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Organizational change research has shown how change processes in organizations connect sequentially to form a trajectory of change through time; however, research has yet to offer an understanding of how ongoing organizational change integrates more distant change processes across time to shape the organization's long-term trajectory. To better understand the dynamics between ongoing change and the shaping of trajectories, we refer to change processes as turning points, arguing that turning points are immanent to – and formative of – trajectories. We define turning points in terms of their definitional, directional and curvilinear features, which we relate to the shaping of organizational change trajectories. Drawing on Deleuze's concept of the fold and the distinction between actual and singular events, we theorize how actors connect past and future turning points of the trajectory as singular events into enacting the actual events of the current turning point. Inspired by Deleuze's conception of the fold, we then develop a theoretical framework for the shaping of organizational change trajectories at turning points. This framework contributes to current change research by explaining how ongoing change processes give shape to trajectories of change that subsequently shape the ongoing process of change. It also contributes to the literature by proposing a more dynamic and central role of continuity in change. Finally, our use of Deleuze's concept of the fold enables us to suggest how theorizing actors' movement through time may extend current process views of time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Use-of-the-past research has advanced our understanding of how top managers instrumentalize past knowledge, events and rhetorical constructions to advance their present-day interests. However, it is unclear how they use the past when they have divergent understandings of the past and different visions of the future. Temporal tensions can lead to a period of unsettlement in organizations, undermine the top management's power base, and open up space for middle managers to take a central role in using the past. Through a longitudinal case study of a Japanese craft firm with a history of over 200 years, we examine how middle managers progressively take an active role in using the past through three processes: temporal mobility, temporal socialization and coalescing the past. Our findings challenge the somewhat linear conception of time in the use-of-the-past literature by elucidating the emergent, in-the-moment evolution of middle managers' strategic use of the past. By adopting a process-analytic lens, our findings extend current understanding of the strategic use of the past as not undertaken by a few powerful individuals in a given moment, but a continually changing process enacted by multiple middle managers with different temporal orientations. Moreover, our findings contribute to the use-of-the-past literature by taking a relational perspective of temporality. Finally, we reconceptualize the strategic flexibility of middle managers from a temporality perspective, showing that they can alter the temporal orientations of those at the top and the bottom. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Recent organizational theorizing has noted the emergence of a new spirit of normative control; implicit, informal, and internalized, "neonormative" control emphasizes a positive affective disposition toward work, a happy, fun, and inclusive workplace where employees are encouraged to "be themselves". This emphasis on positivity, however, is often accompanied by diffuse and persistent anxiety, fear, and other forms of subjective suffering often noted in studies of neo-normative control. The relation between purportedly positive neo-normative discourses of engagement and the persistent resurgence of subjective suffering remains under-theorized and holds wider implications for understanding the control regime represented by neo-normative control and its possible modes of contestation. Through a qualitative case study of a changing organizational safety program at a university facilities service, we examine how engagement and fear discourses worked together at different phases of the program to create both ambient anxiety and self-engagement solutions to manage that anxiety. Rather than conceptualizing suffering as the unintended consequence or ignored remainder of neo-normative "positive" messages, we describe how fear appeals explicitly invoke suffering to enrol employees into a self-shifting mode that leads them to be proactive. In our discussion, we theorize the co-constitutive aspects of positive and negative emotional discourses within a control-capturing process, developing the implications of this dual-affective orientation for understanding neo-normative control and its self-fulfilling properties at work in the neoliberal workplace. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The theory of organizational path dependence helps us to understand why organizational change is sometimes extremely difficult, if not impossible. Although recent conceptualizations of path dependence allow for strategic agency, the theory is still underspecified regarding how to break an organizational path. In an attempt to develop the theory in this regard, we make use of a case in the sphere of global health with an undisputed life-saving impact. More precisely, we trace a significant improvement in the field of pediatric cancer care back to path-breaking organizational change: the successful introduction of multicenter cooperation within a healthcare system that is arguably locked into a centralization path. Drawing on longitudinal research conducted within Russian children's hospitals, we conclude that path-breaking change is an intricate process based upon distinct activities, and supported by mechanisms, directed towards the creation of a new organizational path. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Building on a historical case study on the first two stock exchanges to adopt the now globally dominant for-profit organizational form, the Stockholm Stock Exchange in 1993 and the Helsinki Stock Exchange in 1995, we argue that interaction among socially proximate peers contributes to pioneering organizational form adoption within an industry, particularly when such forms are introduced by established organizations. Peer interaction can induce a search for technically efficient organizational forms through the sharing of collective experiences, the establishment of collective assumptions, and a joint search for solutions. Together, these factors contribute to the legitimization of novel organizational forms in the local setting before the adoption of the first instantiation of those forms. We propose a context-sensitive multilevel model of peer-interaction-induced pioneering organizational form adoption that considers shared macro environmental drivers, idiosyncratic local environmental drivers, and peer interaction as central social mediators between the two. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Enacting both clock and event time – ambitemporality – in organizational change is beneficial but contradictory. Prior research establishes that actors valuing the co-existence of both time conceptions enables ambitemporality in change. However, this is likely to be problematic in many organizations because clock time is hegemonic. Clock time not only exerts systemic influences, but its proponents also work to exclude event time perspectives from affecting change. So how does event time influence change in these contexts? I explore, in an ethnography of an organizational change, how the clock–event time dialectic shapes the doing of time in change. The study's primary contribution is in showing that event time proponents gain power to influence change through two types of political action: uncertainty switching and plasticizing temporal boundaries. A secondary contribution demonstrates the specific features of conflict that enable ambitemporality to emerge despite power asymmetries existing between the contradictory time conceptions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Hughes, Mark Managing and Leading Organizational Change New York: Routledge, 2019, 354 pages Organizational change (OC) is complex and comes in many forms, typically affects more than one part of the organization, and requires resources and the ability to adapt to ambiguities and uncertainties. In the twelfth chapter, Hughes discusses the importance of communication during OC initiatives. He sets the stage by pointing out that there are many schools of thought and perspectives on OC, and that plenty of myths (i.e., popular beliefs or stories) can be found in the OC literature, some of which have been debunked over the years and alternative narratives ("realities") offered. I believe these are great questions to discuss in a final book chapter about OC because they can further stimulate the reader to not only critically evaluate the academic literature but also reflect on the practical implications of the link between myths and OC outcomes. [Extracted from the article]

A person's social position shapes whether and how they can influence organizational change. While prior research establishes people whose social position combines outsider-ness and insider-ness as important change agents, we know little about how they influence change. We analyse a peer coaching initiative in Canadian hospitals to explain how outsider-insiders – in this case, organizational outsiders with professional proximity – advance change. Peer coaches were able to influence change by establishing and enacting a dual outsider-insider role and associated role expectations. We advance theory by showing that role expectations emphasizing duality that are rooted in social position, but created through social interaction, are a key mechanism by which the potential of outsider-insider social positions can be activated and mobilized to influence change. We advance theory on social position generally by highlighting the potential for integrating a symbolic interactionist perspective – focused on role expectations – into Bourdieu's theory of fields. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We shed new light on the processes through which institutions are created and changed by investigating the question how does institutional entrepreneuring unfold in an already organized world. We conducted a longitudinal case study of the field of scientific research production in Australia, which changed over three decades through entrepreneuring processes associated with the creation of a new 'Smart State' place in the city of Brisbane in Queensland. A new place is a form of organizing human activity that has materiality and meaning at a specific geographic location. Our findings showed how field change was interwoven with place creation through four processes of entrepreneuring: structural emancipation, dissociating and reimagining place meanings, bricolaging of place forms and co-evolving place identities. These entrepreneuring processes constituted the field as a flow of 'becoming' that spilled over into temporary and provisional settlements in local places. Our findings make important contributions through: (1) deepening understanding of how organizational fields change through multilevel, distributed, cascading and often unreflexive processes of entrepreneuring in an already organized world; (2) bringing attention to a relationship between institutions and place, in which place is both the medium and outcome of institutional entrepreneuring; and (3) providing new insight into embedded agency by illustrating how institutions in 'becoming' continually (re)produce the resources and possibilities for agency within gradual institutional change over time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article offers a novel perspective on the formation of organizational identity (OI) during major organizational change. The empirical context of our studies is the establishment of a new acute care department and the reorganization of care, where nurses and managers struggle to construct and reclaim a legitimate identity within the hospital and simultaneously strive to gain a leading position among acute care departments in the country. We use Bourdieu's theoretical ideas combined with a focus on narratives as an original and fertile perspective for studying OI. We propose that OI is inherently temporal, embodied and socially configured and cannot be separated from the institutionalized context of its setting because it is interlaced with (in this case) health professional logics. We show how OI is constructed through the strategizing moves of managers and nurses. This includes their narrative constructions of their quest for care progression and a legitimate OI that function as symbolic, emotional and practical glue. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Building on postcolonial critical organization and development studies, this paper explores the neo-colonial drive of a global development initiative. The New Alliance for Food Security and Nutrition (NA) was launched in 2012 and provides a governance framework for partnerships between donors, governments, and companies that applies principles and practices of market-led growth as means to the end of inclusive development. Through an in-depth, multilevel analysis that juxtaposes the NA's stipulated framework with the lived experiences of smallholder farmers in Malawi, one of ten African countries to participate in NA, the paper shows how local consequences are decoupled from global goals through governance gaps in both the horizontal and vertical dynamics of implementation. This decoupling of intention and consequence, we argue, happens at the national level of translating global principles into local practices. On the basis of this analysis, we suggest that vertical and horizontal governance must be integrated in one framework. Thus, we contribute to ongoing efforts to improve the theory and practice of the organization of development by introducing a framework of transglocal governance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

How is collective remembering inhibited by organizational changes which were not intended to manipulate it? And how does collective forgetting affect workers' power and sense of identity? We rely on an ethnographic study of a charitable organization that went through recent organizational changes to study two processes constitutive of collective forgetting. The first process consists in the past becoming unusable because once-useful memories lost their practical usefulness for participants' new activities. The second process consists in the past becoming uprooted because the social relations through which memories used to be shared had changed beyond recognition. Our findings provide insights into the organizational processes through which memories cease to circulate. They also help understand the complex relations between memory, power relations and participants' sense of identity. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article highlights the importance of silence in the change process of organizations, making the claim that silence distributes authority and decision-making processes. It thus adds to existing organization literature that applies a performative approach to silence as neither static nor neutral. It creates new realities. Silence as an act, rather than a noun, is conceptualized as central to organizational change. Through an ethnographic study in a mental healthcare organization, it is shown how different performances of silence make new decision-making processes available and influence new work practices that are central to understanding the particular characteristics of psychiatric organizations. Although the performance of silence can have somewhat immaterial and mundane connotations, when one uses an actor-network theory approach to organization studies, the performance of silence becomes helpful in conceptualizing how new and old practices are often imbedded into each other. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The concept of 'inclusion' has been gaining ground in a field known as equality and diversity work. Scholars have begun to both theorise what this concept means as a normative goal and to critically examine how it is mobilised in organisational practice. This paper contributes to the latter conversation by asking what comes to count as 'doing inclusion' at the level of the individual. I examine the practices of diversity training in United Kingdom organisations, in which diversity practitioners seek to transform their trainees into people who will act inclusively toward others, asking: Who is the 'inclusive subject' that is being constructed – imagined, sought and legitimised – through diversity training? What are the conditions of possibility that shape the emergence of this subject? And what are the possibilities that this subject affords to marginalised groups struggling for recognition within organisations? The analysis mobilises Foucault's notions of power/knowledge, discipline, and practices of the self to describe and discuss the performance of inclusive subjectivity in the context of diversity training in the UK. The practices described are found to be facilitated by two key forms of knowledge about how the subject is characterised: duality and fallibility. The discussion of these two forms of knowledge leads us to consider the relations of both discipline and freedom that take place in diversity training. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this piece of provocation we focus on the words of people who we view as increasingly powerful institutional actors in the field of organization theory and what they signify about 'what needs to be done' and 'how it needs to be done' in order to rectify the many failings they identify. We suggest that their actions reflect a desire for an integrated, general theory of organizations and the conception of organization studies as a nomothetic science to which they (and perforce we) are philosophically and ideologically committed. These are seen to be intellectual and ideological forces at work on both sides of the Atlantic. We provide a critique of this emerging orthodoxy within contemporary organization theory, briefly drawing on Swift's metaphor of Lilliputian 'big enders' and 'little enders' but also offer contemplation of the architectural metaphors of 'cathedral', 'mystery house' and 'the tower of Babel' (conceived of as ruination) to consider the alternative imaginary edifices that may influence the structure of our studies. Finally, we specify an alternative research agenda for organization theory which focuses upon 'the organization of destruction' rather than 'the organization of production' or 'the organization of consumption'. Rather than seeing any contestation of intellectual traditions, analytical frameworks and methodological strategies as mental manacles and shackles which we need to 'throw off' to rediscover our true vocation as organization scientists, we contend that organization theory needs to reignite a fierce dialogue over 'organization' and its relation to order and disorder that has stretched over, at least, two millennia and still speaks to our lives today and tomorrow. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research has made great strides in understanding how and why organizational actors use the past. So far, scholars have largely focused the level of analysis on the organization, without exploring the intertwined nature of historical claim-making with the organizational field or society at large. This article extends the status quo by conceptualizing the role of context for organizational uses-of-the-past. It identifies three key aspects of context that shape how history contributes to the social construction of reality: the existence of multiple audiences, the landscape of pre-existing historical narratives and the experience of social practices giving credibility to historical claims.By analysing the historical case of German business in colonial India, the paper makes three broader claims that could move research toward a more contextualized conception of the uses-of-the-past: (i) historical claims are validated in a continuous dialogue with multiple audiences; (ii) they revise previously existing narratives by critiquing or 'outpasting', i.e. invoking earlier origins; (iii) they often result in 'rhetorical frictions' that require continuous and skilful history revisions to mitigate emerging conflicts in their reception. By contextualizing the uses-of-the-past in this way, the paper moves beyond 'hypermuscular' organizational actors bending history to their will and foregrounds the situated nature of historical rhetoric. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research on the "uses of the past" in organizations and organizing is flourishing. This introduction reviews this approach to integrating history into organization studies and explores its paths forward. We begin by examining the intellectual origins of the approach and by defining why and how it matters to the study of management and organizations. Specifically, we emphasize the performative role of history in making and unmaking organizational orders. Next, we elaborate on how the articles in the special issue demonstrate the uses of the past in shaping organizational identity, strategy, and power. We also highlight how this work contributes to our understanding of the socially embedded character of history in organizations by accounting for the role of materiality, intertextuality, competing narratives, practices, and audiences in how the past is used. We conclude by considering four research frontiers particularly worthy of further exploration—the influence of temporal form, the role of non-rational knowledge, the range of methods, and the integration of ethics—in studies of the uses of the past in organizations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

There has been growing interest in the rhetorical use of history to express organizational identity claims. Yet the evolving role of the founder figure in managerial accounts has not so far received specific attention. In this study, we examine how the founder figure is used to articulate, enact, stretch, preserve or refresh expressions of organizational identity, drawing on an 80-year magazine archive of a financial cooperative. We identify five modes of founder invocation, and show how distance from founding events leads to increasing abstraction in linkages between the founder and organizational identity claims. The paper offers a dynamic perspective on the mobilization of the founder in organizational identity construction as well as an understanding of how and why founders may remain established identity markers long after their demise. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The emergent 'uses of the past' literature challenges traditional perspectives on history as an objective constraint for organizational action. It does so by putting forward an interpretivist view that highlights the moulding and shaping of history as a resource that enables action. We build upon and extend this approach by demonstrating how a more explicit attention to materiality reveals 'the dual nature of the past' as not simply constraining and/or enabling but also actively orienting organizational action in the present. We draw upon research on organizational remembering and the concept of affordance to theorize the entanglement of organizational remembering and the material technologies of memory. We examine the dynamics of organizational remembering and materiality in the context of the British Museum's digitization efforts. We show how narratives about the past enable organizational actors to make sense of and repurpose a novel material technology of memory (computers) through the construction of affordances. However, we also demonstrate how the materiality of objects inherited from the past also actively constrained and oriented how actors worked upon various obstacles on the path to digitization. We make two contributions. First, we develop how the dual nature of the past constitutes a novel way to reconcile deterministic and voluntarist interpretations of the past in organizations by assigning a more active role to material objects in organizational remembering. Second, we introduce a novel way to theorize organizational memory as an ongoing process of mutual constitution between technologies of memory (Speicher) and social practices of remembering (Gedächtnis). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Understanding the emergence, development, growth, or termination of dynamic capabilities (DCs) remains a critical topic of organizational research. This study contributes to and expands this stream of research by investigating the transformation and transition between two distinct DCs—acquisition-based and innovation-based—within the global logistics provider DHL across four time brackets from 1997 to 2006. Using content analysis of interviews with DHL’s managers and secondary sources, we identify DCs through bundles of underlying routines and track their evolution. Our findings provide evidence that a specific DC undergoes transformation before the company transitions to another DC, following a reactive sequence. These insights contribute to research on capability development by challenging traditional life-cycle explanations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Even though transformative agency is widely discussed in organization studies, recent conceptualizations provide little information about the dynamics through which transformative agency emerges at the individual and collective levels, or how these levels influence one another in a particular context. We employ critical realist theories to explore transformative agency in different types of temporary service development groups in professional service organizations. Our study suggests how individuals’ transformative agency emerges from their reflexivity and bargaining power conditioned by resource distributions, and how collective agency subsequently emerges from different combinations of these individual properties in temporary agentic groups. The study clarifies the interplay between the individual and collective levels of agency, and supports further multilevel studies on transformative agency in organizational change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Hybrid organizational forms combine values and practices from different institutional domains, rendering them difficult to fit neatly into the structures of extant organizational forms. Since the work required to institutionalize a new hybrid organizational form may be beyond the resources and capabilities of individual organizations acting alone, we shift the focus to inter-organizational collective action. Using empirical data from a study of a European network of renewable energy cooperatives, we find that, in order to institutionalize the new hybrid organizational form, the network can contribute to overcome the legitimacy challenges inherent in organizational hybridity. In particular, the network builds field-level receptivity to institutional pluralism, collectively codifies the hybrid organizational form, and consolidates legitimation towards plural field-level audiences. In order to perform these institutionalization roles, the network itself becomes increasingly formalized and mobilizes mediating functions involving different types of resources, legitimacy and target audiences. The research advances knowledge of hybrid organizational forms and their collective institutionalization through inter-organizational networks. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The relationship between technological artefacts and the social settings of their design, production and use has received considerable attention in recent years, particularly through the emergence of the sociomateriality literature. This paper reviews extant conceptualizations and discusses the contribution of a Heideggerian perspective to the study of sociomaterial practices. Drawing on insights from Heidegger’s ‘existential spatiality’, an alternative view of spatiality is presented, namely, spatiality as care rather than physical extendedness. Then, the sensitizing concepts of ‘theoretical significance’ and ‘practical significance’ of technological artefacts are introduced grounded in these insights. Finally, implications of spatiality as care for the emergence and change of sociomaterial practices are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite predictions to the contrary, institutionally contested practices are sometimes disseminated broadly. Does diffusion indicate they have achieved legitimacy in the eyes of key constituents? The conventional view regards diffusion as a process of legitimization and suggests that unconventional practices gain legitimacy following diffusion. Building on recent studies that view diffusion as an outcome of political struggle, we instead argue that political contestation ramps up as controversial practices are disseminated, making it difficult for them to gain wide acceptance. Their diffusion threatens the stability of preexisting institutional arrangements and constituents who remain supportive of the status quo react negatively. We test our argument by examining shareholder's response to downsizing in Japan, a practice that is highly controversial given the deeply entrenched norm of lifetime employment. Our analysis of panel data on 1,791 Japanese firms between 1973 and 2005 shows that neither domestic financial institutions nor foreign investors responded positively to downsizing as it became broadly disseminated. Domestic financial institutions actually responded in increasingly negative ways in the 1990s, while they did not in the 1970s when downsizing was conducted within the framework of the long-term relationship between Japanese firms and their main banks. These results suggest that the relationship between diffusion and legitimacy can be contingent, in that the diffusion of institutionally contested practices can trigger reactions that differ from those of institutionally supported practices. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Cynicism, gossip, foot-dragging, simulation of productivity, etc. have been regarded by some scholars as manifestations of resistance that are subtle and unobtrusive, but still real and effective. Denying their strategic and subversive potential, others have argued that such informal, indirect or infrapolitical demonstrations of subversion are risk-free and ineffective, and, because members shy away from acting on their critique, that they should be re-evaluated as mere compliance. Refuting an either–or framework, we ask the more pertinent, empirically grounded, and underexplored question of how resistant and compliant behaviours are performed in situ. This allows us to discern and examine different forms and effects of infrapolitical strategies. Building on an ethnographic case-analysis of a planned change programme in the Amsterdam municipality’s Department of Work and Income (DWI), this paper explores in detail how organizational actors subtly synthesize compliance and resistance in their situated positionings vis-a-vis a change initiative, and how such ambiguous positioning becomes consequential. We describe two distinct infrapolitical strategies, which we term frontstage and backstage resistance. While frontstage resistance derives its subversive potential from mixing open protest with implicit complaisance, backstage resistance functions via a benign appearance of carefully staged compliant behaviour. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We present a typology and process model that integrate dialectical and paradox perspectives on managing contradictions in organizations. Whereas paradox research depicts tensions between contradictory elements as irreconcilable and best managed through acceptance and synergy, the dialectical perspective portrays the relationship of such elements as adversarial and transformed through conflict. Our integrated typology and process model account for both dialectical and paradox approaches to managing contradictions and also identify two approaches, assimilation and adjustment, which combine the two. The model also identifies a key contingency, the expected distribution of power between contradictory elements, as a key influence on actors’ approaches to managing contradictions. For paradox researchers our integrated model emphasizes the need for more attention to the political, institutional, and social contexts of contradictions, practices for managing conflict, and transformation of organizational contradictions. Our integrated model suggests that dialectics researchers pay attention to the strategies managers use to productively manage tensions between contradictory elements, take a contingent view of transformation, and recognize that acceptance of contradiction may play a role in transformation. Hence our integrated model suggests a broadened agenda for both paradox and dialectics researchers. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper focuses on the question of the extent to which the institutional founding environment affects organizational success after a radical institutional change. We analyse firms founded in the German Democratic Republic (GDR) that experienced the fall of the Iron Curtain in 1990 and focus on how the institutional environment of their founding period influences their failure rates. Results show that organizational failure rates vary after institutional change due to differences in institutional founding conditions. This variation is influenced by the degree of (dis)similarity between the imprinted past and the present institutional context. Discussing the time-varying effect of institutional founding conditions, we contribute to a more comprehensive understanding of imprinting and organizational failure in situations of institutional change. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We examine the processes and mechanisms of translating broader field-level change to the local community, drawing on insights from the inhabited institutions perspective and community-based institutionalism. In particular, we develop the concept of linking organizations as key actors in institutional change that connect the broader field and community levels. We use multiple forms of qualitative data, collected over a two-year time frame, to study the processes of a community foundation, the ‘Rainbow Wellness Foundation’, as a linking organization that engaged five community coalitions to embed a new wellness approach, locally. Our findings suggest that linking organizations interpret the central tenets of the approach, define them locally around relevant aims, and regulate community organizations’ adherence, to ensure legitimacy with the field. In addition, by engaging and negotiating with the community and helping manage ambiguity, linking organizations enable local ‘filling-in’ of these models with practices that meet community needs and interests. This study contributes to the literature on institutional change by identifying the activities of linking organizations as agents that translate broader field change, locally. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper aims to contribute to the literature on ‘institutional maintenance work’. Focusing on the institutional disruption resulting from a regulatory project of market rationalization, it enriches the description and analysis of the specific institutional maintenance work performed by powerful actors who engage in resistance against what they perceive as a threat to their discretion. Built on an in-depth qualitative study, our case concerns an attempt to change the form of over-the-counter markets as part of a recent financial reform. The paper contributes to the expanding literature on the maintenance of institutions by suggesting, in particular, that the creation of incommensurables should be added to the list of strategies available to powerful incumbents seeking to resist institutional change. Bridging the gap between the literatures on institutional maintenance and commensuration, it also demonstrates that specific institutional changes can usefully be understood as changes in commensuration systems. This innovatively suggests the existence of degrees of commensuration and calls for a finer-grained understanding of the institutional work required to maintain institutions in a context where the degree of commensuration experienced by a field or a market threatens to increase under coercive pressure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

While the past decade has produced a number of insights into the process of institutional change, scholars still lack a comprehensive understanding of the germinal stages of institutional entrepreneurship. More specifically, further knowledge is needed into what factors cause certain individuals to initiate norm-breaking behaviour while others continue to adhere to societal expectations. Prior work seeking to inform this question has focused either on individual-level or environmental-level explanations. Comparatively, we employ a social network perspective as a 'meso-level' lens into the space where actors and their environment intersect. Based upon our qualitative findings, we propose that social ties can serve as an important factor in enabling (heterophilic ties) as well as constraining (homophilic ties) institutional change. However, our data also suggest that these network forces are highly dynamic and contingent upon tie frequency, the sequencing of tie contact, and the prevailing social norms in which tie contact takes place. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The emergence and proliferation of network forms of organization has sparked interest and debate in organization studies. We have learned much about the effects of networks but our understanding of how they are formed, how they change, and how networks can themselves possess agential properties that make them complex social actants is limited. In selecting papers for this special issue, we were persuaded by arguments that our understanding of networks and their transformative power can benefit from greater attention to culture and discourse, which provide meaning and direction to network participants and are indispensable agentic resources. The special issue contains two sets of papers. The first set debates the articulation between the organized and emergent dynamics of networks and its impact on knowledge exchanges and innovation. The second set seeks to inform our understanding of the manifestations of power in network dynamics. For each section, we provide a tentative research agenda. Our hope is that this special issue will both advance our ability to conceptualize, measure and manage network evolution and enhance our understanding of the transformative impact of network dynamics on organizations and society. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The literature on corporate social performance advocates that firms address social issues based on instrumental as well as moral rationales. While both rationales trigger initiatives to increase corporate social performance, these rest on fundamentally different and contradicting foundations. Building on the literature on organizational ambidexterity and paradox in management, we propose in this conceptual article that ambidexterity represents an important determinant of corporate social performance. We explain how firms achieve higher levels of corporate social performance through the ambidextrous ability to simultaneously pursue instrumentally and morally driven social initiatives. We distinguish between a balance dimension and a combined dimension of ambidexterity, which both enhance corporate social performance through distinct mechanisms. With the balance dimension, instrumental and moral initiatives compensate for each other – which increases the scope of corporate social performance. With the combined dimension, instrumental and moral initiatives supplement each other – which increases the scale of corporate social performance. The article identifies the most important determinants and moderators of the balance and the combined dimension to explain the conditions under which we expect firms to increase corporate social performance through ambidexterity. By focusing on the interplay and tensions between different types of social initiatives, an ambidextrous perspective contributes to a better understanding of corporate social performance. Regarding managerial practice, we highlight the role of structural and behavioral factors for achieving higher corporate social performance through the simultaneous pursuit of instrumental and moral initiatives. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article, we aim to revitalize the concept of role for advancing theory on identity work in organizations. Our article makes three contributions. First, we offer a critical review of how roles have been conceptualized in studies on identities, and develop a theoretical frame for understanding how people in organizations engage in transitions within and between roles that emerge and evolve in relational interaction and mediate their identity work. Second, we operationalize this frame in a longitudinal study of an organizational change initiative focusing on strategic rebranding in an industrial firm. We elucidate how roles and identities co-evolve over time and how roles and role transitions figure in the organization-based identity work of individuals. Third, we consider the implications of viewing roles as mediators in identity work. We highlight identity-related trade-offs made by individuals when they become associated with particular roles and show how they become disillusioned as organizational change agents. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Institutional theory’s understanding of unplanned change in fragmented and complex environments has made the connection between institutional work at the micro level and institutional logics at the macro level a central issue. Change that is not planned is contingent on events. In practice an event, as a single occurrence of an unexpected, unanticipated or unacknowledged process, connects these levels, as the event is selected for attention, enacted in meaning, and organizationally coded. Not all events are selected, enacted and coded, of course. The recognition, attributes and potential of events depend on selections made from and meaning given to past events and those conceived as coming into being in the future perfect. The concept of recursive contingency describes how unique occurrences become connected in an evolving process over time; in doing so, it stresses the important role of the unexpected in regard to institutional change. Using a theoretical framework derived from Luhmann’s work, in which institutions are seen as relatively autonomous self-closed subsystems generating contingency, we define an event as such by the fact that what it means and what is to be done with it cannot be decided by the application of a rule: choice is demanded that requires coding it as a specific type of event. A recursive view of contingency can be connected to an institutional theory of change in which the central role of institutional codes and networks of communication is stressed, producing a new theoretical approach to the explanation of institutional change. To illustrate the argument we make reference to one of the most significant counterfactual cases for questioning the solidity of institutions: the collapse of the key organization of the Soviet Union, the Communist Party. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article examines how organizational designs develop by proposing a novel theoretical framework that views organizational change as resulting from a dialectic process between interpretive agents. The key claim is that existing formal procedures (such as recruitment processes, our empirical focal point) are subject to involved actors’ interpretive efforts. This results in a bargaining situation based on the interpretations of the principal actors, which may induce a feedback loop whereby the original procedures are amended. The empirical relevance of the theoretical argument is illustrated via a case study of the hiring procedures in the European External Action Service. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

We draw on the relevant extant literatures to examine the pathways to building trust through leader behaviors with three distinct emphases: the leader (personal leadership), the leader-follower relationship (relational leadership), and the situation (contextual leadership). We test this model using experimental data collected from experienced managers (Study 1) and field data collected from the peers and direct reports of business executives (Study 2). The results from these two studies both build on and challenge current views in the trust and leadership literatures about how leaders influence trust. Consistent with past literature, our findings indicate that various leadership behaviors appear to directly promote follower trust when analyzed independently. However, when these behaviors are analyzed jointly, relational leadership behaviors were found to mediate the effects of personal and contextual leadership behaviors on follower trust. The implications for theory and practice are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

We address the effect of organizational theories on the organization by focusing on how modularity, a widespread and influential organizational theory, performs a modular organization. While scholars have offered opposing arguments for the influence of this theory—i.e. that it either succeeds or fails to “produce” modular organizations—we show just how and how far modularity is enacted and shapes the organization, and how it may be shaped in turn. Drawing on recent advances in performativity theory we thus contribute to modularity by showing how the modular organization emerges over time as the outcome of performative struggles among competing and complementary theories and how these struggles contribute to modifying the theory and “designing” organizations. We also add to performativity by theorizing the competition between multiple theories, the emergence of unexpected consequences or “errors”, and their implications for organizational practices and boundaries. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

An institution is often considered to be a stable, taken-for-granted ‘being’. The consequence is that agency is primarily associated with the rather exceptional creation or disruption of a relatively stable structure. In this article, we suggest an alternative ontology for understanding an institution as something unstable and always ‘becoming’. This opens a range of new and distinct opportunities for theorizing and researching institutional work involved in the everyday practice of managing institutional complexity. It allows us, in this study, to contribute with a new form of agency in terms of the continuous, active work of managing novel contradictions. Further, it induces us to take a more fine-grained look at the accompanying dynamics of work, in addition to work itself, whereby we provide a novel way of accounting for whether work effort is amplifying or subsiding, and whether it is likely to result in greater or lesser volatility within – on the surface – an otherwise seemingly stable institution. The argumentation is supported by an ethnographic field study of the work of managing novel contradictions within a single South Korean credit card company in the aftermath of the Asian economic crisis in 1997. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Taken-for-granted cognitive schemas form a core aspect of institutions. Whilst much is known about their effects, past research has not yet detailed and formalized how individual actors are able to initiate changes to such institutionalized schemas, reframe their circumstances and how, in turn, such a provisional reframing may itself evolve into a taken-for-granted schema. In this article, we argue that changes to existing institutions come about when actors engage in discursive processes of frame shifting or frame blending by which they articulate alternative or combined schematizations and succeed in building up common ground around the novel cognitive template. We elaborate a set of propositional arguments for when and how actors are more likely to initiate and realize institutional change by either discursively marking the contrast with prior cognitive schemas or by scaling these up into a broader understanding. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Management innovations, also called organizational, administrative, and managerial innovations, are nontechnological innovations that have been conceptualized in contrast to technology-based product and process innovations and pertain to new organizational structures, administrative systems, and management practices. This paper provides a perspective on the state of research on this innovation type. It asks why research on management innovation lags that of technological innovation and compiles five footnotes, each addressing an important aspect of studying innovation in organizations, and, together, they explain conceptual ambiguity and methodological challenges that have hindered research on management innovation. The footnotes also highlight the opportunities that research on management innovation could provide for a better understanding of the influence of innovation on organizational conduct and outcome. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We examine organizational ingenuity within the paradox of embedded agency where organizational stakeholders are constrained in their behaviors by institutions, yet also influence and change these institutions. In this study organizational ingenuity represents the agency component and institutional constraints the embedded component. We build theory about ingenuity from a four-year case study of the embryonic Ontario solar industry. There were two major institutional constraints, limited grid access and political uncertainty. These led to four ingenuity strategies that emerged at different times and levels of analysis that challenged, complied with, or escaped the constraints. We combine these findings to develop a process model of the emergence of ingenuity in this embryonic industry. Lastly, we find that extending legitimacy to an ingenuity strategy is necessary for its success. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The paper offers an introduction to research that concerns itself with the ‘dark side’ of organization and attempts to bring theoretical resources from a range of disciplines to bear upon the problem. This stream of research has emerged most visibly since the 1990s, although its concerns can be found in much earlier research. Frustrations with the tendencies of mainstream work to overlook, ignore or suppress difficult ethical, political and ideological issues, which may well mean life or death to some people, has in recent years led to a research that self-identifies its concerns as being with the dark side. We structure our review around key contributions on the dark side of organizational behaviour, mainly in psychology but also including the concept of organizational misbehaviour; the sociology of the dark side, with particular reference to mistakes, misconduct and disaster; and a wider range of critical approaches to the dark side including Marxist, post-Marxist and postcolonial perspectives. We also undertake a review of methodologies for investigating dark side phenomena, and finally introduce the five papers that comprise this special issue. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Searching for knowledge to solve non-routine problems allows middle managers not only to design new solutions but also to develop organizational capabilities. We focus on knowledge search to develop our understanding of how individuals engage with organizational knowledge in practice, how they acquire and use knowledge, and the implications for organizational knowledge development. Investigating middle managers’ knowledge search practices in response to non-routine events, we uncover four practices: isolating; overcoming knowledge distribution challenges; socializing; and mastering solution development. From these, we identify two aspects of knowledge search: not only can it produce new solutions but it can also have different effects in terms of developing organizational capabilities, either modifying existing routines or creating new ones. We argue that organizations with a knowledge use advantage, namely, an ability to mobilize accessible knowledge by organizing for knowledge circulation and a socialized search that deals with the organization’s challenges of knowledge distribution in order to master solution development – especially at mid-level – can pursue capability development. We discuss the implications of our findings for the literature on organizational knowledge and middle managers’ roles in organizational knowledge processes. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

A call for papers on the organizational paradox, tensions, and dualities of innovation and change is presented.

Markus Scholz and Thomas A. C. Reydon discuss the approach known as generalized Darwinism and make a number of comments and criticisms. This reply demonstrates that a number of their statements are inaccurate and misleading. It is important to examine the accounts of generalized Darwinism carefully, including what its proponents say about its explanatory limitations. Scholz and Reydon raise an important question concerning the definition of populations or species, but overlook the additional persistence of this problem in biology. This definitional problem is important but it does not invalidate generalized Darwinism. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The terms ‘evolution’ and ‘coevolution’ are widely used in organization studies but rarely defined. Often it is unclear whether they refer to single entities or populations. When specific evolutionary processes are suggested, the labelling is often misleading. For example, in the debate over the roles of individual adaptation and competitive selection, the ‘selectionist’ position of Michael Hannan and John Freeman, which emphasizes the role of selection and stress the limits of individual firm adaptability, is often described as ‘Darwinian’ whereas opposing views that emphasize adaptability are described as ‘Lamarckian’. But these labels are not strictly dichotomous. Scholars have shown that core Darwinian principles, resulting from abstract ontological communality rather than analogy, apply to social evolution. This opens up a research agenda using the principles of generalized Darwinism and the replicator–interactor framework to help understand the evolution of organizations. Some illustrations of the conceptual value of this approach are provided, including understanding the entwinement of selection and adaptation, the nature and role of organizational routines, the place of strategic choice and the growth of organizational complexity. The framework of generalized Darwinism also helps to bridge apparently divergent perspectives in the business strategy and organizational ecology literatures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In a recent article in this journal, Geoffrey Hodgson points out that the notion of ‘evolution’ is widely used in organization science without authors being sufficiently clear on what exactly they mean by this term. In his article, Hodgson cleans up the terminological and conceptual confusion on evolution in organization science and positions so-called ‘generalized Darwinism’ as the only well-elaborated evolutionary framework available in social science. We doubt, however, whether in its present form generalized Darwinism itself constitutes a viable approach. In this article we argue that Hodgson and collaborators so far have failed to show that generalized Darwinism is actually capable of serving as a basis for the construction of evolutionary explanations of social and organizational phenomena. We suggest a few items that should be put on generalized Darwinism’s research agenda in order to develop it towards a viable option. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper builds on recent contributions to understanding conditions of institutional complexity by developing a theoretical framework to elaborate the interdependencies between actions, contexts and institutional logics. Our aim is to refine existing explanations of how actors inhabit complex institutional settings. Drawing on a critical realist ontology, we treat agency and structure as analytically distinct phenomena to advance our understanding of conditioned action. This is subject to relational analysis in order to explain the structural conditioning that shapes particular socio-historical contexts, the potential ‘action options’ contained within these contexts and the processes through which actors draw upon these. This reading of institutional reproduction and transformation allows us to reassess the ‘paradox of embedded agency’ by advancing understanding of the historically grounded and multilevel nature of structures and agency in institutional processes. Our approach offers conceptual refinements, a new sensitizing framework and methodological insights to guide studies of the ways actors inhabit complex institutional settings. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]