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Developments in the social neurosciences over the past two decades have rendered problematic the main knowledge elicitation techniques currently in use by strategy researchers, as a basis for revealing actors’ mental representations of strategic knowledge. Extant elicitation techniques were advanced during an era when cognitive scientists and organizational researchers alike were preoccupied with the basic information of processing limitations of decision makers and means of addressing them, predicated on an outmoded conception of strategists as affect-free, cognitive misers. The need to adapt these techniques to enable the investigation of the emotional content and structure of actors’ mental representations is now a pressing priority for the advancement of theory, research, and practice pertaining to several interrelated areas of strategic management, from dynamic capabilities development, to upper echelons theory, to strategic consensus formation. Accordingly, in this chapter, we report the findings of two studies that investigated the feasibility of adapting the repertory grid, a robust method, widely known and well used in strategic management, for this purpose. Study 1 elicited a series of commonly mentioned strategic issues (the elements) from a sample of senior managers similar in composition to the sample recruited to the second study. Study 2 participants evaluated the elements elicited in Study 1 in relation to a series of researcher-supplied bipolar attributes (the constructs), based on the well-known affective circumplex model of human emotions. In line with expectations, a series of vector-based multivariate analyses revealed a number of interesting similarities and variations among participants in terms of the basic structure and emotional salience of the issues under consideration.

Purpose – To present detailed examples of the social construction of understandings, exploring interplay between social and individual sense making.

Methodology/approach – A form of ethnomethodological discourse analysis is undertaken using text from online discussions groups for people with kidney failure. Sense making is theorised using Dervin's Sense-Making Methodology (1999) as a starting point. Chatman's Theory of Normative Behaviour (2000) and Pettigrew's Information Grounds (1999) are considered for their potential to theorise social impacts on individual understandings, while a practice theoretic approach (Gherardi, 2009a, 2009b) illuminates dynamics between social and individual sense making.

Findings – Local understandings developed out of repetition with gradual modification of ideas. Meanwhile, generic information such as facts was usually contextualised by descriptions of lived experiences. In this way, specifics were emphasised rather than generalities. However, the detailed, non-prescriptive commentaries provided by individuals gathered into usefully loose (non-specific) fields of possibilities.

Research implications – Information and knowledge manifest as transient and customised. This suggests a need for caution if researchers conceive people as having stable ‘knowledge structures’ which can be mapped by research, and it raises questions about durable incarnations of information.

Practical implications – People must produce flexible understandings particular to their situation. This requires time, reiteration and access to contributions from a range of sources. Provision of generic information during one-off interactions is only a first step towards support of these larger needs.

Originality/value of paper – Extends relational conceptions of information and verb-based metaphors for sense making, by proposing sense making, information and knowledge as transient and customised.

This study provides a comprehensive framework of adaptation in triadic business relationship settings in the service sector. The framework is based on the industrial network approach (see, e.g., Axelsson & Easton, 1992; Håkansson & Snehota, 1995a). The study describes how adaptations initiate, how they progress, and what the outcomes of these adaptations are. Furthermore, the framework takes into account how adaptations spread in triadic relationship settings. The empirical context is corporate travel management, which is a chain of activities where an industrial enterprise, and its preferred travel agency and service supplier partners combine their resources. The scientific philosophy, on which the knowledge creation is based, is realist ontology. Epistemologically, the study relies on constructionist processes and interpretation. Case studies with in-depth interviews are the main source of data.

Purpose – The broader aim of the research is to better understand the origins of firm heterogeneity in terms of strategy and structure, looking beyond convergence pressures resulting from economic and institutional forces.

Design/methodology/approach – To identify firm-specific differences, the paper uses an in-depth analysis of two matched cases, comparing the introduction of diversification strategies and decentralized organizational structures in two Dutch banks. Based on detailed archival research it tries to understand how different outcomes were shaped by political processes involving a variety of internal and external actors.

Findings – The research shows the importance of these processes and, in particular, the role of management succession as a trigger for organizational changes as well as the potential power of management consultants based on a combination of their own “political” skills and the opportunity provided by internal divisions. Moreover, the study confirms the view that organizational change requires a change in dominant ideology.

Research limitations/implications – The research was able to go beyond the limitations of extant studies based on cross-sectional data or single cases. It demonstrates the usefulness of historical analysis when examining changes in strategy and structure. Its results need to be confirmed by conducting similar studies in different contexts.

Originality/value – The paper provides new insights into the complex and dynamic processes of organizational change and shows how external consultants – within a specific set of circumstances – were able to manage these processes. The results are valuable to scholars studying organizational change and those looking at consultants and their role. They might also provide insights for practicing managers working or planning to work with consultants.

Organizational agility is becoming a critical component of organization development and change due to the increasingly continuous and iterative nature of change. This explanatory mixed methods study demonstrates the effect of collective thriving on change agility and positions collective thriving as a psychological state that contributes to organization agility. Attunement is hypothesized to be a point of leverage to increase the state of collective thriving and was found to moderate the relationship between collective thriving and change agility. The qualitative study investigates characteristics of high- and low-thriving teams and furthers the understanding of collective thriving and change agility.

Anti-racism has been practiced in various ways, with varying degrees of effectiveness. This chapter engages with the body of scholarship that focuses on approaches aimed at promoting anti-racist actions, policies and social change. It discusses some of the main anti-racism strategies that have been deployed across different countries and examines anti-racism practices in interpersonal, intergroup and community settings. These approaches encompass civil rights campaigns, legislative and policy interventions, affirmative action, diversity and inclusion training, prejudice reduction, intergroup contact, organisational development and holistic anti-racism approaches. Some anti-racism practices and policies, such as awareness campaigns, social marketing and diversity training, also extend to digital platforms, with social media and multimedia networks deployed to broaden the reach and impact of anti-racist endeavours. This chapter specifically engages with local anti-racism movements and draws principles for broader implementation of anti-racism policy and practice. It concludes with a brief discussion of the effectiveness of contemporary anti-racism approaches.

The field of Human Resource Management (HRM) has long recognized the importance of interpersonal influence for employee and organizational effectiveness. HRM research and practice have focused primarily on individuals’ characteristics and behaviors as a means to understand “who” is influential in organizations, with substantially less attention paid to social networks. To reinvigorate a focus on network structures to explain interpersonal influence, the authors present a comprehensive account of how network structures enable and constrain influence within organizations. The authors begin by describing how power and status, two key determinants of individual influence in organizations, operate through different mechanisms, and delineate a range of network positions that yield power, reflect status, and/or capture realized influence. Then, the authors extend initial structural views of influence beyond the positions of individuals to consider how network structures within and between groups – capturing group social capital and/or shared leadership – enable and constrain groups’ ability to influence group members, other groups, and the broader organizational system. The authors also discuss how HRM may leverage these insights to facilitate interpersonal influence in ways that support individual, group, and organizational effectiveness.

This paper illuminates the distinction between individual and organizational actors in business-to-business markets as well as the coexistence of formal and informal mechanisms of coordination in multinational corporations. The main questions addressed include the following. (1) What factors influence the occurrence of personal contacts of foreign subsidiary managers in industrial multinational corporations? (2) How such personal contacts enable coordination in industrial markets and within multinational firms? The theoretical context of the paper is based on: (1) the interaction approach to industrial markets, (2) the network approach to industrial markets, and (3) the process approach to multinational management. The unit of analysis is the foreign subsidiary manager as the focal actor of a contact network. The paper is empirically focused on Portuguese sales subsidiaries of Finnish multinational corporations, which are managed by either a parent country national (Finnish), a host country national (Portuguese) or a third country national. The paper suggests eight scenarios of individual dependence and uncertainty, which are determined by individual, organizational, and/or market factors. Such scenarios are, in turn, thought to require personal contacts with specific functions. The paper suggests eight interpersonal roles of foreign subsidiary managers, by which the functions of their personal contacts enable inter-firm coordination in industrial markets. In addition, the paper suggests eight propositions on how the functions of their personal contacts enable centralization, formalization, socialization and horizontal communication in multinational corporations.

Post-acquisition integration matters for overall M&A outcome. However within this phase researchers have struggled to identify clear links between integration activities and post-acquisition outcome. This may be due to using organisational levels of analysis, where sub-organisational issues serve to confound findings. In order to unpack the post-acquisition phase, and to delve more deeply into organisations, this paper adopts a more granular perspective on integration activities by focusing upon the building blocks of organisations. Specifically we investigate ordinary routine amalgamation and their impact upon meta-routine outcome during acquisition integration. Drawing upon two longitudinal integration cases and using ‘retroductive’ analysis, two types of amalgamation are identified, namely ‘combination’ and ‘superimposition’. We find that, while the basic nature of routines, such as multiplicity and nestedness, inhibit routine amalgamation, external interference in the form of context, structural change or introduction of additional routines is needed to stabilise amalgamated routines. From our findings we are able to suggest a number of testable propositions about the factors that influence the amalgamation of routines. This empirical study contributes to the M&A literature by opening up the ‘black box’ of post-acquisition integration by providing details at a granular level of what actually happens during integrations.