Donal Crilly

Embracing Causal Complexity: The Emergence of a Neo-Configurational Perspective

Causal complexity has long been recognized as a ubiquitous feature underlying organizational phenomena, yet current theories and methodologies in management are for the most part not well-suited to its direct study. The introduction of the Qualitative Comparative Analysis (QCA) configurational approach has led to a reinvigoration of configurational theory that embraces causal complexity explicitly. We argue that the burgeoning research using QCA represents more than a novel methodology; it constitutes the emergence of a neo-configurational perspective to the study of management and organizations that enables a fine-grained conceptualization and empirical investigation of causal complexity through the logic of set theory. In this article, we identify four foundational elements that characterize this emerging neo-configurational perspective: (a) conceptualizing cases as set theoretic configurations, (b) calibrating cases’ memberships into sets, (c) viewing causality in terms of necessity and sufficiency relations between sets, and (d) conducting counterfactual analysis of unobserved configurations. We then present a comprehensive review of the use of QCA in management studies that aims to capture the evolution of the neo-configurational perspective among management scholars. We close with a discussion of a research agenda that can further this neo-configurational approach and thereby shift the attention of management research away from a focus on net effects and towards examining causal complexity.

Recasting Enterprise Strategy: Towards Stakeholder Research that Matters to General Managers

As well as specifying functional, business unit, and corporate levels of strategy, early strategy scholars delineated enterprise level strategy as the uppermost level of strategy. Enterprise strategy articulates how the firm engages with actors in its economic, social, and political environment to ensure long‐term corporate performance. As a growing body of evidence shows, heterogeneity in how firms identify, and engage with, their stakeholders can explain why some firms outperform their peers. However, my literature survey of more than three decades of published research reveals that enterprise strategy has stayed firmly in the shadows behind business and corporate strategy. Furthermore, many theories of firm–stakeholder relationships are normative (i.e. explain how firms should act) and do not inform strategy effectively. In this paper, I argue why enterprise strategy research is required as a cohesive body of work that connects with research in business and corporate strategy. I finish by proposing three research domains – strategic goals, organization design, and organization boundaries – that hold the potential to link stakeholder issues with mainstream concerns in strategy research and, thus, to revive a coherent research programme in enterprise level strategy.

The stakeholder enterprise: Caring for the community by attending to employees

A core issue in stakeholder theory is how firms can engender joint interests among competing stakeholders. We draw on theories of normative influence and reciprocity to identify how firms positively influence the relations between their internal and external stakeholders. We propose that firms can send credible corporate signals, such as philanthropy and sustainability reporting, to exert social influence on employees, but that employees’ own treatment by their firm and career prospects are also important in shaping their behavior toward the external community. We investigate these arguments in the context of Chinese firms’ donation behavior following the 2008 Sichuan earthquake. Empirical analysis shows that the credibility of corporate signals differs. Sustainability reporting that adheres to global standards has a direct bearing on employees’ behavior. In contrast, corporate giving by itself has no general influence on the willingness of employees to donate. However, firms that have either positive employee relations or have employees with superior career prospects and make donations to earthquake relief stimulate their employees to make their own donations too. In so doing, firms gain from the efforts of internal stakeholders to serve external stakeholders. We discuss the implications of our study for stakeholder theory and, in particular, the jointness of stakeholder interests.

Cognitive Scope of the Firm: Explaining Stakeholder Orientation From the Inside-Out

This dissertation abstract and the reflection commentary present the work of Dr. Donal Crilly. The dissertation addresses stakeholder orientation of the firm through an “inside-out” perspective. The dissertation abstract explains the research questions, setting, and methods. The reflection commentary discusses the author’s views of research process as a junior scholar.

Time, Space and Intertemporal Choice: Why Approaching the Future Makes for Short-Term Thinking

Strategists must sacrifice short-term returns to achieve sustainable competitive advantage. How does the subjective sense of time influence whether they do so or not? Their language offers an impor...

Using CSR to complement or substitute national institutions? the value of balancing firm attention

Whether you can “do well” by “doing good” could well depend on what “good” you are doing and where. Therefore, Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) can be considered an outcome of both institutional contexts and corporate agency, with a host of different CSR activities that a firm can focus on. In this paper, we situate a firm’s CSR activities in its local institutional context and study their combined effect on its financial performance. We theorize that there are two broad ways in which organizations can design their discretionary CSR activities. First, they may design their CSR activities to complement the dominant institutions of their local environment. Second, their CSR activities may substitute for the dominant institutions in their local environment. We use fsQCA to test which approach is financially rewarding, analysing a cross-national sample of firms spanning 2004- 2011. We find that high-performing firms substitute their local institutions by focusing CSR activities on areas that are neglected by dominant institutions. A substitutionary CSR strategy allows firms to balance their attention on a broader range of areas, thereby moving resources away from an area of diminishing marginal value and allowing them to differentiate themselves from competitors in attracting resources.