The concept of aversive racism has had a significant impact on theory, research, and practice devoted to better understanding bias, discrimination, and persistent disparities based on social identity group such as race, gender, social class, and so on. Originally developed to better explain subtle forms of bias toward racial and minoritized groups, this concept has been extended to understand the impact of disparities in a range of diverse settings, such as intergroup relations, health outcomes, fairness in employment setting, intergroup conflict, educational outcomes, racial bias in policing, experiences of stress and mental health issues, and persistent economic disparities. A core facet of the aversive framework paradigm is that because of human biases that are deeply rooted within a historical context and reinforced by ongoing societal ideologies, unintentional and subtle forms of discrimination emerge and persist. Given that these subtle forms of bias and discrimination exist within otherwise well-intentioned individuals, strategies to eliminate them require understanding the complexity of the aversive racism phenomenon in order to develop effective social interventions.
This article reviews the foundation, research, and impact of this important body of work. In addition, the concept of aversive racism is discussed in connection to emerging research on microaggressions and unconscious (implicit) bias in order to create a more integrated framework that can shape future research and applications. Lastly, practical implications for organizations and future directions are explored, such as using social identity as a theoretical lens, including global perspectives on intergroup bias and leveraging emerging work on intersectionality, as useful perspectives to extend the aversive racism framework. Setting a future agenda for research and practice related to aversive racism is key to greater understanding of how to reduce intergroup bias and discrimination through interventions that cut across traditional academic and discipline boundaries as one approach to create meaningful and long-lasting social impact.
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Article
Aversive Racism: Foundations, Impact, and Future Directions
Audrey Murrell
Article
Bayesian Statistics in Management Research: Theory, Applications, and Opportunities
Tyson B. Mackey and Jeffrey P. Dotson
Bayesian statistics deserve a more prominent place in strategic management methodology. Bayesian methodology shines in its ability to both model heterogeneity and simultaneously model endogenously chosen strategies and heterogeneity in the effect of a strategy on firm-level outcomes. Moreover, within the broader class of Bayesian methods, some methodologies present solutions to a pernicious problem—that of essential heterogeneity, in which typical methods of accounting for endogenously chosen strategies, e.g., instrumental variables, treatment effects models, or random-coefficient models, fail when the effects of strategies on outcomes are heterogeneous across firms. Research about Bayesian inference, including discussions of the theoretical underpinnings of Bayesian statistics and how to implement an empirical workflow using Bayesian statistics, can be useful for building bespoke models to fit theoretical questions pertaining to management research.
Article
Behavioral Decision Making and Game Theory Methods
Georgios Christopoulos
Behavioral decision making and game theory (BDMGT) is the umbrella term for a set of methods aimed at recording the choices and eliciting the decision preferences of individuals (organizational agents like managers, employees, entrepreneurs, investors, or consumers). BDMGT comprises a set of well-defined decision problems that, in contrast to surveys or questionnaires that rely on self-assessment, evaluate actual behavioral choices with well-defined outcomes and choice parameters. Additionally, in contrast to idealized models, BDMGT focuses on actual decision-making processes. BDMGT allows for dynamic and complex decision scenarios that are nevertheless computationally tractable and have lower linguistic demands (thus making inter-group and cross-cultural comparisons easier).
BDMGT decision problems can be broadly categorized as either individual (i.e., where the agent acts against nature or luck, and all outcomes return to the agent) or social (i.e., where [at least one] another agent—“the partner”—is involved). Social decisions can be further defined as either non-strategic (i.e., where the partner makes no decisions, but some of the outcomes can be returned to them) or strategic (i.e., where the partner makes decisions that can affect the final outcomes returned to the agent). Examples of generic research questions for individual decision tasks include how risk influences decisions (i.e., measuring risk preferences) or (for social decision tasks) how agents interact with each other (i.e., how they allocate resources, what they consider fair, how they build trust, or how they coordinate to achieve common strategic goals).
The present entry focuses on the methodological aspects of BDMGT. There are major methodological considerations and common pitfalls associated with BDMGT that can bias results and their interpretation, including incentives and how participants should be paid, anonymity, double-blinding (and when this is not enough), social desirability, how the “partner” participant is explained, or what issues may arise with repeated decisions or trials. The field has also seen the introduction of newer but well-established developments in the field, such as computerized testing, decision neuroscience, and augmented and virtual reality.
Article
Blame: Stakeholder Judgments That Impact Organizations and Entrepreneurs
Varkey Titus and Izuchukwu Mbaraonye
Blame is a feature of everyday life, whether or not that blame is directed toward an individual for a willful act of moral transgression, an entrepreneur for taking reckless action that puts the venture and its employees at risk, or a company for the violation of some social norm. Blame identifies morally wrong behavior and has the power to pressure individuals to adhere to a set of norms. More broadly, blame is worthy of scholarly consideration because it is a reality for organizations and the individuals who lead them.
Blame is multifaceted because it entails psychological, social, and legal issues. Historically, psychological theories of blame emphasized the rational and prescriptive—how blame attribution processes ought to occur to produce an accurate blame attribution, for example. Over time, psychological theories started to incorporate nonrational elements—such as how socially attractive the potentially blameworthy is, whether the blameworthy engage in “positive” or “negative” actions that are unrelated to the blameworthy act, and so forth. Blame becomes more complicated when it moves from a specific individual (e.g., an entrepreneur) to an aggregate group (a venture) or an abstract entity (a corporation). The aggregation of blame creates an apportionment problem in that it is unclear who within a group ought to be blamed. This complication is further illustrated in the court of law. For instance, courts in the United States have struggled to consistently judge cases of corporate criminal liability due, in part, to the difficulty of knowing how to assign blame to an abstract entity. Part of the challenge relates to establishing a criminal “state of mind” to a corporation, and the broader question whether a corporation can even have such a state of mind (or if that state of mind resides in its leaders, employees, etc.).
Management research on blame is limited. Existing work examines blames-shifting tactics, such as scapegoating, wherein organizations place blame on specific organizational actors who may or may not have any direct connection to the blameworthy event. Importantly, blame attributions can flow both ways: employees may sometimes blame the broader organization, despite the employees’ involvement in the blameworthy act.
Given the complexities of blame, entrepreneurs face unique blame-related challenges at different points of their venture’s life cycle. At early stages of the life cycle, blameworthy acts are unlikely to have significant societal impact, and attributions are relatively simple due to the minimal number of actors involved in the venture. As the venture grows, the impact of a blameworthy act grows in magnitude, as does the difficulty of accurately apportioning blame for the act among the numerous actors involved. If the venture eventually adopts a formal corporate structure, it also adopts corporate characteristics such as dispersed decision-making processes, a board of directors that are meant to provide some level of oversight, and so forth. This formal corporate structure introduces the challenge of establishing a “state of mind” for a blameworthy act. Ultimately, blame affects entrepreneurs, their ventures, and the corporations that eventually grow from them, and is worth further scholarly investigation.
Article
Board Interlocks and Diversification Strategies
Christine Shropshire
The board of directors serves multiple corporate governance functions, including monitoring management, providing oversight on strategic issues, and linking the organization to the broader external environment. Researchers have become increasingly interested in board interlocks and how content transmitted via these linkages shapes firm outcomes, such as corporate structure and strategies. As influential mechanisms to manage environmental uncertainty and facilitate information exchange, Board interlocks are created by directors who are affiliated with more than one firm via employment or board service and allow the board to capture a diversity of strategic experiences. One critical corporate decision that may be influenced by interlocks and strategic diffusion is diversification (i.e., in which products and markets to compete). Directors draw on their own experiences with diversification strategies at other firms to help guide and manage ongoing strategic decision-making. There is broad scholarship on interlocks and the individuals who create them, with extant research reporting that some firms are more likely to imitate or learn from their interlock partners than others. Prior findings suggest that the conditions under which information is transmitted via interlock, such as an individual director’s experience with diversification strategies at other firms, may make that information more influential to the focal firm’s own strategic decision-making related to diversification. A more holistic framework captures factors related to the individual interlocking director, the board and firm overall and the context surrounding these linkages and relationships, helping to promote future research. Understanding the social context surrounding board interlocks offers opportunities to more deeply examine how these interconnections serve in pursuit of the board’s fundamental purpose of protecting shareholder investment from managerial self-interest. Overall, integrating multi-level factors will offer new insights into the influence of board interlocks on firm strategies on both sides of the partnership. Expanding knowledge of how inter-firm linkages transmit knowledge influential to board decision-making can also improve our understanding of board effectiveness and corporate governance.
Article
Board Processes and Performance: The Impact of Directors’ Social and Human Capital
Morten Huse
What do we know about actual board behavior and board performance? How can we develop our knowledge about board processes and board members’ capabilities? As a research field grows into maturity, we learn to see nuances, and the vocabulary used becomes richer and more detailed. However, the development of a consistent and nuanced language in research about board processes and performance is lagging behind.
How have research streams and individual scholars influenced how we do research today, and why are these stories not included in most of the published literature reviews on this topic? What distinguishes research about boards and governance from various disciplines? How do we find research about board processes and board capital, and how has groundbreaking research on the human side of corporate governance developed? Groundbreaking research of Myles Mace was conducted more than half a decade ago, and we need to understand what has taken place after the seminal 1989 contribution of Zahra and Pearce. Research about actual board behavior and processes were not for decades published in leading management and strategy journals.
Most published research about board processes and board capital is formulaic, leans on proxies rather than direct observation, and has only incremental if any practical contributions. A message is thus that we should strive for more groundbreaking studies that challenge existing knowledge and practice, including our research practice. A research agenda about board processes and board capital should be influenced by some of the following suggestions:
• It should go beyond formulaic and incremental studies. We should challenge existing wisdom and practice and search for alternative ways of doing research.
• It should include more processual studies rather than archival data studies using proxies.
• We should learn from the scholars doing groundbreaking research before us.
• We should learn by comparing experiences from various types of organizations.
• We must include lessons and publications not found in leading English-language journals.
• We should apply a sharing philosophy and a programmatic approach in which we as researchers contribute to developing future generations of scholars.
Article
Bootstrapping: Complementary Lines of Inquiry in Entrepreneurship
Matthew Rutherford and Duygu Phillips
Bootstrapping is a term, a construct, and a paradigm that has attracted substantial attention from both popular press writers and scholarly researchers. In the scholarly community bootstrapping research is concerned, broadly, with studying the phenomenon of startups in resource poor environments. While this would describe virtually all startups, bootstrapping is most focused upon those resource-starved startups that elected to use only the resources existing internally to the firm or founder(s). That is, in bootstrapped firms, no financing has been attained from individuals or entities outside the firm. In practice, bootstrapping is understood as (a) launching a business with no external debt or equity, and (b) finding creative ways to manage a business launched with no external debt or equity.
Most entrepreneurs bootstrap at founding. It is estimated that few (20%) take on external debt at startup; and far fewer (5%) launch with external equity. Examples of techniques employed because of the decision to bootstrap include using credit cards, drawing upon home equity and sweat equity, taking loans from family, and investing salary from one’s “day job.” There are fundamental reasons for this, both from a demand side and a supply side.
From the demand side entrepreneurs, on average, are autonomous and therefore have a preference for control and a general aversion to external forms of capital, both debt and equity. On the supply side, because of extreme asymmetric information that exists between financiers and entrepreneurs, financiers often cannot accurately gauge the underlying quality of the entrepreneur/venture and are therefore reluctant to provide capital to them.
With regard to outcomes of bootstrapping, though, the research is equivocal. Ceteris paribus, it appears that there is no significant difference in performance between bootstrappers and non-bootstrappers; however, contingencies likely exist. For example, non-bootstrappers are likely more prone to failure because they often take more risks. Therefore, while a few heavily financed ventures may achieve lofty success, many fail in dramatic fashion. By contrast, bootstrappers are often more cautious and therefore these firms demonstrate less variance in outcomes.
Understanding of both antecedents and outcomes of bootstrapping has grown since the introduction of the construct in the late 1980s. Because of this expanded understanding, the construct has evolved from phenomenological roots to one more grounded in theory. That said, there remain ambiguities around bootstrapping, not the least of which is the existence of myriad definitions and resultant operationalizations. Partially because of these varied conceptualizations, the scholarship on bootstrapping has been somewhat fragmented and challenging to decipher. This fragmented accumulation has led to not only a literature with vivid applications and examples, but also one with little universal logic. This fact has made it somewhat difficult for a field to advance.
However, insights from existing theory (e.g., signaling, cultural entrepreneurship) as well as the relatively recent development of closely related bases (e.g., effectuation, bricolage) can complement and advance bootstrapping by adding theoretical breadth and depth. When understood alongside these related lines of research in entrepreneurship, researchers are better equipped to create, catalog, and accumulate knowledge regarding bootstrapping. In turn, educators will be more effective in communicating how entrepreneurs are able to launch in resource poor environments, and ultimately achieve success.
Article
Bureaucracy to Postbureaucracy: The Consequences of Political Failures
Mallory E. Compton and Kenneth J. Meier
Pathologies inherent in democratic political systems have consequences for bureaucracy, and they need to be examined. Limited in time, resources, and expertise, elected officials turn to bureaucratic institutions to carry out policy goals but all too often give public agencies too little support or too few resources to implement them effectively. In response to the challenges imposed by politics, public agencies have sought organizational solutions. Bureaucracies facing shortages of material resources, clear goals, representation of minority interests, or public trust have in recent decades adopted less hierarchical structures, exploited networks and privatization, and taken a representative role. In other words, the evolution of postbureaucratic governance institutions is in part a consequence of political incentives. Efforts to diagnose and resolve many of the shortcomings attributed to bureaucracy therefore require an accounting of the political processes shaping the context in which public managers and bureaucrats operate.
Article
Business Groups as an Organizational Model
Asli M. Colpan and Alvaro Cuervo-Cazurra
Business groups are an organizational model in which collections of legally independent firms bounded together with formal and informal ties use collaborative arrangements to enhance their collective welfare. Among the different varieties of business groups, diversified business groups that exhibit unrelated product diversification under central control, and often containing chains of publicly listed firms, are the most-studied type in the management literature. The reason is that they challenge two traditionally held assumptions. First, broad and especially unrelated diversification have a negative impact on performance, and thus business groups should focus on a narrow scope of related businesses. Second, such diversification is only sustainable in emerging economies in which market and institutional underdevelopment are more common and where business groups can provide a solution to such imperfections. However, a historical perspective indicates that diversified business groups are a long-lived organizational model and are present in emerging and advanced economies, illustrating how business groups adapt to different market and institutional settings. This evolutionary approach also highlights the importance of going beyond diversification when studying business groups and redirecting studies toward the evolution of the group structure, their internal administrative mechanisms, and other strategic actions beyond diversification such as internationalization.
Article
Business History in International Business
Teresa da Silva Lopes
Historical research on the multinational enterprise has long been important in international business studies. When the discipline of international business first developed in the late 1950s, historical evidence was frequently used to build generalizations and propose theories. However, over time, that tradition eroded, as the discipline moved toward using more quantitative and econometric reasoning. International business and business history share important commonalities, such as the topics they address. These include: multinational patterns of international trade and foreign investment; the boundaries and competitiveness of the multinational enterprise; changes in organizational strategy and structure of multinational enterprises and the connections between the two; coordination and management of the activities of the multinational enterprise; impact of multinationals on knowledge and capital flows in host countries; and investment, resilience, and survival in high-risk environments. Nonetheless, the approaches followed can be quite distinct. While both disciplines consider the firm and other institutional forms as the unit of analysis, the way context and the environment are integrated in the analysis, the methodologies followed, the types of comparative analysis carried out, the temporal dimensions adopted, and the way in which theory is used are quite distinct. There are possible ways forward for international business history to be more integrated and provide new dimensions in international business studies. These include using history as a generator of theory to understand phenomena such as the origins of competitiveness and as a way to uncover phenomena that can be fully understood only after the situation has occurred, such as the impact of entrepreneurship on economic development; as a way to check false claims that certain phenomena is new; and to inform discussions on complex phenomena and grand challenges such as globalization and deglobalization, investment in high risk environments, and climate change.
Article
Business Models and Usage of Technology: A New Perspective on Business Model Design
Neva Bojovic and Vincent Mangematin
Companies need business models to profit from innovation and technology. However, the success of a certain technology depends on whether and how it is used. Usage is important not only as an indicator of technology adoption, but also as a way for companies to design business models—as a way to create and capture value from technology. Usage is inscribed by the designers in the technology, but users in their ongoing practice can alter the designers’ intentions, which sometimes leads to innovation. Users can also combine different technologies in practice to accomplish a specific usage. In essence, usage is constitutive of technology and its value.
Technology usage-based business modeling is a way to explore business modeling for technology that looks into how different technologies are integrated, either by users or platform actors, into solutions to address specific usage needs. To understand this notion of usage for business model design, one must first understand how value is created and captured from technology. At the same time, it is also important to know different streams of literature that have investigated technology usage: user-centered design, user innovation and lead users, form, function, affordances of technology, and the practice-based view.
While usage-based business modeling has implications for all kinds of technologies, it is of particular importance for emerging, enabling, and embedding technologies, where the value of technology depends on the usage across multiple applications and connectedness between different users.
Article
Business Research Process
James A. Muncy and Alice M. Muncy
Business research is conducted by both businesspeople, who have informational needs, and scholars, whose field of study is business. Though some of the specifics as to how research is conducted differs between scholarly research and applied research, the general process they follow is the same. Business research is conducted in five stages. The first stage is problem formation where the objectives of the research are established. The second stage is research design. In this stage, the researcher identifies the variables of interest and possible relationships among those variables, decides on the appropriate data source and measurement approach, and plans the sampling methodology. It is also within the research design stage that the role that time will play in the study is determined. The third stage is data collection. Researchers must decide whether to outsource the data collection process or collect the data themselves. Also, data quality issues must be addressed in the collection of the data. The fourth stage is data analysis. The data must be prepared and cleaned. Statistical packages or programs such as SAS, SPSS, STATA, and R are used to analyze quantitative data. In the cases of qualitative data, coding, artificial intelligence, and/or interpretive analysis is employed. The fifth stage is the presentation of results. In applied business research, the results are typically limited in their distribution and they must be addressed to the immediate problem at hand. In scholarly business research, the results are intended to be widely distributed through journals, books, and conferences. As a means of quality control, scholarly research usually goes through a double-blind review process before it is published.
Article
Career Development and Organizational Support
Melinde Coetzee
The complexity of modern careers requires personal agency in managing career development and employability capital as personal resources for career success. Individuals’ employability capital also serves as a valuable resource for the sustainable performance of organizations. Individuals’ ability to proactively engage in career self-management behaviors through the use of a comprehensive range of self-regulatory capabilities, known as career metacapacities, contributes to their employability capital. Organizational career development supports initiatives that consider individuals’ proactivity in light of conditions that influence their motivational states, and availability of personal resources helps organizations benefit from individuals who bring information, knowledge, capacities, and relationship networks (i.e., employability capital) into their work that ultimately contribute to the organization’s capability to sustain performance in uncertain, highly competitive business markets. Career development support practices should embrace the individualization of modern-day careers, the need for whole-life management, and the multiple meanings that career success has for individuals.
Article
Careless Responding and Insufficient Effort Responding
Jason L. Huang and Zhonghao Wang
Careless responding, also known as insufficient effort responding, refers to survey/test respondents providing random, inattentive, or inconsistent answers to question items due to lack of effort in conforming to instructions, interpreting items, and/or providing accurate responses. Researchers often use these two terms interchangeably to describe deviant behaviors in survey/test responding that threaten data quality. Careless responding threatens the validity of research findings by bringing in random and systematic errors. Specifically, careless responding can reduce measurement reliability, while under specific circumstances it can also inflate the substantive relations between variables. Numerous factors can explain why careless responding happens (or does not happen), such as individual difference characteristics (e.g., conscientiousness), survey characteristics (e.g., survey length), and transient psychological states (e.g., positive and negative affect). To identify potential careless responding, researchers can use procedural detection methods and post hoc statistical methods. For example, researchers can insert detection items (e.g., infrequency items, instructed response items) into the questionnaire, monitor participants’ response time, and compute statistical indices, such as psychometric antonym/synonym, Mahalanobis distance, individual reliability, individual response variability, and model fit statistics. Application of multiple detection methods would be better able to capture careless responding given convergent evidence. Comparison of results based on data with and without careless respondents can help evaluate the degree to which the data are influenced by careless responding. To handle data contaminated by careless responding, researchers may choose to filter out identified careless respondents, recode careless responses as missing data, or include careless responding as a control variable in the analysis. To prevent careless responding, researchers have tried utilizing various deterrence methods developed from motivational and social interaction theories. These methods include giving warning, rewarding, or educational messages, proctoring the process of responding, and designing user-friendly surveys. Interest in careless responding has been growing not only in business and management but also in other related disciplines. Future research and practice on careless responding in the business and management areas can also benefit from findings in other related disciplines.
Article
Case Study Research: A State-of-the-Art Perspective
Eric Volmar and Kathleen M. Eisenhardt
Theory building from case studies is a research strategy that combines grounded theory building with case studies. Its purpose is to develop novel, accurate, parsimonious, and robust theory that emerges from and is grounded in data. Case research is well-suited to address “big picture” theoretical gaps and dilemmas, particularly when existing theory is inadequate. Further, this research strategy is particularly useful for answering questions of “how” through its deep and longitudinal immersion in a focal phenomenon. The process of conducting case study research includes a thorough literature review to identify an appropriate and compelling research question, a rigorous study design that involves artful theoretical sampling, rich and complete data collection from multiple sources, and a creative yet systematic grounded theory building process to analyze the cases and build emergent theory about significant phenomena. Rigorous theory building case research is fundamentally centered on strong emergent theory with precise theoretical logic and robust grounding in empirical data. Not surprisingly then, theory building case research is disproportionately represented among the most highly cited and award-winning research.
Article
Categorization Theory
Judith A. Clair and Mary M. Struzska-Tyamayev
Categorization, the process of placing or separating into classes or groups, is a socially meaningful process and has been studied across a variety of disciplines, including the organizational studies field. Organizational scholars have focused on implications of social categorization (classification of another person as part of a group in organizational life), self-categorization (identifying the self as part of a group or category), and, increasingly, categorization systems (the norms and structures shaping and legitimizing the categories themselves) for individuals, group functioning, and organizational outcomes. All three elements are interconnected, as how one categorizes the self is linked to how one is socially categorized by others in organizational life, while categorization systems used in organizations provide the context for this process.
Categorization, in its various forms, plays a key role in diversity and inclusion dynamics within organizations, as it can have positive and negative consequences. Among the most discussed negative outcomes is the potential for categorization to serve as a precursor to interpersonal or systemic forms of bias in organizations. Once categorized, a person may experience stigmatization or work discrimination based on the category assigned. Categorization is associated with unique forms of bias; for instance, if one is perceived to be a-prototypical for a category (e.g., a poor fit), the person may resultingly experience social penalties or work-based negative consequences for not exemplifying the group’s core qualities well enough. In turn, this can generate negative personal and interpersonal effects at work and undermine organizational efforts to build inclusion. For instance, if one does not fit a “leader” prototype well enough, they may have a more difficult time claiming the role of leader. However, categorization also allows for the individual and organizational creation of meaning and understanding of the social world, group cohesion, interpersonal congruence, and ultimately the coordination and structuring of institutional diversity and inclusion efforts.
There are many avenues for advancing understandings of categorization and its effects. In particular, opportunities are rich for studies that explore implications of a growing number of people with intersected, multiple, and/or non-normative categories at work and in organizations. The growth of more complex categories has implications at multiple levels of analysis—for people, group functioning, and organizations seeking to build a more inclusive workplace. Also, with the rise of artificial intelligence (AI) and computerization, categories drawn upon and the processes of categorization, and their implications, are intimately linked to nonhuman forces. There are ample opportunities for organizational research in this domain, a chance to explore and understand the subject beyond the bounds of traditional computing disciplines.
Article
Chinese Leadership
Lynda Song, Dangzhu Zhang, Bei Lyu, and Yiyi Chen
Leadership is universally acknowledged as a pivotal subject within both academic discourse and practice. Numerous well-established leadership theories have emerged through research conducted in Western cultures, giving rise to valid inquiries into their relevance in diverse cultural contexts. Given China’s rapid economic growth and pivotal position in the world, it is important for organizations to explore Indigenous leadership theories that prove effective in the Chinese context.
Chinese Indigenous leadership contains unique elements that are deeply rooted in the rich Chinese cultural heritage and intricate internal and external management environments. Specifically, Chinese philosophies place a significant emphasis on prioritizing interpersonal ethics as the cornerstone of behaviors and advocate viewing and understanding the world through a holistic and dynamic standpoint. Building on this foundation, a theoretical framework for Chinese Indigenous leadership theories that are centered on ethics and morality (including Character-Performance-Maintenance (CPM)leadership theory, transformational leadership in the Chinese context, paternalistic leadership, fraternalistic leadership, ethical leadership, and Tao-oriented leadership) and characterized by a holistic dynamic balance perspective (including differential leadership, paradoxical leadership, dialectical leadership, crisis leadership, and vigilant leadership) is presented. Furthermore, an extensive review and analysis of the origins, definitions, dimensions, existing research findings, and future research prospects of established Chinese Indigenous leadership theories are conducted. These theories hold the potential to provide an alternative approach to addressing issues related to unethical nature, DEI (diversity, equity, inclusion) matters, and the VUCA (volatility, uncertainty, complexity, ambiguity) environment. In order to advance the understanding of leadership dynamics, future research could adopt multimethod approaches, employ interdisciplinary perspectives, and foster cross-national collaborations. Such collective efforts are expected to further enrich this fascinating field.
Article
Citizen Science and Crowd Science
Marion K. Poetz and Henry Sauermann
Citizen science and crowd science (CS) projects involve members of the public who participate in response to an open call and who can perform a broad range of research tasks. Scholars using the citizen science lens focus on the fact that many participants do not have formal scientific training, while scholars using the crowd science lens emphasize that participants are often recruited through an open call. CS projects have resulted in large-scale data sets, novel discoveries, and top-tier publications (i.e., scientific impact), but they can also have large societal and practical impacts by increasing the relevance of research or accomplishing other objectives such as science education and building awareness. The diverse landscape of CS projects reflects five underlying paradigms that capture different rationales for involving crowds and that require different organizational setups: crowd volume, broadcast search, user crowds, community production, and crowd wisdom. Within each CS project, the breadth of crowd involvement can be mapped along stages of the research process (e.g., formulating research questions, designing methods, collecting data). Within each stage, the depth of crowd involvement can be mapped with respect to four general types of contributions: activities, knowledge, resources, and decisions. Common challenges of CS projects relate to recruiting and engaging participants, organizational design, resource requirements, and ensuring the quality of contributions. Opportunities for future research include research on the costs and boundary conditions of CS as well as systematic assessments of different aspects of performance and how they relate to project characteristics. Future research should also investigate the role of artificial intelligence both as worker who can take over tasks from crowd members and as manager who can help organize CS activities.
Article
Cluster Evolution
Nydia MacGregor and Tammy L. Madsen
A substantial volume of research in economic geography, organization theory, and strategy examines the geographic concentration of interconnected firms, industries, and institutions. Theoretical and empirical work has named a host of agglomeration advantages (and disadvantages) with much agreement on the significance of clusters for firms, innovation, and regional growth. The core assertion of this vein of research is that geographically concentrated factors of production create self-reinforcing benefits, yielding increasing returns over time. The types of externalities (or agglomeration economies) generally fall into four categories: specialized labor or inputs, knowledge spillovers, diversity of actors and activity, and localized competition. Arising from multiple sources, each of these externalities attracts new and established firms and skilled workers.
Along with recent advancements in evolution economics, newer research embraces the idea that the agglomeration mechanisms that benefit clusters may evolve over time. While some have considered industry and cluster life-cycle approaches, the complex adaptive systems (CAS) theory provides a well-founded framework for developing a theory of cluster evolution for several reasons. In particular, the content and stages of complex adaptive systems directly connect with those of a cluster, comprising its multiple, evolving dimensions and their interplay over time. Importantly, this view emphasizes that the externalities associated with agglomeration may not have stable effects, and thus, what fosters advantage in a cluster will change as the cluster evolves. Furthermore, by including a cluster’s degree of resilience and ability for renewal, the CAS lens addresses two significant attributes absent from cyclical approaches.
Related research in various disciplines may further contribute to our understanding of cluster evolution. Studies of regional resilience (usually focused on a specific spatial unit rather than its industrial sectors) may correspond to the reorganization phase associated with clusters viewed as complex adaptive systems. In a similar vein, examining the shifting temporal dynamics and development trajectories resulting from discontinuous shocks may explain a cluster’s emergence and ultimate long-term renewal. Finally, the strain of research examining the relationship between policy initiatives and cluster development remains sparse. To offer the greatest theoretical and empirical traction, future research should examine policy outcomes aligned with specific stages of cluster evolution and include the relevant levels and scope of analysis. In sum, there is ample opportunity to further explore the complexities and interactions among firms, industries, networks, and institutions evident across the whole of a cluster’s evolution.
Article
Competitive Dynamics in Strategic Management
Claudio Giachetti and Giovanni Battista Dagnino
Competitive dynamics inquiry originates from a sequence of attacks and counterattacks among firms in an industry. Firms attack and respond to attacks of rivals in order to strengthen or defend their competitive position within their competitive space. Competitive dynamics research is thus centered on the analysis of how the firm’s actions affect rivals’ reactions and performance. Actually, the nature of competitive dynamics research is the open recognition that firm strategies are “dynamic”: Strategic actions initiated by one firm may trigger a series of actions among rival firms. The new competitive environment in many industries has generated the inception of furious competition, emphasizing flexibility, speed, and innovation in response to fast-changing technological and institutional conditions and temporary competitive advantages.
The key constructs and the intellectual roots of competitive dynamics (i.e., Schumpeter’s theory of creative destruction and industrial organization economics and related oligopoly theories) offer some practical examples of industry and firm cases where competitive dynamics have found their main applications.
The relevant underpinnings of the awareness–motivation–capability (AMC) framework provide an integrative model of the key behavioral drivers that shape a competitive actions and responses framework (i.e., the factors influencing the firm’s awareness of the context; the factors inducing or impeding the motivation of firms to respond to competitors’ action; and the capability-based factors affecting the firm’s ability to undertake actions), the three key attributes (i.e., the specific actions of firms in the industry, the firm’s competitive interdependence, and the antecedents and performance implications of firms’ competitive actions and reactions), and the three main levels of analysis used in competitive dynamics literature (i.e., action-level studies, business-level studies, and corporate-level studies).
Some insights regarding the relationship between dynamic competition and the sources of temporary competitive advantage, coopetition dynamics, as well as the kind of accelerated competition epitomizing early 21st-century digital dynamics settings update the traditional competitive dynamics flavor, as they are connected with firms’ strategic interaction and the pursuit of temporary advantages.
