Organizational Scholars Research Articles

I have seen this before: imprinting experiences and Bank CEO risk-taking in times of crisis

Abstract Understanding the causes and consequences of corporate risk-taking has remained a crucial topic for organizational scholars. Using the case of U.S. banks and one dimension of their risk-taking behavior around the 2008 financial crisis, we offer a theory of how the diverse experiences of corporate leaders can shape their risk-taking behavior. Building on the imprinting literature, we theorize how different types of experiences that bank CEOs had in the past interact to shape current risk-taking behavior, resulting in risk moderation under crisis conditions. We focus on two imprinting experiences with particular relevance for bank CEOs’ risk-taking behavior—MBA education and past crisis experience. We argue that the latter played a pronounced role during the crisis because of greater imprint-environment fit. Our analysis using data from 170 large banks between 2001 and 2019 shows that bank CEOs’ firsthand experience of a prior banking crisis not only directly tempered bank risk-taking but also did so indirectly by limiting the risk-taking tendencies of CEOs with an MBA, particularly during the crisis period. Our study contributes to the sociological literature about organizational risk-taking by emphasizing the crucial role of organizational leaders’ biographies and exploring how earlier institutional conditions shape their risk-taking behavior later.

‘I promise to pay the bearer’: connecting present and past via a microhistorical examination of an 18th century banker’s diary

ABSTRACT The detailed methods and intense scrutiny of microhistorians have much to offer management and organization scholars and historians. However, traditional applications have placed certain limitations both on how widely applicable they can be and how they can be related to current preoccupations. This paper introduces the concept of a ‘back bearing’ which is designed to enhance the utility of microhistory in management and organization history in two ways. First, it offers a way of extending any period under review, linking the synchronic to the diachronic by locating a historical source which falls under a line traced backward from contemporary research. This opens up a wider range of historical periods for consideration while at the same time providing a method for justifying what is legitimately relevant. Second, by remaining true to the microhistorians’ focus on detailed scrutiny of individual sources otherwise left on the margins of history, it enables richer theoretical development linking past to present through the lives of individuals. In this case, a line taken from the study of 20th century banking practices back to the diary of an 18th century Edinburgh banker foregrounds what really matters to a banker who is quite literally under fire.

Engaging with Culturally and Linguistically Diverse Communities to Promote Palliative Care That Exceeds Expectation.

Given longstanding barriers that obstruct integrated palliative care, particularly for culturally and linguistically diverse communities, this article demonstrates a way to engage with Syrian, Bhutanese and African communities to learn about brilliant palliative care with and from members of these communities. This study involved the methodology of POSH-VRE, which combines positive organisational scholarship in healthcare (POSH) with video-reflexive ethnography (VRE). Members of the Syrian, Bhutanese, and African communities (n = 14) participated in a focus group or an interview to consider understandings of palliative care; conceptualisations of a good death; how and why palliative care was typically enacted in their communities; the associated effects; as well as the relationship between culturally and linguistically diverse communities and public palliative care services. Discussions were aided by video recordings captured during the previous study on brilliant palliative care, which participants were invited to review. Video recordings and transcripts of the focus groups and interview were analysed using reflexive thematic analysis. The participants demonstrated considerable variability in the ways that palliative care was understood and enacted. For some, death was a taboo topic, while for others, it was a reality that was required to face, particularly in war-torn regions. Similarly, while doctors were held in high regard, participants held different views about how they should enact palliative care and the anticipation of death, particularly because family members were deemed to be a pivotal part of palliative care. To improve the care of people of culturally and linguistically diverse communities who experience a life-limiting illness, participants highlighted three opportunities. These included the avoidance of generalisations, prioritising the needs and preferences of cultural groups, and leveraging the community network. This study demonstrated how reciprocal understandings of palliative care were potentiated using POSH-VRE. Specifically, the members of the Bhutanese, African and Syrian communities demonstrated diversity in the needs, preferences, and customs of culturally and linguistically diverse communities. As such, integrated palliative care is likely to be bolstered by relinquishing assumptions about how cultural groups wish to be referred to and cared for and adopting a public health approach to palliative care that embraces both a population-based and person-centred approach to care. Members of the Bhutanese, African and Syrian communities contributed to this study as participants and co-researchers, contributing to the analysis and interpretation of the data and in the preparation of the article.

Stakeholder Engagement: Theoretical and Methodological Directions for Project Scholarship

In our introduction to this Special Issue on Project Stakeholder Engagement, we emphasize the imperative for a deeper understanding of stakeholder phenomena in the context of temporary organizations. Our argument addresses the growing need for organizational strategies that focus on more inclusive approaches, the moral foundations of stakeholder thinking, and the necessity of considering marginalized groups. Recent debates in management and organizational scholarship have conveyed a key message to organizations: the need for them to contribute to a more cohesive and sustainable world. However, this paradigm shift from stakeholder ‘management’ to ‘engagement’ also presents new challenges for (project) organizations as they seek to address and balance the needs and demands of multiple stakeholders. Such approaches require more collaborative and inclusive structures to tackle pressing social issues and to recognize a broader array of stakeholders in value-creation processes. Against this backdrop, the focus of this Special Issue is on advancing theory and evidence related to the nature, aims, processes, and consequences of stakeholder engagement in temporary organizations. We summarize the contributions of each of the six articles that make up this Special Issue, noting in particular their methodological and theoretical diversity. In conclusion, we propose a future research agenda on project stakeholder engagement, inspired by the ideas and insights developed in this Special Issue.

‘Your Very Existence Goes Against Our Community Guidelines’: Interrogating norms of contributorship through poetic speech acts on Instagram

Platform organizing does not unfold in a neutral realm. While interconnected communicative acts such as posts, shares, or likes constitute organizing on social media platforms, platform organizations condition how such platform organizing unfolds through content moderation. This study engages with the concept of contributorship, which is anchored in communication constitutes organization (CCO) scholarship, and theorizes content moderation as a process of authorization based on ‘norms of contributorship’. Applying queer theorizing to engage with norms as a site of power vis-a-vis embodied difference, we investigate poetic speech acts as queering endeavours that interrogate norms of contributorship in the constitution of platform organizing. Drawing upon a qualitative analysis of Instagram posts that challenge content moderation related to nudity as embodied difference, the findings reveal three practices of poetic speech – playfully altering, juxtaposing wor(l)ds and satirical challenging. Such practices skilfully repoliticize the entanglement of communication, control and normativity, and lay the foundation for collectively queering norms of contributorship in platform organizing. Building upon these insights, we highlight how organizational theory and practice are always implicated in normative regimes and underscore the need for attending to the existence of organizational subjects at and beyond the margins through queering organizing writ large.

Resourcing Agency for Sustained Collective Action Amidst Creeping Crises

In the wake of the Beirut blast, we use Lebanon as an empirical context to examine how a group of scholar-activists organized to support ongoing collective action in the context of creeping crisis. Using the lens of resourcing theory, we provide a process model of resourcing agency as a fractal and embodied form of critical action, augmented and transformed by critical reflection, and collective healing and striving. We make four contributions. First, we demonstrate why organizational scholarship needs to attend to the increasing relevance of creeping crises and we model an approach to understanding both the lived experience of creeping crises and the implications for the situated cultivation of agency. Second, we extend resourcing theory by uncovering resourcing agency as an integral, embodied process in the context of crisis, particularly creeping crises, and show how it is itself a vital instantiation of agency. Third, further extending resourcing and process theories, we identify two types of ampliative cycles (sustaining and transformative cycles) implicated in resourcing agency when organizing in support of collective action amidst creeping crises. Finally, our findings demonstrate the benefits of using a processual approach that attends to the embodied and fractal nature of action in creeping crises and other extreme contexts. We close with a discussion of the implications for engaged scholarship as a framework for action.

The emergence of team compassion: Theoretical implications and practical interventions

With the recent experiences involving COVID-19, there is a growing need for organisations to better understand compassion in addressing employees’ suffering and boosting their well-being. Particularly, as teamwork is becoming ubiquitous, organisational scholars have identified positive benefits of compassion at the team level such as improving communication, decreasing interpersonal conflicts and boosting team effectiveness. Using a multilevel theoretical framework in reviewing compassion research, this article advances our understanding of team-level compassion by elucidating the processes through which individual-level compassion gives rise to team-level compassion. First, we delineate composition and compilation models of the emergence of team compassion and review empirical studies with respect to the two models. Second, we explain three social mechanisms in teams – social learning, emotional contagion and reciprocity – that shape the emergence of team compassion. Finally, we discuss interventions that can facilitate the emergence of team compassion and offer practical guidance for managers seeking to foster team compassion. JEL Classification: D23, I31

Service virtuousness: implementing the very best of human qualities in service delivery

PurposeIn light of the increasing prevalence of non-human services, organizations can benefit by emphasizing distinctively human qualities in their services. This paper suggests that cultivating virtues among employees can enhance the value of human-provided services.Design/methodology/approachThis conceptual paper incorporates ideas from management and service research examining the notion of virtue as well as human qualities that are associated with virtuousness. The paper builds upon service research, which emphasizes the important role of human elements in service interaction, along with extensive research in positive organizational scholarship, which characterizes virtues as the finest attributes of human nature.FindingsThe paper introduces “service virtuousness,” the voluntary and authentic expression of human virtues like compassion and creativity in service delivery, treating customers as individuals beyond their formal roles. A review of the literature reveals how virtuousness appears in services. The study also identifies when it is most beneficial, explores the challenges in its implementation, and suggests future research directions.Originality/valueThe paper offers a novel concept for service research grounded in core human values. Although service virtuousness does not focus on outcomes, it offers numerous benefits to all parties involved in the service setting. The theoretical framework for studying service virtuousness provides new opportunities to identify the conditions in which virtuousness is most beneficial in a service context.

The Role of Coaching-Based Leadership, Appreciation, and Gratitude in Enhancing Psychological Capital and Organisational Thriving in Lithuanian Organisations

The study investigates the relationships between the perceived presence of positive organisational practices and the levels of personal and collective Psychological Capital (PsyCap) and Organisational Thriving (OT) observed by individuals. It hypothesises that applying Coaching-Based Leadership principles within organisations correlates with higher levels of individual and collective PsyCap and a stronger perception of Organisational Thriving. Additionally, it hypothesises that increased supervisor and peer appreciation and Work Gratitude are associated with higher individual and collective PsyCap and a greater perception of the organisation's thriving. Data were collected from 372 participants across 20 organisations using survey scales to measure Psychological Capital (PsyCap), Collective Psychological Capital (PsyCap), Organisational Thriving (OT), Coaching-Based Leadership (CBL), Appreciation at Work, and Work Gratitude. Spearman's rank correlation analysis revealed primarily moderate but significant positive correlations among these variables. Notably, the strongest correlations were observed between Organisational Thriving with both Coaching-Based Leadership and Work Gratitude, with slightly weaker correlations associated with Appreciation at Work. Collective PsyCap resources showed the most substantial links with Work Gratitude, followed by CBL and Appreciation at Work. In contrast, individual PsyCap (iPsyCap) demonstrated more modest but significant relationships with these organisational resources. This study contributes to the fields of Positive Organisational Scholarship and Positive Organisational Behaviour by empirically highlighting the potential impact of positive organisational practices on both individual and collective PsyCap and OT.

When Does Positive Communication Maximize Effective Information Flow?

Positive communication and its importance to organizations has become a popular topic of research among organizational scholars. However, there remains a paucity of work exploring nonlinearities in the role of positivity in communication effectiveness, with little research examining whether there can be too much of a good thing when it comes to communication positivity. To address these gaps in the literature on positive communication, I tested the hypothesis that work-related workplace communication will exhibit an inverted U-shaped curvilinear relationship with positive emotion. This relationship is hypothesized to result from a tradeoff between total workplace communication and the proportion of total workplace communication that is explicitly work-related as communication positivity increases. The results of this study generally support the hypothesized relationship and, save for some minor caveats, the hypothesized mechanisms underlying it. Enclosed are discussions on these caveats and the implications of this study’s findings for both organizational researchers and practitioners.

With Latour in our hands: discovering the politics of organizing and the aesthetic matter of things

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to pay tribute to the work of Bruno Latour and its relevance for organization scholars particularly, by relentlessly going beyond the reified category of “organization.” We rely in particular on our own experiences of conducting fieldwork with Latour in our hands and expose our journeys, sometimes feeling naked, embarrassed and naive. By following traces of actions, paying attention to things and appreciating plurality, with Latour we have discovered the politics of organizing and the aesthetic matter of things.Design/methodology/approachWe use our own methodological experience to describe how Latour’s work has helped us concretely. We structure our methodological reasoning around three excursions in the field, corresponding to our different fieldwork journeys. For each excursion, we rely on descriptions and reflect on how we have traced actions, paid attention to things and appreciated plurality, as set out in the introduction.FindingsWe render through excursions our Latour moments, that is, critical moments in fieldwork, where we get stuck and embarrassed and where Latour’s texts with simple questions help us move. Against the critique of ANT as being apolitical and unable to account for the body, we explain how we have precisely, through our ANT investigations, intersected between politics, aesthetics and organizing through three main ways of displacing us in the field: leaving a priori categories and questioning what we see; placing our view somewhere and moving it in an oligopticon-like way; and “thick thinging.”Originality/valueThe paper is a tribute to Latour’s work and wants to contribute to emphasizing his relevance for understanding not only organization in general but also the politics and aesthetics of organizing. We reassemble our fieldwork journeys and, despite their being personal to us, we believe that our learnings are recognizable and recognized by other scholars. We conclude with a research suggestion relevant to organization scholars.

Informing the ontologies of organizational histories: the critical conceptualization of events and actualization in organizing

ABSTRACT Critical Organizational History (COH) lacks a reflexive discussion about its ontological possibilities. This article fills this gap through a comparative analysis of Foucault’s and Deleuze’s late philosophies of history. It offers a reflexive analysis about the ontological possibilities for COH by translating Foucault’s and Deleuze’s views of actualization and events in ways that inform COH. First, the ‘new metaphysics of history’ developed by Foucault stresses the importance of the continuous reopening of the present through events, which then defines specific attitudes, subjectivation, and care as ethics as the focus of historical work. Second, a ‘post-historical metaphysics,’ as elaborated by Deleuze, reflects a more asubjective stance, in which the post-historical move remains metaphysical. Images, aberrant movements, machines and agencements mediate the fluid becoming of experience, which is primary locus of history and critique. Both routes emphasize the role of critique as actualization and eventalization, thus continuously opening and bordering the present. An example of worker surveillance illustrates Foucault’s and Deleuze’s views on actualization, eventalization, and their approach of history. This article uncovers an interesting confluence of these approaches for organization scholars, namely, through the combination of events with non-events stressing the importance of absences and silences in critical descriptions.

A Revisionist History Approach to the Study of Emotional Labor: Have We Forgotten Display Rules and Service Contexts?

We take a revisionist approach to study emotional labor—commoditization of emotions for a wage—to delineate how organizational scholars must “revive and resubmit” two crucial elements of the emotional labor phenomenon that have been left behind as research within this space evolved. First, we argue that scholars have not paid enough recent attention to display rules that prescribe what emotions are acceptable within service interactions, instead assuming classic conceptualizations (i.e. show positive emotions and hide negative emotions) still prevail. Second, we highlight that the shift away from service occupations to more white-collar occupations may have minimized our understanding of the complexity of emotional labor in modern service arrangements, such as multiple job holders, and employees in the gig economy. We hope that future emotional labor scholarship will dig into several taken-for-granted assumptions about the phenomenon moving forward to help “go back to the basics” regarding display rules of those in service work.

Impact of Leadership on Unethical Pro-Organizational Behavior: A Systematic Literature Review and Future Research Directions

Unethical pro-organizational behavior (UPB) has received growing attention from organizational scholars in recent years. As leadership is a key predictor of employee behavior in organizations, research focusing on leadership and UPB holds great potential for theoretical and practical advancements. The current paper presents a comprehensive systematic review of published research exploring leadership and UPB since 2010. The review not only situates the concept of UPB within the relevant literature, but also incorporates various analyses, including context, theoretical perspective, and research design. It also identifies the leadership-based independent variables, mediators, and moderators that impact UPB, which can help advance future theorizing in the field. Lastly, the paper offers suggestions for future research that can help in repositioning the field in order to build more reliable and valuable theoretical and practical policy recommendations.

Positive mindset: PsyCap’s roles in PERMA+4 and positive organizational psychology, behavior, and scholarship 2.0

This paper explores the role of mindset and Positive Organizational Psychology (POP) in modern workplaces amid increasing acknowledgment of mental and emotional attitudes influencing how individuals perceive and interact with the world. It discusses the shift in focus from traditional problem-centric approaches in behavioral sciences to a balanced perspective that encompasses both strengths and deficits, as advocated by Seligman and Csikszentmihalyi. This shift has given rise to Positive Organizational Behavior (POB) and Positive Organizational Scholarship (POS), emphasizing human resource strengths and psychological capacities. The paper draws on the PERMA+4 framework, an extension of Seligman’s original model incorporating Physical Health, Mindset, Work Environment, and Economic Security alongside Positive Emotions, Engagement, Relationships, Meaning, and Accomplishment to emphasize the unique role of Positive Mindset. It specifically describes promising research on work-related well-being and optimal work performance, evidence-based practices, and programs at the worker, supervisor/leader, group, and organizational level of analysis. Relatedly, this paper illustrates how one of the most empirically sound constructs within the positive psychology literature, Psychological Capital (PsyCap), can be used to cultivate the essential building block of Positive Mindset toward well-being practices, programs, and applications and more broadly, positive organizational psychology, behavior, and scholarship 2.0 research and applications at multiple levels of analysis. PsyCap theory, research, and evidence-based practices and applications will be discussed in light of how employees’ Positive Mindsets improve the quality of workplaces and the effectiveness of organizations.

Social Enterprises as Agents of Social Justice: A Rawlsian perspective on institutional capacity

Many scholars of organizations see social enterprise as a promising approach to advancing social justice but neglect to scrutinize the normative foundations and limitations of this optimism. This article draws on Rawlsian political philosophy to investigate whether and how social enterprises can support social justice. We propose that this perspective assigns organizations a duty to foster institutional capacity, a concept we define and elaborate. We investigate how this duty might apply specifically to social enterprises, given their characteristic features. We theorize six different mechanisms through which social enterprises might successfully discharge this duty. These results affirm the value of conversation between organizational studies and political philosophy and shed new light on debates regarding social enterprise, institutional theory, and several other topics.

(Re-)Vitalizing the Concept of Organization: Inspirations From Recent Social Theory

In this essay, we introduce recent debates on both concepts of organization and organization’s future. Since Max Weber’s ideas gained acceptance, there has been a strong link between social theory (rationalized modernity) and a concept of organization (bureaucracy) in organization theory as well as organizational sociology. Today, organizational scholarship challenges, but at the same time defends, this classical link. We argue that both positions can be substantiated empirically. This situation motivates a debate on updating and revitalizing the link between organizational concepts and social theories that we aim to put forward with this special issue of Critical Sociology. We discuss the assembled contributions in relation to this fundamental conceptual debate of organization research and conclude that the richness of social theories can still serve as an inspiration to explain recent organizational phenomena.

Servant Leadership in the Light of the Positive Organizational Scholarship Trend

Servant Leadership in the Light of the Positive Organizational Scholarship Trend

Advancing Organizational Science With Computational Process Theories

Organizational scholars commonly refer to organizations as complex systems unfolding as a function of work processes. Consequently, the direct study of work processes necessitates our attention. However, organizational scholars tend not to study work processes directly. Instead, organizational scholars commonly develop theories about relationships among psychological construct phenomena that indirectly reference people’s affective, behavioral, cognitive, and/or social processes as underlying explanations. Specifically, construct-oriented theories summarize processes in operation across actors, time, and contexts, and thus, provide limited insights into how focal phenomena manifest directly as a function of process operations. Construct theories remain one-step removed from articulating sequences of actions and two-steps removed from describing generative mechanisms responsible for observed actions. By “missing the action,” construct theories offer incomplete explanatory accounts and imprecise interventions. We assert that researchers in organizational science can make progress towards addressing these concerns by directing greater attention to developing computational process theories. We begin by presenting a framework for differentiating theories based on their focus (constructs versus processes) and modality (narrative versus computational). We use the framework to contrast narrative construct theories to computational process theories. We then describe key design principles for developing computational process theories and explain those principles using a leadership example. We use simulated data, from the computational process model we develop, to explicitly demonstrate the differences between construct and process thinking. We then discuss how computational process theories advance theory development. We conclude with a discussion of the long-term benefits of computational process theories for organizational science.

Media Review: Materially and Ethically Engaged Methods for Organizational Scholarship

Media Review: Materially and Ethically Engaged Methods for Organizational Scholarship