October 2024 – Volume 33, Issue 4
In this issue, we turned David Hannah and Simon Pek lose to develop a special collection on revisionist history. Did they every deliver. They asked prominent scholars to reflect on the current state of the research on their chosen topic, and how our field got there through specific decisions they or other researchers made. The authors were also encouraged to engage in counterfactual thinking by imagining how things could have been different. Besides David and Simon, we especially thank the contributors to this special collection: Blake Ashforth, Fred Mael, Sandra Robinson, Rebecca Bennett, Graham Brown, Sally Maitlis, Aqsa Dutli, Allison Gabriel, John Trougakos, Mara Cable and Jean Bartunek.
SPECIAL COLLECTION: REVISIONIST HISTORY
Introduction to the Special Collection on Revisionist History in Management Research
David Hannah and Simon Pek
Vol. 33(4) 323–328
DOI: 10.1177/10564926241261910
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/10564926241261910
This article introduces the special collection on revisionist history in management research. We asked prominent scholars to reflect on the current state of the research on their chosen topic, and how our field got there through specific decisions they or other researchers made. We also encouraged our authors to engage in counterfactual thinking by imagining how things could have been different. Our contributors offer novel, provocative insights on a variety of topics including organizational identification; emotional labor; resistance to change; territoriality; deviant behavior; and academic careers. In this article we discuss the origins of the special collection, elaborate on our approach to revisionist history, and provide brief overviews of the six papers in the collection. We conclude by discussing how others could build on our approach to revisionist history to provide other valuable lessons for management research.
Keywords: management history, organizational behavior, organization theory, careers
Back to the Future: What We'd Change in "Social Identity Theory and the
Organization" (Academy of Management Review, 1989, 14, 20–39)
Blake E. Ashforth and Fred A. Mael
Vol. 33(4) 329–335
DOI: 10.1177/10564926241261905
https://journals.sagepub.com/stoken/default+domain/SDKBMAGCWGFTEMJRWVAU/full
We are both surprised by and proud of the impact our article has had on the study of organizational identification. But if we had the opportunity of a do-over-with the benefit of 35 years' hindsight-we would focus proportionately: (a) less on how identification occurs and more on why it matters (because "why" helps explain the process of organizing along with key drivers and outcomes); (b) less on cognition and more on affect and internalization (because they are also central to the experience of identification); (c) less on the organization and more on other targets of identification (because they often matter even more); and (d) less on Social Identity Theory and more on other identity perspectives (because they would expand our tools for understanding identification). We also reflect on how a so-called "classic" article can both enable and constrain scholarly inquiry and on the promise of revisiting history.
Keywords: identity, affect/emotions
JMI Revisionist History of Workplace Deviance
Sandra L. Robinson and Rebecca J. Bennett
Vol. 33(4) 336–339
DOI: 10.1177/10564926241261927
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/10564926241261927
In the mid-90s, we embarked on establishing the domain of Workplace Deviance. Though we were fortunate to meet our intended goals and have the impact we had hoped for, we have often thought about what we might have done differently. In this essay, we outline some of the things we wish we knew then that we know now. As we will describe, we perhaps should have chosen a different construct name, taken a theoretical rather than data driven approach to our typology, and developed a reflective rather than formative scale. We hope this essay based on our hindsight may be of value to future scholars seeking to establish new constructs in our field.
Keywords: deviant/counterproductive behavior, organizational behavior, absenteeism
Reflections on a (Failed) Launch: Revisiting and Reflecting on "Territoriality in Organizations"
Graham Brown
Vol. 33(4) 340–344
DOI: 10.1177/10564926241261915
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/10564926241261915
Despite being a novel and useful construct, perhaps prophetically, territoriality has defended itself from adoption by the management research community. However, the topic itself is not to blame and looking back 20 years after publishing the first management article on territoriality, I realize that certain choices I made influenced the direction and impact of my initial publication. In this article, I reflect on my experience trying to launch a new topic (territoriality) into the management field. From this experience, I offer readers ideas that may help successfully launch new constructs. Failure to join other conversations, develop a measure that could be easily adopted by others, and key early tradeoffs I made played a key role in my own failed (slow) launch.
Keywords: organizational behavior, attitudes, management history, territoriality
Bringing My Selves to Work: A Revisionist History of an Academic Career
Sally Maitlis
Vol. 33(4) 345–350
DOI: 10.1177/10564926241261903
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/10564926241261903
In this essay, I revisit a choice I made early in my career to develop and segment different facets of myself: my work as a professor of organizational behavior and my deep interest in the theory and practice of counselling psychology and psychotherapy. While these may appear relatively compatible, I experienced them as very different worlds and lived in them quite separately, afraid my engagement in one might infect or disrupt that in the other. Despite such efforts to keep my worlds apart, however, I found myself inadvertently integrating them-in my research, my teaching, and to some extent in my emerging clinical practice. Yet I held back from fully owning or sharing my growing commitment to counselling psychology. In this revisionist reflection, I consider some of the consequences of this set of choices and what might have been different had I made others.
Keywords: careers, identity, tensions
A Revisionist History Approach to the Study of Emotional Labor: Have We Forgotten Display Rules and Service Contexts?
Aqsa Dutli, Allison S. Gabriel, and John P. Trougakos
Vol. 33(4) 351–356
DOI: 10.1177/10564926241261897
https://journals.sagepub.com/stoken/default+domain/TJB9PR9G8UK7UYZEJBII/full
We take a revisionist approach to study emotional labor-commoditization of emotions for a wage-to delineate how organizational scholars must "revive and resubmit" two crucial elements of the emotional labor phenomenon that have been left behind as research within this space evolved. First, we argue that scholars have not paid enough recent attention to display rules that prescribe what emotions are acceptable within service interactions, instead assuming classic conceptualizations (i.e., show positive emotions and hide negative emotions) still prevail. Second, we highlight that the shift away from service occupations to more white-collar occupations may have minimized our understanding of the complexity of emotional labor in modern service arrangements, such as multiple job holders, and employees in the gig economy. We hope that future emotional labor scholarship will dig into several taken-for-granted assumptions about the phenomenon moving forward to help "go back to the basics" regarding display rules of those in service work.
Keywords: emotional labor, well-being, organizational behavior, human resources management
Revisiting "Resistance to Change": Recognizing the Tenuous Nature of a
Taken-for-Granted Construct
Mara S. Cable and Jean M. Bartunek
Vol. 33(4) 357–362
DOI: 10.1177/10564926241261889
https://journals.sagepub.com/stoken/default+domain/H4CRYQTAGADSNFSXNIKW/full
The title of Coch and French's influential article "Overcoming Resistance to Change" gave the term "resistance" a negative meaning and connotation that has been subsequently fostered by ongoing scholarship and practice regarding organizational change. In this article, we describe the understanding of resistance originally developed by Kurt Lewin, which had very different connotations for the term, and how Lewin's understanding was lost after his death. By reflecting on two publications by one of the authors that were based on an interpretive approach to organizational change and that did not need the term resistance, we show it is possible to interpret change agent initiatives and change recipient responses without using that label. Thus, we demonstrate how taking a revisionist history approach to a particular taken-for-granted construct salient to organizational change research can show how tenuous that construct actually is.
Keywords: resistance, change/transformation, management history, groups/group processes/dynamics, organizational behavior, tensions
ESSAY
Superpower Corrupts Antagonistic Superpowers Corrupt Absolutely
Henry Mintzberg
Vol. 33(4) 363–365
DOI: 10.1177/10564926241256601
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/10564926241256601
If power tends to corrupt, then imagine what superpower can do. Three superpowers, each imbalanced in its own way-toward state communism (China), private capitalism (United States), and national populism (Russia)-vie with each other for global supremacy, all with a substantial arsenal of nuclear weapons under the control of a single individual. Whether malevolent or mistaken, anyone can provoke World War III. We shall, therefore, have to think outside the superpower box, for example, by favoring grounded communityship over centralized leadership, and global governance beyond antagonistic superpower.
Keywords: business & society, political economy, prosocial behavior
EMPIRICAL RESEARCH
Paradoxical Tensions as a Double-Edged Sword: Analysing the Development of Platform Cooperatives in the European Gig Economy
Damion J. Bunders and Tine De Moor
Vol. 33(4) 366–382
DOI: 10.1177/10564926231202422
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/10564926231202422
Platform cooperatives promise to provide an alternative organizational model of worker ownership and governance to heavily criticized investor-owned gig platforms, but have until now remained relatively rare. This study examines the development of platform co-ops to gain insight into the reasons and mechanisms behind their slow but steady growth in Europe. Using desk research on 48 platform co-ops and 16 in-depth interviews with founders of platform co-ops, we build on paradox theorizing to analyze how founders of platform co-ops manage competing demands during the start-up phase. Extending recent studies on interorganizational paradoxes, we show how systemic tensions in the gig economy motivate the creation of platform coops as a way of coping and that interactions between tensions on different levels during actual development can result in failed market entry. Hence, this study also addresses the counter-intuitiveness to the establishment of organizations permeated with paradoxical tensions.
Keywords: innovation, multilevel analysis or framework, organizational development, paradox, tensions
Material Agency in Discursive Strategizing – The Study of a Software Company Seeking Global Growth
Jenni Myllykoski and Anniina Rantakari
Vol. 33(4) 383–400
DOI: 10.1177/10564926231207304
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/10564926231207304
This study examines how the product evokes agency in discursive strategizing. Rather than solely being outcomes of strategizing, products also play a role in the initial formation of strategy, which eventually may both hinder and promote strategic renewal. Theoretically, we draw from ideas of posthumanist performativity, which considers discourse and materiality as inseparable and allows us to elucidate the ways in which materiality evokes agency in managers' discursive strategizing. Empirically, we conducted a longitudinal real-time study by participating in a software company's strategizing meetings for 2 years. Our findings reveal two forms of material agency evoked by the company product during discursive strategizing: indwelling and outdwelling agency. Indwelling agency manifests when the product's logic starts to frame the scope of strategy discourse. Outdwelling agency manifests when the product attracts unexpected customers, which later alters managers' strategic scope. These findings enrich the understanding of the contribution of materiality to strategic outcomes.
Keywords: strategy, discourse, materiality, process thinking, qualitative research
Navigating Temporary Organizations:
A Narrative Perspective
Jothsna Rajan, Srivardhini K Jha2, and Gopal Naik
Vol. 33(4) 401–417
DOI: 10.1177/10564926231208117
https://journals.sagepub.com/stoken/default+domain/EJI6XNUBEN7GVNGGCCEA/full
Temporary organizations (TOs) can be viewed as a collection of narratives about the past and the future that can potentially shape organizational outcomes. An in-depth, longitudinal study of a time-bound inter-organizational project that served rural India's educational needs show how multi-authored narratives and practices in temporary organizations influence each other. When the narratives are coherent with respect to the past and the future, the actors engage in mitigative practices, and the project develops. If the narratives diverge, the actors engage in self-serving practices hindering the project. The narrative view affords us a novel lens to understand the dynamics that shape practices and outcomes within temporary organizations. Our findings also have practical implications for TO management-understanding the plurality of narratives and emphasizing the importance of aligning them.
Keywords: temporary organizations, narratives, emerging markets, grounded theory, groups/group processes/dynamics
PROVOCATIONS & PROVOCATEURS
Wake up! Advancing the Conversation on Woke Labeling
Danielle E. Warren
Vol. 33(4) 418–420
https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/full/10.1177/10564926241265297
Editor's Introduction – I am delighted to write this introduction to Danielle Warren's paper "Wake up! Advancing the Conversation on Woke Labeling." This is the first paper I've accepted as the new editor of the Provocations and Provocateurs (P&P) Section of the Journal of Management Inquiry. I believe it meets the high standards set by my predecessor Denny Gioia. Here's the backstory. I had read Academy of Management Perspectives (AMP) papers that used the terms "woke" and "wokeness" (Foss & Klein, 2023; Waldman & Sparr, 2023; Wright, 2023). I was surprised to see these terms used, because I'd always associated them with pejorative descriptions of DEI practices in popular culture, not with academic work. The subsequent rebuttals in AMP showed that I wasn't alone in my surprise (DiTomaso, 2023; Thomason et al., 2023). I also had the sense that there was an opportunity here for JMI and P&P. If a scholar was freed from the constraints of more formal journals, what would they say in response to the situation? Even more importantly, could they help redirect our field's conversations on these issues away from derisive and divisive labels, and towards more substantive inquiries? I came across Danielle's work (Warren, 2022), made contact, and was pleased when she agreed to take this on. I asked her to embrace the provocative traditions of the section, and she has. Her paper provides a clear, forceful critique and a call to action: we should all wake up to the implications of using terms like "woke" or "woke-washing." The call to action will be critical for the P&P section going forward. I'm not interested in ivory tower musings; I will seek out submissions that specify how things should be different. Danielle calls on us all to dig deeper into the inconsistencies that characterize life in organizations, and to avoid labels that oversimplify, denigrate, and divide. This is excellent advice regardless of where one stands on any complex or controversial issue. – David Hannah
The Editors and Editorial Board of JMI thanks Sage Publications for its generosity in sharing published articles openly.
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Richard Stackman
Professor
University of San Francisco
San Francisco CA
(415) 422-2148
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