Mary Ann Glynn

Understanding the bond of identification: An investigation of its correlates among art museum members.

Identification is defined as the “perceived oneness with or belongingness to an organization” of which the person is a member. The authors propose that customers, in their role as members, identify...

Making Sense with Institutions: Context, Thought and Action in Karl Weick’s Theory

Karl Weick’s sensemaking perspective has proven to be a central influence on process theories of organizing. Yet, one persistent criticism levelled at his work has been a neglect of the role of larger social and historical contexts in sensemaking. We address this critique by showing how institutional context is a necessary part of sensemaking. We propose that there are salient but unexplored connections between the institutional and sensemaking perspectives. We explain how three specific mechanisms—priming, editing and triggering—bring institutional context into processes of sensemaking, beyond a more conventional notion of internalized cognitive constraint. Our contribution seeks to be forward-looking as much as reflective, addressing a critique of one of Karl Weick’s key theoretical contributions and offering amendments that extend its reach.

INSTITUTIONALIZING IDENTITY: SYMBOLIC ISOMORPHISM AND ORGANIZATIONAL NAMES

An organizations identity, symbolized by its corporate name, is rooted in institutional fields. We advance the construct of symbolic isomorphism, or the resemblance of an organizations symbolic a...

Guiding Organizational Identity Through Aged Adolescence

In this article, the authors reflect on the past two decades of research on organizational identity, looking to its history and to its future. They do not provide a review of the literature, nor do they promote a particular perspective on the concept. Instead, they advocate pluralism in studying organizational identity while encouraging clarity and transparency in the articulation of definitions and core theoretical suppositions. Believing there is no one best approach to the study of organizational identity, their intent is to establish a reference point that can orient future work on organizational identity. They focus on three questions they feel are critical: What is the nomological net that embeds organizational identity? Is organizational identity “real” (or simply metaphoric)? and How do we define and conceptualize organizational identity? Last, they try to anticipate organizational identity issues on the horizon to suggest future directions for theory and research.

Creativity and technological learning: the roles of organization architecture and crisis in large-scale projects

Abstract Creativity increasingly takes place in organizational settings best described as large-scale, long-time duration projects. Such projects, directed at the development of complex products such as aircraft, autos and computers, are characterized by high levels of complexity including ambiguity as to the ultimate outcome and design of the product. In developing these types of products, firms design organizational structures that are composed of many multi-functional teams, each responsible for the design of some sub-system of the overall project. Through a process of inductive theory building based on a case analysis of one such organization, we propose that creativity is affected by multiple levels of interdependence. We find that even the best attempts at developing an organizational architecture to handle such complexity are never complete and that periodically crises arise during the design process. These crises are significant events where creativity occurs and new technical knowledge is generated, allowing the organization to realize its project objectives. Although the case analysis centers on the relation of context to creativity, we argue that creativity leads to technological learning, which we define as a form of organizational learning.

Effects of work task cues and play task cues on information processing, judgment, and motivation.

How task cues affect cognition, attitudes, and behavior was explored in this laboratory study with 82 master of business administration students. Linguistic analysis of responses to the same puzzle task, cued as either work or play, revealed that task cues influenced how information was perceived and was used to form judgments and to shape behavioral responses. Ss performing work tasks attended more to information about the quantity of their performance and made more streamlined, goal-directed responses. Ss performing play tasks attended more to information about the quality of their performance; made more elaborated, image-laden responses; and were more intrinsically motivated. Links among task cues, cognitive processes, and performance were explicated through path analysis. Task cues affected performance outcomes indirectly by instantiating associated cognitive orientations: a means orientation in play and an ends orientation in work.

Refining the Nomological Net of the Adult Playfulness Scale: Personality, Motivational, and Attitudinal Correlates for Highly Intelligent Adults

This study extends the nomological net of the 1992 Adult Playfulness Scale of Glynn and Webster by examining concurrent validity using a sample of 550 highly intelligent adults. Playfulness correlated positively with innovative attitudes, intrinsic motivational orientation, and negatively with personal orderliness. Playfulness did not correlate with gender or social desirability and had a low correlation with age. These findings extend the validity of the scale and suggest its applicability for different subgroups of employees in the workplace.

The Many Faces of Culture: Making Sense of 30 Years of Research on Culture in Organization Studies

AbstractThe study of culture is on the rise; still, this popularity comes with the cost of increasing fragmentation, as definitions and conceptualizations proliferate. The objectives of this review are twofold: first, we set out to disentangle the multiple conceptual strands used to describe culture, and second, we examine how culture relates to other key constructs, particularly identity, institutions, and practices. To start, we build from extant work in sociology to identify and discuss five prominent ways in which culture has been theorized in the management literature—values, stories, frames, toolkits, and categories—and we organize these into a framework that hinges on values and toolkits as anchors. Second, we examine the relationship between culture and theorizations of identity, institutions, and practices in organization studies. We focus on these three dimensions because their vicinity with culture often leads to conceptual slippage, as debates in the extant literature document. Finally, we ide...

Uncovering Mechanisms of Theory Development in an Academic Field: Lessons from Leadership Research

AbstractA long‐standing debate in organization studies has centered on the tension between paradigmatic consensus and theoretical pluralism in an academic field, but little attention has been paid to the underlying processes of field development that account for this. Using a mechanisms‐based approach, we examined the field of leadership over the last 50 years (1957–2007) focusing on: scholarly consensus on theory and methods; models and variables; and examinations of the state of the field. In spite of considerable advances in research, we find a general lack of commensuration or standards by which theories can be compared or synthesized; an emphasis on leaders’ effects on performance rather than meaning‐making or value infusion; and sparse instances of taking stock of the overall field. We conclude by proposing three research strategies for the future—theoretical compartmentalization, theoretical integration, and theoretical novelty—and advocating greater methodological variety.

Golfing Alone? Corporations, Elites, and Nonprofit Growth in 100 American Communities

We examine the link between corporations and community by showing how corporate density interacts with the local social and cultural infrastructure to affect the growth and decline of the number of local nonprofits between 1987 and 2002. We focus on two subpopulations of nonprofits in 100 American cities: 1 elite-oriented cultural and educational institutions and 2 social welfare-oriented organizations. We find that corporate density enhances the growth of both types of nonprofits, as does location in the northeast United States and a long-established business community, but corporate density is especially potent for the growth of elite-oriented nonprofits—but not social welfare nonprofits—when local networks and cultural norms support elite mobilization. We conclude that despite globalizing trends, the local geographic community continues to be an important unit of analysis for unpacking multisector organizational processes among corporations and nonprofits.