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Administrative Science Quarterly
Journal Prestige (SJR): 10.187

Citation Impact (citeScore): 6
Number of Followers: 234

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ISSN (Print) 0001-8392 - ISSN (Online) 1930-3815
Published by Cornell University

[4 journals]

Sarah Kaplan: The 360° Corporation: From Stakeholder Trade-offs to
Transformation
- Authors: Jeffrey G. York
  Abstract: Administrative Science Quarterly, Ahead of Print.
  
  Citation: Administrative Science Quarterly
  PubDate: 2020-08-07T09:31:44Z
  DOI: 10.1177/0001839220950577
Getting Ahead of Time—Performing Temporal Boundaries to Coordinate
Routines under Temporal Uncertainty
- Authors: Daniel Geiger, Anja Danner-Schröder, Waldemar Kremser
  Abstract: Administrative Science Quarterly, Ahead of Print.
  In this ethnographic study of firefighters we explore how routines are coordinated under high levels of temporal uncertainty—when the timing of critical events cannot be known in advance and temporal misalignment creates substantial risks. Such conditions render time-consuming incremental and situated forms of temporal structuring—the focus of previous research on temporal coordination—unfeasible. Our findings show that firefighters focused their efforts on enacting temporal autonomy or, as they called it, “getting ahead of time.” They gained temporal autonomy—the capacity to temporally uncouple from the unfolding situation to preserve the ability to adapt to autonomously selected events—by relying on rhythms they developed during training in performing individual routines and by opening up to the evolving situation only when transitioning between routines. Our study contributes to literature on temporal structuring by introducing temporal autonomy as a novel strategy for dealing with temporal contingencies. We also contribute to research on routine dynamics by introducing the performance of temporal boundaries as a previously unrecognized form of coordination within and among routines. Finally, we contribute to process research a method that allows analyzing complex temporal patterns and thus provides a novel way of visualizing processes.
  Citation: Administrative Science Quarterly
  PubDate: 2020-07-30T09:02:05Z
  DOI: 10.1177/0001839220941010
Eitan Y. Wilf: Creativity on Demand: The Dilemmas of Innovation in an
Accelerated Age
- Authors: Robert J. David
  Abstract: Administrative Science Quarterly, Ahead of Print.
  
  Citation: Administrative Science Quarterly
  PubDate: 2020-07-14T08:37:02Z
  DOI: 10.1177/0001839220942460
Quo Vadis' From the Schoolyard to the Courtroom
- Authors: Maxim Sytch, Yong H. Kim
  Abstract: Administrative Science Quarterly, Ahead of Print.
  Existing theories exploring how companies interact with the law stop short of unveiling whether and why companies can differentially pursue, interact with, and benefit from a particular legal environment. We theorize that companies can use social structures—shared educational and professional affiliations—between lawyers and judges to strategically pursue specific legal jurisdictions, influence judges’ discretion, and ultimately reap different legal outcomes from the same legal environment. Using data on such affiliations between lawyers and federal judges, we examine companies’ choice of U.S. federal district courts and their legal outcomes in patent infringement litigation from 1990 to 2013. Our results reveal that companies strategically pursue courts in which their lawyers have past educational or professional affiliations with the courts’ judges. If a desired judge is assigned to the case, a company leverages its lawyers’ social structures to tailor any legal communication to match that judge’s style. While such behavior results in a higher likelihood of winning a lawsuit, it also creates an inherent risk. In stacking their legal teams with lawyers who have connections to judges, companies often shortchange the human capital—lawyers’ skillsets—required to win a case, which adversely affects legal outcomes if the desired judge is not assigned to the case.
  Citation: Administrative Science Quarterly
  PubDate: 2020-06-09T07:01:36Z
  DOI: 10.1177/0001839220922133
Coming Back and Giving Back: Transposition, Institutional Actors, and the
Paradox of Peripheral Influence*
- Authors: Jiao Luo, Dongjie Chen, Jia Chen
  Abstract: Administrative Science Quarterly, Ahead of Print.
  We explore transposition—bringing ideas from one context to a distant other context—as a mechanism for institutional change, and we study the conditions under which institutional actors successfully undertake it. Prior work on transposition has emphasized the paradox of embedded agency: actors embedded in a context may struggle to effect change because they lack exposure to fresh ideas. We complement this work by arguing that transposition is also subject to a paradox of peripheral influence: actors not embedded in a context, who may be a source of fresh ideas, can struggle to effect change because of their peripheral or outsider status. We suggest that these dual paradoxes can be overcome by actors who simultaneously have exposure to alternative institutional environments and are sufficiently embedded in the focal field to gain trust and buy-in from other decision makers. Such actors can both see the potential of new ideas and navigate their implementation successfully. We identify returnees from abroad, who have studied or worked elsewhere and then emigrated back to their home country, as one such type of actor. Using data on publicly listed Chinese companies from 2000 to 2012, we show that the presence on firms’ boards of directors of returnees with relevant exposure on a foreign corporate board significantly raises firms’ participation in corporate social responsibility, specifically in the form of making corporate donations. Supporting our theorizing about the two paradoxes, the effect of returnees is stronger when they or their board allies have greater exposure to foreign experience and greater embeddedness in the local context. The effect is also stronger when field conditions, such as insufficient economic development, present greater need for change.
  Citation: Administrative Science Quarterly
  PubDate: 2020-06-09T07:01:26Z
  DOI: 10.1177/0001839220929736
Fraud and Innovation
- Authors: Yanbo Wang, Toby Stuart, Jizhen Li
  Abstract: Administrative Science Quarterly, Ahead of Print.
  We show that fraudulent firms allocate resources differently than honest companies. Resources obtained through fraudulent means are likely to be viewed as unearned gains and are less likely to be invested in productive activities, such as recruiting talent. We posit that honest and fraudulent companies also invest in different types of innovation: honest firms pursue technically significant innovations, while fraudulent companies are likely to make smaller investments in less challenging inventive opportunities that contribute to the appearance rather than the substance of innovation. We test these predictions in a longitudinal dataset tracking the personnel recruitment and patenting activities of 467 Chinese high technology firms, all of which applied for state-funded innovation grants. We identify fraud by comparing two sets of financial books prepared by each company in the data in the same fiscal year, which are legally required to be identical but are discrepant in over 50 percent of cases, in a direction that benefits the firm. We find that relative to honest companies, fraudulent firms are more likely to receive state grants and are less likely to recruit new employees or produce important inventions in the post-grant period.
  Citation: Administrative Science Quarterly
  PubDate: 2020-06-09T07:01:07Z
  DOI: 10.1177/0001839220927350
Jason Owen-Smith: Research Universities and the Public Good: Discovery for
an Uncertain Future
- Authors: Wesley D. Sine, Xirong (Subrina) Shen
  Abstract: Administrative Science Quarterly, Ahead of Print.
  
  Citation: Administrative Science Quarterly
  PubDate: 2020-05-19T01:40:26Z
  DOI: 10.1177/0001839220922377
Kate Kenny: Whistleblowing: Toward a New Theory
- Authors: Alexandra Michel
  Abstract: Administrative Science Quarterly, Ahead of Print.
  
  Citation: Administrative Science Quarterly
  PubDate: 2020-05-01T07:52:18Z
  DOI: 10.1177/0001839220919053
Radical Uncertainty: Decision-Making Beyond the Numbers
- Authors: David R. Just
  Abstract: Administrative Science Quarterly, Ahead of Print.
  
  Citation: Administrative Science Quarterly
  PubDate: 2020-05-01T07:51:58Z
  DOI: 10.1177/0001839220918981
Bubbles and Crashes: The Boom and Bust of Technological Innovation
- Authors: Johann Peter Murmann, Benedikt Alexander Schuler
  Abstract: Administrative Science Quarterly, Ahead of Print.
  
  Citation: Administrative Science Quarterly
  PubDate: 2020-05-01T07:51:38Z
  DOI: 10.1177/0001839220918980
The Double-edged Sword of Oppositional Category Positioning: A Study of
the U.S. E-cigarette Category, 2007–2017
- Authors: Greta Hsu, Stine Grodal
  Abstract: Administrative Science Quarterly, Ahead of Print.
  To gain attention and build support for new categories, market entrepreneurs often define a new category through its contrast with related, established offerings. Existing research has largely focused on the benefits of this oppositional categorical positioning. In this study, we explore how this strategy might be a double-edged sword. Through a longitudinal inductive study of the e-cigarette category in the U.S. (2007–2017), we develop theory on the risks of associating with an already established category. In our empirical case, we document how value-based distinctions between cigarettes and e-cigarettes became eroded and the e-cigarette category grew increasingly stigmatized. We then propose several mechanisms through which the symbolic and social boundaries between a new and an established category can weaken and the stigma associated with an existing category can become diffused, intensified, and generalized—both across organizational features and across organizations in the new category. This case allows us to investigate the processes by which strategies to legitimize categories may backfire and to consider the role that a diverse set of core and peripheral stakeholders—who enter the market with pre-existing knowledge and motivations—play in category stigmatization processes.
  Citation: Administrative Science Quarterly
  PubDate: 2020-04-22T09:29:49Z
  DOI: 10.1177/0001839220914855
Maintaining Places of Social Inclusion: Ebola and the Emergency Department
- Authors: April L. Wright, Alan D. Meyer, Trish Reay, Jonathan Staggs
  Abstract: Administrative Science Quarterly, Ahead of Print.
  We introduce the concept of places of social inclusion—institutions endowed by a society or a community with material resources, meaning, and values at geographic sites where citizens can access services for specific needs—as taken-for-granted, essential, and inherently precarious. Based on our study of an emergency department that was disrupted by the threat of the Ebola virus in 2014, we develop a process model to explain how a place of social inclusion can be maintained by custodians. We show how these custodians—in our fieldsite, doctors and nurses—experience and engage in institutional work to manage different levels of tension between the value of inclusion and the reality of finite resources, as well as tension between inclusion and the desire for safety. We also demonstrate how the interplay of custodians’ emotions is integral to maintaining the place of social inclusion. The primary contribution of our study is to shine light on places of social inclusion as important institutions in democratic society. We also reveal the theoretical and practical importance of places as institutions, deepen understanding of custodians and custodianship as a form of institutional work, and offer new insight into the dynamic processes that connect emotions and institutional work.
  Citation: Administrative Science Quarterly
  PubDate: 2020-03-20T01:33:01Z
  DOI: 10.1177/0001839220916401
How the Show Goes On: Using the Aesthetic Experience of Collective
Performance to Adapt while Coordinating
- Authors: John Paul Stephens
  Abstract: Administrative Science Quarterly, Ahead of Print.
  Coordinating in action groups consists of continuously adapting behaviors in response to fluctuating conditions, ideally with limited disruption to a group’s collective performance. Through an 18-month ethnography of how members of a community choir maintained beautiful, ongoing performance, I explored how they continuously adapted their coordinating, starting when they felt that their collective performance was fragmented or falling apart. The process model I developed shows that this aesthetic experience—the sense of fragmentation based on inputs from the bodily senses—leads to emotional triggering, meaning group members’ emotions prompt changes in their attention and behavior. They then distribute their attention in new ways, increasing their focus on both global qualities of their ongoing performance (in this context, the musical score and conductor) and local qualities (singers’ contributions). My findings suggest that by changing what aspects of a situation compose their immediate experience, action group members can adapt their coordinating behaviors by changing their heed: the behavior that demonstrates their attentiveness and awareness. The intertwining of attention and emotions helps explain how groups move between heedless and heedful interrelating over time, leading to an aesthetic experience of collective performance as being whole or coherent. My research shows that embodied forms of cognition (what we know from direct experience of an environment) complement accounts of how representational forms of knowledge (what we know from symbols, concepts, or ideas) facilitate real-time adaptation in groups. These insights have implications for a range of organizations engaged in complex action group work.
  Citation: Administrative Science Quarterly
  PubDate: 2020-03-16T10:18:47Z
  DOI: 10.1177/0001839220911056
State Agency Discretion and Entrepreneurship in Regulated Markets
- Authors: Jake B. Grandy, Shon R. Hiatt
  Abstract: Administrative Science Quarterly, Ahead of Print.
  Barriers to entry in regulated markets are frequently conceptualized as static features that must be removed or overcome if new entrants are to successfully enter a market. But government institutions regulating markets often comprise multiple levels that exist in tension with one another due to differing incentives and motivations. We argue that the principal–agent tension between elected officials and agency bureaucrats may render regulatory barriers to entry more malleable, even in the absence of formal policy changes. To test this proposition, we bring the administrative state center stage and examine how regulatory discretion—regulatory agencies’ flexibility to interpret and implement public policies created by elected officials—can influence the market entry of new ventures. Using data on regulatory approval of hydroelectric facilities in the United States from 1978 to 2014, we find that increased state agency discretion improves outcomes for new ventures relative to incumbent firms by freeing regulatory agency officials to interpret and implement policies according to a professional motivation of public service and reducing incumbents’ political influence.
  Citation: Administrative Science Quarterly
  PubDate: 2020-03-16T10:18:27Z
  DOI: 10.1177/0001839220911022
Reinventing Business Models: How Firms Cope with Disruption
- Authors: Rory McDonald, Matt Higgins
  Abstract: Administrative Science Quarterly, Ahead of Print.
  
  Citation: Administrative Science Quarterly
  PubDate: 2020-03-16T10:18:07Z
  DOI: 10.1177/0001839220910621
Engineering Rules: Global Standard Setting since 1880
- Authors: Stephen R. Barley
  Abstract: Administrative Science Quarterly, Ahead of Print.
  
  Citation: Administrative Science Quarterly
  PubDate: 2020-02-27T10:07:23Z
  DOI: 10.1177/0001839220909221
From Face Time to Flex Time: The Role of Physical Space in Worker Temporal
Flexibility
- Authors: Leroy Gonsalves
  Abstract: Administrative Science Quarterly, Ahead of Print.
  Despite the great potential for flexible work policies to increase worker temporal flexibility—the extent to which workers control when and where their work tasks are completed—organizational scholars have found that employees rarely use them for fear of career penalties. This study sheds light on this flexibility paradox by drawing attention to the overlooked yet crucial role of physical space. Using 14 months of field research during an office redesign at a large professional sales organization, I find that a reconfiguration of physical space intended to reduce costs had the unintended consequence of disrupting taken-for-granted greeting practices, noticing practices, and evaluative beliefs. Changes to social practices led employees to feel less concern about trait inferences of dependability and commitment arising from their physical presence and to experience greater temporal flexibility. The findings contribute to a model in which the relationship between flexible work policies and temporal flexibility is moderated by the physical space. By identifying the physical space as a novel determinant of temporal flexibility, the study reveals the structural underpinnings of the flexibility paradox and more generally contributes to our understanding of how physical spaces structure social life in organizations.
  Citation: Administrative Science Quarterly
  PubDate: 2020-02-27T10:06:43Z
  DOI: 10.1177/0001839220907891
Job Turf or Variety: Task Structure as a Source of Organizational
Inequality
- Authors: Nathan Wilmers
  Abstract: Administrative Science Quarterly, Ahead of Print.
  What explains pay inequality among coworkers' Theories of organizational influence on inequality emphasize the effects of formal hierarchy. But restructuring, firm flattening, and individualized pay setting have challenged the relevance of these structuralist theories. I propose a new organizational theory of differences in pay, focused on task structure and the horizontal division of labor across jobs. When organizations specialize jobs, they reduce the variety of tasks performed by some workers. In doing so they leave exclusive job turf to other coworkers, who capture the learning and discretion associated with performing a distinct task. The division of labor thus erodes pay premiums for some workers while advantaging others through job turf. I test this theory with linked employer–employee panel data from U.S. labor unions, which include a type of data that is rarely collected: annual reporting on work tasks. Results show that reducing task variety lowers workers’ earnings, while increasing job turf raises earnings. When organizations reduce task variety for some workers, they increase job turf for others. Without assuming fixed job hierarchies and pay rates, interdependencies in organizational task allocation yield unequal pay premiums among coworkers.
  Citation: Administrative Science Quarterly
  PubDate: 2020-02-25T10:00:01Z
  DOI: 10.1177/0001839220909101
Tie Dissolution in Market Networks: A Theory of Vicarious Performance
Feedback
Open Access Article
- Authors: David R. Clough, Henning Piezunka
  Abstract: Administrative Science Quarterly, Ahead of Print.
  Managers need to periodically evaluate any exchange partner to decide whether to continue or dissolve the exchange tie, but doing so can be challenging because of causal ambiguity: it can be difficult to attribute organizational performance to any specific underlying factor. One way managers may evaluate their exchange partners is by observing the performance trajectories of competitors who rely on the same exchange partners. We propose a theory of vicarious performance feedback and test it in the context of Formula One motor racing. We find that a firm building a Formula One racing car is more likely to end an exchange relationship with an engine supplier after that supplier’s other customers experience an episode of poor performance relative to their historic track record. In line with an attention-based view of the firm, this behavior occurs when the firm’s own performance is below its aspiration level. This work extends our understanding of how managers use vicarious learning to supplement their direct experience when evaluating their exchange partners, expands our thinking about network dynamics by showing how network neighbors’ experiences can influence tie decisions made within a dyad, and contributes to the cognitive foundations of problemistic search by showing how external information is integrated into managers’ responses to their own firm’s underperformance.
  Citation: Administrative Science Quarterly
  PubDate: 2020-02-17T10:11:36Z
  DOI: 10.1177/0001839219899606
Inhabited Ecosystems: Propelling Transformative Social Change Between and
Through Organizations
- Authors: Rich DeJordy, Maureen Scully, Marc J. Ventresca, W. E. Douglas Creed
  Abstract: Administrative Science Quarterly, Ahead of Print.
  Two research streams examine how social movements operate both “in and around” organizations. We probe the empirical spaces between these streams, asking how activism situated in multi-organizational contexts contributes to transformative social change. By exploring activities in the mid-1990s related to advocacy for domestic partner benefits at 24 organizations in Minneapolis–St. Paul, Minnesota, we develop the concept of inhabited ecosystems to explore the relational processes by which employee activists advance change. These activists faced a variety of structural opportunities and restraints, and we identify five mechanisms that sustained their efforts during protracted contestation: learning even from thwarted activism, borrowing from one another’s more or less radical approaches, helping one another avoid the traps of stagnation, fostering solidarity and ecosystem capabilities, and collaboratively expanding the social movement domain. We thus reveal how activism situated in multi-organizational contexts animates an inhabited ecosystem of challengers that propels change efforts “between and through” organizations. These efforts, even when exploratory or incomplete, generate an ecosystem’s capacity to sustain, resource, and even reshape the larger transformative social change effort.
  Citation: Administrative Science Quarterly
  PubDate: 2020-02-07T09:51:23Z
  DOI: 10.1177/0001839219899613
Thomas B. Lawrence and Nelson Phillips. Constructing Organizational Life:
How Social-Symbolic Work Shapes Selves, Organizations, and Institutions
- Authors: Karl E. Weick
  Abstract: Administrative Science Quarterly, Ahead of Print.
  
  Citation: Administrative Science Quarterly
  PubDate: 2020-01-15T02:46:19Z
  DOI: 10.1177/0001839219896664
Dual Networking: How Collaborators Network in Their Quest for Innovation
Open Access Article
- Authors: Anne L. J. Ter Wal, Paola Criscuolo, Bill McEvily, Ammon Salter
  Abstract: Administrative Science Quarterly, Ahead of Print.
  Organizations typically employ a division of labor between specialist creator roles and generalist business roles in a bid to orchestrate innovation. We seek to determine the extent to which individuals dividing the work across roles can also benefit from dividing their network. We argue that collaborating individuals benefit from connecting to the same groups but different individuals within those groups—an approach we label dual networking—rather than from a pure divide-and-conquer approach. To test this argument, we study a dual career-ladder setting in a large multinational in which R&D managers and technologists partner up in their quest for innovation. We find that collaborators who engage in dual networking attain an innovation performance advantage over those who connect to distinct groups. This advantage stems from the opportunity to engage in the dual interpretation of input the partners receive, as well as from dual influencing that helps them to gain momentum for their proposed innovations, and it leads to more effective elaboration and championing of their ideas. In demonstrating these effects, we advance understanding of how collaborators organize their networking activities to best achieve innovative outcomes.
  Citation: Administrative Science Quarterly
  PubDate: 2020-01-13T10:03:06Z
  DOI: 10.1177/0001839219893691