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Online communities (OCs) have become an increasingly prevalent way for organizations to bring people together to collaborate and create value. However, despite the abundance of extant literature, many studies still point to the lack of long-term sustainability of OCs. We contend that communities become dormant or obsolete over time because of manifestations of ineffectiveness a state of the community that hinders the attainment of individual and collective desired outcomes. While ineffectiveness in OCs is common, it is less apparent why such ineffectiveness persists. Two knowledge gaps are particularly significant here. First, while the multilevel nature of OCs is acknowledged, corresponding difficulties in aligning individual and collective interests and behaviors have often been neglected in past studies. Second, rare longitudinal studies have revealed that community members respond to ineffectiveness with various coping behaviors. However, the impact of these coping behaviors may not turn out as desired. Consequently, we investigate the persistence of ineffectiveness from the perspective of multilevel and coping effects, addressing the following research question: How and why does ineffectiveness persist in online communities? Our critical realist case study offers a three-step explanatory framework: (1) underlying multilevel tensions in the community contribute to usage ineffectiveness (i.e., members are unable to use the OC effectively); (2) misguided coping behaviors contribute to ineffective adaptation (i.e., members are unable to cope with not being able to use the OC effectively); and (3) ineffectiveness persists due to the interaction between usage and adaptation ineffectiveness.

In this commentary, we engage with the study by Carney, El Ghoul, Guedhami, Lu and Wang, titled “Political corporate social responsibility: The role of deliberative capacity.” Their study provides empirical support for earlier claims that deliberative capacity – the capacity of political institutions to enable diverse stakeholders to collectively assemble and voice their opinions – is an important building block to understanding the prominence or lack thereof of corporate social responsibility (CSR) in a country. In so doing, Carney and co-authors contribute to the so-called “Political CSR” or PCSR literature. Yet, their study carries two important shortcomings that can be addressed to bring PCSR research forward in an IB context. First, they ignore a fundamental tenet of the PCSR literature, namely the existence of global governance gaps requiring private businesses to actively engage in political activity. Second, and related to the first, their model and associated variables are misspecified, with independent and dependent variables that are at least partially overlapping. Departing from these shortcomings, we attempt to engage constructively with their work in the interest of advancing the conversation in IB about private sector involvement in democratic will formation to achieve social and environmental responsibility.

Previous studies on the impact of grade retention on academic self-concept suffer from inconclusive findings. There is no consensus if retention yields long-term benefits that could offset its opportunity costs and, if so, under what conditions. Therefore, this article examines whether grade retention decreases academic self-concept and whether this relationship is mediated by sense of belonging. Moreover, we aim to contextualise retention research by accounting for schools' retention composition. Based on reference group theory, the effect of grade retention composition on academic self-concept is expected to be twofold. Normative reference grouping leads to the assumption that students in high retention composition schools will exhibit lower levels of academic self-concept, because retainees' values are more likely to spread across all students within the same school. Comparative reference grouping might lead to a moderation effect of retention composition on the relationship between grade retention and academic self-concept. Multilevel analyses on International Study of City Youth data, consisting of 2,354 students in 30 secondary schools in Ghent (Flanders), revealed a negative association between grade retention and academic self-concept, which was mediated by sense of belonging. Students in high retention composition schools had a significantly lower academic self-concept. The impact of being retained on academic self-concept is not affected by the number of retainees within a given context. Implications are discussed.

Building on recent efforts to bring a socio-political perspective to social capital research, we develop and test a multilevel framework that explains why middle managers who occupy brokerage positions differ in their ability and willingness to engage in entrepreneurial behavior. More specifically, we provide a contextualized understanding of the links among middle managers' brokerage, their political-support ties, and their personal initiative. Results derived from data on 383 middle managers and 72 top managers in 34 business units indicate that political-support ties with top managers strengthen the relationship between middle managers’ brokerage and personal initiative. However, this positive effect depends on the social capital resources available in the focal business unit. It is attenuated in business units with a supportive and trusting social context and amplified in business units with high levels of internal connectedness. By uncovering these incompatibilities and complementarities, our study demonstrates the value of accounting for different social capital configurations and the interplay of their inherent social capital resources when examining the effects of brokerage on corporate entrepreneurship.

Population change and environmental degradation have become two of the most pressing issues for sustainable development in the contemporary world, while the effect of population aging on pro-environmental behavior remains controversial. In this paper, we examine the effects of individual and population aging on pro-environmental behavior through multilevel analyses of cross-national data from 31 countries. Hierarchical linear models with random intercepts are employed to analyze the data. The findings reveal a positive relationship between aging and pro-environmental behavior. At the individual level, older people are more likely to participate in environmental behavior (b = 0.052, p &lt, 0.001), and at the national level, living in a country with a greater share of older persons encourages individuals to behave sustainably (b = 0.023, p &lt, 0.01). We also found that the elderly are more environmentally active in an aging society. The findings imply that the longevity of human beings may offer opportunities for the improvement of the natural environment.

Despite the rapid growth of organizational research on subjective time, the extant literature is fragmented due to a lack of conceptual clarification and integration of temporal constructs. To address this fragmentation, we synthesize temporal research from both Organizational Behavior (OB) and adjacent disciplines (i.e., Strategy, Entrepreneurship, and Organizational Theory), and introduce a framework that allocates temporal constructs according to their basic conceptual nature (trait-state) and level of analysis (individual-collective). We employed the Linguistic Inquiry and Word Count (LIWC) text analysis to determine the trait-state property of the constructs and a coding method to determine their level of analysis. This framework categorizes four generic types of subjective time: individual temporal disposition, individual temporal state, collective temporal state, and collective temporal disposition. We clarify the conceptualizations of the temporal constructs belonging to each of the four archetypes of subjective time and review their key findings in the organizational literature. Based on this integrative framework, we identify critical knowledge gaps in the current state of research and chart a future agenda with specific suggestions.

Research teams face complex leadership and coordination challenges. We propose shared authentic leadership (SAL) as a timely approach to addressing these challenges. Drawing from authentic and functional leadership theories, we posit a multiple mediation model that suggests three mechanisms whereby SAL influences team effectiveness: shared mental models (SMM), team trust, and team coordination. To test our hypotheses, we collected survey data on leadership and teamwork within 142 research teams that recently published an article in a peer-reviewed management journal. The results indicate team coordination represents the primary mediating mechanism accounting for the relationship between SAL and research team effectiveness. While teams with high trust and SMM felt more successful and were more satisfied, they were less successful in publishing in high-impact journals. We also found the four SAL dimensions (i.e., self-awareness, relational transparency, balanced processing, and internalized moral perspective) to associate differently with team effectiveness.

PurposeThe purpose of this paper is to examine and reinterpret information ecology in the context of the changing environment of services, which has been strongly affected by digitalisation and increasing citizen engagement. Here, information ecology refers to the interaction and co-evolution of technologies, human beings and the social environment.Design/methodology/approachThe data consist of 25 thematic interviews conducted in a public Finnish organisation responsible for organising welfare services, and in its collaborating organisations. The interviews were analysed qualitatively. The analytical framework is based on Nardi and O'Day's five components of information ecology: system, diversity, co-evolution, keystone species and locality.FindingsThe analysis shows that these basic components still exist in the digitalisation era, but that they should be interpreted and highlighted differently, for example, stressing the openness of the information system instead of closed systems, as well as emphasising the increasing meaning of diversity amongst digitalisation, and the dynamic co-evolution between the elements of the system. New capabilities, such as the ability to combine various kinds of information and knowledge, are needed in this adaptation.Research limitations/implicationsThe study illustrates a wider, updated information-ecology concept with the help of empirical research. Technology affects care organisations' information ecologies in numerous – often invisible – ways, which this study brings into light.Originality/valueSo far, information-ecology research has overlooked social and healthcare, but this study provides findings concerning this societally important sector.

This article 1 , 2 has two aligned aims: (i) to espouse the value of a strategic research orientation for the Information Systems Discipline; and (ii) to facilitate such a strategic orientation by recognising the value of programmatic research and promoting the publication of such work. It commences from the viewpoint that Information Systems (IS) research benefits from being strategic at every level, from individual researcher, to research program, to research discipline and beyond. It particularly advocates for more coordinated programs of research emphasising real-world impact, while recognising that vibrant, individual-driven and small-team research within broad areas of promise, is expected to continue forming the core of the IS research ecosystem. Thus, the overarching aim is the amplification of strategic thinking in IS research – the further leveraging of an orientation natural to the JSIS community, with emphasis on research programs as a main strategic lever, and further considering how JSIS can be instrumental in this aim.

To compete successfully in today's business environment, which is fraught with very heterogeneous and uncertain customer demands, manufacturing organizations are increasingly aiming to develop their mass customization capability (MCC), defined as the ability to fulfill each customer's idiosyncratic needs without considerable trade-offs in cost, delivery, and quality. The literature has overlooked the role of individual competencies (ICs) in the development of MCC, even though companies are paying growing attention to the challenge of developing their employees' competencies. The present study was aimed at narrowing this gap by using a well-established method for conducting IC assessments - namely, the behavioral event interview - to investigate the ICs of an operations manager (OM), which is among the professional roles most affected by product customization, that enhance the MCC of the manufacturing organization for which the OM works. A multiple-case study was designed involving eight cases chosen according to literal and theoretical replication logic among the machinery manufacturers of one European country. From this sample, I collected multilevel data on the MCC of each organization and on the OMs' ICs. Five OM ICs - negotiation, information seeking, efficiency orientation, analytical/systems thinking, and pattern recognition - emerged from this study, and this thesis provides empirical evidence and logical explanations for the positive effects of these ICs on a manufacturing organization's MCC. This PhD thesis is the first research on MCC-enabling managerial competencies that relies on multilevel data, considering both an organization's MCC and its managers' ICs, rather than on practitioners' experiences and opinions. This study also has managerial implications, providing guidance for the human resources management practices of companies pursuing a mass customization strategy. This study could be replicated for other managerial roles as well as in other industries and countries.

The purpose of this methodological insight is to analyze the foundations of multilevel research, answering two main questions: why this methodological approach is important for management research and how to conduct a multilevel study. We examine why multilevel research is relevant, emphasizing its potential, opportunities and basic principles. Moreover, we point out the main theoretical, methodological and analytic aspects to be considered for an appropriate application of multilevel research. The paper refers throughout to the basic literature on multilevel research, reviewing conceptual, methodological and empirical works. This work has been funded by the Spanish Ministry of Economy and Competitiveness (Research Grant ECO2015-67310-P).

Based on the perspective of conservation of resources (COR) theory, this study adopts a multilevel approach to examine the influences of employees&rsquo, personal resources (i.e., work engagement and intrinsic motivation) and external resources (i.e., transformational leadership) on knowledge sharing. This study conducts a survey to explore the interrelationships among transformational leadership, work engagement, intrinsic motivation, and knowledge sharing. The sample includes 33 healthcare work groups consisting of 214 group members. The results show that an individual&rsquo, s personal and external resources are positive and benefit the promotion of knowledge sharing. As for personal resources, work engagement has a positive impact on knowledge sharing by increasing intrinsic motivation. Regarding external resources, transformational leadership acts as a facilitator for knowledge sharing. Specifically, the conditional indirect effects of work engagement on knowledge sharing through intrinsic motivation are more positive under high levels of transformational leadership, rather than low levels of transformational leadership. Based on the COR theory, this is the first study to argue that knowledge sharing could be considered as an active activity and that individuals could be eager to perform knowledge sharing when they possess significant personal and external resources. The results of this study provide new insights into knowledge sharing.

Far too often do management scholars resort to crude and often inappropriate measures of fundamental constructs in their research; an approach which calls in question the interpretation and validity of their findings. Scholars often legitimize poor choices in measurement with a lack of availability of better measures and/or that they are simply following existing research in adopting previously published measures without critically assessing the validity, appropriateness, and applicability of such measures in terms of the focal study. Motivated by a recent dialog in Journal of Business Research , this research note raises important questions about the use of proxies in management research and argues for greater care in operationalizing constructs with particular attention to matching levels of theory and measurement.

This paper sets out a typology for organizational ICT practice in order to derive a more holistic perspective of sociomateriality and its constituent elements (i.e. humans, objects, and practice). Seminal literature by Parsons and Bourdieu is combined with sociomateriality literature in order to offer insights into the factors that need to be investigated when conducting research into organizational ICT practice. The outlined typology is evaluated through an empirical case study of a connected health ICT project to show how the dimensions of the typology come together and contribute to a better understanding.

The hierarchical linear model approach to a two-level design is considered, some variables at the lower level having fixed and others having random regression coefficients. An approximation is derived to the covariance matrix of the estimators of the fixed regression coefficients (for variables at the lower and the higher level) under the assumption that the sample sizes at either level are large enough. This covariance matrix is expressed as a function of parameters occurring in the model. If a research planner can make a reasonable guess as to these parameters, this approximation can be used as a guide to the choice of sample sizes at either level.