Management and Marketing - Research Publications

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Now showing 1 - 10 of 13
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    Organizations, Risk Translations and the Ecology of Risks: The Discursive Construction of a Novel Risk
    Hardy, C ; Maguire, S (Academy of Management, 2020)
    The contemporary ‘risk society’ is associated with the emergence of a wide range of risks characterised by uncertainty and unfamiliarity. These ‘novel’ risks pose a major challenge for organizations: their negative effects may be significant, but prevailing risk assessment techniques are limited in their ability to identify them. Building on our prior work on the chemical bisphenol A (BPA), this study examines how organizations deal with novel risks. It finds that organizations engage in ‘risk translation’ by translating equivocality associated with the novel risk into more familiar risks, which provide them with a clearer basis and guide for action. As organizations take actions to manage these translated risks, an ‘ecology of risks’ evolves which, over time, allows for the construction of a novel risk. The study contributes to research on organizing and risk by theorizing how organizations respond to novel risks, as well as by highlighting the role of translated organizational risks in constructing novel risks and shaping societal responses to grand challenges.
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    Organizing Risk: Organization and Management Theory for the Risk Society
    Hardy, C ; Maguire, S ; Power, M ; Tsoukas, H (Taylor & Francis (Routledge), 2020)
    Risk has become a crucial part of organizing, affecting a wide range of organizations in all sectors. We identify, review and integrate diverse literatures relevant to organizing risk, building on an existing framework that describes how risk is organized in three ‘modes’ – prospectively, in real-time, and retrospectively. We then identify three critical issues in the existing literature: its fragmented nature; its neglect of the tensions associated with each of the modes; and its tendency to assume that the meaning of an object in relation to risk is singular and stable. We provide a series of new insights with regard to each of these issues. First, we develop the concept of a risk cycle that shows how organizations engage with all three modes and transition between them over time. Second, we explain why the tensions have been largely ignored and show how studies using a risk work perspective can provide further insights into them. Third, we develop the concept of risk translation to highlight the ways in the meanings of risks can be transformed and to identify the political consequences of such translations. We conclude the paper with a research agenda to elaborate these insights and ideas further.
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    A New Methodology for Supply Chain Management: Discourse Analysis and its Potential for Theoretical Advancement
    Hardy, C ; Bhakoo, V ; Maguire, S (John Wiley & Sons, 2020-04-01)
    This paper responds to recent calls for methodological diversification and ‘in‐house’ theory development within the discipline of SCM, by introducing discourse analysis to readers of the Journal of Supply Chain Management. One of the merits of discourse analysis is the way in which it ‘problematizes’ taken‐for‐granted aspects of organizational life, including supply chains, to show that what we assume to be natural, inevitable and beneficial is rarely quite so straightforward as it may seem. In addition, through the way in which it emphasizes the interrogation of meaning, discourse analysis can broaden conceptualizations of the supply chain to include actors that have previously been overlooked, such as employees, workers, not‐for‐profit organizations, regulators, consumers and the media. Using examples that are familiar to SCM researchers – the discourses of lean, sustainability, modern slavery and big data – we illustrate how discourse analysis can help to theorize SCM phenomena by problematizing established meanings and revealing how they reproduce power relations among actors. We then show how insights from discourse analysis can complement existing theories of the supply chain and, in so doing, potentially rejuvenate the field of SCM by inspiring novel theory development, opening up different empirical settings, and promoting new ways of analyzing qualitative data.
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    Post-Inquiry Sensemaking: The Case of the 'Black Saturday' Bushfires
    Dwyer, G ; Hardy, C ; Maguire, S (SAGE PUBLICATIONS LTD, 2021-04)
    We examine post-inquiry sensemaking by emergency management practitioners following an inquiry into the most damaging bushfire disaster in Australia’s history. We theorize a model of post-inquiry sensemaking with four distinct but overlapping phases during which sensemaking becomes more prospective over time. In addition to providing important insights into what has, hitherto, been a neglected arena for sensemaking studies, i.e. post-inquiry sensemaking, we contribute to the understanding of sensemaking more generally. Specifically, we show the complex nature of the relationship between sensemaking and equivocality, explain how multiple frames enhance sensemaking, and explore temporality in sensemaking over time.
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    Bridging Practice and Process Research to Study Transient Manifestations of Strategy
    Mirabeau, L ; Maguire, S ; Hardy, C (Wiley, 2018-03-01)
    Research Summary: At the intersection of Strategy Process (SP) and Strategy-as-Practice (SAP) research lies the focal phenomenon they share – strategy, which manifests itself in a variety of ways: intended, realized, deliberate, emergent, unrealized, and ephemeral strategy. We present a methodology comprised of three stages that, when integrated in the manner we suggest, permit a rich operationalization and tracking of strategy content for all manifestations. We illustrate the utility of our methodology for bridging SP and SAP research by theorizing practices that are more likely to give rise to unrealized and ephemeral strategy, identifying their likely consequences, and presenting a research agenda for studying these transient manifestations. MANAGERIAL SUMMARY Managerial Summary: Managers know well that, sometimes for good reasons and other times with negative consequences for organizations, not all aspects of strategic plans are implemented with fidelity, resulting in unrealized strategy; and not all bottom-up projects receive the middle-management support they need to become realized, resulting in ephemeral strategy making. Surprisingly, however, these transient manifestations of strategy receive little attention in the scholarly literature. Our paper addresses this gap by presenting a methodology for tracking all six manifestations of strategy (intended, realized, deliberate, emergent, unrealized, and ephemeral strategy), highlighting the interdependent relations among them. It also describes strategy making practices that are likely to give rise to the two transient manifestations, i.e. unrealized and ephemeral strategy, as well as their consequences for subsequent strategy making.
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    DISCOURSE AND DEINSTITUTIONALIZATION: THE DECLINE OF DDT
    Maguire, S ; Hardy, C (ACAD MANAGEMENT, 2009-02)
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    When 'silence = death', keep talking: Trust, control and the discursive construction of identity in the Canadian HIV/AIDS treatment domain
    Maguire, S ; Phillips, N ; Hardy, C (SAGE PUBLICATIONS LTD, 2001)
    When we trust someone, it is because we believe there is something about his or her behaviour that makes it predictable. From a control perspective, it means that their behaviour is subject to some type of control mechanism. Building on this connection, we argue that trust and control are closely related and, in fact, that different forms of trust are associated with different types of control. We present a model explaining the control mechanisms associated with three different forms of trust commonly proposed in the literature. Based on a three-year study of the Canadian HIV/AIDS treatment domain, we then explore in more detail the dynamics of identification-based trust and normative control. Our findings reveal the discursive foundations of generating identification-based trust
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    Identity and collaborative strategy in the Canadian HIV/AIDS treatment domain
    Maguire, S ; Hardy, C (SAGE Publications, 2005-01-01)
    We explore the links between identity and strategy making by drawing upon a case study of a collaborative strategy implemented by community organizations and pharmaceutical companies involved in Canadian HIV/AIDS treatment. In implementing collaborative strategy, our analysis shows that champions engage in identity work that simultaneously involves: identification with their respective constituencies and, specifically, with categories associated with high legitimacy; counter-identification from their respective constituencies by constructing themselves as different from its core members; and dis-identification away from their constituency towards their collaborative partners. We also examine the interactions between champions and other actors involved in the strategic change process to show the limits and tensions involved in such identity work. We conclude with a discussion of the implications for research and practice.
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    The emergence of new global institutions: A discursive perspective
    Maguire, S ; Hardy, C (SAGE PUBLICATIONS LTD, 2006-01)
    We examine how a new discourse shapes the emergence of new global regulatory institutions and, specifically, the roles played by actors and the texts they author during the institution-building process, by investigating a case study of the Stockholm Convention on Persistent Organic Pollutants (POPs) and its relationship to the new environmental regulatory discourse of ‘precaution’. We show that new discourses do not neatly supplant legacy discourses but, instead, are made to overlap and interact with them through the authorial agency of actors, as a result of which the meanings of both are changed. It is out of this discursive struggle that new institutions emerge.
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    Organizing Processes and the Construction of Risk: A Discursive Approach
    Maguire, S ; Hardy, C (Academy of Management, 2013)
    This study examines the organizing processes through which products “become” risky. Drawing on a case study of chemical risk assessment and management processes in Canada and comparing two chemicals, it identifies a series of enacted practices that bundle into two forms of social ordering: “normalizing” and “problematizing.” By bringing the past to bear differently on organizing processes, these two forms of social ordering structure the discursive work of actors in both their attempts to stabilize and their attempts to destabilize and change meanings of risk objects. As a result, objects “become” risky or safe in different ways.