An Examination of the Interface between Context and Theory Applied to the Study of Chinese Organizations

2009 ◽  
Vol 5 (1) ◽  
pp. 29-56 ◽  
Author(s):  
David A. Whetten
Keyword(s):  
Organizational Theory ◽  
Context Effects ◽  
Organizational Research ◽  
Context Sensitive ◽  
Western Theory ◽  
Organizational Scholarship ◽  
Essential Contribution ◽  
New Research ◽  
Context Theory

This paper expands recent appeals for more context sensitive organizational research to include organizational theory. It does this by systematically examining the interface between theory and context, characterized herein as contextualizing theory (theories in context) and theorizing about context (theories of context). The results of this analysis challenge recent criticisms of Chinese organizational scholarship for relying too much on Western theory. As an alternative to discontinuing the practice of cross-context theory borrowing, ways of making this borrowing more context sensitive are explored. The use of context effects to explain organizational phenomena, as well as their essential contribution to all forms of cross-context scholarship, is also examined. In addition, specific suggestions are offered for overcoming the obstacles facing scholars engaged in cross-context theorizing, especially scholars in new research contexts interested in using and improving ‘mainstream’ theory.

scholarly journals Organizations, Social Problems, and System Change: Invigorating the Third Mandate of Organizational Research

2021 ◽  
Vol 2 (4) ◽  
pp. 263178772110548
Author(s):  
Johanna Mair ◽  
Christian Seelos
Keyword(s):  
Empirical Analysis ◽  
Organizational Theory ◽  
Social Problems ◽  
Social Systems ◽  
System Change ◽  
Organizational Research ◽  
The Third ◽  
Adequate Knowledge ◽  
Organizational Scholarship ◽  
The Relationship

Organizations across sectors appear to be shifting their ambitions from solving social problems to changing entire social systems. This phenomenon offers a timely opportunity to revisit what came to be known as the third mandate of organizational theory. In this paper we interrogate how organizational scholarship can productively explore and theorize the relationship between organizations and social systems in organized system change – an effort by organizations to alter the conditions that generate the characteristics of social problems and their dynamics of change. As a basis for theorizing organized system change, we develop an analytical scaffold that helps researchers to attend to fundamental aspects of the phenomenon and to achieve parsimony without blanking out complexity. Grounded in realist metatheory and principles, the scaffold reduces ambiguity, provides a backbone for empirical analysis, and favours mechanism-based explanation. We suggest that generating theoretically interesting and practically adequate knowledge on organized system change requires attention to three system realms: First, the subjectively constructed problem realm of systems concerned with processes of evaluating and problematizing situations. Second, the objectively constituted situational realm that attends to factual characteristics of situations and their dynamics of change. And third, the realm of causality understood as the mechanisms that generate both the objective characteristics of situations and the subjective criteria by which situations are evaluated as problems. In concluding, we reflect on the topics of boundaries and power as two promising areas for theorizing organized system change.

scholarly journals Intelligence as a discipline, not just a practice

2016 ◽  
Vol 5 (3) ◽  
Author(s):  
Magnus Hoppe
Keyword(s):  
Organizational Theory ◽  
Research Agenda ◽  
Scientific Discipline ◽  
Theory Of Intelligence ◽  
The Subject ◽  
New Research

This paper is a call for a new research agenda for the topic of intelligence studiesas a scientific discipline counterbalancing the present domination of research in the art ofintelligence or intelligence as a practice. I argue that there is a need to move away from a narrowperspective on practice to pursue a broader understanding of intelligence as an organizationaldiscipline with all of its complexities where the subject is seen as more critical and is allowed toreflect on itself as a topic. This path will help intelligence academics connect to theoreticaldevelopments gained elsewhere and move forward, towards establishing more of an intelligencescience. The article is critical of what the author sees as a constructionist line of thinking.Instead the author presents a theory of intelligence as learning how to “muddle through”influenced more by organizational theory. The author also argues for an independent scientificjournal in Intelligence.

Reworking Resistance

2018 ◽  
pp. 274-291 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jenna N. Hanchey
Keyword(s):  
Nongovernmental Organizations ◽  
Organizational Communication ◽  
Organizational Theory ◽  
Communication Research ◽  
Organizational Research ◽  
Cultural Conditions ◽  
International Ngos ◽  
Communication Work ◽  
Do So

Scholars recognize that both nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) and non-Western organizational logics harbor the potential to reconfigure fundamental assumptions of organizational research. Drawing from such work, I argue that we must reconceptualize ‘resistance' in organizational communication scholarship by destabilizing its Western-centric assumptions and logics. I do so by engaging in a postcolonial analysis of scholarship on international NGOs, and drawing out typical assumptions of organizational communication work that do not hold under all cultural conditions, or that are imperialistic in nature. Answering calls to center alternative forms of organizing and to draw deeper relations between critical intercultural and organizational communication research, this study asks scholars to resist typical theorizations of ‘resistance,' and decolonize organizational theory.

Organizational Time in Historical Perspective

2020 ◽  
pp. 169-188
Author(s):  
John Hassard ◽  
Stephanie Decker ◽  
Michael Rowlinson
Keyword(s):  
Organizational Theory ◽  
Historical Perspective ◽  
Karl Marx ◽  
Empirical Investigation ◽  
Emile Durkheim ◽  
Workplace Behavior ◽  
Organizational Research ◽  
Mircea Eliade ◽  
Pitirim Sorokin

This chapter examines how time and temporality have been analyzed in social and organizational theory. Specifically, it discusses forms of analysis developed prior to the purported synthesizing of conceptual dualities under the “postmodern turn” (Nowotny, 1994; Orlikowski and Yates, 2002). The chapter reviews some of the main concepts and theories of time developed historically by sociologists and anthropologists, and describes how—when applied in organizational research—they have yielded rich and diverse insights into workplace behavior. By drawing upon some of the major foundational figures in the sociology of time—such as Emile Durkheim, Mircea Eliade, Georges Gurvitch, Karl Marx, Pitirim Sorokin—we note not only differences between their positions, but also how such differences, when contrasted systematically, offer a broad basis for appreciating time as reflecting a cyclical as well as linear, heterogeneous as well as homogeneous, and processual as well as structural phenomenon in theoretical and empirical investigation.

ORGANIZATIONAL AMBIDEXTERITY: KETANGGUHAN YANG DIBUTUHKAN UNTUK KEBERLANGSUNGAN KINERJA ORGANISASI MASA DEPAN

2017 ◽  
Vol 2 (3) ◽  
pp. 433-438
Author(s):  
Santi Retno Sari
Keyword(s):  
Organizational Theory ◽  
Radical Innovation ◽  
Superior Performance ◽  
Organizational Resilience ◽  
Organizational Ambidexterity ◽  
Research Paradigm ◽  
Related Research ◽  
New Research ◽  
The Impact ◽  
Exploration Exploitation

Organizational ambidexterity has emerged as a new research paradigm in organizational theory, but some fundamental issues in this debate remain controversial. Ambidexterity is the ability to exploit existing capabilities and to explore new opportunities. Achieving exploitation and exploration enables organizational success, even organizational resilience to improve and maintain sustained superior performance, but creates tensions and challenging. The ambidextrous organization excels in utilizing existing products to enable additional innovation and to explore new opportunities to drive more radical innovation, but related research is limited. This article aims to advance our understanding of the prerequisites of organizational prerequisites, approaches to achieving them, and to address the impact of each level of individuals and organizations for the sustainability of ambidexterity organizational achievements keywords: organizational ambidexterity, exploration-exploitation.

Time, Temporality, and History in Process Organization Studies

2020 ◽  
pp. 1-14
Author(s):  
Juliane Reinecke ◽  
Roy Suddaby ◽  
Ann Langley ◽  
Haridimos Tsoukas
Keyword(s):  
Central Element ◽  
Processes Of Change ◽  
Organization Studies ◽  
Organizational Research ◽  
Ongoing Research ◽  
Prior Literature ◽  
Precise Relationship ◽  
Organizational Study ◽  
Organizational Scholarship ◽  
Relationship Of

Time and history have emerged as prominent subjects of interest in organization studies. This volume stands testament to the recent foregrounding of time and history as focal objects of organizational study and scholarship. The precise relationship of temporality and history to processes of change remains under-theorized, and we lack a coherent set of conceptual tools that can be applied to ongoing research directed to addressing the puzzle. The chapters in this volume, devoted to understanding temporality and history as a central element of process, offer a glimpse of both a defining puzzle and a set of emergent conceptual tools that might be useful for scholars engaged in historical and temporally sensitive organizational research. Before elaborating their contribution to the emergent theoretical scaffolding of historical and temporal organizational scholarship, this chapter presents the puzzle and its evolution in prior literature.

Queer Studies and Organizational Communication

2021 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jamie McDonald ◽  
Sean C. Kenney
Keyword(s):  
Organizational Communication ◽  
Queer Theory ◽  
Queer Studies ◽  
Diversity Management ◽  
Gender And Sexuality ◽  
Organizational Life ◽  
Organizational Research ◽  
The Past ◽  
Queer Of Color ◽  
Organizational Scholarship

As a subfield, organizational communication has been relatively slow to engage with queer theory. However, a robust literature on queer organizational scholarship has emerged over the past decade, since the 2010s, in both organizational communication and the allied field of critical management studies. Adopting a queer theoretical lens to the study of organizational communication entails queering one’s understandings of organizational life by questioning what is considered to be normal and taken for granted. Engaging with queer theory in organizational communication also implies exposing and critiquing heteronormativity in organizations, viewing difference as a constitutive feature of organizing, adopting an anti-categorical approach to difference, and understanding identity as fluid and performative. To date, organizational scholars have mobilized queer theory to queer how gender and sexuality are conceptualized in organizational research, queer dominant understandings of leadership, queer the notion of diversity management, queer the “closet” metaphor and understandings of how individuals negotiate the disclosure of nonnormative identities at work, and queer organizational research methods. Moving forward, organizational scholars can continue to advance queer scholarship by mobilizing queer theory to highlight queer voices in empirical research, interrogating whiteness in queer organizational scholarship by centering queer of color subjectivities, and continuing to queer organizational research and queer theory by subjecting both to critical interrogation.

scholarly journals Towards an Articulation of the Material and Visual Turn in Organization Studies

2018 ◽  
Vol 39 (5-6) ◽  
pp. 597-616 ◽  
Author(s):  
Eva Boxenbaum ◽  
Candace Jones ◽  
Renate E. Meyer ◽  
Silviya Svejenova
Keyword(s):  
Product Design ◽  
Organizational Theory ◽  
Building Materials ◽  
Special Issue ◽  
Organization Studies ◽  
Organizational Research ◽  
Visual Artifacts

Contemporary organizations increasingly rely on images, logos, videos, building materials, graphic and product design, and a range of other material and visual artifacts to compete, communicate, form identity and organize their activities. This Special Issue focuses on materiality and visuality in the course of objectifying and reacting to novel ideas, and, more broadly, contributes to organizational theory by articulating the emergent contours of a material and visual turn in the study of organizations. In this Introduction, we provide an overview of research on materiality and visuality. Drawing on the articles in the special issue, we further explore the affordances and limits of the material and visual dimensions of organizing in relation to novelty. We conclude by pointing out theoretical avenues for advancing multimodal research, and discuss some of the ethical, pragmatic and identity-related challenges that a material and visual turn could pose for organizational research.

One Person Organizations as a Resource for Researchers and Practitioners

1984 ◽  
Vol 8 (3) ◽  
pp. 24-30 ◽  
Author(s):  
Jerome A. Katz
Keyword(s):  
Organizational Theory ◽  
Occupational Choice ◽  
Open Systems ◽  
Important Research ◽  
Organizational Research ◽  
Individual Work ◽  
The One ◽  
Systems Framework

The one person organization has been neglected in much of organizational research. This has occurred despite the one person organization's ubiquity and importance to organizational theory and the workforce. Prior admonishments about the uniqueness of such firms have gone largely unheeded, and suggestions to the owners of one person organizations have often been misguided. The paper goes on to show how this modal organization fits into the open-systems framework and where the one person organization offers unique opportunities for important research in the areas of individual-work and individual-organization relationships, organizational founding research, and occupational choice research for marginal members of society.

scholarly journals Inducing preference reversals by manipulating revealed preferences

2020 ◽  
Author(s):  
Harish Balakrishnan ◽  
Shobhit Jagga ◽  
Nisheeth Srivastava
Keyword(s):  
Context Effects ◽  
Revealed Preferences ◽  
Preference Reversals ◽  
Experimental Paradigm ◽  
Evidence Accumulation ◽  
Context Sensitive ◽  
History Of ◽  
Series Of Experiments ◽  
Context Dependent

It is currently difficult to test the validity of existing explanations for the emergence of context-dependent preference reversals. This is because these explanations are generally placed at the level of the process of evidence accumulation, and across experimental paradigms, this process is unobservable. In this paper, we propose a new experimental paradigm for eliciting preference reversals, wherein the process of evidence accumulation is significantly observable. Over a series of experiments, we successfully induce preference reversals for arbitrary stimuli by showing participants sequences of stimuli comparisons with pre-determined outcomes. Our findings partially support the view that context-sensitive assimilation of a history of ordinal comparisons is sufficient to explain classic context effects.

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