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This chapter examines the role of multimodal rhetoric in processes of theorization. Empirically, we investigated the theorization process of a highly disruptive innovation in the history of architecture: reinforced concrete. Relying on archival data from a prominent French architectural journal in the period from 1885 to 1939, we studied the rhetorical modes at play in the theorization of reinforced concrete. First, we found that theorization entailed two recursive activities: dramatization and evaluation. While dramatization relies on both verbal and visual (i.e., multimodal) means, evaluation relies on verbal means. We integrated these components into a dynamic model of theorization that explains how visual discourse contributes to theorization beyond the effects of verbal discourse.

The value of qualitative empirical research in the management and accounting disciplines lies in its “conceptual framing” of organizational actions, events, processes, and structures. Argues that the possibilities for conceptual framing extend beyond the highly abstract schema generally considered as “theories” by academics. In support of this argument, distinguishes five different forms of theorization. Explores the relationship between these theoretical “levels” and the different issues that empirical research explores, arguing that, as the “level” of theorizing “rises”, issues of agency give way to a focus on practice and, in turn, to a concern with structure. As this happens, research aims directed towards abstraction and explanation supersede those for contextualization and understanding. Concludes that views on “what counts as theory” are, currently, too narrow to conceptualize agency, emergence and change adequately in organizational life and, hence, the full range of significant empirical phenomena that characterize the management and accounting areas are not being researched.

The purpose of this paper is to explore how a heterogeneous range of water efficiency responses were driven across a field of seven water consuming organisations in Australia at a time of acute drought conditions into the late 2000s.

Semi-structured interviews were conducted with a range of individuals from 2008 to 2010.

A loosely coordinated range of drivers motivated pervasive water efficiency responses in two of the seven case organisations. Would-be leaders sought to invoke a water efficiency field, and champion nascent logics and theorisation in order to gain some competitive advantage. There was little sense among others of any normative, mimetic or coercive pressure to adopt homogeneous practices. While the field lacked effective champions for change, an institutionalisation of novel water efficiency practices continued across the field into 2010.

Further research could investigate how water efficiency responses continued to develop or decline into the 2010s, and how such practices integrate with the management of other sustainability issues (including carbon).

Global water resources are subject to increasing supply constraints. This paper responds by exploring how the institutionalisation of water efficiency change can be driven across a field of organisations.

Relatively little is understood about “institutionalization” as an unfinished process. This paper responds by contributing an understanding of how institutional logics developed, and how theorisation for water efficiency progressed in the context of water scarcity in Australia in the late 2000s.

Accessing and sharing dispersed knowledge in ecosystems is neither easy nor automatic. In ecosystems, focal firms should purposely create the right conditions and act to deal with dispersed knowledge. This study aims to investigate how focal firms manage dispersed knowledge in ecosystems characterized by a set of autonomous, heterogeneous, yet interdependent actors involved in experimentation under uncertainty.

Following a conceptual framework based on preceding literature, this study conducted a broad qualitative case study of 6 firms and 12 projects, with 43 semi-structured interviews to identify the patterns of actions associated with dispersed knowledge management (KM) in ecosystems. This paper combines coding and multiple case comparisons to examine the processes and strategies used by the firms to strategically manage dispersed knowledge in ecosystems.

This paper proposes a framework that articulates a new type of orchestration (dispersed knowledge orchestration) and offers a new set of dispersed knowledge strategies (transfer, modularity and circular) for ecosystems.

Innovation and knowledge managers play the roles of dispersed knowledge orchestrators. The study offers guidance on how focal firms should carefully use a particular set of approaches (e.g. integrative theorization) including a portfolio of dispersed knowledge strategies in ecosystems.

Current literature on KM and ecosystem management offers a limited understanding of how organizations manage dispersed knowledge in ecosystems. The research provides three major original contributions. First, the framework contributes to broadening the current understanding of ecosystem orchestration by identifying the micro-foundations of dispersed knowledge orchestration: integrative theorization, nurturing distributed sensemaking and a new chapter for ecosystem governance (i.e. dispersed knowledge governance). Moreover, the framework proposes a new type of strategy, the dispersed knowledge strategy. Finally, by exploring the interplay between the micro-foundations of dispersed knowledge orchestration and dispersed knowledge strategy, the results contribute to a multi-level approach in the field.

Despite the theoretical shortcomings of recent historical work on social processes, the historical discipline has a role to play in the theorization of social dynamics. As the work of the late sociologist Charles Tilly (2008, p. 9) has emphasized, the larger-scale theoretical type of social-process analysis may benefit from a more small-scale historical awareness of “the influence of particular times and places.” In Tilly's view, the sociological accounts of social processes that lack the sense of temporal transitions which characterizes historical analysis will “rarely identify the component mechanisms, much less their combinations and sequences.” By contrast, a historical approach to the “big structures, large processes, huge comparisons” (see Tilly, 1984) of social processes may put forward an analytical program that “couples a search for mechanisms of very general scope with arguments that […] lend themselves to ‘local theory,’ in which the explanatory mechanisms and processes operate quite broadly but combine locally as a function of initial conditions and adjacent processes to produce distinctive trajectories and outcomes.” These local elements of history may aggregate together into a more general pattern of theory: “Mechanisms compound into processes: combinations and sequences of mechanisms that produce some specified outcome at a larger scale than any single mechanism.” The temporal dimension of a historical analysis has a capacity to theorize social processes by telling a story of beginnings that carry forward into points of culmination.

This study examines the case of an initial training, called “Dojo”, invented and implemented at a production site in the Czech Republic. It clarifies the initial training program implementation process and offers a conceptual framework for cooperative management of subsidiary activities at the site and firm.

This study conducts an in-depth analysis of qualitative data from the Czech production site over a five-year period. The theoretical base is the theorization and labeling phase of management innovation (MI), the final phase of which legitimizes a new management practice. Interview data, archival data, pictures and financial data are used for the analysis.

To legitimize the Dojo in the operational flow controlled by the site and firm, the Czech production site acquires validation of the Dojo from employees and board members of the Japanese and European headquarters, helping the site build trustful relationships with them. Training programs, process standardization and skills standardization of the workers offer benefits to the trainees, production site and firm.

The authors offer theoretical insights into MI at the subsidiary-level, which past studies have not differentiated at the firm-level. The authors also provide details of the implementation and management of initial training for newly hired blue-collar workers at the production site. The findings complement related literature on human resource management and operational management.

In this reflective piece, the author engages with several themes that are oriented to the past, present, and future of institutional theory, to offer fresh insights for the next generation of theorizing. The author looks backward, tracing prevailing assumptions by investigating the language of theorization over the last eight decades, focusing on the frequency of use of nouns, adjectives, and verbs. What the author finds is a continuing emphasis on relatively static views of institutions and their permanence, indicated by the abundant use of nouns, but a relative neglect of more dynamic processes of institutionalization, reflected in verbs. Leveraging these observations, the author looks ahead, to identify fertile areas for theorization, including a consideration of the antithesis and/or synthesis between relating macrofoundations and microfoundations as antithesis or synthesis; examining the characteristics of institutional fields as contingencies of institutionization; and exploring the language of institutional theorization.

Information literacy has been consistently undertheorised. The purpose of this paper is to contribute in the ongoing theorisation of information literacy by exploring the meaning and implications of the emergent grounded theory of mitigating risk for information literacy research and practice.

The grounded theory was produced through a qualitative study that was framed by practice theory and the theoretical constructs of cognitive authority and affordance, and employed constructivist grounded theory, semi-structured interviews and photo-elicitation methods to explore the information literacy practices of language-learners overseas.

This paper provides a theoretically rich exploration of language-learner information literacy practices while further identifying the importance of time, affect and information creation within information literacy research and practice as well as the need for the continued theorisation of information literacy concepts.

The paper’s constructivist grounded theorisation of information literacy remains localised and contextualised rather than generalisable.

The paper raises questions and points of reflection that may be used to inform the continued development of information literacy instruction and teaching practices.

This paper contributes to an increasingly sophisticated theoretical conceptualisation of information literacy as well as forming a basis for ongoing theoretical development in the field.

This paper aims to illustrate why an understanding of how levels of analysis interact is an essential part of multilevel research in the field of international business (IB). Using research on strategy implementation (SI) in multinational corporations (MNCs) as an example, this paper develops a taxonomy and research agenda that demonstrates the key role critical scholars can play in advancing multilevel theorization.

Drawing on the assumptions of methodological collectivism and individualism, the paper presents a four-step framework: defining the theoretical boundaries of the selected subject; juxtaposing theoretical arguments with empirical work; identifying single- and multi-level theories; and developing a research agenda.

Research on SI in MNCs has been dominated by one type of theorizing that focuses on the designs of organizational systems or the power of institutions. Multilevel theorization grounded in methodological individualism would offer new knowledge by including the views of under-represented stakeholders, questioning the justice of established systems and overall implications of MNC operations.

The proposed four-step framework encourages scholars to adopt a systematic approach to multilevel theorizing and draw upon the untapped potential of IB theories.

The paper contributes to the IB field by introducing an approach to assessing IB research from a multilevel theorizing perspective. The actionable research agenda on SI and the taxonomy of SI research can assist scholars in making aligned choices on study design and envisioning research questions that yield meaningful contributions to theory and practice.

The purpose of this paper is to evaluate critically the competing theories of informal entrepreneurship that variously represent such endeavour as a residue from a previous mode of accumulation (modernisation theory), a direct by‐product of contemporary capitalism and survival strategy for those marginalised from the circuits of the modern economy (structuralism), an endeavour voluntarily pursued due to over‐regulation in the formal economy (neo‐liberalism) or a practice chosen for social, redistributive, political or identity reasons (post‐structuralism).

To evaluate these competing theories, a 2005/2006 survey involving face‐to‐face interviews with 298 informal entrepreneurs in Ukraine is analysed.

Contrary to previous studies which assert that one single theorisation is universally applicable, this study finds that each theory is valid for different types of informal entrepreneurship, and therefore proposes a typology of informal entrepreneurship that joins together the contrasting theorisations in order to achieve a more accurate and finer‐grained explanation of the complex and heterogeneous configuration of informal entrepreneurship in contemporary Ukraine.

This paper reveals the need to move beyond treating the competing explanations as mutually exclusive by outlining a typology that combines the contrasting theorisations in order to more fully understand the heterogeneity of informal entrepreneurship.

By unravelling the heterogeneity of informal entrepreneurship, a more nuanced policy approach is shown to be required which does not seek to simply either eradicate such endeavour, pursue a laissez‐faire approach or harness such entrepreneurship but instead pursues all these approaches to varying extents in relation to different kinds of informal entrepreneur.

This is one of the first papers to identify and empirically evaluate the competing theories of informal entrepreneurship.