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The purpose of the paper is to test whether retail stores’ creativity predicts several indicators of performance through stores’ potency.

A sample of 45 stores (n = 317 employees) of a Brazilian retail chain was included, and a group/store level of analysis was adopted. Performance was measured through objective measures. To reduce the risks of common method variance, group creativity and group potency were measured with data from different store members.

The findings show that store creativity predicts indicators of store performance through store potency.

The study was carried out within a single organization, and the stores’ sample is small. Other causalities are plausible, and future studies should adopt a longitudinal design to test reciprocal effects between the variables of the study.

Cultivating creativity (via the selection of creative individuals and nurturing contextual conditions that encourage creativity) may have at least indirect effects on store performance.

While the few empirical studies relating group creativity (still an under-researched topic) and performance have mostly used subjective performance measures, this study uses objective measures.

The purpose of this paper is to study if the employees’ optimism-pessimism ratio predicts their creativity.

In total, 134 employees reported their optimism and pessimism, and the respective supervisors described the employees’ creativity.

The relationship between the optimism-pessimism ratio and creativity is curvilinear (inverted U-shaped); beyond a certain level of the optimism-pessimism ratio, the positive relationship between the ratio and creativity weakens, suggesting that the possible positive effects of (high) optimism may be weakened by a very low level of pessimism.

Being cross-sectional, the study examines neither the causal links between the optimism-pessimism ratio and creativity nor other plausible causal links. The study was carried out at a single moment and did not capture the dynamics that occur over the course of time involving changes in optimism/pessimism and creativity. Future studies may adopt longitudinal or quasi-experimental designs.

Managers and organizations must consider that, even though positivity promotes creativity, some level of negativity may help positivity to produce creativity.

This study suggests that scholars who want to study the antecedents of creativity (and innovation) must be cautious in focusing only on the positive or the negative sides of individuals’ characteristics, and rather they must explore the interplay between both poles. Individuals may experience both positive and negative states/traits (Smith et al., 2016), and this both/and approach may impel them to think divergently, to challenge the status quo and to propose “out the box” and useful ideas.

This paper aims to discuss the work of non-executive directors (NEDs) as inherently paradoxical. Paradox refers to the presence of persistent contradictions between interdependent forces. Those persistent tensions are explored, and approaches are indicated to stimulate the adaptive use of paradoxes as forces of innovation and renewal.

This conceptual approach can be read as an invitation for corporate governance scholars to embrace the logic of paradox to expand the understanding of this topic. Paradox is not conceptualized as an alternative to dominant structural views, including board composition, but as a complementary conceptual perspective, a meta-theoretical lens to shed light on the tensions inherent to governance.

The authors propose that paradox theory offers a fresh conceptual lens to study the role of NEDs. This approach may help NEDs to turn tensions and paradoxes visible to develop a rich understanding of their work, as well as helping them navigate the complexities of organizing, a process rich in inherent paradoxicality.

Organizational paradox theory is a bourgeoning field of study, but the conceptual lens of paradox has still been underexplored in the study of corporate governance.

The purpose of this paper is to ask why poor performance management practices persist in Portugal, in the middle of claims to increase productivity.

An inductive micro-practice analysis is used to understand barriers to management practice that do not require massive institutional changes.

The practice of performance management in Portugal typically displays three weaknesses: (1) insufficient planning (2) process and integrity issues, and (3) a non-meritocratic logic.

The paper discusses the important topic of persistence of bad practices, showing how institutionalized patterns might be difficult to eradicate even they are suboptimal.

The authors identity key issues in the functioning of performance management, therefore helping managers in developing remedies to improve the quality of their practice.

The paper explains the persistence of bad management practice whose continuity hinders not only organizations’ effectiveness but also that of their members.

The purpose of this paper is to explore the Brazilian managers’ attitudes toward older workers, and how those attitudes explain HRM decisions in hypothetical scenarios.

Brazilian managers (n=201) reported their attitudes toward older workers and their decisions in scenarios involving an older vs a younger applicant/worker.

In spite of expressing positive attitudes toward older workers, a significant number of managers chose a younger one even when the older worker is described as more productive. To build a better understanding of how attitudes predict decisions, it is necessary to identify attitudinal profiles and the interplay between attitudinal dimensions, rather than simply studying each dimension separately. Attitudinal profiling also shows that some managers discriminate against younger workers, a finding, that is, ignored when (only) regressions are taken into account. The managers’ attitudes and behavioral intentions relate with their age. Evidence does not support the double jeopardy effect against older women workers.

The sample is small. The scenarios cover a reduced number of HRM decisions. The data about attitudes and decisions were collected simultaneously from a single source. The findings may be influenced by idiosyncrasies of the context. Future studies should also consider real situations, not hypothetical ones.

Efforts must be made (e.g. via training and development) to raise managers’ awareness about the consequences of ageism in organizations.

Empirical studies about managers’ perceptions/attitudes toward older workers are scarce. Studies in the Brazilian context are even scarcer.

The purpose of the study is to explore inductively the unique paradoxical tensions central to family business (FB) and to analyze how FB's members face these tensions and their implications in the personal and professional realms.

A multiple-case study with 11 parent–offspring dyads from Portuguese FBs was conducted putting the focus on the micro-level interactions.

The slopes of roles and relationality in FBs produces three persistent sets of tensions around cognition, emotion and action. These tensions exist in a paradoxical state, containing potentiality for synergy or trade-off.

Our study is the first to empirically demonstrate that paradoxical tensions between parent and offspring are interrelated, by emphasizing the uniqueness of FB as a paradoxical setting and offering insights to negotiating of these singular paradoxes.

The reorganization of the Portuguese national healthcare system around networks of hospital centers was advanced for reasons promoted as those of effectiveness and efficiency and initially presented as an opportunity for organizational transcendence through synergy. The purpose of this paper is to study transcendence as felt by the authors’ participants to create knowledge about the process.

The paper consists of an inductive approach aimed at exploring the lived experience of transcendence. The authors collected data via interviews, observations, informal conversations and archival data, in order and followed the logic of grounded theory to build theory on transcendence as process.

Transcendence, however, failed to deliver its promise; consequently, the positive vision inscribed in it was subsequently re-inscribed in the system as another lost opportunity, contributing to an already unfolding vicious circle of mistrust and cynicism. The study contributes to the literature on organizational paradoxes and its effects on the reproduction of vicious circles.

The search for efficiency and effectiveness through strategies of transcendence often entails managing paradoxical tensions.

The case was researched during the global financial crisis, which as austerity gripped the southern Eurozone gave rise to governmental decisions aimed at improving the efficiency of organizational healthcare resources. There was a sequence of advances and retreats in decision making at the governmental level that gave rise to mistrust and cynicism at operational levels (organizations, teams and individuals). One consequence of increasing cynicism at lower levels was that as further direction for change came from higher levels it became interpreted in practice as just another turn in a vicious circle of failed reform.

The authors contribute to the organizational literature on paradoxes by empirically researching a themes that has been well theorized (Smith and Lewis, 2011) but less researched empirically. The authors followed the process in vivo, as it unfolded in the context of complex strategic change at multiple centers.

Burrell (2020) challenged management and organization studies (MOS) scholars to pay attention to a topic they have mostly ignored: the peasantry, those 2 billion people that work in the rural primary sector. This paper aims to address the topic to expand Burrell’s challenge by indicating that the peasantry offers a unique context to study a paradoxical condition: the coexistence of persistent poverty and vanguardist innovation.

The authors advance conceptual arguments that complement the reasons why researchers should pay more attention to the peasantry. They argue that continuation of past research into field laborers, transitioning from feudalism to industrial capitalism, still has currency, not just because of the good reasons listed by Burrell (enduring relevance of the phenomenon in developing countries; sustainability concerns; acknowledgment of common heritage) but also because some seemingly archaic practices are evident in the economically developed countries where most management and organizations scholars live.

The authors show that in advanced economies, the peasantry has not disappeared, and it is manifested in contradictory forms, as positive force contributing to sustainable productivity (in the case of digitized agriculture) and as a negative legacy of social inequality and exploitation (as a form of modern slavery).

The authors discuss contrasting themes confronting management of the peasantry, namely, modern slavery and digital farming, and propose that a paradox view may help overcome unnecessary dualisms, which may promote social exclusion rather than integrated development.

The purpose of this paper is to explore how a number of processes joined to create the microlevel strategies and procedures that resulted in the most lethal and tragic forest fire in Portugal's history, recalled as the EN236-1 road tragedy in the fire of Pedrógão Grande.

Using an inductive theory development approach, the authors consider how the urgency and scale of perceived danger coupled with failures of system-wide communication led fire teams to improvise repeatedly.

The paper shows how structure collapse led teams to use only local information prompting acts of improvisational myopia, in the particular shape of corrosive myopia, and how a form of incidental improvisation led to catastrophic results.

The research offers insights into the dangers of improvisation arising from corrosive myopia, identifying ways to minimize them with the development of improvisation practices that allow for the creation of new patterns of action. The implications for managing surprise through improvisation extend to risk contexts beyond wildfires.

The paper stands out for showing the impact of improvisational myopia, especially in its corrosive form, which stands in stark contrast to the central role of attention to the local context highlighted in previous research on improvisation. At the same time, by exploring the effects of incidental improvisation, it also departs from the agentic conception of improvisation widely discussed in the improvisation literature.

This paper aims to contribute to the understanding of the three‐dimensional model of organizational commitment proposed by Meyer and Allen (e.g., 1991). It focuses on whether continuance commitment should be considered one‐dimensional or bidimensional (low alternatives; high sacrifices). Whether affective commitment should be divided into two components (affective commitment; future in common) or if it should remain as a one‐dimensional construct is also discussed. The paper also considers a “new” factor identified by Rego (2003), which he named “psychological absence”, but which we denominated here as accommodating commitment. Besides the confirmatory factor analysis, the paper shows how four dimensions of organizational justice (distributive, procedural, interpersonal, and informational) explain organizational commitment. The sample comprises 366 individuals from 22 organizations operating in Portugal. The predictive value of the justice perceptions for both instrumental commitment components is quite weak, despite ranging from 25 per cent to 36 per cent for the other components. Procedural and interpersonal justice are the main predictors. The accommodating dimension improves the fit indices of the factorial model, but its meaning is not clear. It is also not clear whether one should consider it as a new component of commitment or whether its items should be removed from the measuring instruments. The findings suggest that some gains can be achieved in the partition of the affective and instrumental commitment, but further research is necessary to clarify the issue.