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The literature on charismatic leadership in organizations has neglected the organizational context in which such leadership is embedded. The purpose of this article is to enrich and refine charismatic leadership theory by linking it to its organizational context. We argue that while charismatic leadership principles and processes potentially apply across a wide variety of situations, the emergence and effectiveness of such leadership may be facilitated by some contexts and inhibited by others. We develop and present a series of propositions linking contextual variable to the emergence and effectiveness of charismatic leadership. Among the contextual variable we examine are the organizational environment, life-cycle stage, technology, tasks, goals, structure, and culture, as well as the leader’s level in the organization and the circumstances surrounding his or her appointment.

The concept of a community form is drawn upon in many subfields of organizational theory. Although there is not much convergence on a level of analysis, there is convergence on a mode of action that is increasingly relevant to a knowledge-based economy marked by porous and shifting organizational boundaries. We argue that communities play an underappreciated role in organizational theory – critical not only to occupational identity, knowledge transfer, sense-making, social support, innovation, problem-solving, and collective action but also, enabled by information technology, increasingly providing socioeconomic value – in areas once inhabited by organizations alone. Hence, we posit that organizations may be in the shadow of communities. Rather than push for a common definition, we link communities to an organization's evolution: its birth, growth, and death. We show that communities represent both opportunities and threats to organizations and conclude with a research agenda that more fully accounts for the potential of community forms to be a creator (and a possible destroyer) of value for organizations.

Purpose: The emotions that accompany failure, in and of organizations, and their consequences have been researched in multiple domains of management, but comparative approaches have seldom been attempted. The failure of organizations to survive has been a common occurrence over centuries, particularly in the modern era of start-ups, innovation, and political, economic, and environmental turbulence. With the advent of the COVID-19 pandemic, failure at many levels of society, including the organizational and individual, has increased significantly and produced even more intense emotions. Study Design/Methodology/Approach: For this conceptual chapter, literature from many disciplines was consulted on failure in organizations, and the emotions it elicit, including studies on the process of failure as well as its outcomes. Findings: Failing and failure are likely to evoke negative emotions, with negative consequences for the actor. However, positive emotions can also occur, and a matrix of emotional valence and consequences presents an intriguing set of possibilities. The dimensions of emotions (valence, intensity, duration, and frequency) interact with a wide range of contributing factors (salience, personality, identity, emotional intelligence, emotional regulation, prior experience of failure, and context) in producing the emotions of failure and their consequences. Originality/Value: This chapter contributes to the literature by explicating the types of emotions that emanate during and after failure across many domains of management research, their dimensions and contributing factors, and the consequences for the individual actor. The model of the emotions of failure that is presented here assembles a wider variety of elements than prior research has offered. We indicate avenues for further research as we approach an era of even more demanding challenges.

Despite the theoretical assumption that balancing exploration and exploitation is important for long-term performance and survival, previous studies have provided few insights into these relationships because they have focused mainly on the short-term financial performance of organizations. In addition, balancing exploration and exploitation is a critical challenge for small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) that lack the resources, capabilities, and experience necessary to achieving ambidexterity. In this regards, this study empirically explores the relationship between the exploration–exploitation balance and SMEs’ longevity in order to address two important questions from the ambidexterity perspective: (1) How does the balance between exploration and exploitation influence organizational survival? (2) How is the appropriate balance between exploration and exploitation influenced by an organization’s internal and external contexts?

An analysis of 1981–2012 data from the Korean SMEs in IT industry reveals an inverted U-shaped curvilinear relationship between the extent of exploratory innovation and organizational longevity, providing support for the ambidexterity perspective. We further examine the moderating effects of financial slack and environmental dynamism on the relationship between exploratory innovation and organizational longevity. The results indicate that financial slack moderated the exploration–longevity relationship and call for a contingency approach for a better understanding of performance implications of the exploration–exploitation balance.

We challenge the premise that the CEO's job is to keep the corporation alive and thriving at all costs and under all circumstances. We briefly review the differing normative views of strategic management theorists and organizational theorists about organizational inertia. We then develop an economic model of incumbent behavior in the face of challenger competition that accommodates complementary assets. The model predicts and describes conditions under which organizational inertia, as subsequent organizational failure, is optimal. We then extend the logic and propose that the failure of entrepreneurial firms does not necessarily imply the failure of entrepreneurs. We conclude with a call to study “exit” as a viable strategic option.

How do cultural organizations handle the competing demands of isomorphism and differentiation? Strategic balance theory is a promising point of departure. Proponents argue that while isomorphism contributes to legitimacy, differentiation minimizes competition through innovation or niche control. However, most research has focused on successful cases of optimal performance in core or world cities. I introduce data from three seasons (250+ hours) of ethnographic research on fashion weeks in both a core city and semi-peripheral city. I find that geography acts as a structural barrier to competition: while semi-peripheral producers pursue some standards of fashion capitals in world cities, they cannot compete on the basis of style. Rather than optimizing through strategic balance, cultural organizations embrace a double edge of legitimation. Their sub-optimal vision of organizational survival cultivates legitimacy from available but symbolically polluting sources. Imperfect imitation is suggested instead as a viable legitimation strategy. I call for more attention to semi-peripheral geography and imperfect imitation in culture industry research.

Analysis of organizational decline has become central to the study of economy and society. Further advances in this area may fail however, because two major literatures on the topic remain disintegrated and because both lack a sophisticated account of how social structure and interdependencies among organizations affect decline. This paper develops a perspective which tries to overcome these problems. The perspective explains decline through an understanding of how social ties and resource dependencies among firms affect market structure and the resulting behavior of firms within it. Evidence is furnished that supports the assumptions of the perspective and provides a basis for specifying propositions about the effect of network structure on organizational survival. I conclude by discussing the perspective’s implications for organizational theory and economic sociology.

The contribution revisits existing research on human impacts on the performance of mergers and acquisitions. Findings are grouped into three categories: individual-, organizational- and managerial-related factors. Results show that while research seems various and abounding, influential factors are often studied as static setting approached in isolation, without measuring their direct relation to post-acquisition outcomes.