Abstract: 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.
论文原文：
Stephens, J. P. 2021. How the Show Goes On: Using the Aesthetic Experience of Collective Performance to Adapt while Coordinating. Administrative Science Quarterly, 66(1): 1-41. DOI: 10.1177/0001839220911056
Abstract: 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.
论文原文：
Wright, A. L., Meyer, A. D., Reay, T., & Staggs, J. 2021. Maintaining Places of Social Inclusion: Ebola and the Emergency Department. Administrative Science Quarterly, 66(1): 42-85. DOI: 10.1177/0001839220916401
Abstract: 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.
论文原文：
Hsu, G. T., & Grodal, S. 2021. The Double-edged Sword of Oppositional Category Positioning: A Study of the US E-cigarette Category, 2007-2017. Administrative Science Quarterly, 66(1): 86-132. DOI:10.1177/0001839220914855
Abstract: 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.
论文原文：
Luo, J., Chen, D. J., & Chen, J. 2021. Coming Back and Giving Back: Transposition, Institutional Actors, and the Paradox of Peripheral Influence. Administrative Science Quarterly, 66(1): 133-176. DOI: 10.1177/0001839220929736
Abstract: 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.
Sytch, M., & Kim, Y. H. 2021. Quo Vadis? From the Schoolyard to the Courtroom. Administrative Science Quarterly, 66(1): 177-219. DOI: 10.1177/0001839220922133
Abstract: 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.
