Are Boards Designed to Fail? The Implausibility of Effective Board Monitoring

In this review, we challenge the idea that directors are well positioned to be effective monitors of management. Moving beyond the logic of incentives and ability, we conceptualize a model based on the premise of boards as groups of individuals obtaining, processing and sharing information and explain how variation in information-processing demands at the director, board and firm level may challenge effective monitoring. We draw on multiple theoretical perspectives to identify these barriers to effective board monitoring. Our goal in reviewing these barriers is to help us take stock of existing research in corporate governance and to better explain board behavior beyond traditional agency and resource dependency accounts. We also aim to uncover gaps in the conceptual and empirical research and suggest areas of fruitful future research.     

Revisiting emergence in emergent leadership: An integrative,multi-perspective review

We draw attention to how and why multiple perspectives on emergence can promote leadership scholarship within the broad umbrella category of emergent leadership. Tracing the derivation of emergent leadership and related concepts since 1941, we identify four empirically derived themes: Entries, or how and where definitions were introduced and adopted; Essences, identification of key components and processes; Eclipses, where certain constructs and approaches have gained prominence over others; and Erasures, where particular lines of inquiry and methodologies have been subsumed, ignored, or removed from easy access by researchers. In critically reviewing the emergent leadership literature, we apply these themes to reveal a number of flaws that inhibit emergent leadership research, including: inconsistent measures, narrow sampling frames, tautological definitions, limited theorization, and very little attention to implications for the development of leader-follower relations. Based on this analysis, and with reference to contemporary issues, we propose an agenda for future research on emergent leadership that is informed by interdisciplinary perspectives that give prominence to emergence dynamics.     

On the meaning of work: A theoretical integration and review

The meaning of work literature is the product of a long tradition of rich inquiry spanning many disciplines. Yet, the field lacks overarching structures that would facilitate greater integration, consistency, and understanding of this body of research. Current research has developed in ways that have created relatively independent domains of study that exist in silos organized around various sources of meaning and meaningfulness. In this paper, we review the meaning of work literature in order to propose new frameworks within which to classify existing work and to seed new work. Our review is organized by the major sources of the meaning of work on which extant research has focused, and by the mechanisms through which work is proposed to become meaningful. We analyze the evolution and current state of meaning of work research, identifying core patterns and assumptions that have defined research in this area to date, and offer a theoretical framework based on this body of research that illuminates the main pathways to meaningful work. Throughout, we outline several promising directions for future research that we hope will stimulate further generative inquiry in this rich area of study.     

Implicit affect in organizations

Our goal is to integrate the construct of implicit affect—affective processes activated or processed outside of conscious awareness that influence ongoing thought, behavior, and conscious emotional experience—into the field of organizational behavior. We begin by offering a definition and review of implicit processes, including implicit cognition, motivation and affect. We then draw upon recent empirical research in psychology and neuroscience to make the case for a three category framework of implicit affect: (1) implicit sources of affect (2) implicit experiencing of affect and (3) implicit regulation of affect. To demonstrate the use of this framework in organizational scholarship, we present illustrative examples from organizational behavior research that represent each category. Given the limited amount of research in the organizational domain, we focus on demonstrating how an implicit affect perspective might alter or extend theoretical perspectives about a variety of organizational phenomena. We then discuss methodological options and challenges for studying implicit affect within the organizational domain. In sum, we provide a theoretical and methodological roadmap as well as a call for action for understanding the role of implicit affective processes in organizational behavior.     

Theoretical foundations of cross-border mergers and acquisitions: A review of current research and recommendations for the future

Cross-border mergers and acquisitions (M&As) have gained in popularity over the last decade. However, research on this type of diversification strategy has not kept pace with this trend. While there is considerable research in the area, it is unfortunately fragmented, leaving gaps that need to be addressed. Herein, we examine the theoretical perspectives and research findings on cross-border M&As from three perspectives: cross-border M&As as a (1) mode of entry in a foreign market, (2) dynamic learning process from a foreign culture, and (3) value-creating strategy. Current empirical research on this topic is also tabulated and grouped by theoretical stream to indicate major findings. Most importantly, we identify gaps in the literature and highlight five important research issues that provide directions for future research.     

Human Resource Development in SMEs: A Systematic Review of the Literature

Human Resource Development (HRD) in small and medium‐sized enterprises (SMEs) is a significant area of scholarship. However, the cumulativeness of research on HRD in SMEs remains relatively low when compared to HRD generally. This paper reports a systematic literature review (SLR) to synthesise research in this area. A disciplined screening process resulted in a final sample of 117 papers published in 31 journals from 1995 to 2014. The synthesis of these empirical and theoretical studies revealed that: (a) the literature utilises a narrow range of theoretical and conceptual perspectives; (b) HRD is being investigated across a variety of SME contexts, themes and units of analysis; (c) researchers define HRD in multiple ways and use a diverse set of measures of HRD activity; (d) there is significant potential for future research across the SME and HRD disciplines, SME settings and beyond existing theoretical perspectives. We offer suggestions for further advancing the development of this area of research in terms of theory, content and methodology.     

A review of empirical research on dynamic competitive strategy

Beginning with Chandler's 1962 seminal work, researchers have emphasized that competitive strategy is not a static phenomenon, but rather a sequence of interconnected actions and reactions unfolding over time. This paper reviews the empirical research on dynamic competitive strategy published between 1986 and 2005 in nine leading strategic management journals. An integrated framework is used to showcase the research in terms of antecedents, strategic actions and outcomes. The literature review demonstrates that significant progress has been made in the field of dynamic competitive strategy, and yet that there are still many promising lines of inquiry for future theoretical and empirical research, particularly in the areas of strategic action timing and path dependency.     

Let’s agree about nice leaders: A literature review and meta-analysis of agreeableness and its relationship with leadership outcomes

In this study, we draw from 22 years of research in leadership to investigate the ambiguous relationship between the personality trait agreeableness and leadership. First, we conduct a comprehensive review of the leadership literature to build a foundational understanding of leader agreeableness that includes providing a broad definition for agreeableness, identifying emerging trends, and proposing an agenda for future research. Second, using the literature review as our theoretical foundation, we conduct a meta-analysis from the same body of literature to quantitatively decompose the relationship between leader agreeableness and leadership emergence and effectiveness. We also hypothesize and test the contextual moderating effects for gender, leadership level, and cultural context (as reflected by individualism-collectivism). Collectively, our findings provide a framework for future research on leadership agreeableness and support the notion that nice (highly agreeable) leaders can emerge as effective leaders.     

How follower traits and cultural values influence the effects of leadership

Follower traits and cultural values are important context variables that influence the effectiveness of leader behaviors. Understanding how these variables interact with leader behaviors has been an important scholarly pursuit for the past several decades. Yet, this research is dispersed, and there exist methodological and theoretical limitations within this line of inquiry. We seek to improve our collective understanding of the role of follower traits and cultural values in leadership behavior research. First, we provide a comprehensive review of the extant research on follower traits and cultural values as moderators of leader behaviors. Second, based on our review and analysis of prior research, we identify important patterns in the literature. Third, we highlight methodological shortcomings and solutions that should enhance the quality of future research in this area. We also offer up theoretical insights for future research that should increase our understanding of how follower traits influence leader behaviors.     

9 Creativity in Organizations

Abstract

In this chapter, I review contemporary theories and research on creativity in organizations. After discussing key definitional issues in this domain, I review the contemporary scholarly literature proceeding from the most molecular of perspectives focusing on within-individual processes to the more molar perspective of the collective creativity that can take place in work groups. While the within-individual process featured most prominently in the extant literature is intrinsic motivation, after a treatment of some fundamental issues surrounding the intrinsic motivation construct, I review research on conscious and unconscious thinking and positive and negative affect as key internal processes relevant to understanding creativity. Next, I focus on contextual influences on creativity including safety signals, creativity prompts, supervisors, leadership, and networks. Lastly, I focus on creativity in groups (from both an input and a process perspective). In closing, I reiterate a recurrent theme throughout the review. This is an exciting era for research on creativity in organizations with many intriguing questions awaiting future scholarly inquiry.     

Shared service center research: A review of the past,present, and future

More than 75% of Fortune 500 companies have established models of shared services with the aim of gaining superior performance by cost savings and service enhancements. Despite scholars' complaints about scant shared service center (SSC) research, this study shows that the actual shortcoming in this stream concerns a high fragmentation of the academic literature (e.g., we found 137 works in the initial search and 83 works in a refined screen). In this first comprehensive literature review, we synthesize peer-reviewed articles and classify them into 4 perspectives according to their research questions (i.e., determinant, process, control, and outcome). We identify 17 major research areas across these perspectives. Additionally, we provide information on methodologies and theories. On the basis of the literature synthesis, we discuss opportunities and gaps and propose an agenda for future research. Specifically, we suggest 3 potential research directions (i.e., direct relationships, mediating, and outcome effects) regarding SSCs during their operational maturity phase.     

Internationalization of Digital Innovations: A Rapidly Evolving Research Stream

This perspective paper synthesizes the burgeoning literature on internationalization of digital innovations to identify promising areas for future research. We first integrate multiple perspectives on digital innovations to offer a coherent and unified definition of digital innovations. Next, we synthesize digital innovation research into a theoretical framework that discusses the interrelationship between digital innovations and international business environment and its implications for international penetration of digital innovations. Our synthesis of literature highlights the increased research focus on demand-side perspective as an appropriate theoretical framework to explain the unique dynamics of digital internationalization. Finally, we take account of recent trends in digital economy as well as important gaps in current literature to propose promising avenues for future research. We particularly emphasize the need to integrate current institutional transitions of a digital era as well as emerging theoretical perspectives such as demand-side perspective and opportunity logic in digital internationalization research. We hope our perspective paper will contribute toward a more systematic and theoretically grounded advancement of digital internationalization research.     

Determining causal relationships in leadership research using Machine Learning: The powerful synergy of experiments and data science

Machine Learning (ML) techniques offer exciting new avenues for leadership research. In this paper we discuss how ML techniques can be used to inform predictive and causal models of leadership effects and clarify why both types of model are important for leadership research. We propose combining ML and experimental designs to draw causal inferences by introducing a recently developed technique to isolate “heterogeneous treatment effects.” We provide a step-by-step guide on how to design studies that combine field experiments with the application of ML to establish causal relationships with maximal predictive power. Drawing on examples in the leadership literature, we illustrate how the suggested approach can be applied to examine the impact of, for example, leadership behavior on follower outcomes. We also discuss how ML can be used to advance leadership research from theoretical, methodological and practical perspectives and consider limitations.     

International venture capital research: From cross-country comparisons to crossing borders

Venture capital (VC) has become an international phenomenon, and VC firms are a specific kind of service firm whose characteristics have distinctive implications for international behaviour. There is now a disparate body of research on international aspects of VC across a number of disciplines comprising finance, economics, strategy, entrepreneurship, international business and economic geography. A novel aspect of this paper is that we review and synthesize this disparate literature. A number of research gaps and limitations in the theoretical and methodological approaches involved in previous studies are identified and suggestions made for further research. We show that the vast majority of the literature relates to cross-country comparisons; that is, macro-level comparisons of VC industries across different countries and micro-level comparisons of VC behaviour across countries. From our review of the literature, we argue that an under-researched area concerns the influence of institutional contexts, especially the role of social networks and cultures. Furthermore, our review of the literature indicates that there is a major research gap in relation to work dealing with the crossing of country borders by VC firms. We suggest that resource-based, capabilities, institutional and network theories may be offer insights to further our understanding of the behaviour of VC firms in this area.     

The future of grand challenges research: Retiring a hopeful concept and endorsing research principles

Editorial notes in leading management journals have urged scholars to address Grand Challenges (GC) as an opportunity for producing knowledge that matters for society. This review explores whether current conceptualizations of GC support a productive path for management and organizational scholarship by guiding empirical inquiry, facilitating cumulative theory development, and informing practice. We systematically examine scholarly articles, calls for papers, and editorial notes published in management journals for consistency in how researchers use and define the concept of GC and the scope of associated phenomena and attributes. We find three prominent conceptual architectures in use: discursive, family resemblance, and phenomenon driven. The variety and incoherence of current uses of the GC concept and the lack of efforts to improve its analytical competence lead us to suggest its retirement. Instead, we propose building on the enthusiasm around GC research and using GC as a term to define research principles that collectively help align research efforts and improve theoretical development and practice. The principles we propose capture a genuine origin story for management research on GC.     

Managing Contradiction: Stockholder and Stakeholder Views of the Firm as Paradoxical Opportunity

Stockholder and stakeholder perspectives have been positioned in the literature as being in tension, and thus a potential source of innovation and change. However, researchers have overlooked a systematic examination of this presumption in theory and in practice. This study explores the ways that stockholder and stakeholder assumptions are presented by theorists and compares these with expressions of stockholder and stakeholder perspectives used by firms in practice. We argue that theoretical entrenchment dichotomizing these perspectives has disrupted the ability of researchers to leverage this tension. While scholarship remains trapped in a vicious cycle, we also argue that firms in practice express only the acceptance dimension of a virtuous cycle. Our empirical research demonstrates that firms accept and accommodate the paradoxical tension between managing for stockholders versus balancing the interests of stakeholders. This is evidenced by strategies we identify as book‐ending, cadence, continuous and simultaneous co‐mingling, and hybridization. We find that in practice these tensions are more integrated whereas in theory they are treated as more distinct and, often, in conflict. We suggest ways in which both scholarship and practice can better leverage tension as paradoxical opportunity.     

The multifaceted nature of social practices: A review of the perspectives on practice-based theory building about organizations

A vibrant body of literature on social practices has developed rapidly in recent years. However, a systematic analysis of the underlying perspectives that shape the way practice-based scholars contribute to theory building about organizational phenomena has escaped scholarly attention. It is of pivotal importance to examine the multifaceted nature of social practices and understand the process by which new practice-based knowledge is developed. Our study addresses this gap by disentangling how researchers have adopted the knowledge, materiality, ethics, and politics perspectives that – as past influential work has informed us – are particularly relevant to practice-based theory building. In so doing, we categorize the body of literature into themes that correspond to the organizational phenomena examined by social practice scholars: practice boundaries and coordination of work, technology at work, strategy formation, local particulars structuring everyday work, and transformation of work practices. By uncovering how scholars adopt the four perspectives within each theme, our review shows that scholars (i) predominantly adopt the knowledge perspective, (ii) neglect the politics perspective when looking ‘inside’ a social practice, (iii) strikingly de-emphasize the ethics perspective, and (iv) isolate each of the four perspectives used in theory building. We then examine in detail the implications of our work for future research on social practices and conclude with a number of theoretical and methodological suggestions.     

The Identity of Entrepreneurs: Providing Conceptual Clarity and Future Directions

The identity of entrepreneurs (IoE) has become a popular concept in entrepreneurship research, for example, to explain entrepreneurial behavior. Yet, despite growing interest in this topic, theoretical and terminological inconsistencies have hampered the development of a coherent understanding of the identity of entrepreneurs. I conduct a systematic literature review to provide an overview of different theoretical perspectives in IoE research and suggest consistent use of terminology and operationalizations. Further, I propose a framework to investigate the dynamic nature and multi‐level influences of the identity of entrepreneurs, and outline meaningful avenues for future research to unravel when, how, and with what consequences identity may become relevant in new venture creation.     

Competition network as a source of competitive advantage: The dynamic capability perspective and evidence from China

The search for competitive advantage is the defining inquiry of strategic management research. In this study, we draw on the dynamic capability lens to develop a counterintuitive view that positions competitors of a firm as an important source of competitive advantage. We argue that a firm's competitors form a competition network from which it can collect information about innovative ideas, product market, and related industries. Such information helps it calibrate market opportunities, update the resource base, and, eventually, strengthen its competitive advantage. This positive effect of competition network on competitive advantage will reasonably be contingent upon the proactive information search by the firm. The empirical results based on the survey data of 631 Chinese firms strongly support our theoretical model. This study identifies another distinctive source of competitive advantage than industry context or organizational resources as well as advancing our understanding of competition network.     

From competency to conversation: A multi-perspective approach to collective leadership development

Collective leadership involves the participation of multiple entities in the leadership process. This body of research is informed by a variety of theoretical perspectives, including person-centered, social network, social-relational, sociomaterial, and institutional views. Despite multiple calls for leadership development to move beyond individual leadership, collective leadership development remains focused on coaching and competency development, extending rather than reconsidering the person-centered perspective. We argue that it is necessary and timely to align the practice-based literature on leadership development with theoretical and empirically-based perspectives on collective leadership. We provide a multi-perspective framework of collective leadership development by 1) introducing a wider disciplinary range of theoretical perspectives on collective leadership development; 2) integrating these perspectives with leadership development approaches for different forms of collective leadership; 3) illustrating how the multiple perspectives on collective leadership development can be applied to specific work contexts; and 4) identifying directions for future research.