The Benefits and Pitfalls of Social Capital: Empirical Evidence from Two Organizations in the United Kingdom *

Recently, there has been a shift in the way management scholars view the firm, from traditional models that are based on ideas of opportunism and market failure to newer knowledge‐based theories that argue for a more socialized perspective. One of the key components of these theories is the notion of social capital. Social capital is the set of resources that accrue to an individual or group by virtue of their social connections. As such, it is a resource that is jointly owned. Most recent research adopts a more‐is‐better approach to social capital, suggesting that individuals with larger quantity of ties derive more positive benefits. However in this paper, we argue that using social capital has both benefits and drawbacks for organizations, and that these positive and negative aspects of social capital occur simultaneously. To substantiate our claim, we use data collected from sets of interviews with senior and middle managers in two organizations in the United Kingdom. Our findings indicate that while social capital has many beneficial effects with respect to information access and retrieval, community building, and underlying group norms, there are also a number of less‐beneficial aspects, which are under‐explored in the current empirical literature. Furthermore, we suggest that organizations must develop an understanding of the bridging and bonding elements of social capital, as these are critical for its implementation. Implications of the research findings and future research directions are discussed.     

‘Belonging’ to a Virtual Research Centre: Exploring the Influence of Social Capital Formation Processes on Member Identification in a Virtual Organization

Identification, a person's sense of belonging, is thought to have positive outcomes because those who identify strongly will be more motivated to achieve organizational goals. This study applies a social capital lens in order to highlight how different social capital formation processes contribute to member identification, with a focus on virtual organizations where dispersed membership may preclude face‐to‐face interactions. The study provides a rare opportunity to explore variation in identification in a single organizational context. The results highlight how some dimensions of social capital augment each other and affect identification through the four conditions that influence social capital development: time, interdependence, interaction and closure. The study suggests that, while creating interdependence and an array of means for interaction support the development of both social capital and identification, not all members of the organization need to feel equally connected. Partial closure appears beneficial for information flows and ‘renewal’ of the virtual organization.     

NGOs and international business research: Progress,prospects and problems

Civil society, and non‐government organizations (NGOs) in particular, have become a research interest in international business (IB). The purpose of this paper is to review scholarly understandings of the nature and significance of NGOs in IB. Contributions from complementary research domains are also explored with a view to encouraging greater interdisciplinary integration in analysing the NGO sector and in particular its relations with multinational enterprises (MNEs). These domains are: strategic alliances and resource dependency; global governance and multilateralism; public management; and regulation theory. The primary argument is that such interdisciplinarity may facilitate more innovative IB treatments of the role of NGOs, reflecting more adequately their strategic environment and motivations. Moreover, including a multitude of perspectives helps to address broader issues identified by scholars as pivotal to the future standing of the field: the nature of strategic agency among organizations other than MNEs; the interpretation of globalization and its implications for organizations; and whether IB is too isolated from the other social sciences.     

The Development of Entrepreneurial Leadership: The Role of Human,Social and Institutional Capital

This paper contributes to the literature on entrepreneurial leadership development. Leadership studies are characterized by an increasing emphasis given to an individual leader's social and organizational domain. Within the context of human capital and social capital theory, the paper reflects on the emergence of a social capital theory of leadership development. Using a retrospective, interpretivist research method, the authors present the experience of a cohort of business leaders on an executive development programme to uncover the everydayness of leadership development in practice. Specifically, they explore how entrepreneurial leadership develops as a social process and what the role of social capital is in this. The findings suggest that the enhancement of leaders’ human capital only occurred through their development of social capital. There is not, as extant literature suggests, a clear separation between leader development and leadership development. Further, the analysis implies that the social capital theory of leadership is limited in the context of the entrepreneurial small firm, and the authors propose that it should be expanded to incorporate institutional capital, that is, the formal structures and organizations which enhance the role of social capital and go beyond enriching the human capital stock of individual leaders.     

Social Activism in and Around Organizations

Organizations are frequent targets for social activists aiming to influence society by first altering organizational policies and practices. Reflecting a steady rise in research on this topic, we review recent literature and advance an insider-outsider framework to help explicate the diverse mechanisms and pathways involved. Our framework distinguishes between different types of activists based on their relationship with targeted organizations. For example, “insider” activists who are employees of the target organization have certain advantages and disadvantages when compared with “outsider” activists who are members of independent social movement organizations. We also distinguish between the direct and indirect (or spillover) effects of social activism. Much research has focused on the direct effects of activism on targeted organizations, but often the effects on non-targeted organizations matter more for activists goals of achieving widespread change. Drawing on this framework, we identify and discuss eight specific areas that are in need of further scholarly attention.     

Influence of Social Identity on Negative Perceptions in Global Virtual Teams

The paper combines insights from social identity theory and organizational network theory to specify the conditions under which social capital can induce negative attitudes in global virtual teams. The structural configuration of social capital has crucial implications for the sociocognitive processes causing individuals to adopt negative attitudes to out-group members. The paper evaluates both the negative implications of structural configurations on out-group perceptions, which are important precursors to successful intergroup interaction in global virtual teams. We collected data from 160 actors across 40 global virtual teams embedded within three separate organizations. 34 social identity groups were detected and ties between and within the groups were investigated. Our analyses provide insights on the roles of social identity groupings and social capital as well as in-group brokerage and interactions on (negative) perceptions of other group members in global virtual teams.     

Social Enterprises as Hybrid Organizations: A Review and Research Agenda

The impacts of the global economic crisis of 2008, the intractable problems of persistent poverty and environmental change have focused attention on organizations that combine enterprise with an embedded social purpose. Scholarly interest in social enterprise (SE) has progressed beyond the early focus on definitions and context to investigate their management and performance. From a review of the SE literature, the authors identify hybridity, the pursuit of the dual mission of financial sustainability and social purpose, as the defining characteristic of SEs. They assess the impact of hybridity on the management of the SE mission, financial resource acquisition and human resource mobilization, and present a framework for understanding the tensions and trade‐offs resulting from hybridity. By examining the influence of dual mission and conflicting institutional logics on SE management the authors suggest future research directions for theory development for SE and hybrid organizations more generally.     

Social Capital and Indian Micromultinationals

‘Micromultinationals’ are small to medium‐sized enterprises (SMEs) that use higher‐commitment entry modes beyond exporting. The study extends the micromultinational notion by addressing the question: what enables some internationalizing SMEs to become micromultinationals rather than pure exporters? Adopting a connectionist and bonding perspective, its focus is on cross‐border coethnic ties as a valuable source of social capital. A survey of 102 Indian software SMEs indicates that higher stocks of cross‐border coethnic social capital facilitate the adoption of higher‐commitment entry modes by micromultinationals. Also, micromultinationals have a significantly higher degree of internationalization (the percentage of sales from foreign sources) than pure exporters.     

The Consequences of Perceived Age Discrimination Amongst Older Police Officers: Is Social Support a Buffer?*

This paper considers the psychological consequences of perceived age discrimination, and the buffering effect of social support. Findings suggest that age discrimination acts as a stressor, with negative effects on job and life satisfaction, perceived power and prestige of the job, and affective and normative commitment, along with positive effects on withdrawal cognitions and continuance commitment. For work‐based social support, there were positive main effects on job and life satisfaction, power and prestige of the job, and affective and normative commitment, and a negative main effect on withdrawal cognitions. However, there were no significant moderating effects for work‐based social support, and we found the anticipated buffering effect for non‐work‐based social support only for life satisfaction, with reverse buffering for job satisfaction and normative commitment     

A Critical Plot Twist: Changing Characters and Foreshadowing the Future of Organizational Storytelling

This review explores the evolution of scholarly research about organizational storytelling over the past 40 years in a sample of 165 papers published between 1975 and 2015. The authors contend that organizational storytelling has established a conventional foothold beside the dominant, scientific narrative of organization studies. Meanwhile, the voice of critical storytelling in organizations has emerged, confirming (and extending) five organizational storytelling themes identified by Rhodes and Brown: sensemaking (and subverting); communicating (and manipulating); change, learning (and challenge); power (and dissent); and identity and identification (and alienation). This review reveals the growing influence of critical management studies, emphasizing the role stories play in disrupting conventional narratives, enriching understanding of present and future storytelling in organizations, and of organizations in general.     

CEO childhood trauma,social networks,and strategic risk taking

Childhood trauma has been recognized as an important aspect of an individual’s early life experiences. However, in research on the upper echelons of organizations, the impact of childhood trauma exposure on CEOs’ strategic decision-making is not well understood. By integrating child trauma theory and upper echelons theory, we develop a framework for exploring how CEO childhood trauma influences strategic risk taking. We suggest that CEO childhood trauma has a negative exponential association with strategic risk taking because of the long-term effects of post-traumatic stress (PTS). In addition, we propose that moderating effects of social networks on the effects of PTS arising from CEO childhood trauma are driven by the two competing functions of social networks: social support and social pressure. We use data on China’s Great Famine to test our theory. By examining CEO childhood trauma and strategic risk taking, our study has important implications for child trauma theory and upper echelons theory.     

员工导师网络对员工职业生涯成功的影响研究

在梳理了员工导师网络的导师制理论、社会资本理论和职业成功理论后,运用SEM方法对员工导师网络的社会资本,导师网络效益与员工职业成功之间的关系进行了研究.结果表明:员工导师网络的社会资本对导师网络效益有显著影响;导师网络效益水平对员工的薪酬水平、升迁次数和职业满意度有影响,且与职业满意度显著正相关.     

8 Organizations and Management in China

Abstract

China’s economic transition and its integration into the global economy have been widely recognized as among the most important social changes in the past three decades. This transformation has attracted scholarly attention from multiple disciplines, and sociologists have made particularly important contributions to literature emphasizing theories of organizations, organizational change, and management practice. In this article, we present a critical review of the state of sociological literature on organization and management issues in the transition process. We focus on studies that explore how organizations shaped the trajectory of China’s economic transition, how organizations affect important social and economic outcomes during transition, and the unique challenges that managers face in China’s transition context. We conclude with suggestions for resolving central debates and future research directions.     

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.     

Accelerating the Innovation Process: A Systematic Review and Realist Synthesis of the Research Literature

There is continued interest among academics, practitioners and policy‐makers in methods to achieve accelerated innovation. Academic studies of this complex phenomenon have succeeded in reaching a high degree of consensus on the antecedents of innovation speed. The aim in this review is to elucidate further the mechanisms underlying management interventions to promote speed. The review adopts a theory‐led, realist synthesis of innovation speed research – the first example of this methodology in management studies. The authors develop a new time‐based framework for categorizing the innovation‐speed literature. The framework has a CIMO logic, and is built by invoking the organizational studies literature on time. The authors contextualize the innovation‐speed literature in relation to the three generic temporal challenges faced by all organizations: reducing temporal uncertainty; resolving temporal conflicts over activities; and allocating resources amid conditions of temporal scarcity. They problematize extant explanations of innovation speed as not taking account of different temporal orientations (temporal dichotomies) within innovation work, and thereby neglecting a potential barrier to achieving accelerated innovation outcomes. They further draw on the literature on time in organizations to suggest new avenues of research, and methodological approaches new to the study of innovation speed. The principal contribution of this review is to offer a new conceptual perspective on the complex empirical research examining how innovation projects may be accelerated from original idea to launch.     

The Differential Effects of Transformational Leadership on Multiple Identifications at Work: A Meta‐analytic Model

Employees’ identifications are a valuable asset for modern organizations, and identification research has stressed the necessity to distinguish identifications according to their focus (i.e. organizational, team, or leader identification). Interestingly, transformational leadership (TFL) has been proposed to unfold its effects by transforming followers’ identifications and could thus be a powerful way to actively manage identification. However, it remains unclear whether TFL affects identifications with different foci similarly or whether it predominantly influences a specific focus. To resolve this puzzle, the authors conducted a meta‐analysis (k = 73; N = 20,543) and found that TFL (and each TFL sub‐dimension) is more strongly associated with leader identification than with organizational identification or team identification. By presenting a comprehensive model of TFL's effects on identifications, we show that leader identification mediates the relationships between TFL and collective identifications (i.e. organizational identification or team identification), illustrating that relational identification plays a crucial role in subsequently shaping collective identifications. Implications for research and practice are discussed.     

How Subgroup Interests and Reputations Moderate the Effect of Organizational Identification on Cooperation

Two experiments tested the effects of organizational identification on individual decisions to cooperate. These decisions occurred in the context of a nested social dilemma in which individuals, subgroups, and the larger collective each held distinct and incompatible interests. In Study 1, when the two subgroups in the dilemma were from different real organizations, higher organizational identification caused lower cooperation with the collective (and higher cooperation with the subgroup) when the opposing organization had a purportedly individualistic culture and reputation. The results of Study 2 supported this interpretation by showing that organizational identification had a negative effect on collective cooperation, and a corresponding positive effect on subgroup cooperation, when decision makers perceived the opposing department to have an individualistic reputation. I discuss the implications of these results for organizations that try to elicit cooperation by fostering members’ organizational identification.     

Institutional and Resource‐based Explanations for Subsidiary Performance

Addressing calls to integrate insights from institutional theory and the resource‐based view, we bring together dual theoretical explanations from institutional theory and the resource‐based view to examine the effectiveness of transfer of practice and human capital development as two routes to subsidiary performance. Our study of Hong Kong firms with subsidiaries in Mainland China shows that both routes positively affect subsidiary performance. However, our data show that our sampled firms struggled to successfully transfer practices from their parents. We attribute an explanation for this to the characteristics of practices as organizational capabilities in which transfer is made harder by the difficulty in replicating such capabilities. Consequently, developing subsidiary human capital is an important ally to practice transfer as a means to achieve superior subsidiary performance. Our results raise interesting questions about practice transfer and the resource‐based view relevant to future scholarly research.     

Non‐financial Shareholder Activism: A Process Model for Influencing Corporate Environmental and Social Performance*

Shareholders have become increasingly active in endeavouring to influence companies’ environmental and social practices. In comparison with the mature field of financially motivated shareholder activism, limited enquiries have been carried out on its non‐financial counterparts. This paper synthesizes the knowledge base through a review of the academic literature, exploring shareholder activism intended to affect corporate environmental and social performance. Theoretical perspectives appropriate to this phenomenon are critically appraised: in particular, insights from social movement theory, Hirschman's theory of exit, voice and loyalty and stakeholder salience theory, as well as the roles of signalling and symbolic management actions. Data from the literature are organized into a process model of non‐financial shareholder influence. Underpinned by the influencing context, this conceptualization centres on three primary shareholder interventions: divestment, dialogue and shareholder proposals. These interventions are enabled through a range of actors and tools: coalitions, non‐governmental organizations, codes and indices, the media and regulators. The interaction between interventions and the enabling actors and tools helps to determine managers’ perceptions of shareholder salience. These perceptions subsequently shape the organizational behaviours that affect companies’ symbolic and substantive environmental and social performance. An agenda to direct future research in this burgeoning field is articulated.     

Working Under a Black Cloud: How to Sustain Organizational Identification after a Merger*

This article argues against the merger folklore that maintains that a merger negatively affects well‐being and work attitudes primarily through the threat of job insecurity. We hold that the workplace is not only a resource for fulfilling a person's financial needs, but that it is an important component of the self‐concept in terms of identification with the organization, as explained by social identity theory. We unravel the key concepts of the social identity approach relevant to the analysis of mergers and review evidence from previous studies. Then, we present a study conducted during a merger to substantiate our ideas about the effects of post‐merger organizational identification above and beyond the effects of perceived job insecurity. We recommend that managers should account for these psychological effects through the provision of continuity and specific types of communication.