Organization Science
1526-5455
1047-7039
Mỹ
Cơ quản chủ quản: INFORMS , INFORMS Institute for Operations Research and the Management Sciences
Lĩnh vực:
Strategy and ManagementManagement of Technology and InnovationOrganizational Behavior and Human Resource Management
Các bài báo tiêu biểu
Discretion Within Constraint: Homophily and Structure in a Formal Organization Homophily in social relations results from both individual preferences and selective opportunities for interaction, but how these two mechanisms interact in large, contemporary organizations is not well understood. We argue that organizational structures and geography delimit opportunities for interaction such that actors have a greater level of discretion to choose their interaction partners within business units, job functions, offices, and quasi-formal structures. This leads us to expect to find a higher proportion of homophilous interactions within these organizational structures than across their boundaries. We test our theory in an analysis of the rate of dyadic communication in an email data set comprising thousands of employees in a large information technology firm. These findings have implications for research on homophily, gender relations in organizations, and formal and informal organizational structure.
Tập 24 Số 5 - Trang 1316-1336 - 2013
Free to Be Trusted? Organizational Constraints on Trust in Boundary Spanners We present a view of trust in boundary spanners as explained by the extent of role autonomy, a multidimensional concept that reflects the discretion that agents have in interpreting and enacting their roles. We argue that, in a buyer-supplier context, purchasing managers will be trusted to a greater extent by supplier representatives when they are free from constraints that limit their ability to interpret their boundary-spanning roles. We conceptualize and measure three key components of role autonomy: Functional influence, tenure, and clan culture. Taken together, these components of role autonomy shape and define the purchasing manager's willingness and capacity to make and uphold commitments to supplier representatives. Role autonomy permits purchasing managers to engage in discretionary behaviors that allow supplier representatives to learn about their underlying motives and intentions. We test hypotheses linking the components of role autonomy to trust on a sample of 119 buyer-supplier relationships. We use a dyadic research design that combines data from purchasing managers and supplier representatives. The results suggest that granting purchasing managers greater autonomy enhances supplier representative trust in purchasing managers. By drawing attention to role autonomy as a feature of organizations that influences trust we highlight the importance of organizational context in contributing to a deeper understanding of trust.
Tập 14 Số 4 - Trang 422-439 - 2003
The Kindness of Strangers: The Usefulness of Electronic Weak Ties for Technical Advice People use weak ties—relationships with acquaintances or strangers—to seek help unavailable from friends or colleagues. Yet in the absence of personal relationships or the expectation of direct reciprocity, help from weak ties might not be forthcoming or could be of low quality. We examined the practice of distant employees (strangers) exchanging technical advice through a large organizational computer network. A survey of advice seekers and those who replied was conducted to test hypotheses about the viability and usefulness of such electronic weak tie exchanges. Theories of organizational motivation suggest that positive regard for the larger organization can substitute for direct incentives or personal relationships in motivating people to help others. Theories of weak ties suggest that the usefulness of this help may depend on the number of ties, the diversity of ties, or the resources of help providers. We hypothesized that, in an organizational context, the firm-specific resources and organizational motivation of people who provide advice will predict the usefulness of advice. We investigated these theories in a study of employees of a global computer manufacturer. We collected survey and observational data on the relationships between information seekers and information providers; the number, diversity, resources, and motivations of information providers, and subjective ratings of the usefulness of the advice (from both parties in the exchange) and whether or not the advice solved information seekers' problems. We found that information providers gave useful advice and solved the problems of information seekers, despite their lack of a personal connection with the seekers. The data support the main hypotheses and provide some support for resource and diversity explanations of weak tie influence. We discuss how this organization's culture sustained useful intormation exchange through weak ties.
Tập 7 Số 2 - Trang 119-135 - 1996
Intraorganizational Ecology of Strategy Making and Organizational Adaptation: Theory and Field Research This paper presents an intraorganizational ecological perspective on strategy making, and examines how internal selection may combine with external selection to explain organizational change and survival. The perspective serves to illuminate data from a field study of the evolution of Intel Corporation's corporate strategy. The data, in turn, are used to refine and deepen the conceptual framework. Relationships between induced and autonomous strategic processes and four modes of organizational adaptation are discussed. Apparent paradoxes associated with structural inertia and strategic reorientation arguments are elucidated and several new propositions derived. The paper proposes that consistently successful organizations are characterized by top managements who spend efforts on building the induced and autonomous strategic processes, as well as concerning themselves with the content of strategy; that such organizations simultaneously exercise induced and autonomous processes; and that successful reorientations in organizations are likely to have been preceded by internal experimentation and selection processes effected through the autonomous process.
Tập 2 Số 3 - Trang 239-262 - 1991
Power and Trust: Critical Factors in the Adoption and Use of Electronic Data Interchange Computer networks are an increasingly important technology for improving the efficiency of information processing and providing shared access to information resources. Because computer networks are increasingly being used to support the flow of information between and within organizations, their use both influences and has consequences for interorganizational relationships. An important and widespread application of interorganizational computer networks is Electronic Data Interchange (EDI), which refers to the computer-based exchange of standardized business-related information between buyer and supplier firms. The following theoretical framework addresses the role that power and trust play in EDI adoption and use. Firms with greater power can influence their trading partners to adopt EDI. But power can be exercised in different ways. Because computer networks provide a way for certain information to be more accessible to outside parties, their use makes organizational boundaries more permeable. When firms use coercive power to force trading partners to adopt EDI, less powerful partners may be left more vulnerable. And, over time this perceived vulnerability becomes a constraint in interorganizational relationships that prevents improvements in coordination through expanded use of EDI. On the other hand, when the event of EDI adoption is viewed as an opportunity to build and reinforce trust between firms, the relationship is able to support organizational changes (e.g., restructuring operational processes or new modes of distribution) related to EDI use which contribute to improving interorganizational coordination. The role of power and trust in EDI adoption has important implications for interorganizational theory. Their role may be especially helpful in understanding how technology, and, in particular, electronic media support strategic alliances that firms create to advance mutual goals.
Tập 8 Số 1 - Trang 23-42 - 1997
The Motivational Effects of Charismatic Leadership: A Self-Concept Based Theory The empirical literature on charismatic or transformational leadership demonstrates that such leadership has profound effects on followers. However, while several versions of charismatic leadership theory predict such effects, none of them explains the process by which these effects are achieved. In this paper we seek to advance leadership theory by addressing this fundamental problem. We offer a self-concept based motivational theory to explain the process by which charismatic leader behaviors cause profound transformational effects on followers. The theory presents the argument that charismatic leadership has its effects by strongly engaging followers' self-concepts in the interest of the mission articulated by the leader. We derive from this theory testable propositions about (a) the behavior of charismatic leaders and their effects on followers, (b) the role of followers' values and orientations in the charismatic relationship, and (c) some of the organizational conditions that favor the emergence and effectiveness of charismatic leaders.
Tập 4 Số 4 - Trang 577-594 - 1993
The Role of Trust in Organizational Settings Numerous researchers from various disciplines seem to agree that trust has a number of important benefits for organizations, although they have not necessarily come to agreement on how these benefits occur. In this article, we explore two fundamentally different models that describe how trust might have positive effects on attitudes, perceptions, behaviors, and performance outcomes within organizational settings. In the first section of the article, we examine the model that has dominated the literature: Trust results in direct (main) effects on a variety of outcomes. In the second section of the article we develop an alternative model: Trust facilitates or hinders (i.e., moderates) the effects of other determinants on attitudinal, perceptual, behavioral and performance outcomes via two distinct perceptual processes. Lastly, we discuss the conditions under which each of the models is most likely to be applicable. The theory is supplemented with a review of empirical studies spanning 40 years regarding the consequences of trust in organizational settings. The theoretical framework presented in this article provides insight into the processes through which trust affects organizational outcomes, provides guidance to researchers for more accurately assessing the impact of trust, provides a framework for better understanding past research on the consequences of trust, and suggests ways that organizational settings can be modified to capitalize on high levels of trust or mitigate the effects of low levels of trust.
Tập 12 Số 4 - Trang 450-467 - 2001
When Cymbals Become Symbols: Conflict Over Organizational Identity Within a Symphony Orchestra In this qualitative field study, I explore how the construction of a cultural institution's identity is related to the construction of strategic capabilities and resources. I investigated the 1996 musicians’ strike at the Atlanta Symphony Orchestra (ASO), which revealed embedded and latent identity conflicts. The multifaceted and specialized identity of the ASO was reinforced by different professional groups in the organization: the ideologies of musicians and administrators emphasized institutional resource allocations consistent with the legitimating values of their professions, i.e., artistic excellence versus economic utility. These identity claims, made under organizational crisis, accounted for variations in the construction of core competencies. I propose a model that explicates how the construction of core capabilities lies at the intersection of identification and interpretive processes in organizations. Implications are discussed for defining firm capabilities in cultural institutions and for managing organizational forms characterized by competing claims over institutional identity, resources, and core capabilities.
Tập 11 Số 3 - Trang 285-298 - 2000
Market Mediators and the Trade-offs of Legitimacy-Seeking Behaviors in a Nascent Category Although existing research has demonstrated the importance of attaining legitimacy for new market categories, few scholars have considered the trade-offs associated with such actions. Using the U.S. organic food product category as a context, we explore how one standards-based certification organization—the California Certified Organic Farmers (CCOF)—sought to balance efforts to legitimate a nascent market category with retaining a shared, distinctive identity among its members. Our findings suggest that legitimacy-seeking behaviors undertaken by the standards organization diluted the initial collective identity and founding ethos of its membership. However, by shifting the meaning of “organic” from the producer to the product, CCOF was able to strengthen the categorical boundary, thereby enhancing its legitimacy. By showing how the organization managed the associated trade-offs, this study highlights the double-edged nature of legitimacy and offers important implications for the literatures on legitimacy and new market category formation. The online appendix is available at https://doi.org/10.1287/orsc.2017.1126 .
Tập 28 Số 3 - Trang 447-470 - 2017
Open Source Software and the “Private-Collective” Innovation Model: Issues for Organization Science Currently, two models of innovation are prevalent in organization science. The “private investment” model assumes returns to the innovator result from private goods and efficient regimes of intellectual property protection. The “collective action” model assumes that under conditions of market failure, innovators collaborate in order to produce a public good. The phenomenon of open source software development shows that users program to solve their own as well as shared technical problems, and freely reveal their innovations without appropriating private returns from selling the software. In this paper, we propose that open source software development is an exemplar of a compound “private-collective” model of innovation that contains elements of both the private investment and the collective action models and can offer society the “best of both worlds” under many conditions. We describe a new set of research questions this model raises for scholars in organization science. We offer some details regarding the types of data available for open source projects in order to ease access for researchers who are unfamiliar with these, and also offer some advice on conducting empirical studies on open source software development processes.
Tập 14 Số 2 - Trang 209-223 - 2003