Logan Crace, Joel Gehman and Michael Lounsbury
Reality breakdowns generate reflexivity and awareness of the constructed nature of social reality. These pivotal moments can motivate institutional inhabitants to either modify…
Abstract
Reality breakdowns generate reflexivity and awareness of the constructed nature of social reality. These pivotal moments can motivate institutional inhabitants to either modify their social worlds or reaffirm the status quo. Thus, reality breakdowns are the initial points at which actors can conceive of new possibilities for institutional arrangements and initiate change processes to realize them. Studying reality breakdowns enables scholars to understand not just how institutional change occurs, but also why it does or does not do so. In this paper, we investigate how institutional inhabitants responded to a reality breakdown that occurred during our ethnography of collegial governance in a large North American university that was undergoing a strategic change initiative. Our findings suggest that there is a consequential process following reality breakdowns whereby institutional inhabitants construct the severity of these events. In our context, institutional inhabitants first attempted to restore order to their social world by reaffirming the status quo; when their efforts failed, they began to formulate alternative possibilities. Simultaneously, they engaged in a distributed sensemaking process whereby they diminished and reoriented necessary changes, ultimately inhibiting the formulation of these new possibilities. Our findings confirm reality breakdowns and institutional awareness as potential drivers of institutional change and complicate our understanding of antecedent microprocesses that may forestall the initiation of change efforts.
Details
Keywords
This paper aims to construct a process model of business founding in the biotech industry.
Abstract
Purpose
This paper aims to construct a process model of business founding in the biotech industry.
Design/methodology/approach
An inductive method is used, and five case studies analyzed. Data are coded by applying Gioia’s method.
Findings
Aspirant entrepreneurs conduct resource analysis and industry analysis to formulate research and development targets. They perform transactions and networks because they require resources, and they then deploy and coordinate these resources. Such coordination generates activities with social and financial impacts.
Research limitations/implications
The results are specific to the biotech industry. A future study could examine business founding processes in other industries (e.g. entertainment, fashion, public utilities and sport). Additionally, the paper argues that during the founding process entrepreneurs show little concern for knowledge-sharing risk, as they want to collaborate to implement their ideas. Quantitative papers could test the consequences of such behavior.
Practical implications
The process model provides insights into aspirant founders on how to start a business in the biotech industry.
Originality/value
The paper shows: the differences between the founding process in the biotech industry versus other industries; and the shape of the Bower–Burgelman model in the context of biotech business founding. The paper delineates how private companies discover competencies in the public sector; a model of technology transfer from public to private sector; entrepreneurs’ absence of risk perceptions regarding knowledge-sharing during founding; and how conferences can serve as vehicles for benchmarking in networking.
Details
Keywords
Research has demonstrated that varying degrees and combinations of individual traits, behaviors and characteristics influence the emergence of leaders in teams. While existing…
Abstract
Purpose
Research has demonstrated that varying degrees and combinations of individual traits, behaviors and characteristics influence the emergence of leaders in teams. While existing models have shown that such variables affect leader choice independently and interactively, the overall findings suggest that there is still a lack of research on a potentially significant factor, the impact of personal reputation on leader selection in autonomous work teams (AWTs), an increasingly ubiquitous team practice in organizations. This preliminary review thus aims to offer a general overview of personal reputation and its effects on leader emergence in the context of AWTs.
Design/methodology/approach
By surveying extant literature on team leader emergence, this review has identified that the potential impact of personal reputation on leader selection in teams is significant yet largely ignored.
Findings
Models of leader emergence in teams should incorporate the realistic assumption that teams formed in organizations are often comprised of individuals who have information on others either directly or indirectly. Personal reputation based on an individual’s history thus moderates how one’s behaviors or traits exhibited become contextualized in the overall assessment of leader desirability and selection in teams.
Research limitations/implications
Based on a review of existing research on leadership emergence and personal reputation, this work contends that the external validity and predictive value of leader emergence models would greatly benefit from the inclusion of employee reputations as a moderating variable in the future assessment of the leader emergence process in AWTs.
Practical implications
By designing models that explain the potential effects of personal reputations on leader emergence in self-managed teams, team members and managers can be better elucidated and ultimately improve their understanding of the process of the evaluation and selection of team leaders.
Originality/value
Despite the prolific research on leader emergence, there is still a paucity of studies examining personal reputational effects on leader selection, especially in the context of AWTs. This work is the first review piece calling for the inclusion of personal reputation, a substantive factor overlooked and excluded in previous models, to enhance the current understanding of leader emergence in AWTs.
Details
Keywords
Saeedeh Rezaee Vessal, Judith Partouche-Sebban and Francesco Schiavone
The COVID-19 outbreak has undoubtedly affected overall mental health. Thus, researching resilience is important, as it has been previously discussed as a means to protect people…
Abstract
Purpose
The COVID-19 outbreak has undoubtedly affected overall mental health. Thus, researching resilience is important, as it has been previously discussed as a means to protect people from mental health problems. This study aims to clarify whether survivors of a traumatic event (i.e. cancer survivors) are more resilient to living through another traumatic experience, such as COVID-19, compared to those who have never had such an experience. The study also examines the role of emotional creativity in this process.
Design/methodology/approach
A quantitative research design was adopted. The data collection was performed through a survey (N = 338), which was conducted among two separate groups of participants. The first group (N = 152) included the survivors of a traumatic event (i.e. cancer survivors), and the second group (N = 186) included those who did not have such an experience.
Findings
The results demonstrate that living through a traumatic experience results in a higher level of resilience during another traumatic experience (i.e. COVID-19), which is the result of higher post-traumatic growth. Moreover, emotional creativity is discussed as an explanatory variable that explains a significantly higher level of post-traumatic growth among survivors of a traumatic event.
Originality/value
This research offers a better understanding of the effect of living through a traumatic event on post-traumatic growth and resilience in living through another traumatic experience. Moreover, post-traumatic growth is explained through emotional creativity improvement, which happens after experiencing a traumatic life event.
Details
Keywords
Atheer Abdullah Mohammed, Abdul Hafeez-Baig and Raj Gururajan
The purpose of this paper is to investigate generated themes associated with talent development in the Australian higher education sector. This is because there are pragmatic…
Abstract
Purpose
The purpose of this paper is to investigate generated themes associated with talent development in the Australian higher education sector. This is because there are pragmatic advantages for universities that are focused on developing talents. For example, talent is a primary source of competitive advantage for educational institutions.
Design/methodology/approach
This study depends on the individual interview method as the main tool for data collection. The sample consisted of six participants who are talented. High-level individual interviews were transcribed and thematically analysed using NVivo 11.
Findings
Individual interviews have identified four key themes of talent development: performance management, coaching talent, leadership development and talent acquisition.
Research limitations
This study only targeted one country (Australia), and one sector (higher education). Hence, the generalisability of these results is limited to the Australian university sector in Queensland.
Practical implications
This study collects rich and original qualitative data regarding talent development in the higher education domain. Therefore, for instance, the research findings validate what was already found but are significant because practical data rather than theoretical were gathered through a discussion with experts in talent management. This study has a high quality because of strengthening the effect of an in-depth case study.
Originality/value
The study offers a value added to talent management theory through investigating themes of talent development for the higher education sector. This would assist researchers in this field to provide a deeper understanding and develop a theoretical foundation for their further studies. This implication is unique to the advancement of talent management theory.
Details
Keywords
Tanja Petry, Corinna Treisch and Bernadette Bullinger
Applying the institutional logics perspective to applicant attraction, this study investigates the level of uniformity among preferences for consulting job attributes associated…
Abstract
Purpose
Applying the institutional logics perspective to applicant attraction, this study investigates the level of uniformity among preferences for consulting job attributes associated with the institutional logics of the corporation, the profession and the family, and tests for the influence of anticipatory socialization differences.
Design/methodology/approach
The study uses a discrete choice experiment with 232 business students. A hierarchical Bayes approach to conjoint analysis uncovers part-worth heterogeneity and allows for subsequent cluster and regression analysis of the choice data.
Findings
The findings identify a dominant job-oriented preference type and a minor career-oriented preference type. Anticipatory socialization through personal prior work experience and the occupation of friends decreases adherence to the logic of profession and increases the relevance of the family logic. The parents' occupation has only a minimal influence on preferences.
Practical implications
The study provides attribute-based recommendations on how professional service firms can effectively address the complex expectations of potential applicants in their job ads for an entry position and underlines the role of intra-generational reference groups as important anticipatory socializers.
Originality/value
By testing individual socialization effects at the pre-hire stage and beyond the organizational level, the study fills a void in both the recruitment and the institutional literature.