We build theory on the process of collective identity resurrection through a qualitative study investigating how community members reenergized a valued community identity following years of decline. ...Our findings suggest a recursive model of identity resurrection, in which community leaders marshal tangible resources such as money and human talent to orchestrate experiences and community members authenticate the experiences by judging them resonant with memories and existing identity symbols. This model draws attention to the role of experience and emotion in identity processes, extending theory that has tended to focus narrowly on cognitive aspects of collective identity. We discuss implications for processes of identity reproduction and resurrection in organizational settings, and for interdependencies between community and organizational identities.
In this paper, we argue that successful integration of knowledge across work domains in the short-term can mask the generation of long-term consequences. We explore a setting, the introduction of ...environmental considerations into semiconductor manufacturing, where the eventual adoption of common measurement artifacts and associated practices enabled knowledge integration, but failed to address significant underlying consequences. Drawing from observational, interview, and archival data we develop an understanding of the work practices of the Tech and EnviroTech groups as structured by the material world and broader collective conventions. We introduce the concept of knowledge regime to outline the differences in knowledge across these work domains. More specifically, we find that differences in the causal specificity and developmental time horizon of knowledge and the measurement artifacts that result contribute to the relative power of one knowledge regime over another. Understanding these sources of incompatibility provides insight into the design requirements of information systems as boundary objects for knowledge integration, but also specifies the potential limits to any design effort.
Abstract
Research on grand challenges in the management literature is vibrant and growing. Given that the term “grand challenges” was first invoked in our field 10 years ago, it is timely to reflect ...on how we came to this point – and where we might go from here. In this article, we first explore the origins of the concept of grand challenges in order to trace core assumptions and developments and understand how they shape the current conversation about grand challenges in management scholarship. We next convey findings from our review of 161 papers that cite the editorial for a grand challenges special issue (George, Howard-Grenville, Joshi, & Tihanyi, 2016), uncovering four ways in which papers are shaping the conversation on grand challenges. Finally, based on our perspective on how we got here and where we are now, we make several suggestions for what should come next in driving forward research on grand challenges. We urge scholars to go beyond the study of collaboration for tackling grand challenges and shift toward a more critical, yet generative, exploration of their construction, persistence, and unintended consequences. We also call for increased attention to theorizing grand challenges to guide practitioners’ understanding of the nature of the thing they are trying to address. In these ways, we hope to inspire management scholars to leverage expertise on processes – not content per se – that shape how grand challenges manifest and how they may be tackled.
THE COMPANY YOU KEEP CORNWELL, T. BETTINA; HOWARD-GRENVILLE, JENNIFER; HAMPEL, CHRISTIAN E.
The Academy of Management review,
10/2018, Volume:
43, Issue:
4
Journal Article
Peer reviewed
Open access
Despite scholars’ recognition of the importance of external dynamics to employee organizational identification, this factor remains underexplored in today’s evermore interdependent organizations. We ...theorize about how organizational identification can be influenced by an employer’s horizontal partnerships with entities such as sports teams or charities. Drawing on insights from the organizational identification literature and marketing literature, we explore how events concerning an organization’s horizontal partner become salient to employees, how employees evaluate the implications of the partnership, and how their identification may shift as a result. Surprisingly, our model reveals that partnerships having low congruence may lead to significant positive identification shifts for some individuals, whereas partnerships that are seemingly positive for an organization may result in negative identification shifts. Our theorizing makes two important contributions. First, it introduces the potential of horizontal relationships with other organizations to shape the important work relationship of identification with the focal employing organization. Second, it outlines the processes through which horizontal partners can make a difference in work relationships and sets the stage to better understand how they can strengthen and hinder these relationships, as well as encroach on nonwork life.
We investigate the emergence and growth of “green chemistry”—an effort by chemists to encourage other chemists to reduce the health, safety, and environmental impacts of chemical products and ...processes—to explore how occupational members, absent external triggers for change, influence how their peers do their work. Using extensive interviews, archival data, and observations, we find that advocates simultaneously advanced different frames that specified the utility of making the change: (1) a normalizing frame, positioning green chemistry as consistent with mainstream chemistry innovation; (2) a moralizing frame, positioning it as an ethical imperative; and (3) a pragmatizing frame, positioning it as a tool that could help chemists tackle problems they encountered in their day-to-day work. Each frame resonated differently with chemists in their various occupational roles. Though this pluralistic approach generated broad acceptance of the change effort, it also exposed tensions, which threatened the coherence of the change. Advocates’ diverse responses to these tensions contribute to a persistent state of pluralism and dynamism in the change effort. We uncover a process through which occupational members generate and sustain change, show how occupational heterogeneity can enable and delimit change, and show how well-meaning efforts to “moralize” occupational work can heighten resistance, inhibiting the very changes that enable experts to address urgent societal problems.
Through a qualitative study of the emergence of unlikely activism from committed members of the Catholic Church, we examine how identification can trigger and shape a change effort. We uncover how ...crafting "split identification" allows members to retain their identification with normative aspects of an institution, while disidentifying with, and seeking to change, organizational aspects. Our process model traces how members split their identification, attempt to repair the split by seeking change, and respond when their claimed identification is challenged. We offer implications for identification theory and for literature on change originating inside organizations and institutions.
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