1,720,991 research outputs found
The Use of Organizational Social Media Data in Qualitative Research
No full textThe proliferation of social media technologies as internal and external communication channels has led to a dramatic increase of computer-mediated interactions among organization members. Despite mounting interest by organization and management scholars in studying these interactions, there exists little reflection and guidance for the use of this relatively new kind of data in qualitative research. We address this shortcoming by elaborating the characteristics of organizational social media (OSM) as qualitative data and we subsequently show how organization and management scholars have taken advantage of the specific characteristics of this kind of data to examine organizational phenomena. Our analysis reveals how researchers used OSM to gain insight into different organizational phenomena, including the roles of emotions within organizations, employee resistance, identity negotiation, and value claims. In studying such topics, OSM data as permanent record of visible interactions and connections allowed researchers to gain longitudinal and processual insight from a multivocal and informal perspective, as well as relational insights. We discuss how social media as a data source can help scholars to overcome some methodological challenges associated with conventional qualitative methods. While doing so, we also problematize the limitations of OSM data
The public responsibility of platform corporations
No full textTo capture the ethical and political challenges posed by so-called platform corporations, in this paper we develop the concept of public responsibility. Despite the proliferation of research in corporate social responsibility (CSR), existing theories seem to fall short when it comes to the complexities of recent forms of organising. By analysing the concept of a multisided platform business models (MSPs) through a CSR lens, we argue that the responsibilities they face resemble more those of organisations in the public sector (i.e., public utilities) than those normally ascribed to private businesses – hence we develop the concept of public responsibility. We identify five sources of this responsibility: network effects; centrality of data production, collection and monetisation; global scale; and private policy-setting. Consequently, we argue that MSPs uniquely combine them, leading to three dimensions of public responsibility: privacy, accessibility and control of content. By doing so, we show how platform corporations have developed and provide ‘private’ services that in many ways are of ‘public character’, blurring our traditional understanding of public vs. private goods and services
From Paralysis to Publicization: How Victims Experience and Confront Organizational Harm
No full textOrganizations frequently inflict harm on individuals, and yet it remains unclear why that harm often takes years to come to light, and sometimes never becomes public knowledge. While prior researchers have looked extensively at the role of external audiences in the process of the publicization of organizational harm and wrongdoing, a key actor that has been overlooked is the victims themselves. Using extensive historical archival data and interviews with victims, we examine how victims experience and confront harm through the case of the UK Post Office Horizon Scandal. In this case, over 700 post office branch managers, called sub-postmasters, were accused of stealing and false accounting. This scandal took years to come to light, and the accusations and convictions persisted for over 14 years. Our findings reveal four cycles of paralysis that discouraged victims from speaking out about this case and go on to show how they were able to break their silence and overcome their paralysis. Overall, our paper provides valuable insights into the role victims can play in publicizing organizational harm, but also, importantly, what barriers they face in doing so and therefore extends the literature by providing an explanation of why instances of organizational harm and wrongdoing may take years to surface
Issue field Interaction in the voluntary carbon market
No full textIssue fields are arenas where specific events, developments, and trends are deemed consequential and receive sustained attention from field members including activists, businesses, and governments. While issue field members frequently interact across different fields, current research predominantly concentrates on the internal evolution and dynamics within specific fields. We draw on an in-depth longitudinal analysis of the historical development of the carbon removal field, to understand the role of field-to-field interaction in issue field evolution. Our findings show how the broader carbon removal field developed into two distinctive sub-fields – the compliance and voluntary carbon market and unveil the three main actors in present in both, whose interactions were pivotal for each other’s evolution. By doing so, our research begins to unpack the mechanisms and consequences of field-to-field interactions within the context of issue fields, with a particular emphasis on those formed around pressing societal grand challenges
Corporate Social Responsibility: An Overview From an Organizational and Psychological Perspective
No full textCorporate social responsibility (CSR) is an important topic for both academics and practitioners because it potentially influences all aspects of an organization—from relationships with stakeholders to strategy to daily routines and practices. Thus, scholars have explored CSR for close to one hundred years. Prior research has been primarily conducted at the organizational and institutional levels, but has largely overlooked the individuallevel of analysis, which is a major gap considering that CSR is enacted by and influences
people. Recently, this gap has been addressed by an increased focus on the individual level of analysis—also known as “micro-CSR.” However, CSR is a multilevel construct, so even when focusing on the individual level, all levels need to be taken into consideration at the same time. Moreover, CSR is cross-disciplinary. Prior research has often focused on disciplines such as strategy, but fields such as psychology have much to offer—especially because CSR is conducted through and affects individuals. Moreover, due to the historical
focus of CSR on the organizational level of analysis, most studies have aggregated CSR to the firm level. These studies have shown mixed results of the effects of CSR. One reason is that when CSR is aggregated, the variance at the individual level of analysis is lost. Employees might react both positively and negatively to CSR. For example, CSR is often extra-role (e.g., volunteering, being part of committees) and can have a negative effect of role strain and stress. For other employees, they might find tension with the way that
CSR is carried out. Future research could dive more deeply into the psychology of CSR and how, when, and why employees might react to CSR differently
Privatization: Implications Of A Shift From State To Private Ownership
Full text linkPrivatization—defined here as the transfer of ownership of state-owned organizations to private parties—has attracted the attention of scholars across multiple fields. Privatization programs have been based on the assumption, grounded in microeconomic theory, that a shift from public to private ownership will incentivize more efficient management of available resources. However, failure to deliver the expected outcomes in some cases and the more nuanced perspective on state-ownership offered by recent research in management seem to challenge this assumption, calling for revisiting this literature. Our comparative review of existing studies suggests that the mixed results of privatization programs could be partly explained by what was privatized, how it was privatized, and the regulatory regime under which it was privatized. By doing so, our review provides conceptual clarity and structure to a rich but fragmented body of literature, making seemingly divergent findings more legible, outlining theoretical gaps, and identifying avenues for future exploration
Categorical identity change: the privatization of Royal Mail
No full textThis paper uses findings from a longitudinal case study of the privatization of Royal Mail – the British national postal service organization – to examine internal dynamics triggered by categorical identity changes. By categorical identity change, I refer to changes that alter structural features that determine organizational membership in a particular category, thereby subjecting the organization to a partly new set of rules and expectations, from partly new audiences. This study uncovered the symbolic (e.g. attribution of status and meaning) and substantive (e.g. allocation of resources and discretion) implications of such changes, and how they reflected in a discursive struggle between the employees and the leadership of the organization over “who we are” as an organization, which, at the time of our study, five years after the change, was still ongoing and partly unresolved. By doing so, the findings provide insights into the previously under-theorized substantive implications of organizational identity claims and their role in discursive identity struggles
Going Beyond Counting First Authors in Author Co-citation Analysis
Full text linkThe present study examines one of the fundamental aspects of author co-citation analysis (ACA) - the way co-citation
counts are defined. Co-citation counting provides the data on which all subsequent statistical analyses and mappings
are based, and we compare ACA results based on two different types of co-citation counting - the traditional type that
only counts the first one among a cited work's authors on the one hand and a non-traditional type that takes into
account the first 5 authors of a cited work on the other hand. Results indicate that the picture produced through this non-traditional author co-citation counting contains more coherent author groups and is therefore considerably clearer. However, this picture represents fewer specialties in the research field being studied than that produced through the traditional first-author co-citation counting when the same number of top-ranked authors is selected and analyzed. Reasons for these effects are discussed
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