The reentry period after maternity leave can be a stressful but important transition for mothers, their significant others, and their organizations. In the present study, we integrate conservation ...

We propose and test a relational boundary blurring framework, examining how employees’ evaluations of colleagues’ characteristics drive their decisions to connect with colleagues as friends online....

Conceptualizing shareholder unrest as the aggregate scale and gravity of shareholder dissatisfaction with company practices, we examine the effects of two distinct types of shareholder unrest – wea...

By focusing on individual settlements rather than viewing them as part of a trajectory of change, prior research on institutional settlements has not fully captured the dynamics of longer-term institutional change. This is especially useful to better understand progressive legitimation dynamics; in other words, how successive settlements may increase legitimacy in a long-term trajectory of change. We argue this is a crucial issue for peripheral actors lacking the resources, status, or power of more central ones. Our historical analysis focuses on the long-term struggle of the Cree First Nation in Canada and explains how they succeeded in increasing their dispositional legitimacy in and through the settlements. This required work in three interrelated processes: expansive argumentation including problematizing of the state of affairs and creating discursive resonance with the prevailing discourses and values, building momentum by generating attention and exerting pressure in networks of actors, and seizing opportunities to negotiate with the other side. We challenge previous research on settlements by elucidating how they should not be merely seen as endpoints but rather as stepping-stones in a trajectory of institutional change. More specifically, we develop a process model explaining how progressive legitimation unfolds in a series of settlements.

In this study, we examine new CEOs’ social influence behaviors in leadership transition periods. Taking charge is challenging for new CEOs, particularly when (a) predecessor CEOs stay on as board c...

This paper aims to uncover the roles of material artifacts in managing the learning–performance paradox. It analyzes qualitative data on two transformation projects to implement kaizen (continuous improvement) collected from two manufacturing plants in a Chinese company. In both projects, material artifacts triggered social interaction, through which frontline employees were stimulated to focus on both performance and learning. However, in one project, the interplay of material artifacts that play multiple roles led to competing understandings of organizational objectives between managerial staff and frontline employees, which resulted in regression to the previous state where frontline employees focused exclusively on performance. In the other project, by contrast, the interplay of artifacts led to interrelating understandings of organizational objectives between these actor groups, which resulted in frontline employees’ constant acceptance of the learning–performance paradox. This paper contributes to extant literature by showing how the interplay of material artifacts that play multiple roles, such as triggering, supporting, disconnecting, and connecting, contributes to rendering paradox salient, as well as to creating organizational contexts for actors’ responses to it.

We examine how organizations can challenge institutions that are coercively protected by powerful elites—guarded institutions—when they are unable or unwilling to advocate publicly against them. To...

This study examines how the once prestigious medical profession in China has become criticized to the point of inducing widespread violence by patients. Drawing on archival documents, media article...

Why do ideas that have been successfully moved across highly different contexts subsequently disappear? To answer this question, we use longitudinal data on the organization Villages for Africa tha...

The contemporary ‘risk society’ is associated with the emergence of a wide range of risks characterised by uncertainty and unfamiliarity. These ‘novel’ risks pose a major challenge for organizations: their negative effects may be significant, but prevailing risk assessment techniques are limited in their ability to identify them. Building on our prior work on the chemical bisphenol A (BPA), this study examines how organizations deal with novel risks. It finds that organizations engage in ‘risk translation’ by translating equivocality associated with the novel risk into more familiar risks, which provide them with a clearer basis and guide for action. As organizations take actions to manage these translated risks, an ‘ecology of risks’ evolves which, over time, allows for the construction of a novel risk. The study contributes to research on organizing and risk by theorizing how organizations respond to novel risks, as well as by highlighting the role of translated organizational risks in constructing novel risks and shaping societal responses to grand challenges.