A Review of Measurement Equivalence in Organizational Research: What's Old, What's New, What's Next?

The study of measurement equivalence has important implications for organizational research. Nonequivalence across groups or over time can affect the results of a study and the conclusions that are drawn from it. As a result, the review paper by Vandenberg & Lance (2000) has been highly cited and has played an important role in understanding the measurement of organizational constructs. However, that paper is now 20 years old, and a number of advances have been made in the application and interpretation of measurement equivalence (ME) since its publication. Therefore, the goal of the present paper is to provide an updated review of ME techniques that describes recent advances in testing for ME and proposes a taxonomy of potential sources of nonequivalence. Finally, we articulate recommendations for applying these newer methods and consider future directions for measurement equivalence research in the organizational literature.

Deinstitutionalization revisited

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to offer a new analysis and understanding of the notion of deinstitutionalization. Deinstitutionalization of taken-for-granted practices as a natural consequence of ever-increasing entropy seems to directly contradict the major institutional thesis, namely, that over time isomorphic forces increase and, as a result, possibilities for deinstitutionalization decrease culminating in the impossibility of abandoning in highly institutionalized fields. Design/methodology/approach This paper is conceptual in nature. Oliver’s 1992 paper on deinstitutionalization is taken as a key text on the subject and as a starting point for building an alternative theory of deinstitutionalization. More broadly, institutional theory and organizational literature on diffusion/adoption are reviewed and synthesized. Findings The authors argue that possibilities for deinstitutionalization have been overestimated in institutional literature and offer a revisited account of deinstitutionalization vs institutional isomorphism and institutionalized vs highly diffusing-but-not-institutionalized practices. A freedom for choice between alternative practices exists during the pre-institutional stage but not when the field is already institutionalized. In contrast, institutionalized, taken-for-granted practices are immutable to any sort of functional and political pressures and they use to persist even when no technical value remains, thus deinstitutionalization on the basis of a functional dissatisfaction seems to be a paradox. Research limitations/implications By revisiting the nature and patterns of deinstitutionalization, the paper offers a better conceptual classification and understanding of how organizations adopt, maintain and abandon organizational ideas and practices. An important task of this paper is to reduce the scope of application of deinstitutionalization theory to make it more focused and self-consistent. There is, however, still not enough volume of studies on institutional factors of practices’ abandonment in institutional literature. The authors, therefore, acknowledge that more studies are needed to further improve both the former deinstitutionalization theory and the framework. Originality/value The authors offer a solution to this theoretical inconsistency by distinguishing between truly institutionalized practices and currently popular practices (highly diffused but non-institutionalized). It is only the latter that are subject to the norms of progress that allow abandoning and replacing existing organizational activities. Deinstitutionalization theory is, thus can be applied to popular practices that are subject to reevaluation, abandonment and replacement with new optimal practices while institutions are immutable to these norms of progress. Institutions are immutable to deinstitutionalization and the deinstitutionalization of optimal practices is subject to the logic of isomorphic convergence in organizational fields. Finally, the authors revisit a traditional two-stage institutional diffusion model to explain the possibility and likelihood of abandonment during different stages of institutionalization.

Marketing the past over the long run: uses of the past in French accounting textbooks, 17th-19th c.

Purpose A growing share of the literature in the fields of marketing and organizational theory is focusing on the uses of the past. This paper aims to propose an analysis of these uses over the long run and concludes that these uses of the past may themselves be historicized. Design/methodology/approach The paper uses accounting textbooks published in French from the seventeenth to the nineteenth century. This study uses historical and organizational literature to account for observed variations. Findings Two conceptualizations of the past can be found in the sources from the period studied, depending on the period one considers, each of them leading to a different marketing strategy. In the first one, the past is presented as providing most or even all the value of what is offered in the present, as past experience serves as a stepping stone to a better product. The second conception breaks with these mostly positive views and presents the past as a dangerous routine, from which one must be freed to innovate. Originality/value Studying marketing uses of the past over the long run allows us to identify a limited set of possible sales pitches using the past to promote work and to identify the constraints orienting these pitches at any given time.

Both a curse and a blessing? A social cognitive approach to the paradoxical effects of leader narcissism

Narcissism is widely considered to be a trait that is commonly found in leaders, but also a characteristic that is frequently a source of problems for their organizations. However, there is accumulating consensus in the organizational literature that, rather than a necessary evil, narcissism can potentially be a mixed blessing for leaders. The present study sets out to reconcile the paradoxical effects of leader narcissism by exploring when and how leader narcissism hampers or helps follower job performance. Utilizing a social cognitive approach to leadership and drawing upon the inferential model of leadership perceptions, we propose that leader effectiveness can shape followers’ dual collective leadership perceptions in response to leader narcissism and that these shared perceptions in turn influence follower job performance in opposing manners. The results of multi-wave, multi-source, and multilevel data showed that when leader narcissism was accompanied by low levels of leader effectiveness, followers collectively tended to perceive their leaders as being more narcissistic. However, when leader narcissism was accompanied by high levels of leader effectiveness, followers collectively tended to perceive their leaders as more charismatic. Followers’ dual collective leadership perceptions then mediated the joint effects of leader narcissism and leader effectiveness on follower job performance.

Digital leadership in business organizations

The main aim of this report is to identify and describe the idea of digital leadership. For the study, the effects of digital leaders' traits and experience on the digitalization process will be examined. Different multinational and global businesses have been examined to apply the concept of digital leadership to their businesses. In this paper, with the goal of an organizational literature review, we analyze the concept of digital leadership. The paper seeks to identify the digital leadership concept; to analyze these abilities and their impacts deeply in the new digital age. As a result of detailed literature research, digitalization and technological developments lead businesses to transform organizational structures, processes, business models, and strategies. Digital leadership is crucial for organizations to survive in the new digital era by adapting and transforming business strategies. To accomplish business objectives and successfully drive the digital business transformation, digital leaders use and enhance the company's digital assets. Digital leaders have different abilities and perspectives compared to traditional leaders. However, many organizations do not understand digital leaders' value, leading to poor performance and unrecoverable failures. This research paper demonstrates a strong link between digital leadership and corporate success and productivity, following the analysis and clarification of the digital leadership concept generated in the modern age and the review of variable business strategies and positioning of the leadership concept in different sectors.

EXPRESS: Exploring the dynamics of slack in extreme contexts: A practice-based view

Organizations that operate in extreme contexts have to develop resilience to ensure the reliability of their operations. While the organizational literature underlines the crucial role of slack when facing unanticipated events, a structural approach to slack says little about the concrete ways in which organizational actors produce and use this slack. Adopting a practice-based perspective during a 14-month ethnographic study in a French critical care unit, we study the slack practices, which consist in gathering, arranging and rearranging resources from both inside and outside the medical unit. This permanent process is captured in a dynamic model connecting situations, their evolutions and slack practices. Our research highlights the importance of situational slack production practices to ensure resilience. We also argue that these micro-practices are constitutive of the context in which actors are evolving. Finally, we discuss why these slack practices, although essential for ensuring resilience, can be endangered by the New Public Management context.

Rediscovering the Cooperative Enterprise: A Systematic Review of Current Topics and Avenues for Future Research

For decades, the cooperative enterprise (CE) produces market goods and/or provides services in the interest to its members, such as communities, customers, and suppliers. The upsurge of interest in social enterprises, and their balancing of social and economic interests, has also led to a renewed interest in CEs, often seen as a specific type of social enterprise. However, from an organizational perspective, this renewed interest has been both limited and scattered over a variety of fields. In this paper, we systematically review papers on CE in the mainstream organizational literature, defined as literature in the fields of economics, business, management and sociology. Our review integrates and synthesizes the current topics in the mainstream organizational literature and provides a number of avenues for future research. In addition, we compare our findings in the organizational literature to the social issues literature as these appeared to be quite complimentary. We found multilevel studies, determination of social impact—in particular measurable impact, managerial practices for sustainable (organisational) development, and the entrepreneurial opportunity generation process as the four key avenues for future research.

Sexual Harassment Training Focused Solely on Protecting Organizations From Lawsuits Won't Change a Toxic Culture for Women to an Inclusive One

The location where workplace sexual harassment occurs points to the importance of workplace structures and practices for the precipitation of sexual harassment. In fact, some of the current theoretical explanations of sexual harassment focus primarily on organizational features that may facilitate sexual harassment, such as hierarchies and organizational cultures. Organizational literature suggests that in recent decades there has been a trend toward increased use of organizational practices that might empower workers, make organizations more inclusive, and constructively change organizational cultures through interventions. Assumptions about men and women contained in hegemonic gender beliefs can become embedded in organizational structures, authority lines, job classifications, institutional rules, and employee interactions. This paper explores these notions through a case study of an organizational intervention and a content analysis of the literature.

Equal Pay for Work of Equal Value? Iceland and the Equal Pay Standard

Job evaluation systems have a history of being critiqued as upholding gender inequality. Paradoxically, however, the Icelandic Equal Pay Standard (IEPS), a novel and publicly praised gender equality policy, is based on a job evaluation tool. The aim of this article is to stipulate an initial analysis of how key stakeholders in the Icelandic context view and assess the strengths and weaknesses of the IEPS so far. Drawing on organizational literature and feminist institutionalism, the findings show how equal pay for work of equal value can be achieved. At the same time, the article highlights the need for more emphasis on and awareness of the value of feminized work within organizations, which remains underrecognized in the IEPS.

Identity Work in Organizations

As research on identity has expanded exponentially, the research on identity work has followed suit. Scholars of identity work focus on the underlying dynamics of identity with the recognition that one’s sense of self at a given time and in a given context is the result of an effortful, though not necessarily conscious, identity construction process. As research on identity work has grown, scholars have identified a wide array of ways in which individuals develop, grow, change, and exit their various identities. Further, while presumably all identities may be worked upon, some specific identities—such as gender, entrepreneur, manager, or professional—have been emphasized in the existing organizational literature. In addition, while, up to this point, the emphasis in the identity work research has typically been identifying the nature of changes to the self, a growing body of literature points to the individual, relational, and organizational implications of identity work.