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This study aims to explore the relationship between non-market strategies and organizational resilience, using a Chinese private enterprise as an example.

This study collected data through semi-structured interviews and analyzed them through grounded theory, using a three-step approach of open coding, axial coding and selective coding to analyze and construct a model of the mechanism of the impact of non-market strategies on organizational resilience.

The following conclusions were drawn from this study. (1) Stakeholders, internal and external environment and entrepreneurship are important motivations that influence private firms to implement non-market strategies to enhance organizational resilience, with entrepreneurship being the key driver. (2) Non-market strategies contain three dimensions, and different non-market behaviors have different mechanisms of action on the organizational resilience of firms. (3) Non-market strategies and organizational resilience form an interactive spiral relationship. This mutually reinforcing effect promotes firm growth and sustainable corporate development. The research results enrich the theoretical connotation of non-market strategies, construct a model of the mechanism of influence of non-market strategies on organizational resilience, and describe three explanatory paths for the relationship between the two–incentive mechanism, functional mechanism and transformation mechanism.

This study's single case is unique and based on the Chinese context. In addition, this study adopts a rooted qualitative research approach and although the coding and model construction strictly follow the steps of grounded theory research, a degree of subjectivity is inevitable. On this basis, future research can adopt quantitative analysis methods to test and improve the model.

This paper explores the important role of non-market strategies in the Chinese context under the impact of traditional market mechanisms, based on the perspective of Chinese private enterprises, and provides new insights and revelations for private enterprises to achieve sustainable development.

This study innovatively explores the formation mechanism of organizational resilience from the perspective of non-market strategies, adding a new perspective to the literature. Additionally, it examines the mechanisms between long-term non-market strategy and organizational resilience, particularly their relationship in times of crisis, utilizing a rooted approach that goes beyond static analysis.

Recent literature in the field of knowledge management (e.g. Nonaka and Takeuchi, 2021) asks for new, future-oriented approaches to strategy that allow us to deal with an increasingly complex world. Thus, this paper aims to build an approach to exploit aesthetics (human’s sensory perceptions and their felt meanings) to sense an organizations purpose and realize it by means of organizational strategy.

Conceptual paper, providing a new perspective on the perception of Organizational Purpose. The abductive argument follows Weick’s notion of Disciplined Imagination (Weick, 1989).

The main argument of this paper is that aesthetics contribute to the identification of organizational purpose. Thus, aesthetic perceptions can inform strategy to implement a stakeholders’ sense of purpose into strategy.

The argument presented is grounded in recent literature on the concepts of purpose and aesthetics and abductive in nature. Thus, empirical research to validate the argument would be beneficial and worthwhile to be undertaken.

The paper presents the idea to integrate the sense of organizational purpose into a corporate strategy to address stakeholders’ value expectations and build more sustainable organizations. By emphasizing aesthetics, the study takes a stand for the inclusion of nonrational knowledge in organizational decision-making.

As far as the author’s knowledge goes, the concepts of aesthetics and organizational purpose have not theoretically been connected to each other. However, due to the implicit nature of purpose, aesthetics may serve as the matching knowledge tool to work with organizational purpose.

This paper aims to examine Holacracy as a self-management system and its implications for organizational theory. By exploring its distinctive ontology and epistemology, the paper explains how Holacracy redefines organizational structures and contributes to organizational change.

Adopting a conceptual approach, this essay draws upon existing literature to explore Holacracy’s departure from conventional organizational theories.

The paper discusses how Holacracy challenges traditional organizational concepts, defining its holarchical approach, and emphasizing dynamic hierarchies and role-based organization. It also highlights Holacracy’s focus on emergent intelligence, continuous feedback loops and structured knowledge acquisition through roles and organization spaces. By examining its unique ontology and epistemology, the paper offers insights into how Holacracy aligns with an emergent paradigm known as integral, metamodern or teal.

Further empirical research is needed to assess its practical implementation and long-term effects on organizational performance and employee well-being. Future studies could also explore challenges and limitations associated with adopting Holacracy in different organizational contexts.

Organizations considering alternative ways of working should examine Holacracy. Implementing Holacracy requires understanding its principles and may involve significant changes, with potential benefits such as increased agility and employee engagement.

Holacracy’s departure from traditional structures and approach to power can have broader social implications and contribute to more democratic and participatory cultures.

This paper is a pioneering contribution to the under-researched domain of alternative organizational models. It sheds light on the originality and distinctiveness of Holacracy, highlighting its unique approach to hierarchy, role-based organization and consciousness within organizations.

This research examines the long-held belief in the adaption-related literature that a firm’s ability to adapt organizational structure to changing environments is related to superior performance. We create and test a construct that reflects an organization’s ability to change structure, which we call Supply Chain Structural Adaptability (SCSA), rather than relying on proxies (e.g. structural form or organizational modularity) used in prior studies.

Quantitative data was collected from 218 firms to test our conceptual model.

We find that SCSA has a mixed effect on profitable growth under various environmental conditions.

We find evidence that refutes two widely held assumptions in organization research, namely, that structural form serves as a reasonable proxy for structural adaptability and that the benefits of adaptive capabilities always increase as environmental dynamism increases.

Network embeddedness has been widely considered in enterprise innovation as an effective means of overcoming resource dilemmas. However, while focussing on acquiring external innovation resources, the existing research often ignores the vital role of internal routine updates. Therefore, this study explores the mechanism by which network embeddedness affects innovation performance of enterprises from the perspective of organisational routine updating.

This paper proposes a theoretical model based on social network theory and organisational routines–immune response theory. A total of 328 pieces of research data on high-tech enterprises in China were collected, and the hypotheses were verified using hierarchical regression analysis.

The results show that the two forms of network embeddedness – structural embeddedness and relational embeddedness, have a positive effect on enterprise innovation performance and a significant positive effect on organisational routine revision and organisational routine creation. Both organisational routine revision and organisational routine creation positively affect enterprise innovation performance and partially mediate the relationship between network embeddedness and enterprise innovation performance.

This conclusion provides a new perspective on the impact of network embeddedness on enterprise innovation performance and expands the related research on organisational routine updating. This study provides a theoretical reference for high-tech enterprises to improve their competitiveness and innovation performance through network embeddedness and organisational routine updating.

This study investigates how organizational control systems induce emotional labor in frontline service employees (FLEs). Drawing on the stimulus–organism–response (S-O-R) theory, we hypothesized that two control systems, an outcome-based control system (OBCS) and a behavior-based control system (BBCS), trigger work engagement rather than organizational dehumanization in FLEs, leading them to choose deep acting rather than surface acting as an emotional labor strategy.

This study employed three-wave online surveys conducted 3–4 months apart to assess the time-lagged effects of S-O-R. We measured OBCS, BBCS (stimuli) and control variables at Time 1 (T1); work engagement and organizational dehumanization (organisms) at Time 2 (T2) and emotional labor strategies (responses) at Time 3 (T3). A total of 218 employees completed the T1, T2 and T3 surveys.

OBCS increased work engagement, leading to increased deep acting. BBCS enhanced organizational dehumanization, leading to increased surface acting. Post-hoc analysis confirmed that the indirect effect of OBCS on deep acting through work engagement and the mediation effect of BBCS on surface acting through organizational dehumanization were statistically significant.

This study collected three-wave data to reveal how organizational control systems affect FLEs’ emotional labor in the S-O-R framework. It illustrated how organizations induce FLEs to perform effective emotional strategies by investigating the effects of organizational control systems on their internal states.

This paper aims to investigate the innovation pathway of gerontechnological enterprises under the market-organization-technology (MOT) perspective through configuration analysis.

Based on the analytical framework of technology, organization and market, this paper conducts configuration analysis on the cases of 55 elderly-friendly enterprises in China combined with fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA).

First, this study identifies the three first-level preconditions affecting innovation performance: organization's architectural innovation, technology adapting to aging and market environment attention on the innovation pathway of gerontechnological enterprises. These three first-level conditions include six sub-conditions. Second, this study investigates three innovation pathways by analyzing the configuration effects of preconditions: Configuration 1, technology-balanced type; Configuration 2, organization-market linkage type and Configuration, 3 balanced type. Third, there are differences in the distribution of different configuration types in subdivided industries. The technology-balanced configuration is mainly concentrated in design-driven innovative enterprises, the organization-market linkage configuration is mainly concentrated in medical auxiliary equipment enterprises and the balanced configuration is mainly concentrated in smart elderly care service platform enterprises empowered by digital technology. Fourth, there are differences in the innovation impact paths of the same configuration type. However, the essence lies in the high-level innovation performance formed by the coordinated evolution of technology, organization and market factors, reflecting the characteristics of the same goal through different routes.

The authors' study generates new insights for innovation managers of gerontechnological enterprises about the innovation pathway.

This research enriches innovation management by integrating the linkage adaptation relationship among market, organization and technology factors; further research studies on the different configuration types suitable for different types of enterprises, as well as differentiated innovation pathways under the same configuration type, could contribute to the study on the innovation pathway under a premise of MOT.

Existing studies have been conducted to explain the process of digital transformation. This work aims to identify the paradoxes encountered by companies in undertaking digital transformation and the role of digital affordances in overcoming these paradoxes.

This study uses rich empirical data from four traditional Chinese manufacturers that have successfully achieved digital transformation to explain how companies can overcome the digital transformation paradox with the help of digital affordances.

The authors identify the paradoxes that traditional companies encounter when carrying out data transformation based on the experience of four Chinese traditional manufacturing enterprises that have successfully achieved digital transformation – the paradox of flexibility and stability of organization structure, the paradox of cost and profit and the paradox of perception between executives and employees. Based on this, we propose three digital affordances that play an important role in overcoming the digital transformation paradoxes – digital decentralization, digital agility and digital citizenship.

This study identifies three forms of critical digital affordances and introduces citizenship into digital transformation contexts.

Flexibility and efficiency are dual attributes of the organizational structure that are crucial for project-driven enterprises to achieve sustainable development in a dynamic environment. However, there is a lack of research on the patterns by which the dual attributes of a project-driven enterprise’s organizational structure affect business model innovation. Employing organizational theory, this study aims to assess the mediating mechanisms and dynamic capabilities through which the dual attributes of the organizational structure influence business model innovation in project-driven enterprises.

Data were collected from 242 employees from four project-driven companies across 26 cities (e.g. Beijing, Tianjin, Guangzhou and Shenzhen) in China. Structural equation modeling revealed the relationship between organizational structure’s dual attributes and business model innovation.

The findings show that the dual attributes (flexibility and efficiency) of the organizational structure have positive impacts on business model innovation. Moreover, dynamic capabilities mediate the relationship between the dual attributes and business model innovation in project-driven enterprises.

This study provides contributions to innovation research in the context of project-driven enterprises by revealing the influence of organizational structure on business model innovation through the firms’ dynamic capabilities. Such knowledge can enable managers of project-driven enterprises to develop effective interventions to promote business model innovation.

Growth optimism, which describes the expected future growth of a firm, is an important but underexplored construct in strategy. This paper aims to assess the planning antecedents of such growth optimism by using a large Australian sample of small enterprises.

The authors use a secondary data set, gathered among Australian small to medium enterprises (SMEs), by the Australian Bureau of Statistics (ABS). The analysis adopts a regression approach including a mediated and a non-mediated path to explore the direct and indirect effects of strategic planning and budgetary planning and management on expected future revenues.

This paper assesses the implications of concurrent strategic planning and financial management dynamic capabilities on anticipated future revenue growth, an important predisposition dynamic capability. The authors note that this configuration of actions and predisposition aligns closely with the necessary requirements for growth. The findings suggest that firms that use strategic planning and robust budget planning and monitoring processes exhibit higher optimism about future sales growth and firms that effectively configure these planning activities with market development tend to exhibit higher growth and more growth optimism.

In terms of theoretical contributions, the paper strongly supports the formality view in the formal/informal debates associated with effectuation strategies. The authors suggest that appropriate strategic and budgetary planning and control systems act as a counterbalance to organisational confusion and managerial capriciousness, leading to improved confidence among managers and their employees regarding future resource commitments and plans.

The findings of the paper are potentially important for both managers and policy makers. For managers seeking to grow their future sales, planning is shown to be an important antecedent activity. The presence of financial and strategic planning may predispose firms to make important investment decisions that drive future growth. Also, a better understanding of the firm’s current and future strategic and financial position may be evidence of effective firm management, a situation that, in turn, drives growth.

In terms of social and policy implications, the data gathered for the survey by the ABS forms a valuable collection of information in relation to business practices. Australian firms are required by law to regularly report budget plans and outcomes. The research suggests that this data can inform policy initiatives, particularly in relation to programmes that may assist small and young firms to undertake prospective strategic and budgetary planning.

To the best of the authors’ knowledge, this is the first paper to investigate the particular configuration of strategic and financial planning and anticipated sales growth in the SME context.