Search results

This study, a theoretical article, aims to introduce new institutionalism as a framework through which business and management researchers can explore the significance of artificial intelligence (AI) in organizations. Although the new institutional theory is a fully established research program, the neo-institutional literature on AI is almost non-existent. There is, therefore, a need to develop a deeper understanding of AI as both the product of institutional forces and as an institutional force in its own right.

The authors follow the top-down approach. Accordingly, the authors first briefly describe the new institutionalism, trace its historical development and introduce its fundamental concepts: institutional legitimacy, environment and isomorphism. Then, the authors use those as the basis for the queries to perform a scoping review on the institutional role of AI in organizations.

The findings reveal that a comprehensive theory on AI is largely absent from business and management literature. The new institutionalism is only one of many possible theoretical perspectives (both contextually novel and insightful) from which researchers can study AI in organizational settings.

The authors use the insights from new institutionalism to illustrate how a particular social theory can fit into the larger theoretical framework for AI in organizations. The authors also formulate four broad research questions to guide researchers interested in studying the institutional significance of AI. Finally, the authors include a section providing concrete examples of how to study AI-related institutional dynamics in business and management.

This paper aims to examine how the fields of social enterprise, social entrepreneurship and social innovation have theorised and applied the concepts of narrative and storytelling.

A literature review and subsequent thematic analysis were used. A keyword search of three databases identified 93 relevant articles that were subsequently reviewed for this paper.

Four main roles for storytelling and narrative were found in the literature: to gain support for social innovation, to inspire social change, to build a social-entrepreneurial identity and to debate the meaning and direction of social innovation itself.

Following the literature review, capacities and applications of storytelling and narrative in other, related fields are discussed to highlight practical use cases of storytelling that might currently be underdeveloped in the social enterprise and innovation sectors.

The paper argues that the social innovation and enterprise literature predominantly views storytelling as a form of mass communication, while often overlooking its ability to foster communal debate and organise intrapersonal dialogue as possible aspects of strategic thinking and innovation management in social enterprise, social entrepreneurship and social innovation.