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How is strategic consensus formed in top management team (TMT)? Prior literature provides inadequate evidence. A few scholars explore its antecedents from some perspectives (e.g. organizational or team structure) to address this gap but yield confusing results. This study aims to clarify the mechanism to reach TMT strategic consensus and explore both the effect of collective team identification and information elaboration.

Stepwise regression analysis is applied to explore the formation process of strategic consensus by using data collected from 126 TMTs of Chinese firms.

Results show that collective team identification has a positive effect on TMT strategic consensus, whereas information elaboration has a U-shaped effect. Further, the U-shaped relationship between information elaboration and TMT strategic consensus is strengthened by collective team identification.

This study provides a nuanced explanation of the antecedents of strategic consensus in TMT by exploring the effects of collective team identification and information elaboration. Particularly, this study proposes a U-shaped relationship between information elaboration and strategic consensus, which enriches TMT decision-making literature and consensus research. Moreover, by examining the moderating effect of collective team identification, this study articulates why TMT members fail to achieve strategic consensus even when they have sufficiently discussed the task-relevant information.

The purpose of this paper is to provide guidance for designing and generating cumulative knowledge based on qualitative research.

The paper draws on the philosophy of science and specific examples of qualitative studies in accounting that have claimed a cumulative contribution to knowledge to develop a taxonomy of theoretically justified approaches to generating cumulative knowledge from qualitative research.

The paper argues for a definition of cumulative knowledge that is inclusive of anti-realist research, i.e. knowledge is cumulative if it increases the extent and density of intertextual linkages in a field. It identifies the possibility of cumulative qualitative research based on extensions to the scope of the knowledge and the depth of the knowledge. Extensions to the scope of the knowledge may include expanding the time periods, context, and/or theoretical perspective used to explore a phenomenon. Extensions to the depth of the knowledge may include new empirical knowledge, methodological pluralism, theory elaboration, or analytic generalization. Individual studies can demonstrate their contribution to cumulative knowledge by locating their research within a typology/taxonomy that makes explicit the relationship of current research to past, and potential, research.

The taxonomy may be useful to qualitative researchers designing and reporting research that will have impact on the literature.

The increased use of research impact as an evaluation metric has the potential to handicap the development qualitative research which is often thought of as generating non-cumulative knowledge. The taxonomy and the strategies for establishing cumulative impact may provide a means for this approach to research to establish its importance as a contribution to knowledge.

The concept of cumulative knowledge has not been systematically applied to research based on qualitative methods.

Food sector supply chains have significant negative environmental impacts, including the expansion of global food commodity production, which is driving tropical deforestation – a major climate and biodiversity problem. Innovative supply chain monitoring services promise to address such impacts. Legislation also designates “forest-risk commodities”, demanding supply chain due diligence of their provenance. But such data alone does not produce change. This study investigates how theory in performance measurement and management (PMM) can combine with sustainable supply chain management (SSCM) and decision theory (DT) via case study research that addresses paradoxes of simplicity and complexity.

Given existing relevant theory but the nascent nature of the topic, theory elaboration via abductive case study research is conducted. Data collection involves interviews and participatory design workshops with supply chain actors across two supply chains (coffee and soy), exploring the potential opportunities and challenges of new deforestation monitoring services for food supply chains.

Two archetypal food supply chain structures (short food supply chains with high transparency and direct links between farmer and consumer and complex food supply chains with highly disaggregated and opaque links) provide a dichotomy akin to the known/unknown, structured/unstructured contexts in DT, enabling novel theoretical elaboration of the performance alignment matrix model in PMM, resulting in implications for practice and a future research agenda.

The novel conceptual synthesis of PMM, SSCM and DT highlights the importance of context specificity in developing PMM tools for SSCM and the challenge of achieving the general solutions needed to ensure that PMM, paradoxically, is both flexible to client needs and capable of replicable application to deliver economies of scale. To advance understanding of these paradoxes to develop network-level PMM systems to address deforestation impacts of food supply chains and respond to legislation, a future research agenda is presented.

Scholars have called for diversity in methods and multi-method research to enhance relevance to practice. However, many of the calls have only gone so far as to suggest the use of multiple methods within the positivism paradigm, which dominates the discipline and may constrain the ability to develop middle-range theory and propose workable solutions to today’s supply chain challenges. The purpose of this paper is to present a rationale for expanding the methodological toolbox of the field to include interpretive research methods.

This research conceptually illustrates how positivist and interpretive philosophies translate into different research approaches by reviewing an extant positivist qualitative study that uses grounded theory and then detailing how an interpretive researcher would approach the same phenomenon using the hermeneutic method.

This research expands the boundaries and impact of the field by broadening the set of questions research can address. It contributes a detailed illustration of the interpretive research process, as well as applications for the interpretive approach in future research, particularly theory elaboration, middle-range theorizing, and emerging domains such as the farm-to-fork supply chain and the consumer-based supply chain.

The development of alternative ways of seeking knowledge enhances the potential for creativity, expansion, and progress in the field.

Practical implications of this research include enabling researchers to elaborate theory and develop middle-range theories through an alternative philosophical paradigm. This paradigm facilitates practical insights that are directly relevant to particular domains and move beyond general theories seeking generalizability.

Social implications of this research are much more indirect in nature. This research encourages supply chain management (SCM) scholars to look at phenomena (including those with social implications) from a different philosophical perspective, which can reveal new insights.

This research contributes a rationale for expanding the methodological toolbox of the field to include interpretive research methods and also contributes a methodological operationalization of the interpretive approach. By reflecting on the nature of science and method in SCM, the study opens the door for creativity and progress to expand the boundaries and impact of the field.

A narrow focus of past diversity research and inconsistent findings have contributed to a lack of understanding of how to manage diversity for positive outcomes. Focusing on age, gender and ethnic diversity, this paper aims to review literature on group objective demographic diversity and individual perceived demographic diversity to present an integrated multilevel framework for our improved understanding and to present testable propositions.

The authors conducted a thorough review of 51 empirical studies of demographic diversity at individual and group levels to propose a multilevel framework.

Drawing on information elaboration theory, social categorization theory and social identity theory, an integrated multilevel framework is proposed at individual and group levels. The framework suggests that demographic diversity (age, gender and ethnicity) aids positive information elaboration processes, while also causing negative social categorization processes. These processes impact individual and group outcomes. The framework also identifies moderating factors not sufficiently addressed in the demographic diversity literature. Propositions and implications for future research in the field of demographic diversity are presented.

This review provides an integrated multilevel framework of objective and perceived demographic diversity and its positive and negative processes and effects at both individual and group levels, drawn from information elaboration, social categorization and social identity theories.

Theory is a kind of condensed human knowledge. This paper is to examine the mechanism of interdisciplinary diffusion of theoretical knowledge by tracing the diffusion of a representative theory, the Technology Acceptance Model (TAM).

Based on the full-scale dataset of Web of Science (WoS), the citations of Davis's original work about TAM were analysed and the interdisciplinary diffusion paths of TAM were delineated, a supervised machine learning method was used to extract theory incidents, and a content analysis was used to categorize the patterns of theory evolution.

It is found that the diffusion of a theory is intertwined with its evolution. In the process, the role that a participating discipline play is related to its knowledge distance from the original disciplines of TAM. With the distance increases, the capacity to support theory development and innovation weakens, while that to assume analytical tools for practical problems increases. During the diffusion, a theory evolves into new extensions in four theoretical construction patterns, elaboration, proliferation, competition and integration.

The study does not only deepen the understanding of the trajectory of a theory but also enriches the research of knowledge diffusion and innovation.

The study elaborates the relationship between theory diffusion and theory development, reveals the roles of the participating disciplines played in theory diffusion and vice versa, interprets four patterns of theory evolution and uses text mining technique to extract theory incidents, which makes up for the shortcomings of citation analysis and content analysis used in previous studies.

Marketers often select unique color names for products to heighten shopper interest. The purpose of this study is to use self-referencing as the foundation for assessing how a product color name that involves the self impacts product evaluation. This paper also investigates the salient element that might moderate consumers’ responses, in particular for product categories where color serves mainly as decoration and is of secondary importance.

Two between-subjects experiments examined how self-referencing mediates the influence of generic versus identity color names on product evaluation (Study 1) and also tested whether the effect of naming product colors in identity terms is limited to the scenario where cognitive load is low rather than high (Study 2).

The results of this study show that identity color names are more persuasive than generic color names. Self-referencing mediates the results, and the favorable effect of identity color names is diminished in the case of high cognitive load. Such evidence suggests that consumers might face impediments for self-referenced processing when factors exhaust their cognitive resources. The decreased elaboration results in less favorable evaluation.

This research enriches knowledge of how an element as modest as a creative product color name influences consumer evaluation, with suggestions for approaches to color naming.

We survey and organize over fifty years of theoretical research on status and expectation state processes. After defining some key terms in this theoretical approach, we briefly describe theories and branches in the program.

We also focus on a few theories that illustrate distinct patterns of theory growth, using them to show the variety of ways in which the research program has grown.

The program structure developed from a single set of theories on development and maintenance of group inequality in the 1960s to six interrelated branches by 1988. Between 1988 and today, the overall structure has grown to total 19 different branches. We briefly describe each branch, identifying over 200 resources for the further study of these branches.

Although the various branches share key concepts and processes, they have been developed by different researchers, in a variety of settings from laboratories to schools to business organizations. Second, we outline some important issues for further research in some of the branches. Third, we emphasize the value of developing new research methods for testing and applying the theories.

These theories have been used to explain phenomena of gender, racial, and ethnic inequality among others, and for understanding some cases of personality attributions, deviance and control processes, and application of double standards in hiring.

Status and expectation state processes often operate to produce invidious social inequalities. Understanding these processes can enable social scientists to devise more effective interventions to reduce these inequalities.

Status and expectation state processes occupy a significant segment of research into group processes. This chapter provides an authoritative overview of ideas in the program, what is known, and what remains to be discovered.

The purpose of this paper is to propose the new typologies of leader–member exchange (LMX) theory.

This research conducted a thorough, targeted literature review along with a qualitative research method involving in-depth, open-ended and semi-structured interviews. The interviews were conducted with 21 managers and 70 employees of different public organizations during the two years. After interviews, data were transcribed and the qualitative research method of theory elaboration was used to extract the themes from the transcripts.

The results showed that the LMX has a dynamic nature with four different versions. Also, the results discovered the multi-level of LMX with three different types of leaders’ styles. In addition, four factors that cause damage to high-quality relationships have been identified (i.e. perceived dissimilarity, feeling of being betrayed, failure to meet the expectations and impression management). Finally, the results discovered five dark sides of LMX.

This research proposes the new typologies of LMX and the approach and findings of this research contribute to the literature of leadership theories.

The purpose of this paper is to apply the aspects of decision theory (DT) to performance measurement and management (PMM), thereby enabling the theoretical elaboration of volatility, uncertainty, complexity and ambiguity in the business environment, which are identified as barriers to effective PMM.

A review of decision theory and PMM literature establishes the Cynefin framework as the basis for extending the performance alignment matrix. Case research with seven companies explores the relationship between two concepts under-examined in the performance alignment matrix – internal dominant logic (DL) as the attribute of organisational culture affecting decision making, and the external environment – in line with the concept of alignment or fit in PMM. A focus area is PMM related to sustainable operations and sustainable supply chain management.

Alignment between DL, external environment and PMM is found, as are instances of misalignment. The Cynefin framework offers a deeper theoretical explanation about the nature of this alignment. Other findings consider the nature of organisational ownership on DL.

The cases are exploratory not exhaustive, and limited in number. Organisations showing contested logic were excluded.

Some organisations have cultures of predictability and control; others have cultures that recognise their external environment as fundamentally unpredictable, and hence there is a need for responsive, decentralised PMM. Some have sought to change their culture and PMM. Being attentive to how cultural logic affects decision making can help reduce the misalignment in PMM.

A novel contribution is made by applying decision theory to PMM, extending the theoretical depth of the subject.