Cooling Temps, Hot Topics in the September-October issue of Organization Science
The Fall Issue of Organization Science
Dear Friends,
Thanks for checking out the September-October (well, October) issue of So Here's the Idea, the official Substack of Organization Science!
The September-October issue of Organization Science just landed last week, and we're excited to share these sixteen outstanding papers with you! The papers cover various topics, from governance to theories of the firm to collaboration with AI and much more!
Also, hot off the press are the ten most recent Articles in Advance at the journal.
Winter Conference Deadline Extended!
For those of you who haven’t submitted yet to the Winter Conference, we’ve decided to allow submissions through October 6. We’ve gotten some requests from people who are in the middle of the SMS Conference flurry so we’re giving a couple of days after that conference ends. SMS attendance not required!
Finally, you’ll find the formal process flow chart for the Organization Science review process. You’ll see why we put this part last. Boring!
As always, we appreciate your feedback and contributions. Please share any resources or ideas with our community by contacting us; we’ll try to include them in our next issue.
Please share our newsletter with colleagues, students, and friends!
Best wishes,
The OS Substack Team
Hot off the press
Here are the 10 most recent Articles in Advance at Organization Science
License to Layoff? Unemployment Insurance and the Moral Cost of Layoffs by Dongil Daniel Keum, Stephan Meier
Hybrid Administrative Interfaces: Authority Delegation and Reversion in Strategic Alliances by Marvin Hanisch, Jeffrey J. Reuer, Carolin Haeussler, Shivaram V. Devarakonda
Making Time for Social Innovation: How to Interweave Clock Time and Event Time in Open Social Innovation to Nurture Idea Generation and Social Impact by Anne-Laure Fayard
Uncertainty and Immigrant Entrepreneurship: Evidence from Brexit by Camilo Acosta, Astrid Marinoni
Inverted Apprenticeship: How Senior Occupational Members Develop Practical Expertise and Preserve Their Position When New Technologies Arrive by Matthew Beane, Callen Anthony
How Entrepreneurs Achieve Purpose Beyond Profit: The Case of Women Entrepreneurs in Nigeria By Harry G. Barkema, Uta K. Bindl and Lamees Tanveer
Self-Disclosure and Respect: Understanding the Engagement of Value Minorities by Tracy L. Dumas, Sarah P. Doyle, Robert B. Lount, Jr.
Inspiring, Yet Tiring: How Leader Emotional Complexity Shapes Follower Creativity by Jakob Stollberger, Yves Guillaume, Daan van Knippenberg
Resource Allocation Capability and Routines in Multibusiness Firms by Constance E. Helfat, Catherine A. Maritan
On Habit and Organizing: A Transactional Perspective Relating Firms, Consumers, and Social Institutions by Moshe Farjoun and Nudrat Mahmood
September-October Issue
The Dual Function of Organizational Structure: Aggregating and Shaping Individuals' Votes by Henning Piezunka and Oliver Schilke
When organizations make strategic decisions, they often structure the decision-making process by setting a voting threshold—i.e., how many people on a committee need to say “yes.” The article shows that this threshold does not only aggregate but also shapes individual votes, with the counterintuitive outcome that lower thresholds increase people’s tendency to vote yes.
The Firm as a Subsociety: Purpose, Justice, and the Theory of the Firm by Claudine Gartenberg and Todd Zenger
Research in the “theory of the firm” tradition has often characterized firms as subeconomies in which economic exchange is shaped by a central authority. This paper proposes a wider view of firms as subsocieties, in which authority is also responsible for establishing principles that shape cooperation among members. This expanded role has implications both for internal governance and for the boundary itself: When considering boundary changes, leaders must weigh both the economic and the social consequences of their decisions.
Work Un(Interrupted): How Non-territorial Space Shapes Worker Control over Social Interaction by Leroy Gonsalves
This mixed-methods field study examined how the adoption of non-territorial office space shaped workers’ experience of social interaction. Whereas the traditional office rendered workers constantly accessible to others, the non-territorial office altered information about workers’ location and availability preferences, enabling new hiding and signaling strategies. This led to greater reliance on virtual or asynchronous communication technologies, and less unwanted interruption.
A Rising Tide Lifts All Boats: The Effects of Common Ownership on Corporate Social Responsibility by Mark R. DesJardine, Jody Grewal, and Kala Viswanathan
Want to profit from a company’s ESG activities? Invest in its peers. Compared to investors that own only a single firm in an industry, common owners profit far more from a company’s ESG activities because they enjoy the "spillover" benefits those activities have on peer companies.
Anchoring on Historical Round Number Reference Points: Evidence from Durable Goods Resale Prices by Scott S. Wiltermuth, Timothy Gubler, and Lamar Pierce*
The anchoring effect of durable goods’ prior sales prices on subsequent valuations is discontinuous at psychologically-salient round number reference points (e.g., $10,000 increments) because these numbers create qualitative differences in how people perceive values below them vs. values at/above them. Buyers who pay a price just below a round number therefore may sacrifice money because they receive disproportionately less when reselling the good.
*This paper was submitted, revised, and accepted before the appointment of Lamar Pierce as Editor-in-Chief.
The Agency to Implement Voice: How Target Hierarchical Position and Competence Changes the Relationship between Voice and Individual Performance by Ethan R. Burris, Elizabeth J. McClean, Jim R. Detert, Tim J. Quigley
Our research offers new theory to articulate and illustrate the conditions under which employee voice – employees speaking up with improvement-oriented ideas – can translate into performance improvements. Speaking up with improvement-oriented ideas can sometimes be worth it, but voicing these suggestions can also instead fall on deaf ears. In a study of 227 sales employees from an insurance company and a panel of 362 workers and their bosses and peers, we find that as employees speak up to targets who have more power (they have the authority to devote resources to take action) and are more competent (they have the ability to execute action taken successfully), then employees’ own performance improves.
Symbolic Shareholder Democracy: Towards a Behavioral Understanding of the Role of Shareholder Voting in CEO Dismissals by Alina G. Andrei, J. (Hans) van Oosterhout, Steve Sauerwald
We investigate the effect of expressive shareholder dissent voting, in which shareholders use their votes symbolically to express their discontent with management, on subsequent chief executive officer (CEO) dismissals. Using the routine but highly symbolic executive board discharge proposal voted on at the annual shareholder meetings of German firms, we argue that the board of directors understands these votes as a “vote of confidence in management” that challenges the CEO’s mandate to lead the firm. Contrary to prevailing agency theoretical expectations, we do not find that independent chairs are more responsive to expressive voting dissent, nor that this relationship is strengthened by the degree of minority institutional investor ownership of the firm. Consistent with the symbolic perspective on shareholder voting that we seek to develop, however, we find that family chairs are more likely to lead the board to dismiss the CEO due to the intrinsic disvalue they incur from symbolic leadership legitimacy challenges in their firms, and that the positive effect of having a family chair on the dissent induced chance of CEO dismissal is strengthened by the level of family ownership in the firm.
"Collaborating" with AI: Taking a System View to Explore the Future of Work by Callen Anthony, Beth A. Bechky, Anne-Laure Fayard
To study AI and collaboration, scholars need to move beyond hyped-up claims by taking a system view – namely, studying the multiple actors involved in AI’s construction, implementation, and use. Uncovering the hidden and unintended consequences of AI for the future of work requires relational ethnography with creative twists to traditional approaches.
Moral Foundations, Himpathy, and Punishment Following Organizational Sexual Misconduct Allegations by Samantha J. Dodson, Rachael D. Goodwin, Jesse Graham and Kristina A. Diekmann
We find that third parties – or people like you and me who watched the #MeToo Movement unfold – evaluated individuals involved in #MeToo claims based on their moral values. In other words, certain moral concerns can bias our emotional responses, credibility judgments, and motivations to resolve injustice either for the accused or the accuser.
Cultural Roots of Entrepreneurship: Evidence from Second-Generation Immigrants by Johannes Kleinhempel, Mariko J. Klasing and Sjoerd Beugelsdijk
We study the role of national culture in entrepreneurship by analyzing the employment choices of second-generation immigrants and relating them to the culture in their parents' country of origin. By comparing individuals residing in the same location, we can isolate the role of culture from that of other contextual factors. We find that national culture has a strong effect on entrepreneurship, suggesting that cultural imprints are durable, portable, and intergenerationally transmitted, and that the intergenerational transmission of culture increases in parenting intensity.
Clean Up Your Theory! Invest in Theoretical Clarity and Consistency for Higher Impact Research by Andrew von Nordenflycht
A lot of us write sloppy theory sections that undermine our empirical work! This essay talks about how we are theoretically sloppy, why we are sloppy, and how we can tighten up.
Uniting Through Difference: Rich Cultural-Identity Expression as a Conduit to Inclusion by Rachel D. Arnett
Cultural differences are often assumed to be a source of stereotypes and division. In contrast to this view, the present paper demonstrates that when cultural minority employees open up about their racial, ethnic, and national identities in rich and meaningful ways, it leads to more – not less – inclusive behavior from their colleagues. This research therefore illuminates how cultural minority employees can highlight their authentic selves and stand up for social change in a manner that elevates – rather than endangers – their careers.
When (Non)Differences Make a Difference: The Roles of Demographic Diversity and Ideological Homogeneity in Overcoming Ideologically Biased Decision-Making by Brittany C. Solomon, Matthew E. K. Hall
Although research has shown that decision makers often rely on political biases, that work has not addressed when and why decision-making groups are able to overcome these biases—a pervasive concern in today’s politically polarized social milieu. Using a natural experiment of justices on the U.S. Courts of Appeals, our results indicate that demographic diversity seems to disrupt ideologically biased thought processing only when members of demographically diverse groups share their ideological predispositions, which disrupts ideologically biased decision-making for conservative (versus liberal) groups.
Theorizing Organizational Benevolence by ‘Alim J. Beveridge, Markus A. Höllerer
We extend research on stakeholder orientation by introducing and conceptualizing “organizational benevolence”—a notion that refers to a firm’s inclination to pursue the welfare of an external stakeholder group as an end in itself manifested in a behavioral tendency in which benefiting the “other” is the ultimate goal of action. Employing a microfoundational approach, we propose a theoretical framework and a process model that explain how firms develop such a posture and how it eventually can become an enduring feature of these organizations. We build our framework on the core notion of collective commitment to the well-being of an external constituency by elaborating on the processes through which such collective commitment is mobilized, translated into collective intention, and stabilized in a behavioral tendency. Our article develops several propositions highlighting the crucial roles that emotionality and rhetoric play in these processes, alongside an enabling sociocognitive infrastructure.
The Crisis in Local Newspapers and Organizational Wrongdoing: The Role of Community Social Connectedness by Tony Jaehyun Choi and Mike Valente
Drawing on institutional anomie theory, our analysis of U.S. metropolitan areas demonstrates that local newspaper scarcity, which results from the pervasive journalism crisis, induces a larger scale of internal organizational wrongdoing. However, it is also found that because of functional similarity, community social connectedness compensates for the scarcity of local newspapers.
When Do Boards of Directors Contribute to Shareholder Value in Firms Targeted for Acquisition? A Group Information-Processing Perspective by Stevo Pavićević, Jerayr (John) Haleblian, Thomas Keil
In firms targeted for acquisition, boards of directors that meet regularly to assess acquisition-related information may assist executives in negotiating better deals. However, this holds true only under specific conditions: (a) when non-overboarded, female, and acquisition-experienced directors serve on these boards, enhancing their capacity to process acquisition-related information effectively; and (b) when the acquisition is complex, placing substantial information-processing demands on target firms during deal negotiations.
PDW In Your Inbox
The Review Process Flow Chart
Lamar thinks that his job in a big factory building after college makes him an operations expert. Consequently, he thought it would be cool to build a formal process flow chart to explain all the steps in the review process at Organization Science. After all, we did change this process in January to streamline it and put less decision power in the hands of the Editor-in-Chief. The chart is pretty self-explanatory but lets everyone understand precisely how papers go from submission to final decision under a variety of conditions. After viewing this lovely piece of PowerPoint magic, you will better understand why Lamar was put in charge of overhead stowage compartments, and not anything involving actual flightworthiness.