In the midst of greed, corruption, the economic crash and the general disillusionment of business, current conceptions of leadership, organizational values, and authenticity are being questioned. In this article, we fill a prior research gap by directly exploring the intersection of these three concepts. We begin by delving into the relationship between individual values and organizational values. This analysis reveals that the "value fit" approach to creating authenticity is limited, and also indicates that a deeper exploration of the nature of values and the role of leadership is necessary. More specifically, we propose that organizational values should be viewed as an opportunity for ongoing conversations about who we are and how we connect. Through this type of dialogue which we define as "value through conversation", we can create what we call poetic organizations. A typology of four interconnected values each of which forms a foundation for the critical questioning and inquiry that might be found in poetic organizations is developed. We suggest that this conceptualization offers a new and dynamic approach for thinking about the relationships between leadership, values, and authenticity and has important implications for both research and practice.

A key assumption in the field of strategic management is that strategic fit or alignment of a firm's internal strategy, structure, capabilities and resources with the external environment is beneficial and positively related to performance. As external environments have become more turbulent and unpredictable, the notion of fit embedded in equilibrium assumptions has evolved from strategic fit to dynamic strategic fit to strategic fitness to incorporate this increased complexity and uncertainty. Recent work reconceptualizes the firm, its context, the drivers and outcomes to allow more in-depth examination of the emergent dynamics underlying the relationship between fit(ness) and performance.

Reflexivity is required for institutional work, yet we know very little about the mechanisms for generating such understandings of the social world. We explore this gap through a case study of an interstitial event that aims to create a community of change-makers'. The findings suggest that such events can generate reflexive dis/embedding through two complementary mechanisms. Specifically, personal narratives of injustice and action and individual-collective empowering generate emotional dynamics that disembed actors from their given attachments and embed them within new social bonds. Through these mechanisms, the event in the case study was able to challenge audience members' conceptions of self and others and change their worldview. This research advances our understanding of how reflexivity can be developed by uncovering the emotional dynamics crucial to the dis/embedding of actors.

We explore the resources, actors and processes involved in the rapid emergence of civil society in Libya after the fall of a dictator regime. We conceptualize this context as one of institutional chaos, where political oppression suppressed civil society institutions, and the revolution then created an upheaval, a moment of instability and unpredictability. A multi-level process framework emerged from the findings, highlighting the important role of institutional brokers, actors embedded in multiple established institutions and the emerging field. These institutional brokers link actors and also transform ideas from other fields. We found that brokers engaged in a process of creative translation, recombining, transposing, and recasting institutional resources from other fields. However, once the resources were at play in the emerging field, brokers faced resistance, a not-invented-here syndrome. To overcome this barrier, brokers engaged in collaborative transmission, creating spaces to develop shared meanings and practices with grassroots organizations. This research contributes to our understanding of institutional work required in different contexts, and addresses a grand challenge of our time-creation of civil society after extreme political oppression.

Prior studies have made important strides in understanding the drivers of gender bias facing women at the top. Yet, relatively little is known about the intra-organizational power dynamics of how and why these patterns still persist despite a plethora of initiatives to redress the phenomenon over the last several decades. This paper develops an intra-organizational power perspective on the dynamics of promotion bias to destination positions. We propose that social dominance emerges as social categorization based on a candidate’s visible and invisible markers leads to distorted perceptions and stereotyping which, when combined with group favoritism and conformity pressures within committee practices, engender the perceived degree of ideological asymmetry between the candidate and the organization. It is the magnitude of the perceived degree of ideological asymmetry that drives promotion bias. This bias has potent effects on the institutionalization of power over time. Our perspective ultimately offers new insights into the role of dominant organizational ideology and dynamics of biases that continue to limit promotion opportunities of women to destination positions.

Middle managers provide a powerful conduit for strategy execution particularly in fast paced environments. Their knowledge of strategy is critical for strategic change to be successful. Yet, little research directly examines how aware middle managers are of corporate strategy and how accurate they are in their understanding of how that strategy translates into divisional goals. Framed in cognition theory, this exploratory study uses qualitative and quantitative analysis to investigate the antecedents, accuracy and self-awareness of middle managers' knowledge of strategy within a large North American financial firm (N = 294). Implications for research and practice are highlighted.

Building on the renewed interest in middle managers' knowledge of strategy, this multi-method case study explores gaps in middle managers' actual and perceived strategy knowledge of both corporate and division level strategy. Hypotheses derived from interviews with middle managers and extant literature are tested within a large North American bank (n=294). The findings reveal that middle managers have a tendency to underestimate their knowledge of corporate strategy and overestimate divisional strategy knowledge. Strategy communication, particularly informal communications, and organization tenure emerge as the strongest factors influencing strategy knowledge, although their effects on actual knowledge and perceived knowledge vary.

Our conceptualisation of strategic fitness updates the concept of strategic fit by drawing on disparate theoretical streams to deepen our understanding of the process dynamics underlying the relationship between the external context, strategy, change agents, capabilities and performance. We suggest that strategic fitness is the continuous process of value creation for diverse stakeholders as change leaders throughout the organisation engage in the evolution of resources, routines and capabilities in the face of enacted, far-from-equilibrium contexts.

The recent financial crisis has prompted questioning of our basic ideas about capitalism and the role of business in society. As scholars are calling for “responsible leadership” to become more of the norm, organizations are being pushed to enact new values, such as “responsibility” and “sustainability,” and pay more attention to the effects of their actions on their stakeholders. The purpose of this study is to open up a line of research in business ethics on the concept of “authenticity” as it can be applied in modern organizational life and more specifically to think through some of the foundational questions about the logic of values. We shall argue that the idea of simply “acting on one’s values” or “being true to oneself” is at best a starting point for thinking about authenticity. We develop the idea of the poetic self as a project of seeking to live authentically. We see being authentic as an ongoing process of conversation that not only starts with perceived values but also involves one’s history, relationships with others, and aspirations. Authenticity entails acting on these values for individuals and organizations and thus also becomes a necessary starting point for ethics. After all, if there is no motivation to justify one’s actions either to oneself or to others, then as Sartre has suggested, morality simply does not come into play. We argue that the idea of responsible leadership can be enriched with this more nuanced idea of the self and authenticity.

Knowledge sourcing is important for firms, especially in fast-paced industries. However, few studies explore the effects of knowledge-based predictors on the comparative choice of employing acquisitions versus alliances for sourcing external knowledge. This study extends the limited existing research on this topic. It simultaneously examines the effects of knowledge domain attributes, seeker and source experience-based knowledge, and dyad knowledge similarity and digestibility on whether a firm chooses an acquisition or alliance when sourcing external knowledge. Data is comprised of 209 research-driven acquisitions and alliances of biotechnology firms based in North America. Our findings reveal that external knowledge sourcing through acquisition is more likely when the knowledge domain is more complex and valuable. Acquisition is also preferred when the seeker has greater acquisition experience and when the source has accumulated a moderate level of alliance experience. Alliance, in contrast, is the chosen mode for accessing external knowledge when the knowledge is high in specificity and when the seeker has prior alliance experience. In addition, increasing similarity and digestibility of the dyad's knowledge bases strengthen the relationship between knowledge value and the probability of acquisition versus alliance. These results extend understanding of how firms decide to augment their knowledge resources in a knowledge-intensive industry. They also demonstrate that a multilevel KBV approach emphasizing knowledge characteristics uncovers important predictors of strategy and structure in research-driven organizations.

Excellence in teaching is now a competitive imperative atmost business schools. Management educators face the challenge of creating learning environments that engage, inspire, and motivate students to learn both the content and the skills they need. Focusing on four dimensions of the teaching process—context setting, class preparation, class delivery, and continuous improvement—this article offers a systematic approach and associated tips, tools, and techniques for creating active and high impact learning in the classroom.

No matter what job title and company appears on our business cards, the ability to lead change successfully is a critical component of what we do. Increasing global competition, rapid technological advances, unpredictable economic forces, and demanding customers all mean that change is the rule rather than the exception in today's fast-paced business environment.KeywordsProduct InnovationStrategic ChangeHuman Resource PracticePolitical DynamicChange LeaderThese keywords were added by machine and not by the authors. This process is experimental and the keywords may be updated as the learning algorithm improves.

We all know that the context in which our organization does business has many implications when it comes to change. In this chapter, we focus on assessing this external context, which is critical for diagnosing and developing our understanding of “Where are we now?” in the SOC framework. More specifically, as shown in Figure 2.1, this approach considers three main components:

In every change, politics plays a role as different people jockey to represent their particular interests. Some of us love these organizational politics because of their intrigue, while some of us dislike them because of their potential to wreak havoc. However, all of us would likely agree that ignoring the politics of change is a recipe for trouble.