Israel Drori

Transnational Entrepreneurship: An Emergent Field of Study

This article introduces the reader to the scope, boundaries, variation, and theoretical lenses of transnational entrepreneurship (TE) research. We discuss issues concerning why, how, and when individuals and/or organizations pursue new business ventures, often in far less attractive environments, while relying on abilities and opportunities stemming from the exploitation of resources, both social and economic, in more than one country. We compare TE with international entrepreneurs, ethnic entrepreneurs, and returnee entrepreneurs. TE is considered from several perspectives: agency, institutional, cultural, power relations, and social capital and networks. We summarize the articles presented in this special issue and outline an agenda for further research.

A Process Model of Internal and External Legitimacy

We report the results of a longitudinal case study depicting the relationship between internal and external legitimacy at Orion, an emergent creative professional firm. We address the following questions: How do different types of legitimacy emerge, and how do they interact to shape organizational evolution? Introducing a staged process model, we demonstrate that organizational legitimacy is a product of action, which is continually reproduced and reconstructed by members of an organization in concert with external legitimation activities. Internal and external legitimacy evolve through a process of emergence, validation, diffusion and consensus, sometimes recursively repeating the cycle when imbalances result in conflict and friction.

The Life Cycle of an Internet Firm: Scripts, Legitimacy, and Identity

We study, longitudinally and ethnographically, the construction of legitimacy and identity during the life cycle of an entrepreneurial Internet firm, from inception to death. We utilize organizational scripts to examine how social actors enact identity and legitimacy, maintaining that different scripts, both contested and consent–oriented, become the source of action for acquiring legitimacy and creating organizational identity. We show that scripts enable entrepreneurs and other social actors to invoke a set of interactions within and outside the organization. Scripts construct values and interests, form social bonding and consented actions, and eventually shape and reshape the individual and institutional contexts of identity and legitimacy. We found that the strategic action of organizational members in pursuing and enacting their preferred scripts depends on their position and role in the organization. We observed that the institutionalization of simultaneously competing scripts created a path–dependent process leading to organizational conflict and eventual failure.

Transnational and immigrant entrepreneurship in a globalized world

Transnational entrepreneurs are individuals who migrate from one country to another, concurrently maintaining business-related linkages with their countries of origin and their adopted countries and communities. Once thought of as contributing primarily to ethnic enterprise and small business, they are recognized now as playing a leading role around the world in important start-ups and high technology ventures. Transnational and Immigrant Entrepreneurship in a Globalized World brings together leading international scholars from a cross-disciplinary basis to examine the economic, social, regulatory, technological, and theoretical issues related to the impact of transnational entrepreneurs on business and economic development. Drawing on the work of French sociologist Pierre Bourdieu and other international perspectives, the scholars in this volume examine both theory and case studies to discuss how entrepreneurial activity relates to international business, economic development, and the institutional and regulatory implications of globalization.

Integrating organizational and human behavior perspectives on mergers and acquisitions: Looking inside the black box

This article presents a conceptual framework for investigating merger and acquisition (M&A) performance through a multistage and multilevel approach. First, human resource challenges during the integration process following a merger are explored to help explain the inconsistencies among empirical findings about the effects of cultural differences on M&A performance. It is proposed that in addition to culture clash, organizational identification with the merger has a direct effect on acquired management attitudes and behaviors, thereby influencing postmerger success. We also elaborate how organizational identity acts to moderate the effects of culture clash in M&As, thus explaining contradictory findings in the literature. To conclude, we discuss the implications of our work for future research and managerial practices.

Organizational Ingenuity: Concept, Processes and Strategies

In this introduction to the special issue we explore the main features of ‘organizational ingenuity’, defined as ‘the ability to create innovative solutions within structural constraints using limited resources and imaginative problem solving’. We begin by looking at the changing views of the importance of ingenuity for economic and social development. We next analyse the nature of ingenious solutions. This is followed by a discussion of structural, resource and temporal constraints that face problem solvers. We next turn our attention to creative problem solving under constraints. We contrast ‘induced’ and ‘autonomous’ problem solving. The first arises when external stakeholders or top managers impose tasks that define problems for the individuals and groups that must solve them; the second arises when these individuals and groups recognize and define the problems for themselves. We argue that in both induced and autonomous problem solving, individuals and groups that wish to act creatively confront two types of constraint. The first are ‘product constraints’ that define the features and functionalities that are necessary for a successful solution. The second are ‘process constraints’ that stand in the way of creative problem solving in a given organizational context. We argue that both types of constraints can lead to organizational ingenuity, but that dealing with process constraints is crucial for organizational ingenuity, and hence for sustaining organizational ingenuity more generally. We provide an overview summary of the articles in the special issue, and conclude with suggestions for future research.

Multiple legitimacy narratives and planned organizational change

This article explores the cultural narratives through which members of organizations define legitimacy during prolonged periods of change. We view legitimacy work as a cultural practice and interpretive process that takes the form of organizational narratives. We show how the shifting configurations of internal power relations shape both the choice and the meaning attached to the varied legitimacy narratives. We investigate the construction of legitimacy through a longitudinal case study based on participant observation of Gamma, a government Research and Development (R&D) organization, during a process of intense change. We provide theoretical insights into the construction and deconstruction of the legitimacy by analyzing the narratives in play during a process of planned change. We claim that legitimation narratives not only evolve in accordance with functional need or, in a sense, that older narratives give room to newer, more updated or relevant narratives, but also that multiple narratives are used by different organization actors alternately and interchangeably as part of internal contestation over legitimation of change.

One Out of Many? Boundary Negotiation and Identity Formation in Postmerger Integration

This research investigates how boundaries are utilized during the postmerger integration process to influence the postmerger identity of the firm. We suggest that the boundaries that define the structures, practices, and values of firms prior to a merger become reinforced, contested, or revised in the integration process, thus shaping the firm identity that emerges. In a field study of a series of four sequential mergers, we find that the boundary negotiation process acts as an engine for identity creation in postmerger integration. Our analysis of the process through which postmerger identity is created reveals two stages of identity creation. In the first stage, boundaries are negotiated to leverage and import certain practices and values of the premerger firms; in the second stage, these boundaries are blurred as managers build on the set of imported practices and values to impose further systems that define the postintegration firm. Our research contributes to the identity literature by drawing attention to the important role of boundaries and practices that define the identities of the merging firms. We show how these boundaries get repurposed to create an organization whose identity ultimately represents a departure from the premerger firms while it preserves the aspects of identity that allow members to uphold key values. We also contribute to the literature on postmerger integration by demonstrating the steps through which identity evolves by the staged demarcation and negotiation of boundaries, thus complementing previous treatments of merging firms as a set of fixed organizational attributes in merger contexts.

The linkages between cultural differences, psychological states, and performance in international mergers and acquisitions

A model focusing on the role of the individual in national and corporate culture clash situations, during post-merger integration, is presented. The theory of psychological contract is adapted to explain different individual expectations in domestic versus international mergers and acquisitions (M&As). It is proposed that expectations on the part of both parties to the merger can act to moderate the effects of culture clash in M&As on acquired management attitudes and behavior, and thereby influence post-merger turnover and integration success. Thus, the model explains the inconsistencies of empirical findings about the different effects of national versus corporate cultural differences on M&A performance. The implications of these ideas for research and practice are discussed.

Vision change in a governmental R&D organization : The pioneering legacy as an enduring element

The present research demonstrates how a defense R&D organization wishing to deal effectively with a changing reality developed a vision that accommodated somewhat contradictory sets of aspirations and goals: the old and nationalistic together with the new, economically motivated, and market oriented. The novelty of the claim made in this article rests on recognition of the role of vision in organizational survival and change. Whereas the respective dynamics have usually been portrayed in normative terms, guided by the assumption that vision is a prerequisite for change, the conceptual approach applied in this article challenges the one-sidedness of this view. This new perspective dictates the careful scrutiny of the circumstances under which vision might influence change in enabling as well as disabling ways.