How do organizations strategically change practices and culture?

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JOURNAL ARTICLES

AN ASSEMBLAGE PERSPECTIVE ON HYBRID AGENCY: A COMMENTARY ON RAISCH AND FOMINA’S “COMBINING HUMAN AND ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE”

Joel Gehman, Vern L. Glaser, and Paul Merritt.

Academy of Management Review (forthcoming). https://journals.aom.org/doi/10.5465/amr.2024.0126

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In their recently published study, "Combining Human and Artificial Intelligence: Hybrid Problem-Solving in Organizations", Raisch and Fomina (2024) propose a theoretical model of hybrid agency that integrates human intelligence with AI for problem-solving. They posit three types of search—autonomous, sequential, and interactive—each with fixed relationships to depth and scope of knowledge use. We believe there are three issues with Raisch and Fomina's argument. First, their theorization persists in balkanizing human and non-human agencies, black-boxing the complex human choices required to sustain their propositions. Second, their account of AI agency is problematic as it primarily relies on generative adversarial networks (GANs), limiting the generalizability of their model. Finally, a broader conception of agency in AI, viewed as an assemblage of humans, algorithms, data, and artifacts, reveals that the relationships between search types and outcomes are neither fixed nor can they be theoretically black-boxed. We argue that theorizing AI requires consideration of specific AI capabilities and the demands of given tasks, encouraging future research to take an assemblage perspective in order to theorize the complex interplay between human and AI agencies in organizational settings.

ORGANIZATIONS AS ALGORITHMS: A NEW METAPHOR FOR ADVANCING MANAGEMENT THEORY

Vern L. Glaser, Jennifer Sloan, and Joel Gehman.

Journal of Management Studies (forthcoming). https://doi.org/10.1111/joms.13033

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According to the ‘Point’ essay, management research’s reliance on corporate data threatens to replace objective theory with profit-biased ‘corporate empiricism,’ undermining the scientific and ethical integrity of the field. In this ‘Counterpoint’ essay, we offer a more expansive understanding of big data and algorithmic processing and, by extension, see promising applications to management theory. Specifically, we propose a novel management metaphor: organizations as algorithms. This metaphor offers three insights for developing innovative, relevant, and grounded organization theory. First, agency is distributed in assemblages rather than being solely attributed to individuals, algorithms, or data. Second, machine-readability serves as the immutable and mobile base for organizing and decision-making. Third, prompting and programming transform the role of professional expertise and organizational relationships with technologies. Contrary to the ‘Point’ essay, we see no theoretical ‘end’ in sight; the organization as algorithm metaphor enables scholars to build innovative theories that account for the intricacies of algorithmic decision-making.

TAKING SITUATEDNESS SERIOUSLY IN THEORIZING ABOUT COMPETITIVE ADVANTAGE THROUGH AI—A RESPONSE TO KEMP’S “COMPETITIVE ADVANTAGES THROUGH ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE”

Christine Moser, Vern L. Glaser, and Dirk Lindebaum.

Academy of Management Review (2024). https://doi.org/10.5465/amr.2023.0265

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In the recently published study, “Competitive advantages through artificial intelligence: Toward a theory of situated AI”, Kemp (2023) argues that AI can drive competitive advantage if three properties of AI can be overcome—it's nature as a generic technology, its reliance on an explicit articulation of knowledge, and its tendency to be “myopic” due to its lack of contextual awareness. We believe there are three issues with Kemp’s argument. First, the theorization relies on overly rational assumptions that do not take social values or the dark side of AI into account. Second, Kemp does not engage sociomaterial views on the agency of technology that suggest that successful application of grounding, bounding, and recasting activities may end up actually harming not only the firm, but also society more broadly. Finally, a broader conception of agency in AI can help us envisage alternative assemblages that would falsify Kemp’s propositions about the relationship of supervised and unsupervised learning algorithms and competitive advantage.

CHATTY ACTORS: GENERATIVE AI AND THE REASSEMBLY OF AGENCY IN QUALITATIVE RESEARCH

Vern L. Glaser and Joel Gehman. In M. Kulkarni (ed.), The Future of Research in an Artificial Intelligence-Driven World.

Journal of Management Inquiry (2024). https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/10564926231219622?icid=int.sj-full-text.citing-articles.3

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In this essay, we explore how generative AI can contribute to qualitative research by examining its potential to reassemble agency. Specifically, we suggest that the affordances of Large Language Models and generative AI facilitate three distinct ideal-typical agentic possibilities: Generative AI as a research assistant that supports researchers by functioning as an administrative assistant and interactive conversation partner; generative AI as a data analyst that can be programmed by the researcher to analyze data with enhanced, dynamic pattern recognition; and generative AI as co-author that can act as a semi-autonomous agent in the pursuit, discovery, and refinement of new knowledge. Paralleling these three modes of actorhood, we introduce three principles of governance that management researchers can embrace to mitigate against the potential abuses of generative AI.

PREDICTIVE MODELS CAN LOSE THE PLOT. HERE’S HOW TO KEEP THEM ON TRACK.

Vern L. Glaser, Omid Omidvar, and Mehdi Safavi.

MIT Sloan Management Review (2023). https://sloanreview.mit.edu/article/predictive-models-can-lose-the-plot-heres-how-to-keep-them-on-track/

Organizations using algorithms and artificial intelligence often fail to effectively navigate risk and disruption due to a phenomenon we call algorithmic inertia: when organizations use algorithmic models to take environmental changes into account but fail to keep pace with those changes. Building on an in-depth historical case study of how Moody's used algorithms to rate mortgage-backed securities before the 2008 financial crisis, we identify four sources of algorithmic inertia: (1) buried assumptions, (2) superficial remodeling, (3) simulation of the unknown future, and (4) specialized compartmentalization. We suggest that organizations can overcome these sources of algorithmic inertia through four corresponding practices: (1) exposing data and assumptions, (2) periodically redesigning algorithmic models and their broader organizational routines, (3) assuming that the model will break, and (4) building bridges between #datascientists and domain experts.

READING THE TECHNOLOGICAL SOCIETY TO UNDERSTAND THE MECHANIZATION OF VALUES AND ITS ONTOLOGICAL CONSEQUENCES

Dirk Lindebaum, Christine Moser, Mehreen Ashraf, and Vern L. Glaser

Academy of Management Review (2023). https://doi.org/10.5465/amr.2021.0159

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In this essay, we review Jacques Ellul’s book The Technological Society to highlight ‘technique’ – the book’s central phenomenon – and its theoretical relevance for organizational and institutional theorists. Technique is defined as “the totality of methods rationally arrived at and having absolute efficiency . . . in every field of human activity” in society (1964: xxv, italics added). More than simply ‘machine technology’, technique involves the rational pursuit of standardized means or practices for attaining predetermined results. What makes Ellul both unique and relevant for organizational and institutional theorists is his historical analysis delineating the characteristics of, and the processes through which, technique has evolved into an autonomic and agentic force. We build on and mobilize Ellul’s analysis to explore two aims in this essay. First, we aim to illuminate the process through which technique transforms values – a process we describe as the mechanization of values in organizations and institutions. Second, we identify the consequences of value mechanization for organizational scholarship.

ALGORITHMIC ROUTINES AND DYNAMIC INERTIA: How Organizations Avoid Adapting to Changes in the Environment

Omid Omidvar, Mehdi Safavi, and Vern L. Glaser

Journal of Management Studies (2023). https://doi.org/10.1111/joms.12819

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Organizations often fail to adequately respond to substantive changes in the environment, despite widespread implementation of algorithmic routines designed to enable dynamic adaptation. We develop a theory to explain this phenomenon based on an inductive, historical case study of the credit rating routine of Moody’s, an organization that failed to adapt to substantial changes in its environment leading up to the 2008 financial crisis. Our analysis of changes to the firm’s algorithmic credit rating routine reveals mechanisms whereby organizations dynamically produce inertia by taking actions that fail to produce significant change. Dynamic inertia occurs through bounded retheorization of the algorithmic model, sedimentation of assumptions about inputs to the algorithmic model, simulation of the unknown future, and specialized compartmentalization. We enable a better understanding of organizational inertia as a sociomaterial phenomenon by theorizing how—despite using algorithmic routines to improve organizational agility—organizations dynamically produce inertia, with potentially serious adverse consequences.

WHEN ALGORITHMS RULE, VALUES CAN WITHER

Dirk Lindebaum, Vern L. Glaser, Christine Moser, and Mehreen Ashraf

MIT Sloan Management Review (2022). https://sloanreview.mit.edu/article/when-algorithms-rule-values-can-wither/

When organizations integrate algorithms into business processes, it is tacitly agreed that everything must be measured, quantified, standardized, and rationalized so it is ready for computation. This induces a process that we call the mechanization of values, in which everything is forced into a quantifiable straitjacket that limits consideration of the full spectrum of human values. This process has a potentially devastating side effect: rationality as preferred conduct and efficiency as preferred end taking over all other values, becoming ultimate values in and of themselves. Organizations can strategically mitigate this risk: (1) beware of proxies and scaling effects, (2) strategically insert human interventions into algorithmic decision-making, and (3) create evaluative systems that take multiple values into account.

DESIGNING LEGITIMACY: Expanding the Scope of Cultural Entrepreneurship

Vern L. Glaser and Michael Lounsbury

Journal of Business Venturing Design (2021). https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jbvd.2022.100007

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While the cultural entrepreneurship literature has shown how the stories entrepreneurs tell about their ventures help them attain legitimacy and acquire resources, we still know very little about how entrepreneurs develop their stories or how they change over time. In this paper, we draw upon Donald Schön’s research in design studies to conceptualize a novel approach to understanding the dynamics of entrepreneurial stories and to provide a bridge between the cultural entrepreneurship and design literatures. While the design perspective in entrepreneurship research has tended to neglect the role of wider sociocultural processes related to legitimacy, we highlight three insights from Schön’s research—iterative prototyping, design worlds, and the artistry of design—that scholars can leverage to cultivate a unique perspective on the entrepreneurial pursuit of legitimacy. We then provide an illustrative example that fleshes out how a design approach may fruitfully guide the study of cultural entrepreneurship processes. Finally, we conclude with a discussion of how a designing legitimacy perspective might seed a research agenda that promises to enhance our understanding of frame resonance and the effectiveness of stories, pivoting, and the construction of entrepreneurial possibilities.

THE BIOGRAPHY OF AN ALGORITHM: Performing Algorithmic Technologies in Organizations

Vern L. Glaser, Neil Pollock, and Luciana D’Adderio

Organization Theory 2021. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/26317877211004609

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Algorithms are ubiquitous in modern organizations. Typically, researchers have viewed algorithms as self-contained computational tools that either magnify organizational capabilities or generate unintended negative consequences. To overcome this limited understanding of algorithms as stable entities, we propose two moves. The first entails building on a performative perspective to theorize algorithms as entangled, relational, emergent, and nested assemblages that use theories—and the sociomaterial networks they invoke—to automate decisions, enact roles and expertise, and perform calculations. The second move entails building on our dynamic perspective on algorithms to theorize how algorithms evolve as they move across contexts and over time. To this end, we introduce a biographical perspective on algorithms which traces their evolution by focusing on key “biographical moments.” We conclude by discussing how our performativity-inspired biographical perspective on algorithms can help management and organization scholars better understand organizational decision-making, the spread of technologies and their logics, and the dynamics of practices and routines.

GOAL-BASED CATEGORIZATION: Dynamic Classification in the Display Advertising Industry

Vern L. Glaser, Mariam Krikorian-Atkinson, and Peer C. Fiss

Organization Studies 2020. https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/0170840619883368

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Goal-based categories have recently emerged as an alternative perspective to the dominant account of prototypical market categories. However, key questions remain regarding the mechanisms that would enable stable market exchanges to form around ad hoc and idiosyncratic goal-based categories. Thus, we sought to answer the following question: How can goal-based categorization enable stable market transactions? Through an inductive study drawing on industry discourse, participant observation, and interview data from the online advertising industry, we describe the category infrastructure that enables buyers and sellers to engage in market exchanges using goal-based categorization. Three mechanisms are integral to goal-based categorization in market exchanges: dimensioning (establishing a possibility space in which valuation can take place through the identification, addition, and/or deletion of product features), scoping (selecting particular features in the possibility space), and bracketing (excluding certain actors from participating in market transactions). Moreover, the fundamental principle of valuation in goal-based categorization is goal-based attribution, which involves iteratively adding and deleting features to accommodate evolving goals. Our findings suggest novel directions for work on goal-based categorization as an important element of valuation in modern markets.

PERFORMING THEORIES, TRANSFORMING ORGANIZATIONS: A Reply to Marti and Gond

Luciana D’Adderio, Vern L. Glaser, and Neil Pollock

Academy of Management Review 2019. https://journals.aom.org/doi/abs/10.5465/amr.2018.0378

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Marti and Gond (2018) have recently attempted to extend our understanding of how theories shape social reality by developing a process model of performativity and by articulating the boundary conditions that delimit that process. While we laud Marti and Gond's attempt to develop an analytical template to study the effectiveness and influence of theories, and fully share their overarching sentiment about the substantial potential for this kind of theorizing effort, we believe there are two fundamental flaws in their framework. First, Marti and Gond conceptualize a theory as an objectified, standalone entity. Second, they characterize the effects of a theory in terms of a linear, sequential process. In contrast to this view, we conceptualize a theory as inherently relational (i.e., they must be considered in conjunction with actors, artifacts, practices, and other theories) and characterize the effects of a theory in terms of dynamic, non-linear processes. We believe that conceptualizing theories relationally and characterizing the effects of theories dynamically enhances the generative potential of performativity for management research.

TOPIC MODELS IN MANAGEMENT RESEARCH: Rendering New Theory from Textual Data

Timothy Hannigan, Richard F. J. Haans, Keyvan Vakili, Hovig Tchalian, Vern L. Glaser, Milo Wang, Sarah Kaplan, and P. Devereaux Jennings

Academy of Management Annals 2019. https://journals.aom.org/doi/10.5465/annals.2017.0099

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Increasingly, management researchers are using topic modeling, a new method borrowed from computer science, to reveal phenomenon-based constructs and grounded conceptual relationships in textual data. By conceptualizing topic modeling as the process of rendering constructs and conceptual relationships from textual data, we demonstrate how this new method can advance management scholarship without turning topic modeling into a black box of complex computer-driven algorithms. We begin by comparing features of topic modeling to related techniques (content analysis, grounded theorizing, and natural language processing). We then walk through the steps of rendering with topic modeling and apply rendering to management articles that draw on topic modeling. Doing so enables us to identify and discuss how topic modeling has advanced management theory in five areas: detecting novelty and emergence, developing inductive classification systems, understanding online audiences and products, analyzing frames and social movements, and understanding cultural dynamics. We conclude with a review of new topic modeling trends and revisit the role of researcher interpretation in a world of computer-driven textual analysis.

FINDING THEORY-METHOD FIT: A Comparison of Three Approaches to Qualitative Theory Building

Joel Gehman, Vern L. Glaser, Kathy Eisenhardt, Denny Gioia, Ann Langley and Kevin Corley

Journal of Management Inquiry 2018. http://journals.sagepub.com/doi/abs/10.1177/1056492617706029

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This article, together with a companion video, provides a synthesized summary of a Showcase Symposium held at the 2016 Academy of Management Annual Meeting in which prominent scholars—Denny Gioia, Kathy Eisenhardt, Ann Langley, and Kevin Corley—discussed different approaches to theory buil[ding with qualitative research. Our goal for the symposium was to increase management scholars' sensitivity to the importance of theory-method "fit" in qualitative research. We have integrated the panelists' prepared remarks and interactive discussion into three sections: an introduction by each scholar, who articulates their own approach to qualitative research; their personal reflections on the similarities and differences between approaches to qualitative research; and answers to general questions posed by the audience during the symposium. We conclude by summarizing insights gleaned from the symposium about important distinctions among these three qualitative research approaches and their appropriate usages.

DESIGN PERFORMANCES: How Organizations Inscribe Artifacts to Change Routines

Vern L. Glaser

Academy of Management Journal 2017. http://amj.aom.org/content/60/6/2126.abstract

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Organizations often use artifacts to accomplish strategic objectives. Existing research conceptualizes artifacts as either tools deployed by designers to realize strategic goals or as objects used by skillful actors in repetitive, ongoing routine performances. In this paper, I explore how organizations strategically design artifacts to change routines by analyzing the actions associated with designing performances. I study this phenomenon by conducting an inductive, ethnographic study that investigates how a law enforcement agency uses a game theoretic artifact to modify its patrolling routine. I theorize that an organization uses a series of iterative designing performances to materialize an artifact by articulating action scripts and parameterizing knowledge. In doing so, the organization enacts three inscribing practices: reflecting on assumptions, distributing agency, and appraising outcomes. These inscribing practices integrally shape the form and function of a materialized artifact and also influence organizational actors’ understandings of existing routines. By empirically studying the practices organizations use to design artifacts to change routines, I introduce theoretical insights that reveal the generativity of artifacts and develop a more dynamic account of the performativity of artifacts.

MAKING SNOWFLAKES LIKE STOCKS: Stretching, Bending, and Positioning to Make Financial Market Analogies Work in Online Advertising

Vern L. Glaser, Peer Fiss, and Mark Kennedy

Organization Science 2016. http://pubsonline.informs.org/doi/abs/10.1287/orsc.2016.1069.

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Analogies to financial markets have proven powerful in establishing novel or potentially controversial business concepts, even in  contexts that deviate significantly from financial markets. This phenomenon challenges theory that suggests analogies work best when elements from a source and target domain map closely to each other. To develop a theory that explains how organizations make initially imperfect analogies "work," we use a case study of online advertising exchanges, a market-inspired model for buying and selling online advertising space. We find that as organizations stretch an initially misfitting exchange analogy from financial markets to online advertising, they iteratively bend their activities in superficial, structural, and generative ways to match the analogy and position themselves for advantage in the new space being created. Whereas prior studies emphasize shared cognition about familiar domains as the reason why analogies work, our study offers a dynamic account in which stretching, bending, and positioning combine to not only establish the financial market analogy but also subtly change the understanding of markets.

BOOK CHAPTERS

THE ARTIFACTS OF ENTREPRENEURIAL PRACTICE

Henrik Berglund and Vern L. Glaser

In the Research Handbook on Entrepreneurship as Practice, Neil Thompson, Oral Byrne, Bruce Teague, and Anna Jenkins (ed.) (2022).

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In this chapter we set out to complement the entrepreneurship as practice perspective by proposing a conceptualization of its central artifacts, such as business models, pitches, and prototypes. Having defined as entrepreneurial those artifacts that serve to instantiate an abstract opportunity in a way that supports its further development, we discuss entrepreneurial artifacts in terms of three broad categories: abstract, material, and narrative. Thereafter we point to some themes for further development before concluding with implications for practice (and practice theory) of entrepreneurship.

ALGORITHMS AND ROUTINE DYNAMICS

Vern L. Glaser, Rodrigo Valadao, and Timothy R. Hannigan

In the Cambridge Handbook of Routine Dynamics, Luciana D’Adderio, Katharina Dittrich, Martha S. Feldman, Brian Pentland, Claus Rerup, and David Seidl (ed.) (2021). https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108993340.027

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Organizations increasingly rely upon algorithms to change their routines—with positive, negative, or messy outcomes. In this chapter, we argue that conceptualizing algorithms as an integral part of an assemblage provides scholars with the ability to generate novel theories about how algorithms influence routine dynamics. First, we review existing research that shows how algorithms operate as an actant making decisions; encode the intentions of designers; are entangled in broader assemblages of theories, artifacts, actors, and practices; and generate performative effects. Second, we elucidate five analytical approaches that can help management scholars to identify new connections between routine assemblages, their elements, and organizational outcomes. Finally, we outline directions for future research to explore how studying algorithms can advance our understanding of routine dynamics and how a routine dynamics perspective can contribute to the understanding of algorithms in strategy and organizational theory more broadly.

DESIGN AND ROUTINE DYNAMICS

Frithjof Wegener and Vern L. Glaser

In the Cambridge Handbook of Routine Dynamics, Luciana D’Adderio, Katharina Dittrich, Martha S. Feldman, Brian Pentland, Claus Rerup, and David Seidl (ed.) (2021). https://doi.org/10.1017/9781108993340.026

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Organizational actors spend a tremendous amount of time and energy trying to intentionally change their routines. We conceptualize these intentional changes as routine design—intentional efforts to change one or more aspects of a routine to create a preferred situation. We review existing routines research on intentional change by showing how different perspectives on routines have generated different insights about the relationship between intentional change and design. We highlight a cognitive perspective, a practice perspective, and an ontological process perspective on routine design. We then draw on two perspectives inspired by design studies. Simon’s scientific perspective on design suggests that routines scholars study the effects and implications of designing artifacts. Schön’s reflective practice perspective on design suggests that routines scholars can examine how actors set the problem, engage in (re)framing, and in reflection-in-action. These design studies perspectives offer routines scholars a better understanding of efforts to intentionally change routines. Based on these insights from design studies, we develop a future research agenda for routine design.

INTRODUCTION TO MACROFOUNDATIONS: EXPLORING THE INSTITUTIONALLY SITUATED NATURE OF ACTIVITY

Christopher W.J. Steele, Timothy R. Hannigan, Vern L. Glaser, Madeline Toubiana, and Joel Gehman

In Christopher W.J. Steele, Timothy R. Hannigan, Vern L. Glaser, Madeline Toubiana, and Joel Gehman (ed.) Macrofoundations: Exploring the Institutionally Situated Nature of Activity, Research in the Sociology of Organizations (2020). https://www.emerald.com/insight/content/doi/10.1108/S0733-558X20200000068017

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An introduction to our volume on the Macrofoundations of institutions. This volume of Research in the Sociology of Organizations explores the institutional macrofoundations of action, providing an array of insights into the constitutive and contextualizing powers of institutions, and an agenda for further exploration of these themes.

QUALITATIVE RESEARCH IN FAMILY BUSINESS: Methodological Insights to Leverage Inspiration, Avoid Data Asphyxiation, and Develop Robust Theory

Evelyn Micelotta, Vern L. Glaser, and Gabrielle Dorian

In Alfredo De Massis and Nadine Kammerlander (ed.), Handbook of Qualitative Research Methods For Family Business (2020). https://www.elgaronline.com/view/edcoll/9781788116442/9781788116442.00009.xml

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In this chapter, we echo prior calls for a more pervasive and varied use of qualitative methodologies in family business research. We start with an overview of current empirical qualitative work in the family business domain in order to understand the methodological preferences of family business scholars and the methods they have gravitated towards. Having established the key difference between methods and methodologies and the importance of linking analytical approaches to the building of theory, we discuss three “exemplars” of qualitative methodologies in the general management literature. The final section of the chapter elaborates on opportunities for deeper engagement with these methodologies in the family business domain and suggestions for enriching the qualitative toolkit of family business research.

PRESENTING FINDINGS FROM QUALITATIVE RESEARCH: One Size Does Not Fit All

Trish Reay, Asma Zafar, Pedro Monteiro, and Vern L. Glaser

In Tammar B. Zilber, John M. Amis, Johanna Mair (ed.), The Production of Managerial Knowledge and Organizational Theory: New Approaches to Writing, Producing and Consuming Theory, Research in the Sociology of Organizations (2019). https://www-emerald-com.login.ezproxy.library.ualberta.ca/insight/content/doi/10.1108/S0733-558X20190000059011/full/html

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In this chapter, we explore the state of our field in terms of ways to present qualitative findings. We analyze all articles based on qualitative research methods published in the Academy of Management Journal from 2010 to 2017 and supplement this by informally surveying colleagues about their ‘favorite’ qualitative authors. As a result, we identify five ways of presenting qualitative findings in research articles. We suggest that each approach has advantages as well as limitations, and that the type of data and theorizing is an important consideration in determining the most appropriate approach for the presentation of findings. We hope that by identifying these approaches, we enrich the way authors, reviewers and editors approach the presentation of qualitative findings.

“NAVIGATION TECHNIQUES”: How Ordinary Participants Orient Themselves in Scrambled Institutions

Nina Eliasoph, Jade Lo, and Vern L. Glaser

In Patrick Haack, Jost Sieweke, Lauri Wessel (ed.), Microfoundations, Research in Sociology of Organizations (2019). https://www-emerald-com.login.ezproxy.library.ualberta.ca/insight/content/doi/10.1108/S0733-558X2019000065B011/full/html

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In organizations that have to meet demands from multiple sponsors, and that mix missions from different spheres, such as “civic,” “market,” “family,” how do participants orient themselves, so they can interact appropriately? Do participants’ practical navigation techniques have unintended consequences? To address these two questions, we draw on an ethnography of US youth programs whose sponsors required multiple, conflicting logics, speed, and precise documentation. We develop a concept, navigation techniques: participants’ shared unspoken methods of orienting themselves and appearing to meet demands from multiple logics, in institutionally complex projects that require frequent documentation. These techniques’ often have unintended consequences.

INSTITUTIONAL FRAME SWITCHING: How Institutional Logics Shape Individual Action

Vern L. Glaser, Nathanael Fast, Derek Harmon, and Sandy Green

In Joel Gehman, Michael Lounsbury, Royston Greenwood (ed.), How Institutions Matter! Research in the Sociology of Organizations (2016). http://www.emeraldinsight.com/doi/full/10.1108/S0733-558X201600048A001

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Although scholars increasingly use institutional logics to explain macro-level phenomena, we still know little about the micro-level psychological mechanisms by which institutional logics shape individual action. In this paper, we propose that individuals internalize institutional logics as an associative network of schemas that shapes individual actions through a process we call institutional frame switching. Specifically, we conduct two novel experiments that demonstrate how one particularly important schema associated with institutional logics—the implicit theory—can drive individual action. This work further develops the psychological underpinnings of the institutional logics perspective by connecting macro-level cultural understandings with micro-level situational behavior. 

PERSONAL

Prior to entering academia, I gained experience in sales, customer service, operations management, business development, merger integration, and management consulting. In 2005, I founded Red Hill Advisors, a niche consulting firm which provides management consulting and software development services for medium-sized businesses in a variety of industries. Products and services offered by Red Hill include the Red Hill Enterprise Strategic Insight System, Organizational Assessments and Restructurings, Process Improvement Initiatives, Strategic Planning, and Customized Financial Modeling. Additionally, I co-founded Red Hill Technology Solutions, a joint venture software company that utilizes dashboarding technology and mobile devices to provide real-time Business Intelligence solutions for the construction materials industry.

In addition to consulting experience, I have worked in the areas of finance, operations, sales, customer service, and maintenance. I have held positions including being the Controller for Southdown, Inc.'s concrete and aggregates group and the Production Manager for Cemex, Inc.'s Southern California ready-mixed concrete operations. Previously, I worked as a business analyst for ARCO Products Company's Los Angeles Refinery.

I am a graduate of the University of California at Los Angeles (BA, Economics), Duke University's Fuqua School of Business (MBA), and the University of Southern California (PhD).