Research suggests that the entry of women into a firm's upper-echelon teams may shift its strategic trajectories, reflecting new entrants’ risk propensity, cognition, and knowledge. Accordingly, this study posits that newly appointed female directors influence board decision-making, shaping establishment mode choice between greenfield and M&A. Nevertheless, their influence may be contingent upon the board context. This study further examines the moderating effects of female chair and incumbent directors’ international experience. Using 2,009 observations from Taiwanese manufacturing firms, this study finds that following more female director appointments, firms show a greater tendency to enter a foreign country through greenfield (vs. M&A). The likelihood increases when a woman serves as board chair, as she tends to support new female directors and help build their presence in board discussions. However, incumbent directors’ international experience reduces the likelihood, as such experience enhances the feasibility of successful post-acquisition integration and implementation.
By attending to the broader historical and societal contexts that shape organizational members’ interpretations of diversity management, embedded sensemaking analysis surfaces context-specific tensions that may otherwise remain hidden. The study proposes a methodological strategy that combines cue interpretation, stance analysis, extra-discursive referencing, and contextual issue-framing to trace how these tensions emerge. The approach is illustrated through a comparative case study of White men in South Africa and the United States, a group whose sensemaking is consequential for the implementation of diversity management. Analysis of 32 middle managers shows how context-specific tensions are patterned differently across the two settings. In South Africa, these tensions are explained by perceptions of compromised quality, the need to be indispensable, and the value of scarce skills. In the United States, they are shaped more by moral awakening and insider–outsider dynamics. Rather than treating these tensions as direct outcomes, the study interprets them as observable patterns through which deeper explanatory mechanisms can be inferred. On this basis, the article argues that embedded sensemaking analysis can help diversity management practitioners diagnose context-specific tensions and develop context-informed responses that are more closely attuned to local conditions.
Whole-System Development focuses on how systems build the capacity to act together on complex challenges. Drawing on open systems thinking and decades of practice, this paper introduces Differentiation/Integration (D/I) as the developmental logic through which systems increase their capacity to learn and act. While many approaches emphasize dialog, alignment, or individual change, this work highlights how the system is brought together, who is present, and what they do. When the relevant parts of a system engage directly, differences become visible and workable rather than divisive. Through the interplay of differentiation and integration, systems can hold multiple perspectives, recognize shared realities, and take coordinated action without requiring agreement. Cases drawn from Future Search practice in business, post-conflict settings, and community development show how this capacity emerges. The paper positions Whole-System Development as a contribution to applied behavioral science and a basis for further inquiry and practice.
Masculinity contest culture (MCC) is widely documented as detrimental to employee well-being, equity, and organizational effectiveness, yet practical guidance for intervention remains limited. This article presents a practice-based account of addressing MCC within a corporate technology setting through a collaboration between an organizational psychologist and a senior leader. Drawing on employee engagement data, facilitated dialogue, and leadership modeling, the intervention targeted underlying cultural norms related to overwork, competition, and vulnerability. The case illustrates how naming MCC, fostering honest conversations, and aligning leadership behavior with organizational values can support meaningful and ongoing culture change. We conclude by highlighting three interrelated mechanism which may be helpful for practitioners seeking to move from diagnosing MCC to implementing sustainable, system-level interventions.
As the political context in which organizations operate continues to change, organizations face growing challenges in managing politically diverse teams. Yet, empirical evidence remains limited on how politically dissimilar employees working interdependently affect team functioning. Drawing from the political affiliation model and the categorization-elaboration model, we hypothesize that political diversity is associated with higher relationship conflict, which in turn relates to lower team performance. We further propose that a team diversity climate helps buffer these negative effects. Using a time-lagged, multisource field study of 372 employees within 70 teams in South Korea, we find general support for these hypotheses. We conclude by discussing the theoretical and practical implications of these findings, particularly in terms of how organizations can adapt to and effectively manage politically diverse teams in an era of accelerating sociopolitical change.
The capacity of coaching conversations to facilitate reflectivity by helping individuals gain awareness and revisit habitual ways of thinking, feeling, and acting represents a fundamental value proposition of this developmental practice. The emergence of Artificial Intelligence Coaching (AIC) offers a novel opportunity to examine how technology-mediated coaching may stimulate such reflectivity. In this context, we conducted a qualitative exploratory study, analyzing coaching conversations between 20 leaders and an AI Coach. Our exploratory findings suggest that AIC may function as a reflective mirror, potentially surfacing coachees’ underlying relational orientations—instrumental or empowering. These orientations reflect distinct cognitive and affective schemas that guide how leaders interpret and respond to workplace situations. We propose that AIC conversations have the potential to mediate the development of reflectivity by surfacing coachees’ relational orientations, positioning AIC as a complementary tool for cultivating essential workplace competencies.
Team-based organizational designs are increasingly used to improve the fit between tasks and available human resources in modern organizations, and team empowerment represents an important means of enhancing team performance. At the same time, the growing complexity of work often results in task interdependencies that cross team boundaries, increasing the importance of interteam coordination in multiteam systems (MTS). Based on a longitudinal case study of a municipality that has implemented an innovative multiteam organizational model for home-based healthcare services, this article investigates how interteam coordination influences team empowerment. The results show that interteam coordination is central to team empowerment, highlighting the significance of the interplay between inter- and intrateam functioning in MTS. Overall, interteam coordination was a key factor in making the new organizational model work as intended and required careful attention and ongoing measures throughout the implementation process.
Qualitative research crucially contributes to knowledge generation via theory development, refinement, and refutation. A plethora of resources exist facilitating raw data engagement and immersion strategies. Yet, advanced analytic techniques for deriving theoretical insight are scantly understood and documented in the methods literature. The current paper creates a procedural framework for advancing theoretical insight via the use of qualitative analytic techniques by collating insights from the groundbreaking work of Klag and Langley , Langley , Locke et al. , and Locke —which builds heavily on Peirce's work on abduction and Weick's work on disciplined imagination. We construct this framework around three core processes: challenging, seeing, and articulating. We provide three practical examples from our own research projects to demonstrate how these core processes are supported by advanced analytic techniques. We discuss the impact of different theorizing goals, different epistemological grounding, future applications, and further methodological development.
This study explores the complexities of interorganizational collaboration, particularly within nongovernmental organizations (NGOs), which often face interdependencies and tensions despite potential benefits. Existing research emphasizes shared goals, shared knowledge, and mutual respect, but may overlook hierarchical structures and power dynamics. The present study addresses this gap by investigating relational dynamics, including trust, conflict, inclusion, power, and leadership, in an NGO collaboration. The study highlights the unique challenges NGOs face due to their mission-driven approach, financial insecurity, and their small workforce that handles significant societal duties. Using an abductive thematic analysis of qualitative data from a Scandinavian nonprofit collaboration, this study examines how perceptions of respect, common goals, and communication influence relational dynamics across hierarchical levels. The findings contribute to our understanding of the interactive processes in interorganizational collaboration, offering insights applicable to comparable contexts while suggesting new research avenues on interorganizational collaboration.
Edgar H. Schein’s approach to research has been described as phenomenon-based, problem-focused and pragmatic, with an approach that is improvisational, procedural and path dependent on the subjectivity and intentionality of those engaged. This essay explores how, in the context of phenomenon-based research, Schein’s notion of clinical inquiry/research seeks to generate knowledge that is practical and useful for practitioners in particular settings and has implications for wider knowledge base. By consolidating diverse sources of knowledge on Ed Schein’s thinking on research into one essay it brings his notion of clinical inquiry/research to contribute how phenomenon-based research may be conducted.
Organizations increasingly grapple with misalignments between formal structures and informal cultural dynamics, yet these discrepancies often remain hidden until they undermine learning, integrity, or adaptive performance. This article presents the Culture Congruence Diagnostic Model (CCDM), a behavioral-science framework for detecting and interpreting such incongruence. Grounded in research on organizational behavior, sensemaking, and behavioral risk, the CCDM focuses on four observable behavioral domains—decision-making, ownership, communication, and learning—linking them to three interacting drivers: formal mechanisms, informal norms and beliefs, and leadership behaviors. The model's four-stage diagnostic cycle integrates quantitative indicators with qualitative sensemaking to surface weak signals and reveal how behavioral patterns emerge and stabilize over time. Illustrative applications in financial services and engineering demonstrate how the CCDM clarifies root causes of cultural drift and supports psychologically safe and adaptive routines. The article concludes with implications for applied behavioral science and directions for future research.
Drawing from the Conservation of Resources (COR) theory, this research introduces the construct of Hybrid Work Enablement (HWE), which captures flexibility and logistical support for hybrid work. Study 1 provides preliminary psychometric evidence supporting HWE's two-dimensional structure. Study 2 examines HWE's effects on employee engagement and turnover intentions through a conditional moderated mediation model, with leader-member exchange (LMX) and remote work experience as moderators. Using a two-wave design, data from 318 U.S. hybrid workers collected 3.5 years after the onset of COVID-19 revealed that HWE positively predicted engagement and negatively predicted turnover intentions, with engagement mediating these relationships across both dimensions. Unexpectedly, conditional moderation results ran counter to predictions: LMX strengthened the HWE flexibility -> engagement link, but only for employees with more remote work experience. These findings refine COR theory by illustrating how supervisory relationships and remote work history influence employees' experience of hybrid work.
Elite sport is widely celebrated as a model of human excellence. Yet beneath this idealizationlies a system that normalizes the suppression of vulnerability, the tolerance of harm, and the prioritization of performance over well-being. Drawing on systems psychodynamic theory, this essay argues that sport serves a broader cultural function by absorbing and legitimizing impulses such as aggression, domination, and emotional suppression that society struggles to acknowledge elsewhere. Athletes carry these burdens on the public's behalf, and when they refuse, the reaction can be fierce. These dynamics extend beyond sport and shape norms of excellence in business, medicine, and other high-stakes professions. The essay calls for forms of high performance that sustain both achievement and humanity.
Although much is known about the benefits of friendships, less is known about the specific benefits of workplace friendships. We argue that friendships are a fundamental feature of human social life and therefore cannot be divorced from organizational life. Despite some researchers suggesting that workplace friendships interfere with role requirements, we contend that friendships may make positive contributions to work outcomes. Using Conservation of Resources theory as a guiding framework, we propose that workplace friendships are resources that help with workplace challenges by providing resources for social, task, and emotional support. Across three studies with a combined 1,305 employed individuals, we find that workplace friendships were positively associated with supportive, affective, health, and performance outcomes. We discuss theoretical implications of our findings and offer practical suggestions for increasing the prevalence of friendships in organizations.
This article develops a regenerative perspective on embodied dialogue grounded in autoethnographic action research within a public social and healthcare organization undergoing systemic transition. Rather than treating dialogue as a technique for alignment or control, it conceptualizes dialogue as a relational process through which human systems remain responsive amid turbulence. Through abductive analysis of reflective journals, observations, and dialogic episodes, three interrelated dynamics are identified: coherence, in which embodied presence gathers as settled being-with; potentiality, the ripening of a not-yet quality within that presence; and activation, the emergence of what has taken shape into speech or collective movement. These dynamics unfold as an asymmetric regenerative rhythm across self, relational, collective, and field dimensions. By introducing the field level, the study situates dialogue within wider relational processes and offers a framework for understanding dialogue as a regenerative capacity supporting relational renewal and ethical responsiveness.
Leaders navigating AI-driven digital transformation increasingly face a paradox. High investment, disappointing returns, and setbacks persist despite growing computational capability. Drawing on three quantum principles, we introduce Quantum/AI fluency-the capacity to engage paradoxical thinking while harnessing AI's computational power to intentionally recast and redesign legacy workflows. To cultivate Q/AI fluency, we present the USE framework-Uncertainty, Superposition, and Entanglement-with three response pathways and six specific leadership practices to navigate organizational AI adoption.
This paper recounts the chance discovery and multi-step follow-up exploration of an unexpected and remarkably robust empirical regularity in a planned change training exercise. Participants (predominantly experienced management professionals) appear surprisingly unattracted - even avoidant - to the work and activities associated with the final 'anchoring' phase of planned change. If replicated in practice, this 'anchoring reticence' may lead to the non- or at least underinstitutionalization of planned change efforts, that is, to 'unclosed loops' of change. This may undermine or even nullify change efforts and thus provide a new explanation for the allegedly low success rate of planned change efforts. Using a post-game follow-up questionnaire and extensive discussions with participants, we systematically explore this finding in depth and probe several tentative explanations for the apparent 'unpopularity' of change anchoring activities. Next, we discuss our findings from both a theoretical and practical angle, bringing in the reflections of an expert panel. We find that anchoring activities tend to be avoided because they are considered boring, hard, 'not my concern' and superfluous. We trace the origin of these beliefs to managers' professional and educational socialization, which tends to undervalue tactical management. Our findings provide new suggestions for explaining unsuccessful planned change initiatives. Zooming out, they point to the more generic phenomenon of orphaned and neglected practices in organizations and the mechanisms behind their languishing subsistence. For this organizational learning failure, we provide a tentative model.
This future scope provokes exploration on the coherence between the ontology and epistemology of organizational change, urging scholars and practitioners to critically align what is claimed as "change" with what is empirically studied. Despite decades of theorizing, the field remains fragmented, often conflating perceptions and evaluations with change itself. We advocate for methodological pluralism, triangulating multiple indicators-structural, behavioral, cultural, processual, and performative-to capture the multifaceted nature of change. Doing so, we propose five corrective actions: (a) integrating process and variance approaches, (b) aligning metrics with ontological assumptions, (c) triangulating data sources, (d) assessing alpha/beta/gamma change, and (e) matching temporal design to the pace of change. By foregrounding the complexity and dynamism of organizational change, the paper calls for renewed commitment to methodological rigor and reflective practice, ensuring that future research and consultancy genuinely advance understanding and impact in the field.
Traditional change-management models assume stability, an assumption that collapses in volatile institutional environments. Drawing on the Peruvian context, this article introduces survival management as a practitioner-oriented approach for organizations facing fragile credibility, short planning horizons, and chronic uncertainty. I propose a stabilize-consolidate-transform sequence as the practical foundation for any meaningful change. The article offers grounded examples and guidance for leaders navigating volatility, arguing that survival is not opposed to change but enables it.
Bootleg innovation, self-initiated innovation by employees without formal organizational approval, plays an important role in enhancing organizational adaptability, especially in fast-changing digital work environments. While previous research has focused on structural or managerial antecedents, limited attention has been given to the cognitive and psychological foundations that motivate such informal innovation. Drawing on social cognitive theory, we examine how paradox mindset, learning from failure, and strength use jointly influence employees' engagement in bootleg innovation. Using two-wave survey data from 518 employees in a large information and communications technology company, our findings show that paradox mindset promotes bootleg innovation both directly and indirectly by enhancing learning from failure and use of personal strengths. These results suggest that employees' internal resources and adaptive cognition are key to driving innovation beyond formal roles. This study contributes by uncovering mechanisms that explain bootleg innovation and offers practical implications for supporting informal innovation in digitally transforming workplaces.
