JOURNAL OF MANAGEMENT INQUIRY – July 2024 Issue
Please enjoy free access to the Volume 33, Issue 3 (July 2024) articles through August 30 by clicking on the URL for each article.
CURATED
The Future of Research in an Artificial Intelligence-Driven World
Mukta Kulkarni, Saku Mantere, Eero Vaara, Elmira van den Broek, Stella Pachidi, Vern L. Glaser, Joel Gehman, Gianpiero Petriglieri, Dirk Lindebaum, Lindsey D. Cameron, Hatim A. Rahman, Gazi Islam, and Michelle Greenwood
Vol. 33(3) 207–229
DOI: 10.1177/10564926231219622
https://journals.sagepub.com/stoken/default+domain/UR9REWPGEJ6RYTU2NWQV/full
Current and future developments in artificial intelligence (AI) systems have the capacity to revolutionize the research process for better or worse. On the one hand, AI systems can serve as collaborators as they help streamline and conduct our research. On the other hand, such systems can also become our adversaries when they impoverish our ability to learn as theorists, or when they lead us astray through inaccurate, biased, or fake information. No matter which angle is considered, and whether we like it or not, AI systems are here to stay. In this curated discussion, we raise questions about human centrality and agency in the research process, and about the multiple philosophical and practical challenges we are facing now and ones we will face in the future.
Keywords: artificial intelligence systems, AI-human collaboration, management research; agency
Practicing Impact and Impacting Practice? Creating Impact Through Practice-Based
Scholarship
Yanis Hamdali, Lorenzo Skade, Paula Jarzabkowski, Davide Nicolini, Juliane Reinecke, Eero Vaara, and Charlene Zietsma
Vol. 33(3) 230–243
DOI: 10.1177/10564926231219621
https://journals.sagepub.com/stoken/default+domain/SDTVYGHS6A3BKDAW8M37/full
This curated debate provides a discussion on impact and its relation to practice-based scholarship, i.e., scholarship grounded in the social theories of practice. Five experienced senior scholars reflect on conceptualizations of impact, how it can be created and disseminated, and on the role of practice-based scholarship in this process. The authors discuss the role of researchers as members of the academic system, their activities related to generating, developing, and challenging new theory, and their reflexive relation to the research context when explaining their research to stakeholders to create knowledge and thus, for impacting practice. To suggest ways of practicing impact, their contributions also conceptualize impactful theory and reflect on the relationship between the production and usage of knowledge. These insights are an important contribution to the debate on scholarly impact and provide critical guidance for impactful scholarly work beyond conventional concepts.
Keywords: practice theory, impact, practice
EMPIRICAL
Family Owner–Nonfamily CEO Relational Practices Shaping CEO Succession: Handling Equivocality and Relational Balancing
Frank Lambrechts, Rüveyda Kelleci, Wim Voordeckers, and Jolien Huybrechts
Vol. 33(3) 244–264
DOI: 10.1177/10564926231191081
https://journals.sagepub.com/stoken/default+domain/CDYW7QP5XAXZSBWWHEZF/full
This study focuses on family owner–nonfamily CEO relational practices and what these relational practices constrain and potentiate in family firm CEO succession. Our main contribution is developing a constructionist relational practice perspective and approach as an alternative to the entitative view that dominates the family business literature. We illustrate the relational practice perspective through our dialogically structured inquiries with family owners and nonfamily CEOs. We co-develop practical wisdom on how family owner–nonfamily CEO relational practices can construct stuckness in organizing or, conversely, open up new possibilities to go on depending on (i) the way the family owner and nonfamily CEO "handle" equivocality and tension they continuously (re)produce through their relational practices and (ii) the way they enact "relational balancing" to equilibrate their relation in the making in terms of value/self-worth maintenance by involving other actors, such as board members, management team members, or a coach.
Keywords: constructionist relational practice perspective, family owner-nonfamily CEO relational practices, dialogically structured inquiries, handling equivocality, relational balancing
Organizing Creativity With Constraints-Insights From Popular Music Songwriting Teams
Tobias Theel and Jörg Sydow
Vol. 33(3) 265–283
DOI: 10.1177/10564926231191087
https://journals.sagepub.com/stoken/default+domain/ERVMSANB72SMYWQWV4SF/full
Creative processes within and across organizations have not only been associated with freedom but also with constraints. By taking a dialectical process perspective, we examine how creatives actually engage with constraints and how constraints thereby emerge, unfold and terminate over time. Based on ethnographic observations and interviews with popular music songwriting teams, we found that collaborators do not simply experience but also actively utilize constraints. Doing so enables songwriters to process constraints and to organize for an oscillation between stable, generative, and flexible constraint characterizations, fueling the creative process. Notwithstanding the persistent nature of some structural constraints, these findings contribute to research on organizing creativity by conceptualizing constraints as intertwined, malleable and even transformable by actors as they unfold. Thereby, the findings extend the current understanding of creativity with constraints by pointing to the crucial role of certain constraint characterizations that need to alternate procedurally between stability and fluidity.
Keywords: creativity, innovation, organization theory, process thinking, qualitative research
Who Do They Think We Are? Reflexivity and Participant Constructions of the Researcher
Ali Rostron
Vol. 33(3) 284–299
DOI: 10.1177/10564926231193374
https://journals.sagepub.com/stoken/default+domain/QNRJEIWZHTP99P3RZSRE/full
This article addresses an underexplored issue within management and organizational studies researcher reflexivity, namely how participants perceive and construct the researcher. However, reflexivity which includes how our participants see us is necessary for a more complete understanding of the research process and ourselves as researchers, and for how participants choose to talk about themselves and their practice. I therefore present a novel method for reanalyzing research data to construct a version of myself-as-researcher from the talk and responses to me of my manager participants, addressing the question: "to whom were my participants speaking?" which identifies multiple constructions of the researcher as auditor, consultant, and therapist. I extend the literature on the researcher–participant relationship by highlighting the role of emotion and uncertainty of managers in making sense of the research occasion, and I add to the suite of tools available to researchers to review and reflect on their research practice.
Keywords: qualitative research, quality management, interviews
Conceptualising Silence in External Corporate Communication: A Case
Study of Pakistan
Fatima Yusuf, Amna Yousaf, Maria Ishaque, and Waheed Ali Umrani
Vol. 33(3) 300-318
DOI: 10.1177/10564926231194297
https://journals.sagepub.com/stoken/default+domain/JEP86YF3P6JBNSVUDMAK/full
Although existing research has extensively explored corporate disclosure, a very little is known about why corporate organisations may remain silent while communicating with their external audiences. This study offers a definition of corporate silence and develops a conceptual framework for the study of silence in the narrative communication of corporate organisations. We develop a typology based on the forms and motivations for corporate silence in written corporate documents. Data was gathered from 26 interviews with senior managers from regulatory bodies, audit firms and listed companies in Pakistan and a grounded theory approach was used for data analysis. We postulate that self-protection from fear and discomfort, cooperation, managerial opportunism, apathy, and resistance are the prime motivators of corporate silence. The analysis also leads to the development of five different forms of silence: (1) defensive; (2) prosocial; (3) opportunistic; (4) authoritative; and (5) counteractive.
Keywords: communication, developing countries, impression management, power and politics
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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