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This paper seeks to advance understanding of how new social venturescan gain legitimacy in authoritarian contexts. Through a study of a newdisability rights organization in post-revolutionary Egypt, we theorizehow authoritarianism poses distinct challenges for social ventures thatrequire different legitimation strategies than those commonly reported inthe literature. Specifically, we use our case study to build a theoreticalmodel that suggests social ventures need to achieve optimal assimilationby balancing protective disguise with harmonious advocacy. By explicitlytheorizing social venture legitimation in authoritarian contexts, weadvance the budding literature on social venture legitimation that has sofar predominantly considered legitimation in more democratic contexts.Moreover, our study shows that organizational legitimacy may need tobe conceptualized differently when examining social ventures—andindeed other forms of organization—in authoritarian regimes.

The authors draw on emerging research in organization theory to suggest how different firm-level identity orientations (individualistic, relational, or collectivistic) impact governance choice. They develop a conceptual framework that focuses on the relationship between a focal firm’s own identity orientation and that of a value chain partner. The framework identifies a series of match and mismatch scenarios, where the latter represent unique governance problems that are not accounted for by existing theory. Some of the mismatch scenarios involve pseudo-matches that resemble convergent orientations between parties but actually represent governance problems. Theoretically, this framework advances the governance literature by providing a comprehensive and nuanced account of (1) the orientations that parties bring to bear on a relationship, and (2) how their effects vary depending on the interdependence structure between the parties. The authors also advance the general literature on identity orientation by connecting it to concrete governance practices, by showing how multiple internal identity orientations create unique internal governance challenges, and by delineating two possible solutions to these challenges. They rely on the framework to develop managerial guidelines for governance choice.

We examine how organizations can challenge institutions that are coercively protected by powerful elites – guarded institutions – when they are unable or unwilling to advocate publicly against them. To do so, we draw on an in-depth qualitative study of efforts to combat child marriage in Indonesia. We explore how an international children’s rights organization worked alongside local NGOs and activists to disrupt the institution of child marriage through two discrete strategies: the crafting of an alter ego that takes the appearance of a social movement that has emanated from the grassroots but is actually highly organized; and the use of this alter ego to support the incubation of public dissent by means of a high-stakes event. We contribute to the literature by developing a theorized account of how organizations can challenge guarded institutions when they cannot speak out – an important organizational problem that has received limited attention. We also challenge the theoretical distinction that has been drawn between the organizational mobilization of activists, often referred to as astroturfing, and seemingly organic mobilization that is said to emerge at the grassroots.

Many new ventures have to pivot – radically transform what they are about – because their original approach has failed. However, pivoting risks disrupting relationships with key stakeholders, such as user communities, who identify with ventures. Stakeholders may respond by withdrawing support and starving ventures of the resources needed to thrive. This can pose an existential threat to ventures, yet it is unclear how they can manage this problem. To explore this important phenomenon, we conduct a qualitative process study of The Impossible Project, a photography venture which encountered significant resistance from its user community as it pivoted from an analog focus to an analog-digital positioning. We develop a process model of stakeholder identification management that reveals how ventures can use identification reset work to defuse tensions with stakeholders whose identification with the venture is threatened. A core finding is that ventures can remove the affective hostility of stakeholders and rebuild connections with many of them by exposing their struggles, thus creating a bond focused around these shared experiences. We offer contributions to scholarship on identification management, user community identification, and pivoting.

Purpose is a concept often used in managerial communities to signal and define a firm’s benevolent and pluralistic approach to its stakeholders beyond its focus on shareholders. While some evidence has linked purpose to positive organizational outcomes such as growth, employee satisfaction, innovation, and superior stock market performance, the definition and application of purpose in management research has been varied and frequently ambiguous. We review literature streams that invoke purpose in the for-profit firm and propose a unifying definition. Next, we develop a framework to study purpose that decouples its framing and formalization within firms from its realization, thus helping to avoid conflation of the presence of purpose with positive organizational outcomes. The framework also highlights internal and external drivers that shape the framing of purpose as well as the influence of the institutional context on its adoption and effectiveness. Finally, we provide a rich agenda for future research on purpose.

In this inductive study, we shift the focus of stigma research inside organizational boundaries by examining its relationship with organizational identity. To do so, we draw on the case of Keystone, a social enterprise in the East of England that became stigmatized after it initiated a program of support for a group of migrants in its community. Keystone’s stigmatization precipitated a crisis of organizational identity. We examine how the identity crisis unfolded, focusing on the forms of identity work that Keystone’s leaders enacted in response in order to reframe the meaning that organizational members attached to the stigma. Interestingly, we show not only that the internal effects of stigmatization on identity can be managed, but also that they may facilitate unexpected positive outcomes for organizations.

Poor places across the globe have pressing needs, not least because the social, economic, and environmental issues that challenge us all have a disproportionate impact upon them. Innovation to address these needs is challenging and distinctive. It also thrives in many poor places, albeit to varying degrees. Yet, and despite recent advances, innovation in the context of poverty remains an overlooked area of research. In this essay, we seek to address this lack of attention and to shed light on the prospects and possibilities for the study and practice of innovation in poor places. We first provide an overview of current thinking on the topic. We go on to offer suggestions for research, taking account of the distinct roles played by the social, public, and corporate sectors. Finally, we suggest that addressing the most intractable social problems requires collaboration across sectors, and point to the crucial role of social extrapreneurship as a way of conceptualizing such cross-sector relationships.

We draw on institutional theory to study a common type of new venture creation that has been neglected in the literature: the translation of an existing organizational form from a different – and misaligned – institutional context. To do so we conducted an in-depth case study of H-Farm, an Italian venture that was founded as a business incubator, a type of organization that first emerged in Silicon Valley and other US technology regions. Our study illuminates the specific configuration of legitimacy pressures inherent in this type of entrepreneurship, and theorizes the strategies that entrepreneurs can enact to address them: local authentication work, category authentication work, and dual optimal distinctiveness work. We also show that the legitimacy pressures experienced by entrepreneurs may vary significantly as ventures mature, and challenge the notion of a specific “legitimacy threshold” that new ventures are required to reach. Finally, our model conceptualizes translation as an iterative, dynamic and ongoing accomplishment rather than a “one off” activity with clear beginning and end points.

Based on an in-depth historical study of how Thomas Cook's travel agency moved from stigmatization to legitimacy among the elite of Victorian Britain, we develop a dialogical model of organizational destigmatization. We find that audiences stigmatize an organization because they fear that it threatens a particular moral order, which leads them to mount sustained attacks designed to weaken or eradicate the organization. Our model suggests that an organization that experiences this form of profound disapproval can nonetheless purge its stigma and become legitimate through a two-step process: first the organization engages in stigma reduction work designed to minimize overt hostility among audiences by showing that it does not pose a risk to them. Second it engages in stigma elimination work designed to gain support from stigmatizers by showing that it plays a positive role in society. Our study therefore reorients organizational stigma research from a focus on how organizations can cope with the effects of stigma, and considers instead how they can eradicate the stigma altogether. We also shed light on much neglected audience-level dynamics by examining the process through which audiences construct stigma and why these constructions change.

In this paper we argue that formal exchanges with poor consumers in emerging markets are hard to create and maintain, resulting in widespread market failure. More specifically, in emerging markets the institutions required for exchange either function poorly or are entirely absent, making it difficult for sellers to deliver affordable and accessible offerings to poor buyers in a financially sustainable manner. The marketing challenge thus becomes (1) developing a viable business model to facilitate market-based exchanges and (2) shaping the institutions needed to implement this business model. Drawing on institutional theory and extending it with insights from the marketing and business model innovation literatures, we develop a model of exchange in emerging markets. At the heart of our model is the idea that sellers often need to act as institutional entrepreneurs in order to create and deliver value when marketing to the poor in emerging markets. We discuss the implications of our model for future research on marketing, exchange and emerging economies, as well as the implications for managers seeking to market to the poor in emerging economies.

We investigate how established professionals manage their identities in the face of identity threats from a contested shift in the professional logic that characterizes their field. To do so, we draw on interviews with 113 physicians from five European transition countries who faced pressure for change in their professional identities due to a shift in the logic of healthcare from a logic of "narrow specialism" in primary care that characterized the Soviet health system to a new logic of "generalism" that characterizes primary care in the West. We found three important forms of professional identity threats experienced by physicians during this period - professional values conflict, status loss, and social identity conflict. In addition, we identified three forms of identity work - authenticating, reframing, and cultural repositioning - that the professionals who successfully transitioned to the new identity performed in order to reconstruct their professional identities so that they were aligned with the new logic. Based on these findings, we present a model of how established professionals change their professional identities as a result of a contested shift in the professional logic of their field and discuss the underlying mechanisms through which this occurs.

Organizational success increasingly depends on leaders’ abilities to address competing demands simultaneously. Scholars have applied both institutional theory and paradox theory to better understand the nature and responses to these competing demands. These two lenses diverge in their understanding and responses to tensions. Institutional theory depicts competing demands emerging from divergent field-level pressures and stresses their contradictory and oppositional nature. Organizational responses vary from making tradeoffs and choosing pressures with which to conform to seeking strategies for engaging both and managing conflict. Paradox theory locates competing demands as inherent with organizational systems, surfaced through environmental conditions, individual sensemaking, or relational dialogue. According to these scholars, paradoxes are contradictory, interdependent, and persist over time, demanding strategies for engaging and accommodating tensions but not resolving them. In this essay, we highlight these distinctions and argue that drawing from both of these lenses will results in rich, generative theorizing to better address key challenges in the world. We identify specific areas where future research can benefit from such integration.

I examine the microlevel processes involved when members of an organization seek to persuade others to internalize a new institutional logic. To do so I conduct a qualitative study of the Alpha course, an evangelizing movement designed to convert agnostics to a particular—and contested—interpretation of Christianity. My analysis suggests that the process of persuading actors to adopt a new logic entails four distinct kinds of microinstitutional work and illustrates the dynamics underpinning each of them. It also delineates three discrete paths that targeted actors may follow in response to persuasive attempts. I contribute to organization theory by building a framework that conceptualizes the microfoundations of institutional persuasion and conversion. The framework illustrates the two-way nature of institutional communication and highlights the potential of emotion and ritual performance to connect actors with—and alienate actors from—institutional logics.

One of the most significant challenges facing family firms is how to successfully manage succession from one generation of leaders to the next. In this paper, we contribute to existing understandings of this complex and difficult process by exploring how successors use family business succession narratives to legitimate their succession. Building on a case study of Alessi, a family–owned Italian design firm, we draw on the literature on organizational narratives to develop a framework for understanding family business succession narratives and present a typology of some of the narrative strategies that can be used during succession. We conclude with a discussion of the theoretical and practical ramifications of a narrative view of succession in family firms.

The authors examine new product outcomes in the context of regional clusters. On the basis of prior research on marketing relationships, clusters, and social networks, they propose that the overall configuration of a cluster helps promote particular governance practices among its members. These practices have distinct value-creating properties, and when they are brought to bear on a specific new product development project within a cluster, they promote performance outcomes such as product novelty and speed to market. Ultimately, these performance effects are reinforced by the configuration of the cluster itself. In general, the authors propose that new product outcomes result from complex interactions between a cluster's macro-level configuration and its micro-level governance processes. More broadly, their framework points to the importance of geographical variables and to the role of “place” in marketing decision making.