Interpretation of successful and failed events at entrepreneurial firms: Acknowledgement practice under uncertainty

Event interpretation and acknowledgement drive behaviour and identity formation in organisations. Extant studies exploring this link have focused on large, stable organisations. We extend these studies to entrepreneurial contexts where individual behaviour and organisational identity are especially fluid. We analyse narratives of success and failure in entrepreneurial firms to identify and explore acknowledgement practice, which is the ad-hoc action (or inaction) of organisational actors and groups responding to observed events. We explore how uncertainty affects event interpretation and acknowledgement. Within entrepreneurial contexts, we show that event interpretation and acknowledgement biases influence responses to success and failure. The combination of these biases reveals four broad emergent organisational characteristics, which have important implications for organisational identity.

Organisational Identity and Alcohol Use in Knowledge-Intensive Workplaces

<p>The use of alcohol is an integral social act in many cultures and societies. The reasons for its use, as well as its mental and physical effects on people, have been a topic of academic interest for decades. This thesis examines the relationship between the work lives of individuals and their use of alcohol. At a more specific level, the thesis examines the relationship between alcohol use and the concept of organisational identity. Using data collected from interviews with members of a knowledge-intensive workplace, findings are presented that illustrate how alcohol use can be understood as an important part of processes of organisational identification, and how workers' alcohol use can be affected by an organisation's identity itself. The theoretical implications of these findings are numerous. Firstly, these findings suggest that organisational concepts, such as organisational identity, can be exceptionally useful in gaining an understanding of the reasons why individuals use alcohol in the ways that they do. In addition, the findings suggest that knowledge-intensive workplaces represent a valuable site for further advancing understandings of the work-alcohol relationship. Finally, it is argued that alcohol use in many situations should be understood as a part of individuals' organisational life, and not just a product or outcome of their participation in an organisation.</p>

Organisational Identity and Alcohol Use in Knowledge-Intensive Workplaces

<p>The use of alcohol is an integral social act in many cultures and societies. The reasons for its use, as well as its mental and physical effects on people, have been a topic of academic interest for decades. This thesis examines the relationship between the work lives of individuals and their use of alcohol. At a more specific level, the thesis examines the relationship between alcohol use and the concept of organisational identity. Using data collected from interviews with members of a knowledge-intensive workplace, findings are presented that illustrate how alcohol use can be understood as an important part of processes of organisational identification, and how workers' alcohol use can be affected by an organisation's identity itself. The theoretical implications of these findings are numerous. Firstly, these findings suggest that organisational concepts, such as organisational identity, can be exceptionally useful in gaining an understanding of the reasons why individuals use alcohol in the ways that they do. In addition, the findings suggest that knowledge-intensive workplaces represent a valuable site for further advancing understandings of the work-alcohol relationship. Finally, it is argued that alcohol use in many situations should be understood as a part of individuals' organisational life, and not just a product or outcome of their participation in an organisation.</p>

Narrating organisational identity

Organisational identity may be understood as the result of communication processes, e.g. in the form of narratives and stories, that continuously intertwine and compete for the right to define the organisation (Boje, 1995; Humle & Frandsen, 2017). This understanding forms the background of the article which analyses the narrative struggles in a local Danish airport whose collective identity was challenged in light of organisational changes that led to a large and dispersed organisation. Combining positioning theory (Davies & Harré, 1990, 1999) with close linguistic analysis, data from a focus group interview are analysed, showing that through stories and narratives, top-management and staff members construct several positions along a cline that make it possible to achieve consensus across organisational levels and divisions. Furthermore, the article argues for analysing participants’ linguistic choices in detail to come closer to how participants do positioning work.

The challenge of building a favourable reputation for social businesses

Purpose: The purpose of this study is to better understand the challenge of building and managing a favourable organisational reputation for social businesses in light of the complex relations between organisational identity, paradoxical tensions and organisational reputation.Design/Methodology/Approach: This paper combines deductive and inductive approaches. Deductively, the categorisation of Smith and Lewis (2011) was used to identify various types of paradoxical tensions in social businesses. An inductive bottom-up research strategy was also applied, collecting data from a 90-minute ‘open fishbowl’ with six managers and advisers of Israeli social businesses (and approximately 40 undergraduate and graduate students serving as ‘observers’), and 8 interviews with managers and communication professionals of social businesses.Findings: Managers of social businesses that are hybrid-identity organisations face a challenge when trying to build a consistent hybrid identity, thus managing reputation and paradoxical tensions using holistic and dynamic ‘both-and’ or ‘more-than’ approaches.Limitations: The small sample used in this study (an open fishbowl method consisting of only six participants, in addition to 8 interviews) doesn’t enable generalisability, and therefore should be seen as a benchmark for future studies that are larger and include additional methods. In addition, this study might well be culturally biased, because it takes place in only one country.Implications and Contribution: Referring to the theoretical model of Huang-Horowitz (2015) that stresses the importance of achieving consistency in identity in order for an organisation to succeed and have a favourable reputation, the findings reveal that social businesses experience a more complex process of identity formation when trying to build a consistent hybrid identity, using various holistic and dynamic approaches. From a practical perspective managers of hybrid-identity organisations might find it useful to explore how various holistic and dynamic approaches might help them to overcome internal and external paradoxical tensions and manage organisational reputation.

Stakeholder engagement and the future of Irish public–private partnerships

Building on recent works that stress the importance of stakeholder engagement in partnerships, we propose a novel benchmarking framework for the evaluation of public–private partnerships. This framework describes mutuality and the preservation of organisational identity as the ideal characteristics of partnerships because they, in turn, encourage stakeholder support for public–private partnerships. Applying this framework to infrastructure public–private partnerships in Ireland, we note that mutual accountability has been weakened following the financial crisis. Meanwhile, consultation with clients such as key public–private partnership stakeholders, which would help articulate organisational identities, remains patchy across the education, justice and health public–private partnership that we investigate. Nonetheless, there are sectoral differences. In education, consultation centres on school principals while ignoring teaching staff and trade unions. In justice, attention is focused primarily on judges. Similarly, in health sector public–private partnerships, there is a strong focus on clinicians. Overall, private sector-driven consultation efforts are primarily pragmatic, with a focus on preventing delays and the dissatisfaction of key clients who could prevent future projects from materialising. We suggest that the combination of this calculated approach to consultation, together with the delegation of public–private partnership contracting to an arm’s-length government agency, is likely to promote a similar depoliticisation of Irish public–private partnerships as has been observed in other countries. We argue that the potentially harmful stakeholder disengagement that this might encourage can be addressed through a concerted set of measures focusing on improved transparency of decision-making, as well as frameworks that mandate client and public consultation. Points for practitioners Research has highlighted the importance of mutual accountability and the preservation of organisational identity in ensuring that public–private partnerships attract public participation and receive public approval. We investigate public–private partnerships in education, justice and health in Ireland, a country that is widely considered an exemplary public–private partnership practitioner. We observe that consultation by private sector public–private partnership participants with client organisations in these sectors is largely motivated by a desire to prevent hold-ups and secure future business rather than seeking to engage with a broad range of users and stakeholders. Together with the existing lack of evidence of benefits from public–private partnerships, this situation is likely to lead to dissatisfaction with the policy. Indeed, political parties critical of public–private partnerships have been able to significantly increase their share of the vote in a recent national election. Our conclusion is that such dissatisfaction is avoidable if the Irish government improves transparency around public–private partnership decision-making while strengthening requirements for public and client consultation.