual Organizations for Research: A Comparative Empirical Evaluation of Text-Based, Video, and Virtual Reality Video Vignettes

Due to recent technological developments, vignette studies that have traditionally been done in text or video formats can now be done in immersive formats using virtual reality—but are such virtual reality video vignettes superior to traditional vignettes? To address this question, we examine participants’ experiences within a fictitious organization by comparing their responses to a relevant and particularly sensitive organizational phenomenon presented either through written text, a video recording, or a virtual reality experience. The results indicate that participants prefer more immersive methods, and that these increase their attention to critical study details. Moreover, this augments the effect sizes of several measured employee reactions—particularly those with high emotional content—suggesting that virtual reality technology offers a promising avenue for developing ecologically valid vignette studies to measure employee affect. To facilitate and expediate the use of virtual reality video vignettes in organizational research, we provide organizational scholars with a step-by-step instructional guide to develop immersive vignette studies.

Architectural design and managerial control: Lefebvre, Latour and the process of enrollment

Organizational scholarship on architecture often applies Henri Lefebvre’s conceived, perceived, and lived framework. Karen Dale and Gibson Burrell, most notably, have illustrated how architectural design exploits each of these, exerting managerial control through processes of enchantment, emplacement, and enactment. Although this “3E framework” has been productively applied to buildings from the modern and postmodern periods, its weaknesses become apparent in the current occupant-centric design period. Drawing on Actor Network Theory’s account of translation, we propose enrollment—a 4th “E”—which enables us to better capture the nature of spatial control in the occupant-centric design period. Our 4E expanded spatial control framework recognizes the tensions that Lefebvre originally observed, tensions concealed by Dale and Burrell’s otherwise rightly influential work. This expanded framework also augments our understanding of modern and postmodern periods: the dominant Building Movements of the past Century, we claim, have each engaged in a recursive enrollment of socio-political ideals.

Streamlining the self-correction process: a review of the use of replication research by organizational scholars

PurposeReplication is a primary self-correction device in science. In this paper, we have two aims: to examine how and when the results of replications are used in management and organization research and to use the results of this examination to offer guidelines for improving the self-correction process.Design/methodology/approachStudy 1 analyzes co-citation patterns for 135 original-replication pairs to assess the direct impact of replications, specifically examining how often and when a replication study is co-cited with its original. In Study 2, a similar design is employed to measure the indirect impact of replications by assessing how often and when a meta-analysis that includes a replication of the original study is co-cited with the original study.FindingsStudy 1 reveals, among other things, that a huge majority (92%) of sources that cite the original study fail to co-cite a replication study, thus calling into question the impact of replications in our field. Study 2 shows that the indirect impact of replications through meta-analyses is likewise minimal. However, our analyses also show that replications published in the same journal that carried the original study and authored by teams including the authors of the original study are more likely to be co-cited, and that articles in higher-ranking journals are more likely to co-cite replications.Originality/valueWe use our results to formulate recommendations that would streamline the self-correction process in management research at the author-, reviewer- and journal-level. Our recommendations would create incentives to make replication attempts more common, while also increasing the likelihood that these attempts are targeted at the most relevant original studies.

Why does using personal strengths at work increase employee engagement, who makes the most out of it, and how?

Engaging in behaviors that take advantage of one's personal strengths at work can promote employee flourishing in the workplace and mental health. Personal strengths use has thus gained increasing attention within occupational psychology and positive organizational scholarship. In this article, we first integrate work on personal strengths use with the latest developments in the job demands-resources theory (and its extensions) to develop a conceptual model explaining how and why personal strengths use on the job increases work engagement. Specifically, we propose that feelings of inspiration and meaningfulness explain the relationship between personal strengths use and work engagement. Second, we identify two mechanisms through which employees can amplify the benefits associated with personal strengths use at work; that is, we propose that the increased engagement associated with strengths use makes employees more likely to capitalize on the positive aspects of their work by engaging in work-family interpersonal capitalization and positive work reflection. Further, our model predicts that employees' psychological capital moderates the effects of personal strengths use. We tested our theoretical predictions in a sample of 160 full-time employees who provided ratings that comprise a three-level data set (person, week, and day) comprising 943 matched weekly ratings and 2,787 daily ratings. Our hypotheses were largely supported by these data. Implications for theory, practice, and future research are discussed. (PsycInfo Database Record (c) 2024 APA, all rights reserved).

The Curvilinear Impact of Cultural Friction on Foreign Divestment

International business scholars have long recognized the potential influence of cultural differences on foreign divestment; however, the empirical results are mixed. Our study helps resolve this contradiction and contribute to the existing literature in three ways. First, we advocate the use of cultural friction metric, instead of the more traditional cultural distance approach. This overcomes a key limitation in the modelling the impact of cultural differences. The friction construct metric includes an index of firm-specific factors, referred to as the degree of ‘cultural interaction’. This index moderates the impact of cultural distance, reflecting firm—level differences. We also build on calls for more Positive Organizational Scholarship by challenging the negative bias in the international business literature and propose a curvilinear effect of cultural differences on divestment probability. Lastly, we investigate a potential boundary condition—the moderating effect of entry mode on the main hypothesis. Our empirical sample include 2120 Finnish foreign subsidiaries operating in 40 countries during 1970–2010. Our analyses confirm that the cultural differences, when measured by the friction metric, appear to be a significant and superior predictor of subsidiary divestment probability, and that the relationship appears to be U-shaped. Our robustness analyses also highlight the importance of which cultural framework is applied and controlling for selection bias.

Challenges in Digital Transformation of Microenterprises in Nueva Ecija: A Basis for Risk Management Plan

Digital transformation (DT) has attracted the attention of management and organizational scholars in the past decade. It has become an important factor for the competitiveness of businesses especially with the microenterprises. The use of technology has been the goal of many microenterprises to push forward in the competition and provide better quality products and services to its customers and improve the customer experience through IT innovation. This paper presents the challenges encountered by the microenterprises in Nueva Ecija both on the business and its employees in relation to digital transformation. A structured questionnaire was given to the 359 respondents representing microenterprises in Nueva Ecija, which showed that majority of the respondents were females at an average age of 43 years old. The objective of the study is to determine the challenges in digital transformation of microenterprises in Nueva Ecija. The sample size of 359 respondents answered questionnaires based on the factors like the level of digital skills, degree of digital transformation acceptance, level of technological adoption, implementation of digital transformation, and the challenges encountered in the process of digital transformation. The level of digital skills especially in the management level and employees appears to be high. On the degree of digital transformation acceptance, the microenterprises showed positive or good acceptance on the digital transformation. In the level of technological adoption, the result showed that majority of the microenterprises are moderately applying digital transformation or willing to apply technology in their business. While in the factor of implementing digital transformation in the business, a very small number of microenterprises implement digital technologies in their operation. Most of the microenterprises experienced difficulties in the digital transformation due factors like financial constraints, resistance to change, skills gap and others. The study recommends that microenterprises in Nueva Ecija should conduct regular training to its management and staff for skills development and acquire the necessary technologies as part of its risk management plan. It is also recommended that owners secure funds to digitally transform its businesses to stay competitive. This paper may be of help to the microenterprises owners and future researchers on the topic of digital transformation of microenterprises.

A positive psychological approach for improving the well-being and performance of employees

PurposeToday’s competitive business world presents unanticipated challenges to enterprises worldwide. So, the well-being of the employees may be a sustained competitive edge for corporations in improving employee performance. Positive psychology served as the foundation for this study, investigating the interplay between employee well-being and task performance by incorporating organizational-specific factors like organizational virtuousness (OV) and individual-specific factors such as Psychological Capital (PsyCap).Design/methodology/approachIn total, 639 dyadic responses were gathered from the banking sector, encompassing employees in both private and public banks in India, along with their immediate supervisors. The hypotheses were subsequently examined by applying Structural Equation Modeling (SEM).FindingsOV and PsyCap are considerably associated with the well-being of employees and task performance, according to the findings. Employee well-being mediates the relationships between the perceptions of Organizational Virtuousness (OV) and task performance, as well as between PsyCap and task performance.Research limitations/implicationsThe intense competition and series of scandals in Indian banks urge the introduction of some behavioral precautionary measures. Banks need to understand and intervene in positive organizational behavior and help the employees build strong PsyCap to enhance their well-being and task performance to gain a competitive edge.Originality/valueThe present study integrated Positive Organizational Behavior (POB) and Positive Organizational Scholarship (POS) to enhance work performance.

Can “Soft” Advice from International Organizations Catalyze Natural Resource Sector Reform?

Abstract Can international organizations improve natural resource governance? The International Monetary Fund (IMF) is most noted for its role in crisis lending, where it can wield the “teeth” of loan suspensions to push for reforms. But IMF officials also spend a large amount of time conducting routine surveillance through Article IV consultations, which assess a country’s economic developments and provide non-binding recommendations. Do governments follow this “toothless” advice? To answer this question, we examine the content of all Article IV staff appraisals published between 2004 and 2019. Using text analysis and a difference-in-differences estimator, we find that resource-rich developing countries are more likely to adopt legislation reforming the oil, gas, and mining sectors in the wake of an Article IV appraisal that extensively discusses the natural resource sector and recommends natural resource governance reforms. Our results suggest that technocratic advice—a tool often overlooked in international organization scholarship—can lead to the adoption of policies that help ameliorate the resource curse.

How do projects decouple from coercive pressures? A study of decoupling in construction projects

PurposeHow organisations interact with and respond to environmental pressures has been a long-term interest of organisational scholars. Still, it remains an under-theorised phenomenon from a project perspective. So far, there is limited understanding of how projects, which are composed by a constellation of organisations, “respond” to institutional pressures that are exerted on them. This research takes the perspective of projects as adopters/implementers of institutional pressures and analyses how they interact with, and respond to, such pressures. More specifically, this research explores how construction projects respond to the pressure of a Building Information Modelling (BIM) mandate.Design/methodology/approachMultiple in-depth case studies were conducted to explore the practical implementation of a BIM mandate in the UK and understand how the construction projects responded to the coercive pressures to implement a new policy mandate for process digitalisation. Multiple sources were employed for data collection and the data were analysed inductively. The findings identify a hybrid response comprising four distinct ways that projects might respond to an institutional pressure.FindingsWe find that projects decouple both from the content and from the intended purpose of a policy, i.e. there are two variance of a policy-practice decoupling phenomenon in projects. The findings also reveal the underlying conditions leading to decoupling.Originality/valueWe advance decoupling literature so that it better applies to the temporary, distributed and interdependent work conducted via projects. Second, we define decoupling in projects as a provisional and fragmented process of wayfinding through heterogeneous institutional spaces, and discuss the potential policy-practice assemblages in projects, influenced by how, if and when project members' activities decouple from the many and often contradicting institutional pressures they face. Third, we discuss how the qualitatively different forms of decoupling that we identified in our work may act as part of a legitimation process in ambiguous situations whereby projects might share a resemblance of conformity with institutional pressures when they are de facto only partially conforming to them.

Experimentation in Qualitative Organization Research: Determinacy and Indeterminacy Through Walking Ethnography

The current article explores walking ethnography as a mode of qualitative experimentation in organizational scholarship. Walking ethnographies allow researchers to experience the field in embodied ways that reflect the fluidity and unpredictability of contemporary organizational spaces. We identify and compare two ideal-typical approaches to open, ethnographic experimentation, involving a generative tension between determinacy and indeterminacy: pragmatist (inquiry-oriented) and phenocritical (drift-oriented) experimentation. These experimental forms replace the logic of confirmation of quantitative experimentation with a logic of consequences or critique. We examine how each mode of qualitative experimentation offers a unique relation to knowledge and experience. From our field work, relying on 30 discrete walking ethnographies of entrepreneurship and innovation spaces conducted between 2016 and 2020, we develop a taxonomy of eight modalities of inquiry-dérive encounters to better understand the experiential aspects appearing in moments of experimentation. By doing so, we show how qualitative research can rediscover the potentials of qualitative experimentation as a methodological impulse, particularly in the context of contemporary modes of organizing. We discuss methodological implications for the renewal of qualitative research on the basis of public experimentation and “radical openness” in research practices.

Migration, ethnic otherness and the ‘refugee crisis’ in Germany: Why more conflict is better integration, and how this reconfigures positive cross-cultural management scholarship

Otherness in contemporary cross-cultural management (CCM) studies often emerges from migration and refugee movements, with ensuing integration challenges. In this context, ‘difference’ is perceived as being more problematic than enriching, and this makes it difficult to contribute to integration via a Positive Organizational Scholarship. Introducing the sociology of conflict, I propose that the success of a positive cross-cultural management engagement with Otherness should not be measured in terms of the degree to which difference is overcome and integrated, but in terms of the degree to which more parties engage more deeply with relevant conflict and friction. Investigating Otherness by means of a sociology of conflict approach thus radically changes the assumptions, research agendas, practices, presumed goals and potential responsibilities of a contemporary cross-cultural management theory and practice: deeper conflict signifies better integration, and assuming otherwise is both unrealistic and mis-fitting. I exemplify this reverse logic, and how to employ it, with a discussion of the ‘refugee crisis’ and the dynamics of ‘migration background’ in Germany. Thus reconfigured, integration in Germany emerges as more successful than is commonly believed.

More knowledge, better innovation? Role of knowledge breadth and depth

PurposeCurrent open innovation (OI) and external knowledge search (EKS) research primarily shows a positive linear relationship between EKS and innovation at an individual level. However, organizational scholarship argues that excessive EKS may harm innovation. This study combines the knowledge-based view (KBV) and attention-based view (ABV) to articulate a nonlinear theory of EKS and innovation at the individual level.Design/methodology/approachThe authors constructed a multi-sourced dataset covering 59,798 USA pharmaceutical patents spanning from 1975 to 2014 and employed negative binomial fixed-effect models to examine theoretical hypotheses.FindingsWe find a significant concave curvilinear relationship between EKS and innovation quantity as well as innovation quality at an individual level. An individual’s knowledge breadth and depth moderate the relationship between EKS and innovation, such that the threshold at which EKS has diminishing returns for individual innovation is higher for inventors with a broad range of knowledge and those with deeper expertise in the domain where they are innovating.Research limitations/implicationsManagers should guide inventors toward a moderate investment of time and effort in EKS and should caution against over searching. Besides, managers should recognize that an inventor’s capacity for EKS is determined in part by their breadth of knowledge across various domains as well as the depth of knowledge they have in the knowledge domain where they are innovating.Practical implicationsWe provide both parties with a clearer understanding of when EKS can begin to deteriorate an individual’s innovation performance why that deterioration occurs, and we also highlight two individual-level knowledge characteristics to take into consideration when deciding when to cease the EKS process.Social implicationsThis study provides a novel holistic understanding of OI and knowledge management for policymakers and organizations to nourish innovation dynamism and make the best of knowledge stocks in the community, which in turn will create endless power for sustainable social change and inclusive development.Originality/valueThis study contributes to OI theory by highlighting the non-linear nature of the relationship between EKS and innovation on an individual level. This represents a fundamental shift in theory on EKS and individual innovation by suggesting a major rethinking of how the two concepts relate, revealing the dark side of EKS in knowledge management if inventors engage in excessive EKS. Likewise, our study’s incorporation of the ABV informs KBV scholarship by highlighting the role of the limited attentional capacity of individuals in firm knowledge management.

A Retrospective of Workplace Deviance in Hospitality: A Two-tier Literature Review

The detrimental impacts of employee deviant behaviour within workplaces have garnered considerable attention from both organizational scholars and practitioners. However, the existing research on workplace deviance remains fragmented, leaving significant knowledge gaps in this area. To address this void, our study conducts a meticulous bibliometric analysis of the literature on workplace deviance in the context of the hospitality industry, offering insights into its evolution over time. We meticulously gathered and examined 80 papers from reputable journals, spanning the years 1996–2022, using the biblioshiny. Our findings underscore the pressing need for more extensive research on workplace deviance in the hospitality sector, given its labour-intensive nature. Moreover, our analysis suggests that emerging economies hold substantial potential for contributing to this field of study. By employing quantitative bibliometric techniques, this study provides a comprehensive overview of workplace deviance research within the hospitality domain, shedding light on emerging trends and patterns in behavioural research within the hotel industry.

Open up! An appeal for dialog between scholars of corporate political activity and open strategy

We cross-fertilize insights from corporate political activity and open-strategy literature to propose a research agenda on open political strategy—or greater participation and visibility in firms’ actions aimed at shaping public policy. Incorporating ideas from open-strategy research, corporate political activity scholars can upgrade knowledge about firms’ political actions, and ensure their theorizing keeps pace with contemporary practice. Considering the specificities of corporate political activity, open-strategy scholars can extend the boundaries of their field, and generate fresh insights into how firms open up strategy in contexts previously unexplored. Through a more critical reading of open political strategy, we also raise broader questions—addressing its repercussions for broader society—that should chime more generally with scholars of strategy and organization, especially those interested in firms’ strategic responses to institutional pressures, and the “dark sides” of strategizing and organizing.

Two routes to degeneration, two routes to utopia: The impure critical performativity of alternative organizing

It sometimes appears that alternative organizations are doomed to perpetuate the systems they aim to transform, as efforts to avoid co-optation entail retreat from the very engagement social change requires. Scholars then face a dilemma: do we reveal these degenerative processes in existing alternative organizations and reinforce disillusionment, or avoid such critique and endorse ineffectual strategies? To address this question I draw on Erik Olin Wright’s identification of two broad strategies of social transformation adopted by alternative organizations. Symbiotic strategies are those that aim to change the existing system via incremental reform, such as trade unions’ collective bargaining. Interstitial strategies, by contrast, are those more radical approaches that seek to prefigure emancipatory alternative systems, such as mutual aid networks. The first contribution this paper proposes is a mapping of these social transformation strategies to distinct forms of degeneration, understood as inadvertent reproduction of the hegemonic system. Organizations adopting the symbiotic strategy are particularly vulnerable to the more well-studied forms of degeneration that result from partial alignment with the hegemonic system—what I call exposure degeneration. Organizations adopting the interstitial strategy are instead vulnerable to less well-studied forms of degeneration resulting from insufficient engagement with the hegemonic system—what I call insulation degeneration. Although this model may appear to place alternative organizations in a catch-22, I draw a more hopeful perspective from theories of performativity that highlight the relationship between socially transformative agency and social reproduction. Unpacking the necessary impurity of performativity leads to the paper’s second contribution: while both practitioners and scholars of alternative organizations can pursue social transformation only via impure critical performativity, awareness of this constraint can foster reflexivity regarding the agential scope that remains.