Abstract We examine how the two dimensions of VC managers' personal reputation, that is, ‘being known’ and ‘being known for quality’, jointly influence the formation of initial syndication ties. We propose that VC managers follow a two‐stage cognitive process. In the first stage, the ‘being known for quality’ dimension – a reflection of their abilities‐must enter their ‘consideration set’. The ‘being known’ dimension is crucial to draw attention to potential candidates. In the second stage, lead VC managers evaluate the signal conveyed by the ‘being known for quality’ dimension of prospective partners' reputation. The ‘being known’ dimension is also important at this stage, as it allows for a more accurate assessment of what is otherwise a noisy signal. We test our hypotheses on a pairwise dataset of 1686 realized and 14,395 counterfactual initial syndication ties between VC managers. We find that lead VC managers are more likely to form initial syndication ties with VC managers with similar reputations. This effect is stronger if they share a previous common employer, have a similar industrial or geographic investment focus, or work at VC firms that have previously syndicated one or more investments with each other or with the same VC firm.
Abstract Governments have become increasingly active players in corporate social responsibility (CSR), with many countries adopting more stringent regulations for firms to pursue goals not limited to profit‐making. However, more recently, some jurisdictions have seen a backlash against CSR, which implies that the state's role in CSR is reversing from facilitating, encouraging, and mandating to prohibiting or undermining CSR. We study one such case of backlash against CSR in Bolsonaro's Brazil. We introduce the concept of state de‐orchestration to capture the reversal of the government's role in CSR in Brazil. We contribute to processual perspectives on state‐business interactions, the government and CSR literature, and the orchestration literature, by identifying the mechanisms by which the state loosens the constraints on and support for firms to pursue public good objectives. We also contribute to the government and CSR literature by demonstrating and theorising the impact de‐orchestration has on corporate discretion. We argue that corporate discretion needs to be conceived as both the liberty to adopt or not adopt CSR practices and the ability to do so. We further show that for some firms, domestic de‐orchestration may impair the exercise of corporate discretion, particularly among those exposed to pressures stemming from transnational CSR norms.
Abstract Social enterprises are frontrunners in social innovation, yet our understanding of how they can scale their social impact beyond local, contained contexts remains nascent. To transform the institutional environment that gives rise to social problems, social enterprises must mobilize actors with divergent interests, values, and beliefs to change their practices – a process often complicated by incumbents who resist social innovation efforts and marginalize or co‐opt social innovators. Drawing on the social innovation and social movement scaling literatures, we identify a significant puzzle: how can social enterprises avoid marginalization and co‐optation while scaling their social impact? We address this question through an in‐depth case study of Tony's Chocolonely, a social enterprise dedicated to eradicating child labour in the chocolate industry. Our study offers two contributions. First, we show how social enterprises can scale their social impact beyond local, contained contexts by unpacking how different types of interactions and associated scaling outcomes create moral and competitive pressures for incumbents to change their practices. Second, we show how social enterprises can fend off risks of being pushed into a niche market or of being pressured to weaken the robustness of their solution, thus avoiding marginalization and co‐optation while scaling their social impact.
Abstract Newly appointed CEOs often enter office with a mandate to initiate strategic change, yet such change disrupts established routines and interests, frequently provoking resistance from organizational stakeholders. This creates a fundamental leadership transition dilemma: the strategic change new CEOs are expected to undertake may also threaten their early survival. We argue that strategic change increases the likelihood of CEO early dismissal because boards, facing uncertainty about a new CEO's competence, may interpret negative stakeholder reactions as signals of weak leadership or poor fit. Drawing on the strategic communication literature, we propose that new CEOs can mitigate this tension by building resonance, defined as alignment between their communication and stakeholders' emotional concerns and cognitive frames. In particular, charismatic visions and expressions of optimism generate emotional resonance by reducing anxiety and uncertainty and strengthening affective commitment to change; linguistic simplicity and language concreteness create cognitive resonance by making change initiatives clearer and more credible. Through these communication tactics, new CEOs can build stakeholder support for strategic change even before they have established a firm power base. Using a sample of CEO successions in S&P 1500 firms from 2002 to 2015, we find support for these predictions.
Abstract While ethnographers recognize vulnerability as revelatory, we have yet to understand how it generates embodied knowledge. This paper reconceptualizes vulnerability as the open exposure to affect and be affected by the world and others. Rather than treating vulnerability as a methodological risk or by‐product of immersion, I argue that it constitutes a way of knowing: a practice for accessing the unspoken, visceral and embodied aspects of social life. I introduce the figure of the vulnerable performer: a researcher who does not merely observe but enacts field practices under conditions of open exposure. Through this figure, I theorize how such exposure produces carnal knowledge – practical, sensuous, affectively grounded knowing. Drawing on a two‐year enactive ethnography in a hospice, I identify three dimensions through which vulnerable performance generates carnal knowledge – sensorial openness, visceral reactions and the intersubjective experience of time and space – showing how each renders organizing perceptible. Yet, the same exposure that enables such knowledge also carries ethical and methodological costs that cannot be treated as secondary to its gains. I therefore clarify when vulnerable performance is warranted, what it can reveal about the bodily and ethical dynamics of organizational life, and under what conditions such exposure can remain ethically sustainable.
Firms under regulatory threat often have a collective interest in influencing policy outcomes through market behaviour. However, when coordination is prohibited and collective benefits are non-excludable, such efforts are constrained by coordination and outcome uncertainty. While prior research emphasizes firm influence through the public policy arena, much less is known about how firms navigate collective action problems in the market arena, where interdependent incentives and uncertainty about rivals' behaviour make coordination difficult under legal constraints. We address this gap by theorizing that multimarket contact (MMC) creates the conditions under which coordination and sanctioning mechanisms become feasible. Using data from the Indian pharmaceutical industry's response to a 2013 price-control regulation, we show that firms with higher MMC are more likely to raise prices in regulated markets, thereby participating in collective efforts to shape the average market price used to set price ceilings. Our findings extend the MMC framework by showing how firms can activate it selectively for cooperative purposes under regulatory pressure, even when assumptions like competitive parity are violated. More broadly, we identify MMC as a contingency that enables firms to overcome collective action barriers in the market arena, offering new insights into the interplay between market and non-market strategy.
Government orchestration describes regulatory settings in which governments delegate some governance functions to private actors; for instance, business conduct is monitored by stakeholders under CSR disclosure regulation. This article examines the impact of this type of regulation on stakeholder monitoring, which is a core yet little-examined governance function. We analyse the effects of the European Union's Non-Financial Reporting Directive (NFRD) on stakeholder accusations and on the relationship between CSR and accusations across firms in 28 OECD countries (2007-2018) using a difference-in-differences design. The analysis shows that government orchestration significantly increases the number of stakeholder accusations by inducing a transparency dynamic. It also demonstrates a fundamental shift in how reported CSR relates to stakeholder accusations. In the past, companies were able to protect themselves from accusations by publicly reporting their CSR efforts. More recently, two patterns have emerged: where no disclosure regulation exists, CSR no longer buffers firms against accusations; under regulation, it produces a 'backfire effect' whereby CSR increases accusations. These findings advance research on the government-CSR nexus and social evaluations and offer a contextual explanation for previously inconsistent results on the link between CSR and stakeholder accusations.
Large partners are critical for small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) seeking to overcome resource constraints in internationalization. However, as an SME's portfolio of size-asymmetric alliances expands, governance costs can increase during post-formation alliance management. We develop theory on the resource benefits and governance costs of asymmetric alliance portfolios, arguing that the net benefit of access to large partners' resources is bounded by a portfolio ceiling. Initial alliances with large partners provide knowledge, legitimacy and network support that facilitate foreign direct investment (FDI) entries. As the portfolio expands, however, cross-partner interfaces, safeguarding demands and partner competition consume scarce managerial capacity, limiting SMEs' ability to mobilize large partners' resources. Using a 30-year firm-year panel (1990-2019) of Japanese SME trading companies and their equity alliances with business-group-affiliated general trading companies, we identify an inverted U-shaped relationship between the number of large partners and FDI entries, consistent with this portfolio ceiling. In line with our theory, competition among large partners is negatively associated with FDI entries. Overall, our study shows that, for resource-constrained firms, the net value of asymmetric alliance portfolios depends on the balance between partner resource benefits and portfolio-level governance costs.
Emerging ecosystem value propositions require collective co-adoption by heterogeneous stakeholders. Focusing on middle managers (MMs) in ecosystem emergence, we introduce the notion of MM interface work: a form of social-symbolic work comprising discursive, relational, and material micro-practices within and across cognitive, behavioural, regulatory, and political interfaces. Drawing on rich primary and secondary data collected over 5 years from six technology providers in the healthcare sector, we explain how these micro-practices underpin the co-adoption of an emerging ecosystem value proposition. Two key mechanisms drive this process: the integration of micro-practices within each interface and the synergistic alignment of the micro-practices across interfaces. Our study advances ecosystem and strategic leadership literatures by explaining how MMs may influence co-adoption of an emerging ecosystem value proposition 'from the middle-out'.
Abstract Bifurcation bias, the preferential treatment in favour of family managers over non‐family managers, is prevalent in family firms, yet research on its performance implications remains inconclusive. We argue that this inconclusiveness reflects insufficient attention to the normative contexts that shape how non‐family managers interpret differential treatment. Drawing on justice and entitlement theories, we argue that non‐family managers' fairness judgments hinge on whether family membership is perceived as a legitimate basis for entitlement. Using longitudinal data on publicly listed Chinese family firms, we find that bifurcation bias in cash‐based compensation undermines performance, but that this relationship is contingent on normative context. Specifically, the negative effect is attenuated in regions with stronger traditional values and in firms with greater family involvement in management, whereas it is amplified in highly competitive industries. By demonstrating that entitlement judgments are socially embedded, this study offers a contingency‐based resolution to the debate over whether bifurcation bias harms family firm performance and provides practical guidance for family firms seeking to balance fairness with family‐centred goals.
Abstract This Counterpoint advances the study of organizational attention by proposing an ‘expansive’ rather than a ‘substitutive’ development of the attention‐based view (ABV) as proposed in the Point . While endorsing a richer understanding of attention, we caution against reinforcing unhelpful dichotomies between quality and quantity of attention. We argue that the ABV's perceived limitations, especially its treatment of attention as scarce and quantifiable, reflect Simon's legacy more than flaws in the ABV itself. We propose three directions for future research: rethinking resource allocation as emerging from competition among attentional sources; developing a thicker view of situatedness in which social dynamics shape attention beyond intentionality; and revisiting scarcity by examining why attention is limited, what kind of scarcity is involved, and when abundance rather than scarcity becomes problematic. By articulating a dialectical position that transcends the thesis of a complete turn to the quality of attending, as in the Point and the antithesis in Counterpoint 2 – stick to quantity and persevere in normal science, we offer a way forward that preserves the strengths of attentional research while enabling a more nuanced account of organizational attention.
Abstract This Point proposes an ontological reorientation of the Attention‐Based View from a focus on attention quantity to attention quality – that is, from a quantitative to a qualitative Attention‐Based View. This shift is motivated by developments in both academic research and contemporary management. Drawing on practice theory, we reconceptualize attention not as a resource to be allocated and rationed, but as a set of sociomaterial practices of attending. We identify five constitutive qualities of these attentional practices: sociality, discourse, embodiment, materiality, and historicity. This conceptual shift moves beyond viewing attention as a limited and homogeneous resource, instead framing attending as a crescive and differentiated set of practices. We argue that this qualitative Attention‐Based View offers a deeper understanding of attention, one particularly relevant to contemporary strategizing and organizing.
Humanity – the virtue enabling meaningful human connection – is vital to the leadership we need to survive our polycrisis context. As a prerequisite to sustainable human community, the virtue of humanity is considered universal. It has been claimed as a ‘higher‐order virtue’, comprised of and enacted by – but irreducible to – a suite of ‘lower‐order virtues’ such as compassion and kindness. This claim is evident in widely‐adopted virtues catalogues, but we lack consensus on how humanity is defined, and which attributes qualify as its virtuous dimensions. To address this, we develop a robust definition of humanity and apply criteria distilled from virtue ethics to theorize the lower‐order virtues that comprise its virtuous dimensions. We thus determine the virtuous dimensions of humanity include empathy, compassion, forgiveness, love, kindness, and generosity. Our processual model illustrates how, when expressed by leaders and followers, these virtuous dimensions represent the fullest expression of the higher‐order virtue of humanity and sustain human community. Our systematic review details what is known empirically about each virtuous dimension of humanity in relation to leadership. Drawing on this, we propose a research agenda to advance understanding of how the virtue of humanity might enable the leadership needed today and into the future.
Abstract This paper develops a theory‐building argument about the limits of property rights theory (PRT) when applied to culturally embedded intangible assets. Integrating property rights theory, organizational sociology, and Indigenous theory, we examine historically informed contrasts between low and moderate tribal sovereignty to show why tangible and intangible assets differ analytically in their governability. We argue that Native imagery reveals a class of contexts in which the specificity assumed by classical PRT becomes difficult to satisfy because authority is plural, asset boundaries are ambiguous, and value is relational rather than fully alienable. Using Native imagery as an illustrative case, we specify how PRT can be extended to better account for culturally embedded intangible assets by incorporating collective guardianship, community consent, sacred and relational inalienability constraints, and multi‐sovereign enforcement. In doing so, the paper reframes property governance in settings where meaning, spirituality, and community relationships are integral to the asset itself.
Property rights theory holds that stronger ownership protection stimulates firm investment, yet whether such investment supports environmentally beneficial uses remains unclear. We develop a property rights perspective on corporate pollution control, arguing that stronger ownership protection promotes cleaner production when complementary institutional conditions make environmental upgrading both strategically valuable and financially feasible. Exploiting China's 2007 Property Law as a quasi-natural experiment, we find that firms more exposed to the reform significantly reduce toxic emissions after the Law. Importantly, this emission-reducing effect is concentrated among firms operating under stronger external monitoring and among financially constrained firms that experience improved credit access. Mechanism tests show that green innovation and abatement upgrading partially explain the emission reductions. These findings extend property rights theory by showing that ownership protection does not automatically lead to cleaner production; its sustainability effects depend on monitoring and financing conditions that shape firms' strategic investment choices.
While executives vary in attention to the past, present, and future, prior work has largely examined these temporal orientations in isolation or at the individual level, which limits insight into how they jointly configure within top management teams (TMTs) and translate into firm behaviours. In this study, we advance a configurational perspective by introducing TMT temporal faultlines, defined as subgroup divisions based on the alignment of members' past, present, and future foci. We distinguish two key features of temporal faultlines: temporal faultline strength and the dominant subgroup temporal profile, and propose that these configurational properties shape the emergence of TMT time-awareness norms through regulating how teams attend to and coordinate temporal demands. Based on multi-wave survey data from 209 TMTs of small- and medium-sized enterprises in Iran, our findings suggest that temporal faultlines, making temporal differences salient, foster the development of shared norms around time management. We further find that TMT time-awareness norms exhibit an inverted U-shaped relationship with firm innovativeness, with moderate levels enhancing innovativeness by balancing temporal discipline and flexibility. Together, these findings shift research on executive temporality from individual traits to team configurations and extend faultlines theory by showing that both subgroup differentiation and subgroup content matter.
The context within which social evaluations form has been fundamentally altered by contemporary forces, such as digital technologies, polarization, activism, politicization of business, and geopolitical tensions. While research on social evaluations has generated rich insights into the formation and development of constructs, such as legitimacy, status, reputation, stigma, trust, and celebrity, much of this work has been developed under the assumptions of relative stability, coherent audiences, and well-defined intermediary roles. These assumptions are increasingly challenged in this changing context, requiring us to rethink the formation and management of social evaluations. The articles in this special issue focus on these changes. Building on these contributions, this introductory article develops a research agenda across seven interconnected areas: the stability and fragility of social evaluations, audience fragmentation and convergence, the reshaping of the intermediary landscape, construct interrelationships, range and extension of constructs, the measurement of social evaluations, and their underlying foundations. We discuss how these transformations affect not only organizations and evaluative processes, but also the societal impact of social evaluations. Overall, this editorial provides a framework to guide future research in a field undergoing profound transition.
This paper introduces the concept of platform auxiliaries to identify a set of actors that provide independent resources explicitly designed to support complementors in their value creation and capture activities. Platform auxiliaries capitalize on unmet needs of complementors within platforms, offering services such as third-party software development kits (SDKs) for app developers, social media analytics tools for content creators, rental management software for hosts, and even fake review services for sellers. Although the presence and relevance of these actors have been largely overlooked in platform research, we demonstrate the importance of recognizing their distinctive role and their conflicting impacts on platform value architectures. Specifically, we theorize three mechanisms through which auxiliaries support complementors (augmenting their development and commercialization capabilities on the focal platform, increasing access to platform-specific information, and expanding their activities beyond the focal platform), discussing how they enhance complementors' engagement and innovation potential, thereby fostering generativity on the platform. Yet, because auxiliaries operate outside the architectural framework established by the platform owner, in supporting complementors, they may reshape fundamental channels underpinning architectural stability, such as platform curation, information distribution, and platform compatibility, potentially weakening the control mechanisms through which the platform owner manages the platform and captures value.
Contemporary climate crises, such as wildfires, droughts, floods, and tropical storms, are increasing in frequency, intensity, scale, and duration. Organization and management scholars have been calling for more systematic study of the impacts of this increasing complexity on extant crisis governance arrangements and capacities for collaboration in response. We here bring together insights from organization and management studies and public administration research to investigate the disruptive impacts of the 2019-2020 'Black Summer' bushfires - a prototypical contemporary climate crisis. We conceptualize the complexity of such crises in terms of manifestation on, and across multiple, scalar dimensions (i.e., jurisdictional, functional [organizational, sectoral], spatial, cultural, and temporal dimensions) and mobilize transboundary crisis theory to explain how this disrupts the functioning of standing collaborative governance arrangements through five distinct mechanisms: stretching, blurring, fracturing, ossifying, and improvising. In turn, we synthesize a conceptual model of how these mechanisms interact to undermine collaborative capacity as crisis complexity increases. Our work bridges and extends ongoing debates in organization and management studies as well as public administration, offering a foundation for adaptation of crisis governance and response in a climate-changed future.
