Management and Marketing - Research Publications
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ItemEditorial: Virtual books, person-books and new media artefacts: The expanding remit of the Organization Studies review section(SAGE PUBLICATIONS LTD, 2022-11)
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ItemFrom Catch-and-Harvest to Catch-and-Release: Trout Unlimited and repair-focused deinstitutionalization(SAGE PUBLICATIONS LTD, 2024-01)Increasingly we are faced with broad societal challenges that encourage us to rethink existing institutions. Yet many people also want to preserve institutions they cherish. This tension points to the need for change that can erode or discontinue unsustainable or problematic aspects of institutions while also maintaining what is sacred and valued. In this paper we ask how can organizations deinstitutionalize taken-for-granted practices while also preserving the institution? We answer this question by exploring how Trout Unlimited deployed visual and discursive tactics to push out unsustainable catch-and-harvest fly fishing practices and insert new catch-and-release practices. Our primary theoretical contribution is a model of repair-focused deinstitutionalization, illustrating how custodians utilize three forms of work to respond to threats—mending, caring, and restoring—all with an eye on deinstitutionalization via repair rather than disruption. Importantly, we show how the construct of repair is multipurpose, not limited to maintenance strategies, but can also be a catalyst for change. In addition, we extend research on deinstitutionalization by presenting a multimodal approach that goes beyond discourse, with particular attention to visuality and show how different modalities present different affordances in longer-term repair efforts.
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ItemCollectors, Investors and Speculators: Gatekeeper use of audience categories in the art market(SAGE Publications, 2020)This research examines gatekeepers’ categorization work to assess and sort audience members. Using a multi-sited ethnography and interpretivist qualitative lens, we explore how high-value art gallerists sort buyers via categories, but also encourage conformity with preferred audience categories, both for artistic consecration goals and to discourage disruptive speculation. Categories served as reference points, with preferred and problematic buyer categories providing a discursive socialization tool, but also informing gatekeeping strategies, for example, problematic behaviors and buyer categories led to value-protecting gatekeeping and exclusion, often justified in moral terms. Monitoring continued throughout the relationship, with decisions considered both fair and necessary for gallerists’ professional practice. Gatekeeping decisions included long-term temporal considerations, prompting strategies including ‘placement’, monitoring and audience recategorization. This extends gatekeeping beyond simply passing muster at the ‘gate’. We also illustrate the dynamic and fluid nature of hidden categories, which provide gatekeepers with heightened abilities to punish perceived wrongdoing.
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ItemPleasingly Parallel: Early Cross-Disciplinary Work for Innovation Diffusion Across Boundaries in Grid Computing(Elsevier, 2020-08-20)This paper examines the adaptation of innovations to suit new fields and user communities. We argue this early-stage work to adapt a technology for a new context is essential for later diffusion, particularly with complex technological innovations—a topic less examined in marketing. Through the case of grid computing, a precursor to today’s Cloud computing, we examine the structure and process of this essential adaptation work for diffusion across boundaries, and the enabling role of government funding. Grid computing was adapted via cross-boundary collaborations by innovators and collaborators in other fields. Integrating the work of various actors and elements in the market systems tradition, we provide a process model of co-linking for cross-field adaptation and diffusion. This contributes new insight into the diffusion of complex technologies, with a focus on early non-buyer roles enhancing later diffusion across boundaries, and adaptation work occurring prior to traditional consumer adoption.
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ItemEarning While Giving: Rhetorical Strategies for Navigating Multiple Institutional Logics in Reproductive Commodification(Elsevier, 2019-12-01)This paper examines the rhetorical strategies for navigating multiple institutional logics in human egg commodification. We focus on the intermediaries (agencies) who match donors and recipients, examining their attempt to recruit potential donors through strategic communications. Using a rhetorical and semiotic approach, we analyzed 412 online advertisements on craigslist.org,recruiting women for commercial egg donation from across 30 US states (82 cities/regions). In this situation of institutional complexity, we find contradictory logics about gift giving and commodified market exchanges. In addition to reframing strategies that downplay opposition, we find interesting mixtures of what should be adversarial logics existing simultaneously. We contribute to an understanding of the use of rhetorical languages tructure and content of communications to navigate oppositional market and altruism logics,in addition to advancing knowledge about strategic communications by third-party intermediaries.
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ItemWhips, Chains and Books on Campus: How Emergent Organizations with Core Stigma Gain Official Recognition(SAGE Publications, 2020)This article explores how emergent organizations with core stigma manage stigma, and work toward official recognition. The qualitative research design used organizational constitutions, listserv communications, and interviews to examine officially-approved student organizations focused on kinky sexuality in U.S. universities. Our findings indicate (a) due process and impersonal evaluations enable official approval of emergent organizations, particularly if this focuses on operational concerns; (b) emergent organizations leverage credible social discourses, such as individual rights, to emphasize issues pertinent to approval bodies and mainstream throughout society; (c) organizations can strategically embrace stigma, entailing complex decisions about balancing revelation and concealment; and (d) organizational tactics shift depending on the maturity of the stigmatized issue, important because organizational stigma can be resilient and persistent despite organizational legitimacy. The article contributes to research on organizational management of stigma by examining how emergent organizations with core stigma manage stigma while moving from informal to official status.
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ItemBoundary Objects and the Technical Culture Divide: Successful Practices for Voluntary Innovation Teams Crossing Scientific and Professional Fields(SAGE Publications, 2020-01-01)This article examines the creation and stabilization of early-stage boundary objects by voluntary teams spanning divergent professional and scientific fields. Cross-disciplinary collaborators can share similar goals, yet nonetheless face frictions from differences in professional expertise, practices, and technical systems. Yet if boundary objects help to span disciplinary divides, the same challenges are likely to hinder initial boundary object development. Comparative ethnography of three projects adapting Grid computing technology to fields of science highlights challenges for boundary object creation, including a “mind-set shift” before the technology could stabilize. Enriching our knowledge of boundary object beginnings, we find successful stabilization requires both appropriate localization and further resources, which enable the simultaneously global–local nature of boundary objects. This essential feature is understudied in management research. Developing the boundary object concept on its own terms enhances empirical and theoretical application, particularly when researchers prefer one main theory of objects, rather than a “pluralist” approach.
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ItemCompressed Lives: How “Flexible” are Employer-Imposed Compressed Work Schedules(Emerald Group Publishing Ltd., 2018)Purpose: The following study examines employee satisfaction with an employer-imposed compressed workweek (“CWW”) schedule within a U.S. municipality (“City”). Design/methodology/approach: The study utilized an employee survey (N = 779) to test factors related to employee satisfaction with the CWW, a four-day, 10-hours/day workweek (“4/10 schedule”). Findings: Employee satisfaction with the schedule is influenced by previous 4/10 pilot experience, work schedule preference, and happiness with the 4/10 schedule’s implementation. Additionally, sick leave figures and survey results regarding informal substitute work schedules suggest worker fatigue may limit the overall organizational value of the 4/10 schedule. Research limitations/implications: The study was opportunistic in nature and therefore constrained by the City’s HR Department concerns for survey length and respondent anonymity. This meant an inability to collect demographic data or to utilize validated scales. Practical implications: Analysis suggests that the potential work-life benefits of flexible work schedules may not apply equally to employer-imposed vs. employee-chosen compressed work schedules. Further, CWWs engender greater fatigue despite employee satisfaction, an issue managers should consider when weighing schedule costs and benefits. Originality/value: The study highlights the importance of employee choice in conceptualizing flexibility and for capturing CWW benefits; namely an initiative’s voluntary or involuntary nature should be considered when determining whether it is likely to be beneficial for employees.
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ItemArtistic Practices: Social Interactions and Cultural Dynamics(SAGE PUBLICATIONS LTD, 2016-03)
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ItemOrganizational and epistemic change: The growth of the art investment field(Pergamon, 2016-11-01)What can studying the creation of knowledge tell us about how new technical fields emerge and develop? This paper shows how a knowledge community may be necessary to support the legitimacy of new products that undergo performance evaluation before purchase. Using historical and ethnographic data covering half a century, we review the growth of the art investment field through an epistemic cultures lens. Technical knowledge about the financial characteristics of art has been developed alongside practical knowledge about how best to structure investment ventures. Investment venture success has been determined by legitimacy as much as by profitability, given durable expectations about the evaluation and monitoring of investments. The growth of knowledge, practices and tools was thus a necessary condition for the recognition of artwork as an asset class. Crucially, the epistemic cultures approach highlights deepening knowledge, resources and professional expertise, and their development through experimentation, failures and negative knowledge. This shows accounting issues contributing to technical field legitimacy and emergence, such as the role of knowledge production, valuation practices and receptive environments, and the distinction between legitimate investments that can be valued and investment venture profitability.