Administrative Science Quarterly

Innovation teams must navigate inherent tensions between different learning activities to produce high levels of performance. Yet, we know little about how teams combine these activities—notably reflexive, experimental, vicarious, and contextual learning—most effectively over time. In this article, we integrate research on teamwork episodes with insights from music theory to develop a new theoretical perspective on team dynamics, which explains how team activities can produce harmony, dissonance, or rhythm in teamwork arrangements that lead to either positive or negative effects on overall performance. We first tested our theory in a field study using longitudinal data from 102 innovation teams at a Fortune Global 500 company; then, we replicated and elaborated our theory in a study of 61 MBA project teams at an elite North American university. Results show that some learning activities can occur within the same teamwork episode to have harmonious positive effects on team performance, while other activities combine to have dissonant negative effects when occurring in the same episode. We argue that dissonant activities must be spread across teamwork episodes to help teams achieve a positive rhythm of team learning over time. Our findings contribute to theory on team dynamics, team learning, and ambidexterity.

Drawing on data from an ethnographic study of the introduction and implementation of a flexible work policy intended in part to improve gender equality at a STEM professional organization, I develop grounded theory on how managers’ gender shapes their implementation of such initiatives. I identify an equality policy paradox in which women managers, who openly support gender equality, are more likely than men managers to limit the policy. This apparent contradiction between intentions and actions is reconciled through an interactional role-based mechanism. Specifically, in this setting women managers encounter barriers to developing technical expertise, client relations, and respected authority. They respond by engaging extensively with subordinates, which allows them to effectively manage by brokering information (as an alternative to technical and client-facing tasks) and cultivating cooperation (as an alternative to formal authority). The policy undermines these interdependent activities; reflecting this, women managers generally oppose it. Men managers tend not to experience these constraints, and they focus on technical and client-related tasks that are largely independent of subordinates. The policy maintains these activities; reflecting this, they implement it. By identifying the equality policy paradox and the mechanism underlying it, this study advances theory on managers’ implementation of equality-related practices and policies as well as theory on gender and management.

Here I theorize about a common challenge that research on technology and organizing has not yet considered: how organizations preserve results given the challenges of managing increasingly heterogeneous technological portfolios. I do so via a study of how a top-tier hospital allocated scarce resources across two surgical robots. After acquiring its second robot, the hospital divided resources between the older and newer robots to build its surgical capacity: it allocated the best available infrastructure to the new robot, and it prioritized assigning inexperienced talent to the new technology to facilitate use and skill development. The hospital then adjusted its resources to build on initial successes, committing both the best available maintenance and more-complex surgical cases to the newer robot. These dynamics inadvertently degraded the older robot, making it increasingly difficult to use. In response, more-experienced surgeons and staff made do with the degrading system: they developed and mastered workarounds, and they developed a venting cycle with management. Their actions reduced concerns about the older technology and stabilized the situation for the hospital, such that for years this portfolio resourcing process facilitated satisfactory outcomes on organizational goals such as growth, new capability, and patient care. But by shunting scarce resources away from the older technology, this process also stressed the experienced talent (even as it built their resilience) and limited exploration of changes that could benefit the hospital.

Most literature on aesthetic innovation has focused on single producers who use radical aesthetic innovation to differentiate their products. However, a few scholars, as well as anecdotal evidence, suggest that when gazed at from the category level, aesthetic innovation usually occurs as incremental variations of a dominant aesthetic. Extant theory fails to account for why we see cycles of shift and stability in the dominant aesthetic of a category. In this study, we identify the mechanisms that drove such shifts and stability in the dominant aesthetic of the hearing aid category from 1945 to 2015. Leveraging this study, we develop theory showing that alignment or misalignment between category meanings and recent cultural trends spurs producers to generate new categorical aspirations to associate their category with new sets of meanings. However, producers introduce radical new aesthetic innovations only when a change in product form allows them to experiment. Examining aesthetic evolution at the category level helps to shed light on category-level patterns of aesthetic shifts and stability, why attempts to differentiate outside the dominant aesthetic are rare, and why product aesthetics across a category shift synchronously between dominant aesthetics. Furthermore, we enhance understanding of the roles of culture in category evolution and of aesthetics in the construction of category meaning, and we show how such meanings are periodically and collectively renegotiated in mature categories.

How do organizations reconcile the cross-pressures of conformity and differentiation? Existing research predominantly conceptualizes identity as something an organization has by virtue of the products or services it offers. Drawing on constructivist theories, we argue that organizational members’ interactions with external audiences also dynamically produce identity. We call the extent to which such interactions diverge from audience expectations performative atypicality. Applying a novel deep-learning method to conversational text in over 90,000 earnings calls, we find that performative atypicality leads to an evaluation premium by securities analysts, paradoxically resulting in a negative earnings surprise. Moreover, performances that correspond to those of celebrated innovators are received with higher enthusiasm. Our findings suggest that firms that conform to categorical expectations while being performatively atypical can navigate the conflicting demands of similarity and uniqueness, especially if they hew to popular notions of being different.

In a 20-month ethnographic study, I examine how a technology firm, ShopCo (a pseudonym), considered 13 different recruitment platforms to attract racial minority engineering candidates. I find that when choosing whether to adopt recruitment platforms focused on racial minority candidates (targeted recruitment platforms) but not when choosing whether to adopt recruitment platforms on which the modal candidate was White (traditional recruitment platforms), ShopCo managers expressed distaste for what they perceived to be the objectification, exploitation, and race-based targeting of racial minorities. These managers’repugnant market concerns influenced which types of platforms ShopCo adopted. To recruit racial minorities, ShopCo eschewed recruitment platforms taking a transactional approach that emphasized speed, quantity, efficiency, opportunity, and compensation, in favor of platforms taking a developmental approach that emphasized individuality, ethics, equity, community, and commitment. I show that ShopCo managers had different relational models for recruiting based on the race of the candidate. By exploring the new mechanism of repugnant market concerns, I aim to increase understanding of employees’ resistance to DEI initiatives, which can create barriers to workplace reforms even when organizations are committed to change.

By conceptualizing similarity among firms in terms of overlapping resources, research on location choice has found that similar firms tend to locate far from one another. Yet, a resource-overlap perspective may not always align with decision-makers’ similarity classifications. In this article, we propose that new entrants also perceive firm similarities in terms of collective identities, and we examine how competition between collective identities influences entrants’ choice of location. Our arguments center on the distinction between unaffiliated traditionalists, actors who are loyal to values and practices originally associated with a label and who emphasize autonomy, and affiliated modernists, actors who reinterpret a label using different values and practices and who seek consistency. Analyzing the entry of 177 artisan bakers within the city of Lyon from 1998 to 2017, we find that new entrants locate where prior actors with similar collective identities had located previously. To differentiate through competition, however, some new entrants also tend to prefer locations closer to actors who are encroaching on their collective identity, most evident among traditionalists choosing to locate near modernists. By integrating a collective-identity perspective with location choice, we show how the sociocognitive basis of similarity classification shapes new entrants’ competitive behavior.