bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Coercive Organizational Politics and Organizational Outcomes: An Interpretive Study
Authors: Voyer John J.
Published: October 2008

This study tried to understand how the members of an organization interpreted, in their enacted cognitive schema, the events and processes they enacted during their formation of a new strategy. Participant observation, qualitative interviewing, and cognitive mapping identified many important organizational processes. Among these were pervasive coercive organizational politics, which was retained as an interesting element of the organization's rich cognitive schema. Organization members interpreted politics as being deleterious to morale, as indirectly related to inferior organizational performance outcomes, and as a source of organizational control in the form of negative feedback loops. They also interpreted politics in a paradoxical way—greater levels of political activity led to lower levels of political activity.
Congruence and Fit in Professional Role Motivation Theory
Authors: Miner John B. , Crane Donald P. , Vandenberg Robert J.
Published: October 2008

Organization theory has been preoccupied for many years with the bureaucratic form. Insufficient attention has been given to alternative designs, including, in particular, professional organizations of various types. This article considers these professional organizations at length within the context of professional role motivation theory. It also considers the concept of fit or congruence as it enters into professional role motivation theory and into organization theory generally. Considerable support for the congruence concept is provided via an analysis of data on over 100 labor arbitrators. The findings indicate that (1) arbitrators work in a predominantly professional context and (2) professional motivation is closely associated with various indexes of arbitrator effectiveness. Effective arbitrators are more motivated to provide help to others, more desirous of status, more interested in acquiring knowledge and learning, more professionally committed, and to a somewhat lesser degree more desirous of acting independently. These patterns are found to characterize the lawyers within the sample to at least an equal degree. The data indicate that the professional organizational form encompasses professional components of otherwise bureaucratic organizations such as universities and governments, professional organizations such as law firms, and private professional practices. It is apparent that professional systems are important in the practice of organizational design and that they are distinct from the bureaucratic form.
Capturing the Complexity in Advanced Technology Use: Adaptive Structuration Theory
Authors: DeSanctis Gerardine , Poole Marshall Scott
Published: October 2008

The past decade has brought advanced information technologies, which include electronic messaging systems, executive information systems, collaborative systems, group decision support systems, and other technologies that use sophisticated information management to enable multiparty participation in organization activities. Developers and users of these systems hold high hopes for their potential to change organizations for the better, but actual changes often do not occur, or occur inconsistently. We propose adaptive structuration theory (AST) as a viable approach for studying the role of advanced information technologies in organization change. AST examines the change process from two vantage points: (1) the types of structures that are provided by advanced technologies, and (2) the structures that actually emerge in human action as people interact with these technologies. To illustrate the principles of AST, we consider the small group meeting and the use of a group decision support system (GDSS). A GDSS is an interesting technology for study because it can be structured in a myriad of ways, and social interaction unfolds as the GDSS is used. Both the structure of the technology and the emergent structure of social action can be studied.

We begin by positioning AST among competing theoretical perspectives of technology and change. Next, we describe the theoretical roots and scope of the theory as it is applied to GDSS use and state the essential assumptions, concepts, and propositions of AST. We outline an analytic strategy for applying AST principles and provide an illustration of how our analytic approach can shed light on the impacts of advanced technologies on organizations. A major strength of AST is that it expounds the nature of social structures within advanced information technologies and the key interaction processes that figure in their use. By capturing these processes and tracing their impacts, we can reveal the complexity of technology-organization relationships. We can attain a better understanding of how to implement technologies, and we may also be able to develop improved designs or educational programs that promote productive adaptations.
Raising Radicals: Different Processes for Championing Innovative Corporate Ventures
Authors: Day Diana L.
Published: October 2008

This study investigates the types of championing processes that explain the innovativeness of 136 internal corporate ventures. Current theory suggests that bottom-up champions create the most innovative ventures. In contrast, this paper argues that both bottom-up and top-down champions are suitable for developing innovative ventures. Using a broadly based sample of Fortune 1000 firms, the study supports both bottom-up and top-down processes including a special dual-role principal champion, who acts both as product champion and organizational sponsor. The functions or roles of these top management and dual-role champions are quite different from bottom-up champions and represent relatively unexplored top-down championing processes. Preliminary results show support for an emerging theory that top management champions arise when ventures are expensive and visible and when they represent new strategic directions or resource reconfigurations for the firm. In contrast, dual-role champions emerge from the firm's upper ranks when an innovative idea is highly uncertain but not technology-driven. The paper proposes an integrative view of championing in which any one of three types of championing processes may be the most relevant for a particular venture, depending on what it needs to achieve innovative outcomes.
Firm-Specificity in Corporate Applied R&D
Authors: Helfat Constance E.
Published: October 2008

Much corporate research and development (R&D) has characteristics that tie it strongly to the firm in which it takes place, and which may make the process of undertaking R&D or the outcome of the R&D difficult for other firms to duplicate perfectly. That is, the R&D is firm-specific. This is particularly true for more highly applied R&D, which tends to involve incremental technological change and often entails alterations and enhancements to existing firm assets, production processes, and products. The often firm-specific nature of corporate R&D tends to receive relatively little attention in the study of technological innovation. This article outlines the primary characteristics of firm-specificity in R&D, and discusses two interrelated consequences of such firm-specificity: (1) heterogeneity in the R&D applications of firms within an industry, and (2) increased ability of firms to earn returns to R&D (often termed “appropriability”). Both factors have important implications for firm strategy. Empirical evidence from the U.S. petroleum industry is presented that documents differences between firms in their R&D applications. The evidence is consistent with firm-specificity in R&D.
Merging Professional Service Firms
Authors: Greenwood Royston , Hinings C. R. , Brown John
Published: October 2008

The prevailing theory of mergers is that firms emphasize considerations of “strategic fit” in discussions prior to merger activity, and neglect considerations of “organizational fit”. The result is that immediately following a merger dysfunctional organizational behaviours occur. The number of empirical studies of mergers, however, is relatively modest and there are few case studies of the merger process. The present paper studies the merger involving two large accounting firms, over a period of four years. The unique features of accounting firms—in particular, their organization as professional partnerships—and of the accounting industry, make the case study an appropriate “tough” test of the general theory. Accounting firms are likely to take account of organizational fit in merger discussions.

The case study rehearses the careful attention to issues of strategic and organizational fit (contrary to the general theory) but also maps the unfolding behavioural problems that followed formal merger. Interestingly, the specific difficulties observed in previous studies were less salient in the present case: problems and difficulties were of a kind peculiar to the type of organization, which suggests that theories of mergers should be sensitive to the context and setting of merger activity.

The paper concludes by elaborating elements of a more systematic model of the merger process. These elements include the difference between mergers and acquisitions, the structure of governance, organizational capacity, sector cohesiveness and technology.
Cognition Within and Between Organizations: Five Key Questions
Authors: Meindl James R. , Stubbart Charles , Porac Joseph F.
Published: October 2008

This special issue of Organization Science taps into the burgeoning work on managerial and organizational cognition. In the last 15 years, there has been a decided “cognitive turn” within organizational studies as researchers increasingly explore the relationships among mind, management, and organization. The early groundwork established by the Carnegie School of organizational theory, the success of modern cognitive science, and the recent diffusion of social constructionism within organizational studies have all contributed to this growing interest in cognitive research. Researchers are now exploring the cognitive underpinnings of such diverse organizational phenomena as job attitudes, performance appraisals, managerial decision making, environmental sensemaking, organizational learning, and interorganizational belief systems. Few areas of contemporary organizational science remain untouched by a cognitive agenda. In this short paper, we introduce the special issue by discussing the issue's focus and highlighting several key questions that constantly recur within the cognitivist agenda illustrated by these papers.
Integrating Organizational and Individual Information Processing Perspectives on Choice
Authors: Corner Patricia Doyle , Kinicki Angelo J. , Keats Barbara W.
Published: October 2008

Existing information processing theories of strategic choice focus on either the organizational or individual level of analysis. This single level focus makes these theories incomplete representations of how strategic decisions are actually made in organizations. We believe an integration of these two levels is necessary for a comprehensive view of choice. This paper thus proposes a parallel process model of strategic decision making that integrates organizational and individual level information processing perspectives. The integrated, comprehensive view afforded by the proposed model enhances understanding of strategic decision making by identifying (1) multiple ways in which bias can enter into choices and (2) dual level influences on decision activities such as information gathering and alternative generation.

The proposed model portrays strategic decision making as complex, multilevel information processing and choices as emergent outcomes of that processing. The model is developed as follows. First, the individual level of the model is generated by recognizing that people process information in stages. The notion of stages is used because it depicts the basic structure of information processing and is widely supported by empirical research. Second, the organizational level of the model is articulated by acknowledging organizations (1) process information in stages and (2) exhibit information processing activities analogous to those at the individual level. Third, a series of linking mechanisms connecting individual information processing stages to analogous organizational level ones is proposed. These linking mechanisms thus conceptually operationalize the integration of the two levels. Fourth, three contingency variables are presented to flesh out the model and formulate propositions. Contingency variables specifically acknowledge differences in information processing across organizations. A final section of the paper explains how key variables in the proposed model can be operationalized and outlines a test for the presence of multiple levels of information processing in a strategic choice context.
Organizational Culture and Individual Sensemaking: A Schema-Based Perspective
Authors: Harris Stanley G.
Published: October 2008

Organizational culture encompasses both individual and group-level phenomena. However, to date, the individual-level dynamics of organizational culture have remained relatively neglected. This paper addresses this neglect by focusing on culture's manifestation in individuals' sensemaking structures and processes. Building off the social cognition literature, I propose that organizational culture's influence on individual sensemaking is revealed in the operation of a patterned system of organization-specific schemas. Schemas refer to the cognitive structures in which an individual's knowledge is retained and organized. In addition to being knowledge repositories, schemas also direct information acquisition and processing. They guide answering the questions central to sensemaking efforts: “What or who is it?,” “What are its implications; what does it mean?,” and “How should I respond?”

After a brief review of schema theory, the categories of schema knowledge relevant to understanding sensemaking in organizations and the cultural influences on their emergence are examined. The conscious and unconscious operation of these schemas in the actual process of making sense of organizational stimuli is framed within a schema-directed, intrapsychic, mental dialogue perspective on social cognition. Specifically, I propose that in the social setting of organizations, individuals make sense out of their experiences based in large part on the outcomes of contrived mental dialogues between themselves (e.g., “I think it means this and I would be inclined toward this response”) and other contextually-relevant (past or present; real or imagined) individuals or groups (e.g., “What would my boss and peers think about this? What would they want me to do?”). The content of the argument provided for others is guided by the individual's schemas for those others. I close the paper by discussing the ways in which this schema-based perspective enhances our under-standing of the individual experiences of cultural sharing, subcultural boundaries, and psychological attachment.
Symbolism and Strategic Change in Academia: The Dynamics of Sensemaking and Influence
Authors: Gioia Dennis A. , Thomas James B. , Clark Shawn M. , Chittipeddi Kumar
Published: October 2008

This study investigated the uses of sensemaking, influence, and symbolism in launching a strategic change effort at a university. It employed an ethnographic/interpretive approach in examining the ways that symbols, metaphors, and various subtle influence processes were used to lend meaning to concepts and possible courses of action by a task force instrumental to the strategic change process. Two distinct researcher perspectives were used: an “insider” perspective employing several informants along with an active participant-observer and an “outsider” perspective employing several researchers. Both perspectives were brought to bear as a means of countering the “researcher arrogance” that typifies organizational study by lending balanced voice to both insider and outsider interpretations of events. The findings showed that sensemaking and influence emerged as fundamental processes in the instigation of strategic change. Both processes were symbolically based and varied in directionality over the life of the task force (internally directed in the embryonic phases, and externally directed in the mature phases). Contrary to common wisdom, sensemaking and influence emerged as frequently coincident, interdependent processes that were difficult to distinguish from each other. The discovery of the common symbolic base for scnsemaking and influence also indicated that symbols served both expressive and instrumental roles: suggesting that the accepted view of symbols as predominantly expressive devices does not present a complete picture of their dynamic nature. The use of symbolism also was shown simultaneously to reveal and conceal different aspects of the change process, thus providing task force members the means to circumvent resistance while accomplishing desired action. Symbols and metaphors thus facilitated both cognitive understanding and intended action in attempting to “reinstitutionalize” a major public university via the strategic change process. Overall, the study suggests that efforts to stabilize an organizational system in flux from the systematic upheaval represented by strategic change can be understood as the symbolic interplay between sensemaking and influence.
Industry Mindsets: Exploring the Cultures of Two Macro-Organizational Settings
Authors: Phillips Margaret E.
Published: October 2008

Cultures are dynamic, shared mindsets that, in organizational settings, are usually believed to be nationally or organizationally based. In this paper, the existence of industry cultures is explored. Previous studies of industry-based cognitive constructs have narrowly focused on top managers' mental models for strategic decision making. Here, broad-based assumption sets comprising the cultural knowledge widely shared among organizational participants within two industries (fine arts museums and California wineries) are surfaced and compared. A cognitive definition of culture and a modified ethnographic methodology frame the inquiry. The research process balances the requirements of the inductive method with the logistics of doing research in settings as broad in scope as “industry” and into issues as amorphous as “culture in modern organizations.” This process involves the selection and in-depth interviewing of 96 informants in 12 organizations, representing a cross-section of members of these two industries. The distinct assumption sets that surface for each industry demonstrate, among other things, substantial differences in conceptualizations of membership, competition, the origins of “truth,” the purpose of work, and the nature of work relationships. The findings suggest that the current narrow focus in research on industry-based cognitive constructs can be productively broadened to include a fuller range of cultural elements and a wider set of industry participants. The surfacing of distinct industry mindsets reinforces the emerging belief that a multiplicity of dynamic, shared mindsets exist within an organization's environment. A new cognitive lens—that of industry—is offered, through which scholars and managers alike can view behavior in organizational settings.
Consensus, Diversity, and Learning in Organizations
Authors: Fiol C. Marlene
Published: October 2008

Organizational learning, like individual learning, involves the development of new and diverse interpretations of events and situations. Unlike individual learning, however, collective learning also involves developing enough consensus around those diverse interpretations for organized action to result. Traditional measures of organizational consensus are unable to capture the multiplex nature of collective agreement that encompasses both unity and diversity. Traditional wisdom thus suggests that to achieve unity in groups, one must sacrifice diversity.

This study breaks the notion of consensus into two component parts: consensus around interpretations embedded in the content and in the framing of communications. Communicated content consists of the labels people use to convey their “pictures” of reality, e.g., pictures of issues as threats or as opportunities. The framing of communications refers to the form people use to construct a picture, regardless of its content, e.g., rigid or flexible perceptions of an issue. People may hold very different pictures of reality and still agree on the way they frame them. It is thus possible for groups to simultaneously agree and disagree, an essential component of collective learning.

Simultaneous agreement and disagreement is especially important in corporate innovative efforts. Successful corporate innovation requires that decision makers develop a collective understanding that incorporates the new and the different. This paper describes the changing pictures and frames communicated in a new-venture development process in a large financial institution over a two-year period. Several linguistic analyses show how the venture team members developed unified ways of framing their arguments, while at the same time maintaining diversity through differences in the content of team members' interpretations. The results reveal one way that organizations manage to combine the unity and diversity needed for collective learning. The managerial implications present a challenge for anyone wishing to promote learning as a community: managers must actively encourage the development of different and conflicting views of what is thought to be true, while striving for a shared framing of the issues that is broad enough to encompass those differences.
Organizational Niches and the Dynamics of Organizational Founding
Authors: Baum Joel A. C. , Singh Jitendra V.
Published: October 2008

In this paper we argue that patterns of organizational niche overlap and nonoverlap influence the organizational niches in which entrepreneurs create organizations. Organizational niches characterize the different resource requirements and productive capacities of individual organizations in a population. Depending on which organizational niches are targeted, entrepreneurs will face different competitive landscapes. For a population of day care centers (DCCs), we measure organizational niches and compute organizational niche overlaps in terms of the ages of children they are licensed to enroll. Using weights based on organizational niche overlaps, we disaggregate population density (i.e., the number of DCCs) into overlap density and nonoverlap density to measure the potential for competition and cooperation among DCCs. The overlap density of an organizational niche is equal to population density weighted by the overlaps of the focal organizational niche with all other organizational niches. Conversely, non-overlap density is equal to population density weighted by the absence of overlaps of a focal organizational niche with all other organizational niches. We hypothesize that overlap density will be negatively related to the founding rate. We expect entrepreneurs will be much less likely to target or be capable of founding organizations in crowded parts of the resource space than parts that are less densely populated. We also hypothesize that nonoverlap density will be positively related to the founding rate. This is because differentiated DCCs do not compete directly for resources, and, at the same time, their presence can have facilitative influences through complementary demand enhancement and widening social acceptance of the organization form. Supporting these predictions, a dynamic analysis showed that overlap density had a competitive effect on the founding rate, while nonoverlap density had a positive effect. Parallel effects were obtained when overlap and nonoverlap densities were further disaggregated on the basis of geographic proximity into local and diffuse components. Overall, our findings are consistent with earlier research on organizational founding at the population level, but reveal intrapopulation patterns of mutualism and competition that influence the likelihood of organizations being established in different organizational niches. The key result of this study, that location in a multidimensional resource space, together with the distribution of other competitors and noncompetitors, has a significant impact on founding probabilities serves to illuminate some of the underlying dynamics of competition and mutualism that impact strategic and entrepreneurial processes.
Electronic Mail as the Medium of Managerial Choice
Authors: Markus M. Lynne
Published: October 2008

As new technologies that support managerial communication become widely used, the question of how and why managers, especially senior managers, use them increases in importance. This paper examines how and why managers use electronic mail. Today, one of the more influential theories of media choice in organization and information science is information richness theory, which has stimulated much empirical research on media selection and has clear implications for how managers should use media. Despite numerous modifications and elaborations, information richness theory remains an individual-level rational choice explanation of behavior, and as such it differs fundamentally from theories that emphasize the social context of managers' communication and media choice behavior. While the weight of informed opinion seems to be shifting toward social theories of media selection and use, much empirical research continues to test individual-level rational choice models.

A multi-method investigation was designed to assess the power of information richness theory, relative to alternative social theories, to explain and predict managers' use of email. Managers were found to perceive various media in ways that were relatively consistent with information richness theory, but to use email more and differently than the theory predicted. In particular, effective senior managers were found to use email heavily and even for equivocal communications tasks. These results cannot be explained by information richness theory or by simple modifications of the theory. Rather, they suggest that the adoption, use, and consequences of media in organizations can be powerfully shaped by social processes such as sponsorship, socialization, and social control, which require social perspectives to understand them. These processes can result in differences across organizations and other social units in the patterns of using traditional media like the telephone, but such differences are even more likely for new media, like electronic mail.
Organizational Routines Are Stored as Procedural Memory: Evidence from a Laboratory Study
Authors: Cohen Michael D. , Bacdayan Paul
Published: October 2008

Organizational routines—multi-actor, interlocking, reciprocally-triggered sequences of actions—are a major source of the reliability and speed of organizational performance. Without routines, organizations would lose efficiency as structures for collective action. But these frequently repeated action sequences can also occasionally give rise to serious suboptimality, hampering performance when they are automatically transferred onto inappropriate situations.

While the knowledgeable design and redesign of routines presents a likely lever for those wishing to enhance organizational performance, the lever remains difficult to grasp because routines are hard to observe, analyze, and describe. This paper argues that new work in psychology on “procedural” memory may help explain how routines arise, stabilize and change. Procedural memory has close links to notions of individual skill and habit. It is memory for how things are done that is relatively automatic and inarticulate, and it encompasses both cognitive and motor activities.

We report an experiment in which paired subjects developed interlocked task performance patterns that display the chief characteristics of organizational routines. We show evidence from their behavior supporting the claim that individuals store their components of organizational routines in procedural memory. If routines are stored as distributed procedural memories, this may be the source of distinctive properties reported by observers of organizational routines. The paper concludes with implications for both research and practice.
Guest Editorial
Authors: Child John
Published: October 2008

It was with great pleasure and a sense of privilege that I received the invitation from Arie Lewin to contribute the guest editorial to this special issue of Organization Science. I was appointed Editor-in-Chief of Organization Studies in January 1992, since when Arie and I have kept in close touch. We are keenly aware of the different yet complementary traditions which stand behind the two journals, and which are manifest in their origins and their titles. We are therefore seeking ways of sharing information and improving mutual communication for the benefit of our readers. The occasional guest editorial is one such initiative, and we are also arranging for the exchange of advertisements and information on forthcoming articles. On this particular occasion, I shall say something about the origins and purpose of Organization Studies and then offer my perceptions of the contrast between the European and North American scenes.
Chaos Theory and Organization
Authors: Thiétart R. A. , Forgues B.
Published: October 2008

Many authors have stressed the existence of continuous processes of convergence and divergence, stability and instability, evolution and revolution in every organization. This article argues that these processes are embedded in organizational characteristics and in the way organizations are managed. Organizations are presented as nonlinear dynamic systems subject to forces of stability and forces of instability which push them toward chaos. When in a chaotic domain, organizations are likely to exhibit the qualitative properties of chaotic systems. Several of these properties—sensitivity to initial conditions, discreteness of change, attraction to specific configurations, structural invariance at different scales and irreversibility—are used to establish six propositions. First, because of the coupling of counteracting forces, organizations are potentially chaotic. Second, the path from organizational stability to chaos follows a discrete process of change. Third, when the organization is in the chaotic domain, small changes can have big consequences that cannot be predicted in the long term. Fourth, from chaos, new stabilities emerge—the strange attractors—which are assimilated to organizational configurations. Fifth, similar patterns should be found at different scales. Finally, during one single organizational life span or between two different organizations similar actions should never lead to the same result.
Organizational Environments and Organizational Discourse: Bureaucracy between Two Worlds
Authors: Meyer Heinz-Dieter
Published: October 2008

The controversy around Weber's theory of bureaucracy that occupied post-war American organization theorists serves as a backdrop to consider differences in the institutional and cultural environments of American and continental European, notably German, organizations. I suggest that formal organizations in the United States emerged under institutional and cultural conditions sufficiently different from those Weber witnessed as to account for the differences in the European and American organizational discourses. European institutional-cultural conditions favored a centralized, hierarchical, obedience-based organizational form with little uncertainty tolerance emphasizing loyalty. In the US, by contrast, the primacy of the large business organization which operated in volatile markets under the cultural imperative of equality favored flatter, less hierarchical, and more nearly decomposable organizations in which compliance was based on a temporary contract. Indifference vis-à-vis the national and cultural particulars of formal organizations may have led early organization research to prematurely close off a potentially fruitful line of inquiry in the field of comparative organization.
The Dynamics of Organizational Development and Change: How the Past Shapes the Present and Constrains the Future
Authors: Kimberly John R. , Bouchikhi Hamid
Published: October 2008

Organization theory is, as the title of this special issue suggests, at a crossroads. At a time when the world of and around organizations is changing very fast, and when the need to invent new approaches to organizations and their management is apparent, organization theory is challenged either to encompass these changes and contribute to their elucidation or be viewed as a quaint, but largely irrelevant, enterprise. This paper is one response to the challenge defined above. In it, we seek to analyze how and why one particular organization, characterized by a highly unorthodox management approach and strong performance, developed as it did. The innovative approach to management coupled with high performance is central to the question of relevance.
Relational Aspects of Computer-Mediated Communication: Experimental Observations over Time
Authors: Walther Joseph B.
Published: October 2008

Previous research on the interpersonal effects of computer-mediated communication (CMC) reveals inconsistencies. In some cases CMC has been found to be impersonal, task-oriented, and hostile. Other reports show warm personal relations, and still others show gradual adjustments in interpersonal relations over time. The past research results are also difficult to compare, as their research methods reveal inconsistent approaches. These inconsistencies include the treatment of time limits on group development, the neglect of nonverbal behavior in face-to-face, comparison groups, and other measurement issues. Each of these factors may obscure our understanding of the way CMC partners get to know and come to relate to each other through CMC. The present study attempts to address some of these concerns. This study explored the effects of computer conferencing on the interpersonal messages with which people define their relationships, known as relational communication. Observers rated the relational communication from transcripts of CMC conversations or from videotapes of face-to-face three-person groups who had worked in several sessions. Analyses showed that CMC groups achieved more positive levels on several dimensions of interpersonal communication than did face-to-face groups. On other dimensions, no differences between conditions were found. In no case did CMC groups express less intimacy or more task-orientation than face-to-face groups. Implications are drawn suggesting that under certain conditions, CMC may promote positive relational effects in ways that previous theories have not considered, and in some ways superior to more traditional media.
Crossroads Writing Organizational Tales: Four Authors and Their Stories About Culture. Introduction
Authors: Yanow Dvora
Published: October 2008

The title of this collection of short essays derives from Tales of the Field (Van Maanen: Tales of the Field: On Writing Ethnography. Chicago University Press, Chicago, IL). In it, John Van Maanen argues that researchers’ writings are “tales”—that is, constructions—rather than objective reports or “mirrors,” to use Richard Rorty’s (Rorty, R. 1979. Philosophy and the Mirror of Nature. Princeton University Press, Princeton, NJ.) term, of the external social world. Van Maanen writes there about ethnographies, but the point holds for social scientific (and scientific) writing in general. A text-used here in the sense of “the subject matter of a discourse” and not “textbook”—ethnographic or otherwise, is a means of (re)presentation.
The Style and Structure of Cultures in Organizations: Three Perspectives
Authors: Martin Joanne
Published: October 2008

Organizational culture is a topic that has brought to the surface fundamental theoretical, methodological, epistemological, and political disagreements. Such disagreements could be fruitful for this topic area and for the field of organizational studies, more broadly defined. Unfortunately, all too often, disagreements among cultural researchers take the form of a debate about which theory or method is the “one best way”: an open or unspoken struggle for intellectual dominance. When opposing points of view clash openly, assumptions are laid bare and declared unwarranted or foolish and alternate viewpoints are dismissed as misguided, empirically unfounded, or irrelevant to more important questions. In other kinds of papers, only a careful reading between the lines reveals the silencing of opposing points of view, as assumptions remain unstated or unchallenged and opposing points of view are omitted, marginalized in a footnote or an aside, or declared outside the paper’s focus. If culture were a topic area where quantitative methods were used by all, and if these disagreements were purely theoretical, a classic experiment or comprehensive archival study might be able to prove, conclusively, that a particular argument is false. However, because so much culture research is qualitative, such definitive empirical answers are unlikely, and so the culture debates become even less tolerant of opposing views.
Writing Organizational Tales: Reflections on Three Books on Organizational Culture
Authors: Smircich Linda
Published: October 2008

I must confess that I’m an organizational culture dropout. It’s been a while since I felt much interest in reading about organizational culture. But Dvora Yanow had framed my task in an intriguing way. She asked me to comment on these three organizational culture books by Trice and Beyer, Kunda, and Martin respectively, as writings that tell stories about organizations and those who research them. Already inherent in this framing is a view that repositions the researcher from scientist to narrator. This view understands the researcher, not as a well-placed observer-scribe using language to mirror the organizational reality he or she witnesses, but as someone already embedded in a language community that shapes what can be said as knowledge.
Opening up Decision Making: The View from the Black Stool
Authors: Langley Ann , Mintzberg Henry , Pitcher Patricia , Posada Elizabeth , Saint-Macary Jan
Published: October 2008

Set on its current course thirty years ago by Herbert Simon’s notions of bounded rationality and sequential stages, the research literature of organizational decision making is claimed in this paper to have suffered from three major limitations labeled reification, dehumanization, and isolation. In particular, it has been stuck along a continuum between the cerebral rationality of the stage theories at one end and the apparent irrationality of the theory of organized anarchies at the other. This paper seeks to open up decision making in three respects. First, the concept of “decision” is opened up to the ambiguities that surround the relationship between commitment and action. Second, the decision maker is opened up to history and experience, to affect and inspiration, and especially to the critical role of insight in transcending the bounds of cerebral rationality. Third, the process of decision making is opened up to a host of dynamic linkages, so that isolated traces of single decisions come to be seen as interwoven networks of issues. The paper concludes with a plea to open up research itself to the development of richer theory on these important processes.
Crossroads Understanding Language Games
Authors: Mauws Michael K. , Phillips Nelson
Published: October 2008

In this essay, Mauws and Phillips argue that the current usage of the language game concept has been a very weak version. They assert that, as originally presented by Wittgenstein, it is a considerably more nuanced and powerful idea than has been previously presented in the organizational literature. They draw from Wittgenstein, from arguments outlined in the 1992 debate in Organization Science and from their own perspective on the meaning of language games to present a thoughtful, scholarly and very lucid treatment of the subject. They demonstrate the usefulness of paying serious attention to original sources when translating an idea from one arena to another.
Electronic Communication and Changing Organizational Forms
Authors: Fulk Janet , DeSanctis Gerardine
Published: October 2008

We introduce this Special Issue by providing an overview of the interplay between communication technology and various dimensions of new organizational forms. We consider the major factors motivating dramatic change within and between organizations today, and describe key dimensions of intraorganizational and interorganizational forms that are linked to electronic communication technologies: vertical control, horizontal coordination, size of organization and constituent units, new types of coupling, core product, communication cultures, ownership and control, interorganizational coupling, strategic alliances, and interstitial linking. Our purpose is to sample the changes attendant upon advances in electronic communication and organizational forms, with the goal of energizing future research. Our overview uncovers possibilities for new avenues of study within the technology-organization relationship and reveals the important contributions made by the articles in this Special Issue.
Communication across Boundaries: Work, Structure, and Use of Communication Technologies in a Large Organization
Authors: Hinds Pamela , Kiesler Sara
Published: October 2008

Recent popular and theoretical literature emphasizes the significance of communication technology for collaboration and information sharing across organizational boundaries. We hypothesize that due to the collaborative nature of their work and the way they are organized in work groups, technical employees, as compared with administrative employees, will communicate laterally, and will use the telephone and email for this purpose. We studied technical and administrative employees in seven departments of a large telecommunications firm. From logs of communication over two days, we examined vertical and lateral communication inside and outside the chain of command and department, and the use of telephone, email, and voice mail for this communication. Technical employees did have more lateral communication than administrators did, but all lateral communication (not just that of technical employees) tended to be by telephone. Over 50% of employees’ communication was extradepartmental; extradepartmental communication, like lateral communication, tended to be by telephone. When employees used asynchronous technology, technical employees used email whereas administrators, especially those at high levels, used voice. Differential boundary-crossing by technical and administrative employees could be explained in part by the flatter structure of the technical work groups. Our results are consistent with Powell (Powell, W. W. 1990. Neither market nor hierarchy: Network forms of organization. Res. Organ. Behavior 12295–336.), Barley (Barley, S. 1994. The turn to a horizontal division of labor: On the occupationalization of firms and the technization of work. National Center for the Educational Quality of the Workforce, University of Pennsylvania, available from author.) and others who have argued that the rise of technical work and the horizontal organization of technical workers increases collaboration and nonhierarchical communication. Organizations can encourage communication flows across organizational boundaries by strengthening horizontal structures (for technical workers, especially) and supporting old and new technology use by all employees.
Hardwiring Weak Ties: Interorganizational Computer-Mediated Communication, Occupational Communities, and Organizational Change
Authors: Pickering Jeanne M. , King John Leslie
Published: October 2008

Interorganizational computer-mediated communication (ICMC) is expanding rapidly through the Internet and other elements of infrastructure. ICMC can be expected to evolve into the mainstream of existing communications infrastructure, but this evolution is not occurring uniformly across organizations. ICMC infrastructure appears to be most strongly supported, at least in this early stage, among organizations dependent on the maintenance of external weak social ties among employees who are members of professional, dispersed occupational communities. This can be seen in the experience of research-oriented organizations. Two strong forces—the professionalism of key occupational communities seeking autonomy, and a persistent desire by organizations to reduce fixed costs and organizational size—are posited as encouraging growth of ICMC infrastructure. Such growth might provide an important “bootstrapping mechanism” of long-predicted shifts from hierarchical to market forms of organization, at least in professionalized sectors of the economy.
Incentives and Computing Systems for Team-Based Organizations
Authors: Barua Anitesh , Lee C.-H. Sophie , Whinston Andrew B.
Published: October 2008

Facing increasingly complex tasks involving coordination, communication and interactions among multiple decision makers, organizations are undergoing a transition, experimenting with new forms such as the team-based structure, and investing heavily in network-based computing to support team activities. We take the position that for the new form to succeed, and for computing investments to pay off, the organizational designer must consider complementarity effects between incentives, IS design, and organizational and task characteristics. Since these factors impact group performance through complex interactions, a change in one factor necessitates changes in others. We develop a stylized, analytical model of group/team interactions involving computing support, and study the impact of various design factors and their interactions on group productivity. Key research issues include the choice of a team/group reward structure, the impact of team composition and computing system features on the overall payoff, incentives for monitoring peers and their effect on group output, the time allocation of group members between peer monitoring and task effort, and the effect of task interdependence on monitoring incentives. The theoretical model provides a set of propositions showing how interactions between the chosen reward system, system design features and organizational factors determine members’ behavior (e.g., the extent of free riding and shirking) and subsequently the organizational payoff. These results provide broad qualitative implications for designing incentive schemes and information systems for appropriating maximum organizational value in team-based environments.
Grammatical Models of Organizational Processes
Authors: Pentland Brian T.
Published: October 2008

Grammar has been used metaphorically to describe organizational processes, but the metaphor has never been systematically developed so that it can be applied in empirical research. This paper develops the grammatical metaphor into a rigorous model for describing and theorizing about organizational work processes, defined here as sequences of actions that occur in the context of enabling and constraining structures. A grammatical model starts with a lexicon of elementary actions (called moves) and specifies the ways in which they can be combined to create a process. Unlike other sequential data analysis techniques, grammatical models provide a natural way of describing the layering and nesting of actions that typifies organizational processes. The example of a simple retail sales transaction is used to illustrate the underlying concepts. The paper also examines some methodological considerations involved in using process grammars and proposes an agenda for research, including: (1) creating descriptive taxonomies of organizational processes; (2) creating disconfirmable theories about the relationship between processes and the structures that enable and constrain them; (3) explaining the distribution of observed processes and predicting new processes that have not yet been observed; and (4) designing new organizational processes.