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Leaders are important social actors in organizations, centrally involved in establishing and maintaining institutional values, a view that was articulated by Philip Selznick (1957) nearly a half-century ago, but often overlooked in institutionalists’ accounts. Our objective is to build on Selznick’s seminal work to investigate the value proposition of leadership consistent with institutional theory. We examine public interview transcripts from 52 senior executives and discover that leaders’ conceptualizations of their entities align with the archetypes of organization (i.e., economic, hierarchical, and power oriented) and institution (i.e., ideological, creative and collectivist) and cohere around a set of relevant values. Extrapolating from this, we advance a theoretical framework of the process whereby leaders’ claims function as transformational mechanisms of value infusion in the institutionalization of organizations.

Purpose: This chapter aims to study the organizational challenges that arise from a hybrid character of organizations. Using a taxonomy of hybridization, based on the societal triangle, we provide a more comprehensive understanding of challenges that different archetypes of hybrid organizations face. This research focuses on enterprises providing private goods. Methodology/Approach: First, a taxonomy of hybridity is introduced based on the societal triangle of state, market, and society. Based on a literature search, we selected 75 articles to determine the main organizational challenges for the four hybrid archetypes. The organizational challenges are clustered in five themes: mission and balancing divergent goals, leadership, hiring and employee involvement, accounting and financial issues, and future outlook. The themes are discussed with 17 case organizations including social-oriented enterprises (SEs), as well as profit-driven enterprises that have moved toward different levels of hybridity. Findings: Our findings emphasize that different kinds of hybrid organizations face different kinds of challenges but also handle them differently. For SEs, the main challenges are related to financial value creation and future outlook, while for profit-oriented enterprises, the main struggles are related to leadership, employee involvement, and balancing divergent goals. Research Limitations/Implications (if applicable): This study is of an explorative nature, focusing on four hybrid archetypes and using broadly defined themes. Future research could involve all hybrid archetypes and define the challenges more succinctly. Originality/Value of Paper: Hybrid enterprises are usually classified according to typologies based on at least two different ways of thinking (“logics”). This paper uses a taxonomy based on the societal triangle which brings analytical clarity when defining hybridity and identifying challenges. Next to that we discuss organizational challenges with 17 organizations from different hybrid archetypes. The results show that depending on the archetype, organizations face different challenges and also handle these challenges differently.

The aim of this chapter is to: (1) model culture as a configuration of multiple values, (2) identify different culture archetypes across the globe, and (3) empirically demonstrate heterogeneity in culture archetypes within and across 52 countries. We use Schwartz values from the World Values Survey (WVS) and the archetypal analysis (AA) method to identify diverse culture archetypes within and across countries. We find significant heterogeneity in culture values archetypes within countries and homogeneity across countries, calling into question the assumption of uniform national culture values in economics and other fields. We show how the heterogeneity in culture values across the globe can be represented with a small number of distinctive archetypes. The study could be extended to include a larger set of countries, and/or cover a broader range of theoretically grounded values than those available in the Schwartz values model in the WVS. Research and practice often assume cultural homogeneity within nations and cultural diversity across nations. Our finding of different culture archetypes within countries and similar archetypes across countries demonstrates the important role of culture sharing and exchange as a source of reducing cultural conflicts between nations and enhancing creativity and innovation through interaction and integration in novel ways. We examine culture as a configuration of multiple values, and use a novel AA method to capture heterogeneity in culture values within and across countries.

The reforms that have been promoted in public organisations in developed countries since the 1970s are said to impose changes in professional bureaucracies by promoting self-governance and institutional autonomy and by challenging professionals’ status and their values and standards. Taking the specific case of Portugal, this paper intends to contribute to understanding to what extent professional bureaucracies, like hospitals and Higher Education Institutions (HEIs), have been affected by changes in state policies and how the professionals involved have responded to these organisational changes. Based on an empirical qualitative study the paper concludes that there are significant differences in the way the state changed the regulatory framework and the professional archetypes in hospitals and HEIs and that professionals give heterogeneous responses to these changes.

This chapter proposes a research agenda for the study of large law firm culture and explains how the research would contribute to both legal ethics and organizational theory. It focuses on two sets of questions that are uniquely suited to investigation in large law firms. First: what is the significance of organizational culture, relative to that of professional networks and subgroups? To what extent does organizational membership shape lawyers’ understandings about “how things are done”? Second: how is organizational culture sustained? What are the mechanisms of cultural integration in volatile, multioffice firms? The chapter draws on a pilot study of law firm culture in one 500-lawyer firm.

Pervasive forms of worldwide communication now connect us instantly and constantly, and yet we all too often fail to understand each other. Rather than benefiting from our globally interconnected reality, the world continues to fall back on divisiveness, a widening schism exacerbated by some of the most pronounced divisions in history along lines of wealth, culture, religion, ideology, class, gender, and race. Cross-cultural dynamics are rife within multinational organizations and among people who regularly work with people from other cultures. This chapter reviews what we know from our scholarship on cross-cultural interaction among expatriates, negotiators, and teams that work in international contexts. Perhaps more important, this chapter outlines what we need to learn – and to unlearn – to be able to see diversity as an asset in helping individuals, organizations, and society to succeed rather than continuing to understand it primarily as a source of problems.

Guidance on the many questions of life can be found in stories and tales. These are carriers of a collective wisdom gathered by our forebearers which resonates deep within our minds and souls. The chapter builds upon C. G. Jung’s work on archetypes to reflect upon the pitfalls and challenges facing organisations and individuals who wish to improve lives. Two tales are introduced and discussed with a view to highlighting how lessons can be drawn from tales with practical implications for organisational life and for the implementation of meaningful change in relation to well-being inside and outside of work. The tales notably bring attention to the learning and maturing process of a consciousness overly identified with certain aspects of the archetypal masculine and outline how generative solutions need not be sought out far from home; instead, the undervalued wisdom of a grounded, earthy archetypal feminine are ready to be engaged with if only we open our mind and heart to her.

This chapter examines the sources of variation in organizational form among accounting and law firms. We first summarize research in the organization of professional service firms and explain its evolution. This is followed by the argument that variations around the P2 archetype have emerged in response to different market and institutional pressures faced by accounting and law firms. Drawing on contingency and institutional theory, we show how the changing balance between the influence of market and institutional factors has resulted in structural variation.

Systems thinking calls for a shift of our mindset from seeing just parts to seeing the whole reality in its structured dynamic unity and interconnectedness. Systems thinking fosters a sensibility to see subtle connections between components and parts of reality, especially the free enterprise capitalist system (FECS). It enables us to see ourselves as active participants or partners of FECS and not mere induced factors of its production–distribution–consumption processes. Systems thinking seeks to identify the economic “structures” that underlie complex situations in FECS that bring about high versus low leveraged changes. A system is strengthened and reinforced by feedback of reciprocal exchanges that makes the system alive, transparent, human, and humanizing.

In Part I, we explore basic laws or patterns of behaviors as understood by systems thinking; in Part II we examine the basic archetypes or structured behaviors of systems thinking; in both parts we strive to see reality through the lens of critical thinking to help us understand patterns and structures of behavior among systems and their component parts. In conclusion, we argue for compatibility and complementarity of critical thinking and systems thinking to identify and resolve management problems created by our flawed thinking, and sedimented by our wanton assumptions, presumptions, suppositions and presuppositions, biases, and prejudices. Such thinking will also identify unnecessary economic and political structures of the self-serving policies we create, which imprison us.