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In this article, we develop, and empirically test, a moderated mediation model of the effects of flexible leave on employees' organizational attachment. Drawing on a social exchange framework and signaling theory, we explore how the material and non‐material nature of exchange between the employer and employee shapes their relationship. First, we show that the relationship between the availability of flexible leave and organizational attachment is shaped by two competing mediators, perceived organizational support (POS) and perceived flexibility stigma. Second, we delineate between availability and use of the policy, to show how the effect of POS is enhanced and perceived flexibility stigma reduced, with use. Our findings demonstrate that the relationship between the availability of flexible leave and organizational attachment is complex, but is enhanced through use of flexible leave. We contribute toward HRM scholarship about the relationship between employees' experience of HR practices and their corresponding impact on employees' subsequent behavior. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article we strive to reconcile equivocal findings about the effects of top leader succession and prior leadership experience on postsuccession organizational performance. In doing so, we draw on insights from theories of human capital, learning, and asymmetric information to better understand the conditions under which leaders increase or decrease postsuccession performance. Employing a sample of 119 newly appointed leaders in the English Premier League (1996-2010), we find the following results. First, relating to the succession event, outside leaders that directly move between leadership positions are associated with higher postsuccession performance while the departure of a prior leader to a leadership position in another organization has a negative effect on postsuccession performance. Second, relating to prior leadership experience, leaders with domestic top leader experience are associated with lower postsuccession performance, while leaders with foreign top leader experience are associated with higher postsuccession performance. © 2015 Wiley Periodicals, Inc. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite growing interest in rhetorical analysis by management scholars, the study of enthymemes or arguments‐in‐use, arguably the mainstay of rhetoric, has been scarce. We argue that enthymeme analysis holds promise in enabling researchers to access agents' shared beliefs, in turn shedding light on organizational processes. We draw from two key studies of enthymeme analysis; one interpretivist and one objectivist, to propose a mixed methods approach that combines the situationally‐specific, grounded insights of the former, with the confirmation, population validity aspects of the latter. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We draw on the conservation of resources theory to examine whether self‐efficacy and resilience mediate the relationship between entrepreneurs' business network utilization and their subjective well‐being. Using socioemotional selectivity theory, we then examine the extent to which the mediating effects become stronger as entrepreneurs age. An analysis of data collected from 335 entrepreneurs in India reveals that business networks help entrepreneurs build resilience and self‐efficacy, which contribute to subjective well‐being. Furthermore, we find that the relationship between business network utilization and subjective well‐being strengthens as entrepreneurs age. Our findings attest to the importance of understanding how contextual resources in entrepreneurs' work environments influence their subjective well‐being by enhancing their personal psychological resources. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: Why are some new leaders dismissed more quickly than others? Adopting agency theory logic, the authors examine how different succession contexts shape boards’ information asymmetries about a potential candidate's competencies in the hiring process, which influences the propensity of making poor hiring decisions and hence the risk of new leader dismissal. Employing duration analysis on a sample of 164 newly appointed leaders in the English premier league (1996–2014), the authors find that the risk of new leader dismissal is: (i) greater when the predecessor leader's exit was initiated by them rather than by the board; (ii) greater when following a longer‐tenured predecessor; and (iii) lower for outside successions compared with inside successions. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract: In this paper we explore the effects of team‐specific human capital (TSHC) on performance. We do so by delineating between two dimensions of TSHC, relating to team members and the team manager, and then exploring how the two dimensions may interact in shaping performance. Employing a 10‐year panel of football teams from the English Premier League we find that team members’ TSHC has a positive and significant effect on team performance, which is positively moderated by managers’ TSHC. Our results attest to the importance of considering both the team member and team manager dimensions of TSHC, and how the performance effects of team members’ TSHC are shaped by managers’ TSHC. Our results stand in stark contrast to the dramatic reduction in managerial tenure that has characterized the English Premier League in recent years. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Professional hybrids are situated between managerial and professional groups, potentially enabling them to move between different organizational groups. Extant research assumes that professional hybrids undergo identity transition to overcome the conflicts associated with influencing two distinct organizational realms. However, how these identity conflicts are managed remains unclear. To explore how professional hybrids manage such identity conflicts we consider the experience of nurse hybrids. Drawing on the concept of liminality we argue that influence across multiple groups relies on the construction of a positive liminal space. In contrast, we demonstrate how nurse hybrids occupy a perverse liminal space, perpetuating identity conflict, preventing identity transition, and undermining their effectiveness as hybrids. Our work calls into question the reliance on professional hybrids as an organizational panacea for reform and develops our understanding of individual hybrids. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Intuition is a way of processing information that is largely unconscious, associative, fast and contextually dependent. As part of the growing cognition-oriented research agenda in the entrepreneurship field, the specific cognitive construct of intuition has attracted relatively little attention. The authors find this position surprising, particularly since some entrepreneurship scholars have described intuition as the seed of entrepreneurial activity. This review examines the small but rapidly growing literature at the intersection of intuition and entrepreneurship. In critically analysing this body of work, the authors reveal a number of areas that warrant further attention if scholars wish to enhance academic understanding of the role of intuition in the entrepreneurial process. From this review, the authors develop an agenda to help guide scholars of entrepreneurial cognition with a specific interest in intuition in their future research. In doing so, they address a gap in the entrepreneurial cognition literature, which currently lacks a clear view of the value of entrepreneurship research on intuition and of how it should be conducted. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we examine the institutionalization of a new organizational practice around third stream activities in UK higher education from 1994 to 2008. Employing a longitudinal research design, involving archival, survey and contemporary interview data, we show how a new organizational practice diffused through the use of discourse and metrics around commercialization but over time was threatened on pure economic criteria. In response to the threat we explore how actors worked to institutionalize the new practice, reshaping both discourse and metrics to ensure that they were robust so that they could align with the interests and values of major stakeholders. In addition, actors worked to align discourse and metrics, as any misalignment between the two would have undermined the institutionalization of the new organizational practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we reflect on two related questions. First, how have we arrived at a position where null hypothesis significance testing is the dominant criterion employed by quantitative researchers when deciding on whether or not a result is 'significant'? Second, how might we change the practice of quantitative management research by promoting a greater plurality of methods, and in doing so better enable scholars to put phenomena before design? We conclude by arguing that quantitative management researchers need to focus on the epistemological issues surrounding the role of scholarly reasoning in justifying knowledge claims. By embracing a plurality of approaches to reasoning quantitative researchers will be better able to escape the straitjacket of null hypothesis significance testing and, in doing so, reorder their priorities by putting phenomena before design. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Our ambition in this essay is to challenge received wisdoms about the importance of 'useful' management scholarship. Suggesting that usefulness and uselessness are contingent on issues of temporality and power, we advocate caution in assigning terms such as useful and relevant - they are inherently problematic, we argue, and should be viewed more as ideology than as empirical statements. We conclude by a call for reflexivity about what it is we are doing when we do 'useful' research, along with a greater concern for the values for which business schools stand. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper examines leadership in practice, specifically the interaction of leaders and followers, taking account of context (. Distributed Leadership. San Francisco, CA: Jossey Bass). Employing Gronn's dimensions of concertive action and conjoint agency (. Distributed leadership as a unit of analysis. Leadership Quarterly, 13, pp. 423-451), different conceptualizations of distributed leadership (DL) are examined, and the influence of a health and social care context on attempts to enact DL is analysed. In so doing, boundary conditions or the limits to distributing leadership in health and social care are identified. The analysis suggests that the collective leadership DL model presented by Denis et al. (. The dynamics of collective leadership and strategic change in pluralistic organizations. Academy of Management Journal, 44, pp. 809-837) is most likely to be enacted in the face of policy and professional pressures towards more concentrated leadership. However, where DL does not encompass conjoint agency, it will tend towards more towards 'nobody in charge' (. Nobody in charge: distributed change agency in healthcare. Human Relations, 60, pp. 1065-1090) or collaborative leadership (. Leadership in the shaping and implementation of collaboration agendas: how things happen in a (not quite) joined-up world. Academy of Management Journal, 43, pp. 1159-1175). Following the analysis, the authors argue that researchers need to move beyond a reified concept of DL, and ask a more straightforward question of how power is distributed. As Gosling et al. suggest (. Distributed leadership in higher education: what does it accomplish? Leadership, 5, pp. 299-310), DL evokes an aspiration for the way leadership is configured, and draws attention to iterative relations between leadership, followership and context, but it is a conception of leadership that requires unpacking. This conceptual analysis, applied to health and social care, is offered in pursuit of this aim. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Syndicates are a form of inter-firm alliance in which two or more private equity firms invest together in an investee firm and share a joint pay-off, and are an enduring feature of the leveraged buyout (LBO) and private equity industry. This study examines the relationship between syndication and agency costs at the investor-investee level, and the extent to which the reputation and the network position of the lead investor mediate this relationship. We examine this relationship using a sample of 1,122 buyout investments by 80 private equity companies in the UK between 1993 and 2006. Our findings show that where agency costs are highest, and hence ex-post monitoring by the lead investor is more important, syndication is less likely to occur. The negative relationship between agency costs and syndication, however, is alleviated by the reputation and network position of the lead investor firm. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Over the last 20 years, the resource-based view (RBV) has reached a pre-eminent position among theories in the field of strategy, but debate continues as to its precise nature. This paper contributes to the debate by critically reviewing the development of the RBV to date. The critical appraisal examines the development of the RBV in terms of theory, method, empirical evidence and practical insights. It is contended that the permeable and eclectic nature of the RBV stems from its being a theory about what firms are and how they function, and that its popularity is due to an absence of limiting behavioural assumptions. Finally, the authors provide their own subjective views on where they think RBV scholars should focus their efforts in the future. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this paper we investigate the status of corporate social responsibility (CSR) research within the management literature. In particular, we examine the focus and nature of knowledge, the changing salience of this knowledge and the academic influences on the knowledge. We present empirical evidence based on publication and citation analyses of research published from 1992 to 2002. Our results demonstrate that, for CSR research published in management journals, the most popular issues investigated have been environmental and ethics; the empirical research has been overwhelmingly of a quantitative nature; the theoretical research has been primarily non-normative; the field is driven by agendas in the business environment as well as by continuing scientific engagement; and the single most important source of references for CSR articles was the management literature itself. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Venture capital (VC) has become an international phenomenon, and VC firms are a specific kind of service firm whose characteristics have distinctive implications for international behaviour. There is now a disparate body of research on international aspects of VC across a number of disciplines comprising finance, economics, strategy, entrepreneurship, international business and economic geography. A novel aspect of this paper is that we review and synthesize this disparate literature. A number of research gaps and limitations in the theoretical and methodological approaches involved in previous studies are identified and suggestions made for further research. We show that the vast majority of the literature relates to cross-country comparisons; that is, macro-level comparisons of VC industries across different countries and micro-level comparisons of VC behaviour across countries. From our review of the literature, we argue that an under-researched area concerns the influence of institutional contexts, especially the role of social networks and cultures. Furthermore, our review of the literature indicates that there is a major research gap in relation to work dealing with the crossing of country borders by VC firms. We suggest that resource-based, capabilities, institutional and network theories may be offer insights to further our understanding of the behaviour of VC firms in this area. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article presents information on resource-based views (RBV) of firms which has increasingly been viewed as a broad church that offers the potential to bring together a number of different theories. The ascendancy of RBV--arguably--began during the mid to late 1980s and the initial wave of interest was reflected in a special issue of the "Journal of Management," in 1991. This period has seen the empirical validation of some of the central hypotheses of RBV and developments of the theory. Although RBV now occupies a central role in the field of management its origins pre-date the 1980s by a substantial margin. RBV has emerged as the dominant paradigm in strategy research over the last 15 years or so. Scholars might dispute the relative weights attributable to individual contributions, but it is clear that over a series of papers diverse insights into the relationship between a firm's opportunity set and the strategic behavior to be implemented by its management team have become consolidated into a theory of competitive advantage. In particular, RBV has focused attention on the role of each firm's unique experience in accumulating resources and capabilities that shape its opportunities to earn rents.

Edith Penrose's work has been widely acknowledged to have played a central role in providing the intellectual foundations of the resource-based view. This position, however, was recently challenged in a paper by Rugman and Verbeke (2002). In this paper we address the three main arguments of Rugman and Verbeke and, by drawing on her writings, demonstrate that their arguments are materially incorrect. While readily conceding that Penrose's primary goal was to explain the growth of firms, we show that her analysis of path-dependent firm evolution anticipated many key propositions of the resource-based view. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Syndicates are a form of inter-firm alliance in which two or more venture capital firms co-invest in an investee firm and share a joint pay-off. Syndication is a significant part of the venture capital market yet little research has been conducted into the process of structuring syndicate deals and the management of syndicates following deal completion. This paper analyses the neglected issues concerning the structuring and management of syndicated venture capital investments from the perspectives of both lead and non-lead syndicate members using two surveys of venture capital firms and examination of syndication documents. Lead investors typically have larger equity stakes and the syndicated investment agreement is a document that enshrines the rights of participants rather than specifying behaviour. Contractual arrangements typically serve as a back drop to relationships as non-legal sanctions are important and decisions are typically reached following discussion and consensus, but lead venture capital investors' residual and specific powers are important in ensuring timely decision-making. The findings extend previous work on alliances by emphasizing the importance of non-legal sanctions, especially reputation effects, in mitigating opportunistic behaviour by dominant equity holders. The paper also adds to the limited research on the dynamics of alliances by highlighting the role of repeat syndicates. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]