Responsibility and Organization Science: Integrating Micro and Macro Perspectives

Responsibility is an important issue in organizations and society. Employees, managers, and owners can behave responsibly in the workplace and beyond. In addition, these individuals can be influenced by the propensity of the organization to behave responsibly. Organizations can pursue strategies that take into account responsibility at the product, firm, industry, and societal levels. This virtual special issue examines 19 articles published in Organization Science that consider responsibility at multiple levels of analysis. An important theme that emerges is that although some studies have crossed levels of analysis, future research would benefit from cross-level or more meso-based approaches.

Context and Aggregation: An Experimental Study of Bias and Discrimination in Organizational Decisions

This paper addresses a notable gap at the intersection of organizational economics and organization science: how does organizational context influence aggregation of individual behavior in organizational decisions? Using basic centralized versus decentralized organizational structures as building blocks for our experimental design, we examine whether assignment of organizational positions, incentive schemes, and structural configuration induce endogenous adaptation in the form of change in reservation levels (bias) or modified discrimination capability in subjects’ behavior. We found that evaluators adapted their reservation and discrimination levels in centralized structures, whereas they did not generally adapt their reservation and discrimination levels when placed in decentralized structures. We identify mechanisms that explain these findings; explain how they influence aggregate, organizational behavior; and discuss implications for research and practice.

A novel taxonomy of organizational learning contextual factors: Review of 2004–2020 top-ranked journals

As a dynamic phenomenon that interacts across different levels – individual, group, organizational, interorganizational – the development of a unique multilevel theory of Organizational Learning (OL) is absent and challenging. The intent of this paper is to contribute to the advancement of such a theory. In this context, a systematic review of the 2004-2020 literature was carried out, with analysis of 120 papers selected from management and organization science top-ranked journals. Based on the conceptualization of OL as multiple processes of knowledge creation, transfer, and retention, the reviewed papers highlight that internal and external environments, organizational culture, strategy, structure, leadership, technology, and shared environments need to be considered for a comprehensive understanding of vertical trickle-down OL processes, and of bottom-up emerging OL processes, in both single and multi-level OL analyses. This study contributes to the theory of OL with the presentation of a novel taxonomy of contextual factors that could help researchers in the development of comprehensive OL studies. The implications offered should support the definition of a multilevel theory for OL that embraces all the relevant factors that influence its processes across the different organizational levels. The review closes with specific recommendations for further studies in OL.

Towards emancipation through organizational (re)design? Exploring integral organizational renewal from a critical management perspective

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to contribute to a more pragmatic critical management studies (CMS), by exploring the emancipatory intent of organizational (re)design concepts and ideas from the modern sociotechnical approach integral organizational renewal (IOR). Design/methodology/approach This paper is of a conceptual nature in that it engages with relevant literature from the fields of CMS and IOR, guided by a focused conceptualization of emancipation from CMS literature. Findings It is found that although IOR can to a large extent be considered as an emancipatory project, it contains a number of dangers which jeopardize its emancipatory potential. Complemented with other sociotechnical approaches and ideas, however, it appears that IOR could make some valuable contributions to a pragmatic CMS. Originality/value This paper is unique in engaging in an exchange of ideas between CMS and IOR. By doing so, it contributes, first, to the debate on a more pragmatic CMS; second, to the dialogue between CMS and “mainstream” organization science; third, to the field of organizational (re)design.

Humanitarian support in a denial of access context: emergent strategies at the interface of humanitarian and sovereign law

The principles of international humanitarian law (IHL) have evoked considerable debate in the practice of humanitarian support, particularly in terms of emerging tensions with sovereign (national) law. Drawing on organization studies, we examine the emergent strategies aimed at resolving the ambiguous legal context in which humanitarian support operations in a conflict context are embedded. Our analysis of two missions revealed two types of emergent strategies, namely network and negotiation strategies, differentiated by particular contextual dimensions. We extend the humanitarian law debate by showing the strategic interplay between the operational humanitarian context and international humanitarian principles, thereby connecting the fields of international law and organization science.

Organizational and Institutional Crisis Management

Research on organizational crisis emanates from multiple disciplines (public administration, international relations, political science, organization science, communication studies), yet basically argues that three main categories of crises exist: • Crises in organizations: often tangible, immediate threats or incidents that completely upset an organization’s primary process or performance, while both cause and problems are more or less confined to the organization and those affected by its malperformance. • Crisis to the organization: a threat or damage occurs outside of the organization at hand but implicates the organization by attribution of responsibility or culpability (for causing the problems or allowing them to occur). • Crisis about the organization, or institutional crisis: even without a tangible threat or damage, in a short period of time the organization’s perceived performance deficit becomes so deeply problematic that the organization itself is subject to intense scrutiny and criticism. Previously agreed-on values and routines, the structure, and policy philosophy of the organization are no longer seen as adequate or legitimate. The three types of organizational crises tend to have not only different causes but also different implications as to the commensurate crisis response, both functionally and politically. There is no single best response to organizational crises: appropriate responses are both commensurate to the crisis type at hand and to different phases of a crisis. Still, discerning between crisis typologies opens a research agenda to provide a better understanding of the relation between the internal and external dynamics of a crisis.

Socio-Technical Affordances for Large-Scale Collaborations: Introduction to a Virtual Special Issue

In this special issue, we review 14 articles published in Organization Science over the past 25 years examining large-scale collaborations (LSCs) tasked with knowledge dissemination and innovation. LSCs involve sizeable pools of participants carrying out a common mission such as developing open-source software, detector technologies, complex architecture, encyclopedias, medical cures, or responses to climate change. LSCs depend on technologies because they are often geographically distributed, incorporate multiple and diverse epistemic perspectives. How such technologies need to be structured and appropriated for effective LSC collaborations has been researched in piecemeal fashion by examining a single technology used in a single collaboration context with little opportunity for generalization. Studies have tended to black box technology use even though they acknowledge such uses to be critical to the LSC operation. We unveil the black box surrounding LSC collaboration technologies by identifying three challenges that LSCs face when they pursue an LSC effort: (1) knowledge exchange challenges, (2) knowledge deliberation challenges, and (3) knowledge combination challenges. We examine how technology was used in responding to these challenges, synthesizing their use into three socio-technical affordances to improve knowledge dissemination efficiency and innovation effectiveness: knowledge collaging, purposeful deliberating, and knowledge interlacing. We demonstrate the intellectual benefit of incorporating socio-technical affordances in studies of LSCs including what small group collaboration research can learn from LSCs.

Alexander Bogdanov at the Institute of the Scientific Philosophy: from the Decline of the Philosophy to the Scientific Monism

The author considers the activity of Alexander A. Bogdanov as a full member of the Institute of Scientific Philosophy, established in 1921. Special attention is paid to the line of radical denial of the actual meaning of philosophy, what was characteristic for Bogdanov’s works of those years. This topic was manifested in the article “From Religious Monism to Scientific One”, which was read at the Institute in February 1923 as Bogdanov’s scientific report. Presenting the devel­opment of human knowledge as a change of historical forms of monism based on the evolution of labor practice and the inherent desire to coordinate cognitive ac­tivity, Bogdanov proclaimed the advent of the era of scientific monism and pre­sented his own “universal organization science” as a means of the future real unity of collective experience. The political campaign against Bogdanov con­ducted throughout the 1920s also affected his activities at the Institute of Scien­tific Philosophy: the thinker was removed from the staff, and the possibilities of his philosophical work had been narrowing more and more every year. However, despite the pressure Bogdanov continued to work at the Institute, taking part, in particular, in the heated discussions around Spinoza and Bergson’s philoso­phies, which marked the beginning of a new round of polemics among “mecha­nists” and “dialectics”. The most important research interests of Bogdanov in the last years of his life were also philosophical problems of biology, the foundations of natural science knowledge, the methodological basis of the theory of relativ­ity. Thus, the scientific activity of A.A. Bogdanov as a full member of the Insti­tute reflected almost all the philosophical topics and problems that were signifi­cant for him at that time