This article reflects on our article of 2009, “Organizational path dependence: Opening the black box,” which received the Academy of Management Review’s Decade Award in 2019. We review how the article has been used in subsequent research, discuss the criticism it has elicited, and reexamine our original propositions in light of theoretical insights gained since the text’s publication. We also explore the linkages to related concepts, such as complexity, hierarchy, agency, and expansion. We conclude by outlining new avenues for research on and enhancing the theory of organizational path dependence.
参考文献：Sydow, J. et al. 2020. On the Theory of Organizational Path Dependence: Clarifications, Replies to Objections, and Extensions, Academy of Management Review, 45(4), 717-734.
Across all fields of management research, uncertainty is largely considered an aversive state that people and organizations cope with unwillingly and generally aim to avoid. However, theories based on principles of uncertainty reduction overlook opportunities arising from uncertainty creation. Building on recent research in management, cognition, and neuroscience, we expand current conceptualizations of uncertainty by introducing a model of uncertainty regulation where individuals employ opening and closing behaviors to achieve alignment between preferred and experienced levels of uncertainty and with exogenous requirements for effectiveness. We derive propositions for uncertainty regulation and work performance that extend existing concepts of adaptation in uncertain environments to include deliberate uncertainty creation and expansive agency. We discuss implications for dynamic models of agentic goal striving, organizational support for individuals’ uncertainty regulation, and extensions to team- and organization-level phenomena.
参考文献：Griffin, M. A. and Grote, G. 2020. When Is More Uncertainty Better? A Model of Uncertainty Regulation and Effectiveness, Academy of Management Review, 45(4), 745-765.
Managers face a critical issue in deciding when to employ a predictive planning approach versus a more adaptive and flexible strategic approach. We suggest that determining which approach is ideal for a given context hangs on the extent to which uncertainty is, or might be, mitigable within that context. To date, however, the mitigability of uncertainty has not been adequately distilled. Here, we take on this issue, distinguishing mitigable ignorance of pertinent but knowable information (i.e., “epistemic uncertainty”) from immitigable indeterminacy (i.e., “aleatory uncertainty”). We review the current state of the debate on the existence of free will, because the acceptance or rejection of conscious agents as a true first cause has fundamental implications. A critical examination of the arguments for and against the free will hypothesis land us on the side of voluntarism, which implies immitigable indeterminacy (but not complete unpredictability) wherever conscious actors are involved. Accepting the existence of immitigable or aleatory uncertainty, then, we revisit the determination of strategic logics and produce important theoretical nuance and key boundary conditions in the normative choice between predictive and nonpredictive strategies.
参考文献：Packard, M. D. and Clark, B. B. 2020. On the Mitigability of Uncertainty and the Choice between Predictive and Nonpredictive Strategy, Academy of Management Review, 45(4), 766-786.
Despite the longstanding recognition of the importance of uncertainty in strategy, strategy researchers have given limited attention to the distinct challenges and processes involved in strategy making under uncertainty. To address this gap, we build on Knight’s and Shackle’s seminal ideas about how strategists address the incomplete knowledge problems that uncertainty poses. We argue that strategists adopt two distinct strategic postures when crafting strategies in uncertain markets—shaping and adapting—and theorize their constituent elements: intentions, epistemologies, and enactment strategies. Our framework extends current understanding of strategy under uncertainty by integrating research on adapting strategies, based on scientific epistemologies, which guide continuous experimentation and learning, with research on shaping strategies, based on design epistemologies, which guide significant symbolic and resource investments intended to create new market orders.
参考文献：Rindova, V. and Courtney, H. 2020. To Shape or Adapt: Knowledge Problems, Epistemologies, and Strategic Postures under Knightian Uncertainty. Academy of Management Review, 45(4), 787-807.
Creation theory suggests that opportunity formation is endogenous to the actions of entrepreneurs. However, this characterization of the opportunity formation process suggests at least two important questions that have yet to be fully addressed in the literature—one pertaining to early on in the opportunity formation process, and one to later in this process. The present paper proposes to address these two questions—in particular, through the integration of the theories of cognition with the creation theory of opportunities. The first question is as follows: “Given that individuals have no rational, profit-maximizing reason to begin the process of forming an opportunity under conditions of Knightian uncertainty, why do they do so?” The present paper suggests that entrepreneurial curiosity sparks the creation of opportunities. The second question is this: “In later stages of the opportunity formation, how do individuals create the many possible ways to exploit this opportunity?” Here, this papers posits that creating entrepreneurial opportunities under Knightian uncertainty includes the cognitive generative processes of entrepreneurs. These theoretical arguments, which extend the creation theory of opportunities, also have implications for the valuation and governance of creation opportunities.
参考文献：Arikan, A. M. et al. 2020. Creation Opportunities: Entrepreneurial Curiosity, Generative Cognition, and Knightian Uncertainty. Academy of Management Review, 45(4), 808-824.
We combine Herbert Simon’s view of design with the common distinction between reality as discovered or created to develop experimentation and transformation as ideal types of entrepreneurial design. Building on the design tradition’s view of artifacts, we describe how opportunities-as-artifacts iteratively develop at the interface between organized individuals and their environments, where more or less concrete instantiations are used to drive the process forward. By conceptualizing entrepreneurship as artifact-centered design, we provide an alternative to accounts inspired by economic theory, which have proven conceptually problematic and of limited practical use. We conclude by discussing how uncertainty can be defined and managed, the value of design as a conceptual anchor for entrepreneurship studies, avenues for future conceptual and empirical work, and how the design perspective naturally bridges theory and practice.
参考文献：Berglund, H. et al. 2020 Opportunities as Artifacts and Entrepreneurship as Design, Academy of Management Review, 45(4), 825-846.
The role of complementary assets across the different stages of a firm’s value chain in facilitating value creation and value appropriation from technological innovation remains a key area of interest in strategy and entrepreneurship research. However, current thinking on complementary assets operates with an unstated boundary condition—that relevant assets and asset configurations are relatively well known to the innovating firm. This assumption is applicable under conditions of “risk,” wherein decision-makers can know outcomes and probabilities. It is less clear, though, how current insights apply under conditions of “Knightian uncertainty,” in which neither outcomes nor probabilities are knowable. The purpose of this paper is to advance a complementary assets theory that accounts for conditions of Knightian uncertainty, thus aligning theory with the contemporary realities surrounding innovating firms. This article highlights an important intertemporal trade-off that existing literature ignores—without accounting for Knightian uncertainty, firms may unknowingly direct complementary assets in ways that favor current value appropriation at the expense of future value creation. We discuss theoretical implications for research on the microfoundations of dynamic capabilities and opportunities for future research on complementary asset configurations across geographic boundaries and across organizations in innovation ecosystems.
参考文献：Lampert, C. M. et al. 2020. Branching and Anchoring: Complementary Asset Configurations in Conditions of Knightian Uncertainty. Academy of Management Review, 45(4), 847-868.
The 9/11 terrorist attacks manifested change in the world around us and caused many people to reevaluate their work and lives. Nearly two decades later, with the benefit of hindsight, we can see the effects of changing political power on the American Dream—and, in turn, on the perceived purpose of business organizations and individuals’ experience of the meaning of work. To study these phenomena through a diversity of perspectives, we examine four post-9/11 stories in which business is a central force: Art Spiegelman’s 2004 graphic comix storyboard, In the Shadow of No Towers; Mohsin Hamid’s 2007 novel, The Reluctant Fundamentalist; Irene Sankoff and David Hein’s 2015 musical, Come from Away; and Laila Lalami’s 2019 novel, The Other Americans. These stories encourage us to reflect on the causes and consequences of 9/11 and to consider how systems of political power, economic organizations, and work have changed and should change. They also challenge management scholars to think about what this means for our own scholarship, teaching, and practice—in particular, who capitalism is for, what business is for, and why we work.
参考文献：Michaelson, C. and Tosti-Kharas, J. 2020. A World Changed: What Post-9/11 Stories Tell Us about the Position of America, Purpose of Business, and Meaning of Work. Academy of Management Review, 45(4), 877-895.
