Abstract: In spite of an increasing interest in ambiguity, our knowledge of how organizations maintain strategic ambiguity to protect themselves from public scrutiny is still in its infancy. Through an in-depth historical study of the Sicilian Mafia between 1963 and 2018, we develop a model of strategic ambiguity maintenance. We focus on three struggles between the Mafia and state representatives, and show how these struggles centered on different types of ambiguity: ambiguity as opacity, equivocality, and absurdity. We elaborate on the strategies enacted by the Mafia and the responses by state representatives and their implications for ambiguity over time. The main contribution of our paper is that it advances understanding of the maintenance of strategic ambiguity by organizations that need to protect themselves from public scrutiny. More specifically, it enriches our knowledge of the key process dynamics, the types of struggles, and the discursive and nondiscursive strategies employed in the process. Our analysis also extends research on clandestine organizations and illuminates the relationship between (strategic) ambiguity and secrecy.
Cappellaro, G., Compagni, A., & Vaara, E. 2020. Maintaining Strategic Ambiguity for Protection: Struggles over Opacity, Equivocality, and Absurdity around the Sicilian Mafia. Academy of Management Journal, 64(1): 1-37. DOI: 10.5465/amj.2017.1086
Abstract: This paper contributes to the resource dependence theory and corporate political activity literatures by distinguishing dependence from uncertainty and explaining how two different types of uncertainty have opposite effects on dependence management. We explain how some environmental factors increase the state uncertainty associated with firms’ dependence on government jurisdictions, whereas other factors increase response uncertainty. We hypothesize that, due to the historical influence of the media and social movement organizations on politics, negative national media tenor and oppositional social movement organization resources increase state uncertainty (i.e., government’s likely behavior toward firms becomes less predictable), strengthening the relationship between firms’ dependence on jurisdictions and their use of political contributions in those jurisdictions. Further, we hypothesize that top management team turnover and politician turnover increase response uncertainty (i.e., the effectiveness of firms’ efforts to manage their dependence becomes less clear), weakening the relationship between dependence and political contributions. We find support for our theory in an examination of state-level political contributions of firms in environmentally intensive industries from 2009 to 2016. Interviews with senior executives, political consultants, and senior government employees directly involved in corporate political activity help illustrate the hypothesized relationships.
Sutton, T., Devine, R. A., Lamont, B. T., & Holmes, R. M. 2020. Resource Dependence, Uncertainty, and the Allocation of Corporate Political Activity across Multiple Jurisdictions. Academy of Management Journal, 64(1): 38-62. DOI: 10.5465/amj.2017.1258
Abstract: Internal talent markets—created when firms post open jobs and invite current employees to apply—enhance the value of an organization’s human capital by generating complementary person–job matches. Yet these markets generate more internal rejections than matches, as not all internal applicants are hired. We develop theory to explain when rejections are more or less likely to deplete an organization’s human capital resources through voluntary turnover. Drawing on the extant intraorganizational mobility literature, we argue that variations in post-rejection turnover are shaped by the information that the market provides employees about their likelihood of future internal advancement, despite being rejected in the present. Specifically, we argue that hiring manager decisions about whom to interview and hire provide information to rejected internal candidates about their ability to meet the criteria to be hired for similar jobs in the future and the likelihood that those jobs will be filled internally. Analyzing 9,355 rejections in a single firm over a five-year period, we find that rejected employees are significantly less likely to exit when they are interviewed by the hiring manager (compared to being rejected earlier) and when they are rejected in favor of another internal candidate (compared to an external candidate).
Dlugos, K., & Keller, J. R. 2020. Turned Down and Taking Off? Rejection and Turnover in Internal Talent Markets. Academy of Management Journal, 64(1): 63-85. DOI: 10.5465/amj.2018.1015
Abstract: We examine how actors react to status inconsistencies across multiple status hierarchies. We argue that pluralistic value systems create multiple status conferral mechanisms, and that hierarchies’ prestige varies as a function of the values they represent. While status inconsistency, in general, increases the likelihood that actors will pursue opportunities that can boost their lagging status, their status hierarchies’ unequal prestige influences the magnitude and direction of actors’ responses to their status inconsistency. Further, their ability to respond is constrained by their relative standing in their primary status hierarchy and the extent to which they are embedded in particular professional networks. Using the artistic and commercial status of Hollywood performers, we found that status-inconsistent performers were more likely to appear in films that could boost their lagging status in the commercial hierarchy when they possessed relatively higher artistic than commercial status. Moreover, being high-status decreased the likelihood a performer would pursue opportunities that could improve their lagging status only when they were high status in the artistic status hierarchy, while embeddedness only decreased the likelihood when their primary status hierarchy was commercial.
Han, J.-H., & Pollock, T. G. 2020. The Two Towers (or Somewhere in Between): The Behavioral Consequences of Positional Inconsistency across Status Hierarchies. Academy of Management Journal, 64(1): 86-113. DOI: 10.5465/amj.2018.1091
Abstract: Scholars continue to debate whether voice and silence are opposites or distinct constructs. This ambiguity has prevented meaningful theoretical advancements about employees’ voice and silence at work. We draw on the behavioral activation and behavioral inhibition systems perspective to provide a conceptual framework for the independence of voice and silence and explicate how two key antecedents—perceived impact and psychological safety—more strongly relate to voice and silence, respectively. We further differentiate voice and silence by identifying their distinct effects on employee burnout. In Study 1, a meta-analysis, we demonstrate that voice and silence are independent (Mρ = −.15) and that perceived impact (psychological safety) relates more strongly to voice (silence) than to silence (voice). We also find that silence has a significantly stronger association with burnout compared to voice. In Study 2, we constructively replicate these findings in an interval-contingent panel study across six months. Taken together, this article helps shift the conversation of whether voice and silence are distinct constructs to how they differ and why such differences matter.
Sherf, E. N., Parke, M. R., & Isaakyan, S. 2020. Distinguishing Voice and Silence at Work: Unique Relationships with Perceived Impact, Psychological Safety, and Burnout. Academy of Management Journal, 64(1): 114-148. DOI: 10.5465/amj.2018.1428
Abstract: How do new ventures gain legitimacy and attract critical resources? An increasing body of cultural entrepreneurship research has highlighted an “optimal distinctiveness” trade-off: new ventures need to be distinctive from their peers to stand out, yet distinctiveness counteracts the attainment of organizational legitimacy. In this paper, we challenge the underlying assumption that distinctiveness necessarily counteracts the attainment of legitimacy and propose that distinctiveness can become a source of legitimacy. This proposition matters because it fundamentally alters the relationship between distinctiveness and resource acquisition from certain audiences. We build on these theoretical arguments to examine new ventures’ resource acquisition from crowdfunders, one of the most important audiences for new ventures. Analysis of 28,425 crowdfunding campaigns across 39 market categories strongly supports our arguments, showing that higher levels of distinctiveness lead to superior crowdfunding performance. We further demonstrate that the legitimating effect of distinctiveness intensifies under the absence of alternative sources of legitimacy. Our study contributes by uncovering a new mechanism and three contingencies for the “optimal distinctiveness” trade-off.
Taeuscher, K., Bouncken, R., & Pesch, R. 2020. Gaining Legitimacy by Being Different: Optimal Distinctiveness in Crowdfunding Platforms. Academy of Management Journal, 64(1): 149-179. DOI: 10.5465/amj.2018.0620
Abstract: The nascent literature on feeling trusted has focused on the notion that it is a benefit to employees and their organizations, with several studies demonstrating a link to improved job performance. It is not surprising, therefore, that the prevailing assumption is that employees will react positively when their supervisors trust them more as opposed to less. Recent research, however, has suggested that the benefits of feeling trusted are accompanied by strains, which some employees may be unwilling to bear. Drawing on seminal theorizing on fairness, we propose that employees will perceive their supervisors as being more mindful of their needs—acting more fairly—when there is a fit between trust wanted and trust received, even when the fit is at low levels of trust. By extension, when trust received exceeds or falls short of an employee’s desire for trust, the employee should perceive the supervisor as less fair. We build a model in which the overall fairness perceptions resulting from the trust wanted–received interplay influence employee performance. Our model is supported by a multisource, three-wave field study and an experiment.
Baer, M. D., Frank, E. L., Matta, F. K., Luciano, M. M., & Wellman, N. 2020. Undertrusted, Overtrusted, or Just Right? The Fairness of (In)Congruence between Trust Wanted and Trust Received. Academy of Management Journal, 64(1): 180-206. DOI: 10.5465/amj.2018.0334
Abstract: Research into boards of directors has provided mixed support for the view that outside directors’ independence or leadership by an independent chair improves monitoring. In this study, we use a micro-level approach to provide a better understanding of why outside directors have difficulty in monitoring the CEO. We highlight that an important reason for this lies in the boardroom dynamics associated with (a) outside directors’ cognitive conflict with the CEO and (b) the chair’s leadership of the board. Our inductive analyses of video observations of board meetings in five Australian corporations revealed the importance of chair participative leadership during disagreement episodes in the boardroom. Follow-up in-depth interviews of board meeting participants highlighted the importance of psychological safety as a key mechanism explaining why participative board chairs appear so effective in dealing with board–CEO cognitive conflict. We corroborate these results with a second, large-scale survey study involving data on 310 outside directors from 64 Dutch boards. Whereas prior work has mostly focused on the chair’s relationship with the CEO, we instead highlight the importance of the chair’s role as the leader of the board and identify board psychological safety as an important element shaping director monitoring within the confines of the boardroom.
Veltrop, D. B., Bezemer, P.-J., Nicholson, G., & Pugliese, A. 2020. Too Unsafe to Monitor? How Board–CEO Cognitive Conflict and Chair Leadership Shape Outside Director Monitoring. Academy of Management Journal, 64(1): 207-234. DOI: 10.5465/amj.2017.1256
Abstract: Side-hustles, income-generating work performed alongside full-time jobs, are increasingly common as the gig economy provides opportunities for employees to perform supplementary work. Although scholars have suggested that side-hustles conflict with full-time work performance, we assert that psychological empowerment from side-hustles enriches full-time work performance. We argue that side-hustle complexity—the motivating characteristics of side-hustles—positively relates to empowerment and that side-hustle motives moderate this relationship. A study of 337 employees supports these assertions. We then investigate the spillover of side-hustle empowerment to full-time work performance in a 10-day experience-sampling method study of 80 employee–coworker dyads. We address an affective pathway in which daily side-hustle empowerment enriches full-time work performance through side-hustle engagement and positive affect at work. We also consider a cognitive pathway wherein side-hustle empowerment distracts from full-time work performance through side-hustle engagement and attention residue—persistent cognitions about side-hustles during full-time work. Overall, performance enrichment from side-hustles was stronger than performance conflict. We also consider affective shift from full-time work to side-hustles, finding negative affect from full-time work strengthens the relationship between side-hustle empowerment and engagement. Combined, our two studies examine the source of side-hustle empowerment and how side-hustle empowerment influences affective and cognitive experiences during full-time work.
Sessions, H., Nahrgang, J. D., Vaulont, M. J., Williams, R., & Bartels, A. L. 2020. Do the Hustle! Empowerment from Side-Hustles and Its Effects on Full-Time Work Performance. Academy of Management Journal, 64(1): 235-264. DOI: 10.5465/amj.2018.0164
Abstract: The behavioral agency model (BAM) posits that executives endow current wealth, but do not endow prospective wealth. As a result of this endowment effect, executives are risk averse with current wealth and risk seeking with prospective wealth. These relationships, however, assume that all executives perceive and attend to current and future outcomes similarly, which is at odds with research on temporal orientations. Drawing on the concept of temporal focus, we theorize that present-focused CEOs adhere to the BAM’s endowment effect, while exhibiting even stronger relationships between current and prospective wealth and risk taking. In contrast, by nature of being forward-looking, future-focused CEOs endow prospective wealth instead of current wealth, thereby reversing the main relationships of the BAM. Using a sample of 7,700 CEO-year observations from 2003 to 2016, we find empirical support for our arguments in the context of merger and acquisition investment. Findings from this study advance the BAM by showing that the relationship between wealth type and risk taking hinges on CEOs’ temporal focus.
DesJardine, M. R., & Shi, W. 2020. How Temporal Focus Shapes the Influence of Executive Compensation on Risk Taking. Academy of Management Journal, 64(1): 265-292. DOI: 10.5465/amj.2018.1470
