Seeking input when the train has left the station: The decoupling of participative strategic decision-making processes and the role of new technology in symbolic management

We examine the symbolic management of participative strategic decision-making programs that purportedly use crowdsourcing technology to solicit strategic input below the executive suite, but are often decoupled from actual strategic decision making. Specifically, top management may decide on a strategic option before soliciting input under the program. The first portion of our theoretical framework explains why disclosure of a participative strategic decision making program in communicating with security analysts is associated with more positive analyst appraisals, despite decoupling, and why the benefits of disclosure are amplified to the extent that leaders highlight the use of crowdsourcing technology in the program. The second portion of our framework addresses the antecedents of symbolic adoption. We suggest that firms are more likely to adopt and decouple a program when the CEO has a personal friendship tie to the CEO of another firm that has adopted and decoupled, especially following relatively negative analyst appraisals. Analysis of a unique dataset that includes longitudinal survey data from executives supported our predictions.

Exploring the Strategic Intent and Practices of University Accelerators: A Case of Australia

University accelerators are a recent but rapidly growing phenomenon that not only enhance regional entrepreneurial ecosystems but influence the success of university startups and regional development and prosperity. The aim of this research is to explore the alignment of university strategic intent and practices with the impact and outcomes of university startup accelerators. The research design includes emergent enquiry perspectives aligned to inductive and nascent exploratory research. This is the first global algorithmic study using Leximancer techniques to examine the integration of university intent and accelerator impact using institutional theory as a foundation. Neoteric reviews provide conflicting points of view regarding university accelerators as startup launchpads or vehicles for entrepreneurial learning, and the findings suggest a disparity between university accelerators and university strategic intent, primarily a result of the incongruent interplay of substantive and symbolic management practices. The findings provide not only critical grounding and insights for researchers, practitioners, and university leaders in their quest to engage with successful nascent entrepreneurs and university startups but, also, practical implications to align the strategic intent.

How legitimate are the environmental sustainability claims of luxury conglomerates?

PurposeBy responding to scholarly calls, this study examines the environmental reports of LVMH and Kering. The study extends legitimacy theory to ascertain the credibility of the aforementioned luxury conglomerates' commitment to environmental sustainability.Design/methodology/approachA corpus-assisted discourse analysis centred upon the Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) guidelines is used to examine the environmental disclosures of LVMH and Kering.FindingsThe findings show inconsistencies due to the lack of brand-level reporting and reporting quality falls short of comparable sustainability reporting within each conglomerate and with one another. Selective and unbalanced reporting along with symbolic management undermines the legitimacy of sustainability efforts by LVMH and Kering.Originality/valueDespite the increased attention paid to sustainable luxury, few studies critically analyse how luxury brands formally report on sustainability.

The Social Psychological Dynamics of Symbolic Management

While previous chapters described dyad-level and group-level behavioral processes of symbolic management, in this chapter we examine processes of symbolic management at a more micro-level of analysis. We describe a kind of self-regulated cognition in which managers and directors reflect on personal and social characteristics held in common with colleagues, and avoid thoughts about attributes not shared, prior to interaction. We explain how such cognitions increase the efficiency and efficacy of social influence behavior toward powerful colleagues within the firm, security analysts, and powerful institutional investors. We further describe how managers engage in self-regulated cognition about firm strategy and governance prior to social influence opportunities with security analysts and institutional investors, and how such cognitions enhance the efficacy of impression management. We also reveal important side benefits of self-regulated cognition, including reduced symptoms of burnout in top executives, and reduced interpersonal conflict in diverse top management teams.

Symbolic Management beyond the Firm Level

We describe forms of symbolic management that cross organizational boundaries, including symbolic management by firm leaders about the leadership, strategy, and governance of particular other firms, and symbolic management by and for larger groups of leaders and their firms. We suggest how such “symbolic management support” not only has a significant impact on how constituents evaluate particular firms and their leaders, but over an extended period of time it has had a deeper influence on the normative assumptions of journalists and analysts about leadership and governance, contributing to a historical shift in the institutional logics of governance. Finally, we reveal how firm leaders have engaged in symbolic management about the social structure of corporate leadership elite as a community and how these communications have contributed to a growing decoupling between the social structure of corporate leadership as it appears to constituents, and the actual social networks of firm leaders.

Conclusions, Future Research Directions, and Policy Implications

In this chapter we summarize and synthesize key tenets of the symbolic management perspective on corporate governance and strategy. We discuss opportunities for future research on the forms and processes of symbolic management. We call for research on different audiences of symbolic management (e.g., lower-level managers and employees), different subjects of symbolic management (e.g., corporate transparency, executive succession, and various aspects of the decision-making process, such as the use of performance feedback), and different forms of symbolic management (e.g., cooperative and competitive forms). We then propose symbolic management theory as a powerful and comprehensive approach to the study of organizational behaviour more broadly, and conclude by describing managerial and public policy implications of our theory.