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In this paper, we call for renewed attention to the structure and structuring of work within and between organizations. We argue that a multi-level approach, with jobs as a core analytic construct, is a way to draw connections among economic sociology, organizational sociology, the sociology of work and occupations, labor studies and stratification and address the important problems of both increasing inequality and declining economic productivity.

We examine how the social structure of existing organizations influences entrepreneurship and suggest that resources accrue to entrepreneurs based on the structural position of their prior employers. We argue that information advantages allow individuals from entrepreneurially prominent prior firms to identify new opportunities. Entrepreneurial prominence also reduces the perceived uncertainty of a new venture. Using a sample of Silicon Valley start-ups, we demonstrate that entrepreneurial prominence is associated with initial strategy and the probability of attracting external financing. New ventures with high prominence are more likely to be innovators; furthermore, innovators with high prominence are more likely to obtain financing.

Incentives are effective at enhancing productivity, but research also suggests that performance incentives can have “unintended negative consequences” including increases in hazard/injuries, increases in errors, and reduction in cooperation, prosocial behaviors, and creativity. Relatively overlooked is whether, when, and how incentives can be designed to prevent such negative consequences. The authors review literature in several disciplines (construction, healthcare delivery, economics, psychology, and [some] management) on this issue. This chapter, in toto, sheds a generally positive light and suggests that, beyond productivity, incentives can be used to improve other outcomes such as safety, quality, prosocial behaviors, and creativity, particularly when the incentives are thoughtfully designed. The review concludes with several potential fruitful areas for future research such as investigations of incentive-effect duration.

In one of his most cited works, March (1991) observed that “The basic problem confronting an organization is to engage in sufficient exploitation to ensure its current viability and, at the same time, devote enough energy to exploration to exploration to ensure its future viability” (p. 105). The need to simultaneously pursue exploration and exploitation is a cornerstone of organizational ambidexterity, with the embedded assumption that exploratory ventures require organic management systems and exploitative activities benefit from more mechanistic management systems. The authors argue that this assumption about system alignment is neither well-supported by empirical evidence nor well-grounded in March’s original ideas about exploration and exploitation. The authors review the existing empirical evidence on the management systems that support exploration and exploitation and reveal some of the empirical and conceptual challenges. The authors then share a quasi-experimental study of 49 project teams over an 18-month period where they investigated how components of the management system – formalization, specialization, hierarchy, and leadership – differentially affect project success for explore and exploit projects. The authors find that exploitation projects can succeed under either mechanistic or organic systems, but that exploratory project performance suffers under a mechanistic system. In addition, the authors also find that leadership is the most important determinant of project success or failure. The authors discuss the implications of these results for future studies of organizational ambidexterity and draw attention to some of the underdeveloped ideas in March’s original article that might further advance the field.