Journal of Management

This paper presents and organizes the results of two decades of research on feedback-seeking behavior according to three motives: the instrumental motive to achieve a goal, the ego-based motive to protect one’s ego, and the image-based motive to enhance and protect one’s image in an organization. Each motive is discussed with reference to its impact on the frequency of feedback seeking, seeking method (whether by inquiry or monitoring), timing of feedback seeking, choice of the target of feedback seeking, and the topic on which feedback is sought. The role of context in influencing these patterns is also discussed. Issues in the literature are identified throughout, and the review ends by identifying five promising areas for future research.

Sixty-three studies published in the years 1997–2002 are reviewed to assess the effects of workplace diversity on teams and organizations. Four major questions are considered: Which personal attributes have diversity researchers studied in recent years? What has been learned about the consequences of diversity for teams and organizations? What has been learned about the role of context in shaping the effects of diversity? How has research addressed the multi-level complexities inherent in the phenomenon of diversity? For each question, we consider the strengths and weaknesses of recent diversity research, point out opportunities for new research, and identify threats to continued advancement. The review concludes by considering practical implications of the accumulated evidence.

During the past decade organizational scientists have devoted considerable research attention to the topic of workplace affect. Despite important advances, continued progress depends on a better understanding of the structure of affective experience. The goal of this paper is to review progress to date. In particular, we review evidence pertaining to four constructs that have been widely used to organize research on affect: positive affectivity, negative affectivity, hedonic tone, and affect intensity. We review various structural models pertaining to these four constructs, devoting special attention to integrative frameworks and future research needs.

The Academy of Management (AOM) was founded to help meet society’s social and economic objectives and in so doing, serve the public interest. However, scholarship in our field has pursued society’s economic objectives much more than it has its social ones. Surveying the supply and demand for all of the empirical research published by the AOM between 1958 and 2000 and all of the research published between 1972 and 2001 that attempts to link a firm’s social and economic performance, we provide evidence for this claim. We then propose reasons for why this research imbalance exists and conclude by foreshadowing a research agenda that honors our field’s historic social values.

The multinational corporation (MNC) has been increasingly used as a context for conceptual and empirical work. Based on a review of several leading management journals, we identify three main purposes for which the MNC has been employed: (1) study of MNC-specific phenomena; (2) validation and expansion of existing theories; and (3) development of new theories. We suggest that the latter purpose represents the highest potential contribution of MNC research, yet it is the least utilized so far. We then offer ideas of how to increase the contribution of MNC research through capturing the conceptual distinctiveness of the context, examining the theoretical paradoxes inherent in these organizations, and theorizing about novel combinative phenomena emerging in this context.

The purpose of this article is to review recent advanced applications of causal modeling methods in organizational and management research. Developments over the past 10 years involving research on measurement and structural components of causal models will be discussed. Specific topics to be addressed include reflective vs. formative measurement, multidimensional construct assessment, method variance, measurement invariance, latent growth modeling (LGM), moderated structural relationships, and analysis of latent variable means. For each of the areas mentioned above an overview of developments will be presented, and examples from organizational and management research will be provided.

This paper develops an approach to organizational governance decisions that recognizes how the choice of organizational governance form affects both the creation and appropriation of economic value. The paper begins with a detailed survey of three theoretical approaches— transaction cost economics (TCE), the resource-based view (RBV), and Real Options analysis (RoA) to the study of organizational governance. This review serves to provide background material on each theory as well as to identify the similarities and differences in the assumptions underlying these perspectives. A concluding section provides a series of propositions for future empirical research that may help to integrate these theories by incorporating notions of both value creation and value appropriation.

Strategic entrepreneurship (SE) involves simultaneous opportunity-seeking and advantage-seeking behaviors and results in superior firm performance. On a relative basis, small, entrepreneurial ventures are effective in identifying opportunities but are less successful in developing competitive advantages needed to appropriate value from those opportunities. In contrast, large, established firms often are relatively more effective in establishing competitive advantages but are less able to identify new opportunities. We argue that SE is a unique, distinctive construct through which firms are able to create wealth. An entrepreneurial mindset, an entrepreneurial culture and entrepreneurial leadership, the strategic management of resources and applying creativity to develop innovations are important dimensions of SE. Herein we develop a model of SE that explains how these dimensions are integrated to create wealth.

In this paper, we review and analyze the emerging network paradigm in organizational research. We begin with a conventional review of recent research organized around recognized research streams. Next, we analyze this research, developing a set of dimensions along which network studies vary, including direction of causality, levels of analysis, explanatory goals, and explanatory mechanisms. We use the latter two dimensions to construct a 2-by-2 table cross-classifying studies of network consequences into four canonical types: structural social capital, social access to resources, contagion, and environmental shaping. We note the rise in popularity of studies with a greater sense of agency than was traditional in network research.