Administrative Science Quarterly

This article outlines a social information processing approach to explain job attitudes. In comparison with need-satisfaction and expectancy models to job attitudes and motivation, the social information processing perspective emphasizes the effects of context and the consequences of past choices, rather than individual predispositions and rational decision-making processes. When an individual develops statements about attitude or needs, he or she uses social information--information about past behavior and about what others think. The process of attributing attitudes or needs from behavior is itself affected by commitment processes, by the saliency and relevance of information, and by the need to develop socially acceptable and legitimate rationalizations for actions. Both attitudes and need statements, as well as characterizations of jobs, are affected by informational social influence. The implications of the social information processing perspective for organization development efforts and programs of job redesign are discussed.

Gerald R. Salancik

Jeffrey Pfeffer

A Social Information Processing Approach to Job Attitudes and Task Design

工作态度与任务设计的社交信息处理方法

Discusses the notion that the ability to exploit external knowledge is crucial to a firm's innovative capabilities. In addition, it is argued that the ability to evaluate and use outside knowledge is largely a function of the level of prior related knowledge--i.e., absorptive capacity. Prior research has shown that firms that conduct their own research and development (R&D) are better able to use information from external sources. Therefore, it is possible that the absorptive capacity of a firm is created as a byproduct of the firm's R&D investment. A simple model of firm R&D intensity is constructed in a broader context of what applied economists call the three classes of industry-level determinants of R&D intensity: demand, appropriability, and technological opportunity conditions. Several predictions are made, including the notions that absorptive capacity does have a direct effect on R&D spending and spillovers will provide a positive incentive to conduct R&D. All hypotheses are tested using cross-sectional survey data on technological opportunity and appropriability conditions--collected over the period 1975 to 1977 for 1,719 business units--in the American manufacturing sector from Levin et al. (1983, 1987) and the Federal Trade Commission's Line of Business Program data on business unit sales, transfers, and R&D expenditures. Results confirm that firms are sensitive to the characteristics of the learning environment in which they operate and that absorptive capacity does appear to be a part of a firm's decisions regarding resource allocation for innovative activity. Results also suggest that, although the analysis showing a positive effect of spillovers in two industry groups do not represent a direct test of the model, positive absorption incentive associated with spillovers may be sufficiently strong in some cases to more than offset the negative appropribility incentive. (SFL)

Wesley M. Cohen

Daniel A. Levinthal

Absorptive Capacity: A New Perspective on Learning and Innovation

吸收能力：学习与创新的新视角

This paper suggests that there are five problems with contingency theory, ranging from a simple lack of clarity in its theoretical statements to more subtle issues such as the embedding of symmetrical and nonmonotonic assumptions in the theoretical arguments. Starting from Galbraith's (1973) contingency theory about organizing for effectiveness, several traditional contingency hypothesis were tested along with more precise hypotheses developed from knowledge of the five problems with contingency theory. Data were drawn from a study of organizational effectiveness in acute care hospital operating room suites. Although traditional contingency notions were not supported by the data, the more precise hypotheses received stronger empirical support. The study data suggest that relationships between technology, structure, and organizational effectiveness are more complicated than contingency theory now assumes. The paper concludes by suggesting formulation of a contingency theory of organizational effectiveness that includes interactive, nonmonotonic, and symmetrical arguments.

Claudia Bird Schoonhoven

Problems with Contingency Theory: Testing Assumptions Hidden within the Language of Contingency "Theory"

权变理论的问题：检验隐藏在权变“理论”语言中的假设

This study develops a model of engagement in the multiple roles of work and family. I examine two competing arguments about the effects of engaging in multiple roles, depletion and enrichment, and integrate them by identifying the type of emotional response to a role, negative or positive, as a critical contrasting assumption held by these two perspectives. Moreover, I represent depletion and enrichment as complex multistep processes that include multiple constructs, such as engagement and emotion. This study jointly examines both the depleting and enriching processes that link engagement in one role to engagement in another, using structural equation modeling. Findings from a survey of 790 employees reveal evidence for both depletion and enrichment as well as gender differences. Specifically, depletion existed only for women and only in the work-to-family direction. Men experienced enrichment from work to family, while women experienced enrichment from family to work. Overall, more linkages were found between work and family for women than for men.

Nancy P. Rothbard

Enriching or Depleting? The Dynamics of Engagement in Work and Family Roles

丰富还是消耗？工作与家庭角色参与的动态变化

I used qualitative methods to explore why some employees working in a newly created, non-territorial office environment perceived that their workplace identities were threatened and used particular tactics to affirm those threatened identities. Findings suggest that the non-territorial work environment threatened some employees' workplace identities because it severely limited their abilities to affirm categorizations of distinctiveness (versus status) through the display of personal possessions. Categorizations of distinctiveness appeared to be most threatened by the loss of office personalization because of three characteristics: (1) their absolute, rather than graded membership structure, (2) their high subjective importance and personal relevance, and (3) their high reliance on physical markers for affirmation. In affirming threatened identity categorizations, employees chose different tactics, in terms of the amount of effort required and their conformance with company rules, based on the acceptability and importance of affirming the threatened categorization.

Kimberly D. Elsbach

Relating Physical Environment to Self-Categorizations: Identity Threat and Affirmation in a Non-Territorial Office Space

将物理环境与自我分类联系起来：非领土性办公空间中的身份威胁与确认

Most organizational stigma research focuses on preexisting stigma, leaving largely unexplored the question of how the stigmatization process unfolds. The few studies on the stigmatization of organizations have not explored the dynamics between the stigmatizer and the stigmatized or the role of the government. I address these voids by explicating the process of top-down stigmatization of Russian NGOs after the passage of the 2012 foreign agents law. Through an inductive approach relying on archival data, online sources, and interviews, I uncover an authoritarian government’s deliberate stigmatization of select NGOs by assigning to them the resurrected historical label of “foreign agent.” I present a three-phase process model of stigmatization: stigmatizing label emergence, stigma enforcement and contestation, and stigma propagation. I also detail the iterative manner through which the government used burdening, isolating, and intimidating enforcement tactics and how the stigmatized organizations devised coping strategies: persist, adjust, dispute, and evade. The outcomes of the process were the broadening of the scope of targets and criteria for stigmatization and the NGOs’ destabilized existence. I highlight the critical roles of power imbalance, limited action by international authorities, and lagged media attention. I conclude by discussing how these findings may generalize beyond authoritarian regimes.

Anastasiya Zavyalova

Stigmatization by an Authoritarian Government: Russian NGOs Under the 2012 Foreign Agents Law

权威政府的污名化：2012年外国代理人法下的俄罗斯非政府组织

Despite the benefits associated with interorganizational collaborations, they often fail to meet partnering firms’ expectations. A common issue is competitive tension between partners. Yet, competitive tension is a well-known issue in collaboration, such that partners should be able to set expectations and manage it accordingly. Why, then, does competitive tension often derail collaborations? We suggest that whether partners perceive each other as competitors is a key but understudied aspect of how competition shapes collaboration. We hypothesize that misaligned perception—one firm perceiving the other as a competitor but not vice versa—leads to misplaced expectations about partner behavior and collaboration performance and subsequent failure to meet those expectations. We test our theory in the U.S. software industry and find that collaborations characterized by misaligned perception are less likely to be renewed, even after controlling for partner quality and market overlap (i.e., objective competitive tension). Our examination of the social structure surrounding collaborations illustrates how the perceptions of third parties can moderate the effect of misaligned perception. We examine mechanisms and find that misalignment is linked to litigation between partners and lower collaboration performance. We contribute to the literatures on interfirm collaboration and on perception in social networks.

Sruthi Thatchenkery

Henning Piezunka

Competition in Collaboration: The Problem of (Mis)Aligned Perception

合作中的竞争：(误)对齐认知的问题

Stewart Clegg

Gail T. Fairhurst and Linda L. Putnam. Performing Organizational Paradoxes

盖尔·T·费尔赫斯特和琳达·L·普特南。表演组织悖论

Third parties who refer clients to expert service providers help clients navigate market uncertainty by curating well-tailored matches between clients and experts and by facilitating post-match trust. We argue that these two functions often entail trade-offs because they require referrers to activate network relationships with different experts. While strong ties between referrers and experts promote trust between clients and experts, the presence of such ties reduces the likelihood that intermediaries refer clients to socially distal experts who may be better suited to serve clients’ needs. We examine this central and unexplored tension by using full population medical claims data for the state of Massachusetts. We find that when primary care physicians (PCPs) refer patients to specialists with whom the PCPs have strong ties, patients demonstrate more confidence in the specialists’ recommendations. However, a strong tie between the PCP and specialist also reduces the expertise match between a patient’s health condition and a specialist’s clinical experience. These findings suggest that the two central means by which referrers add value may be at odds with one another because they are maximized by the activation of different network ties.

Mathijs de Vaan

Toby Stuart

Referral Triads

转诊三元组

Entrepreneurs can have a long-lasting impact on organizations they found, despite significant changes in the environment. Imprinting theory offers an explanation for this. Yet, knowledge of how imprinting occurs is still limited. Scholars have therefore called for more attention to processes and micro-level theories of imprinting, including the role of individuals. I therefore ask, how do entrepreneurs imprint organizations? Drawing on material from company archives, I conducted a longitudinal, historical case study of Zeiss, a German manufacturer of optical instruments, covering the period 1846–1990. I show how individual blueprints of the founder and his business partner were translated into persistent features of the organization through early decisions, teaching, role modeling, and formalized rules, which left structural, behavioral, and product imprints. The article extends theory on imprinting by shedding light on blueprints as sources of imprints, the multiple mechanisms by which individuals persistently shape core features of an organization, and the multiple organizational dimensions on which imprints are left.

Abbreviation	Adm. Sci. Q.
Journal Impact	8.39
Quartiles(Global)	MANAGEMENT(Q1)

ISSN	0001-8392, 1930-3815
h-index	210

Publication Information	Publisher: Johnson School at Cornell University，Publishing cycle: ，Journal Type: journal，Open Access Journals: No
Basic data	Year of publication: 1996，Proportion of original research papers: 96.00%，Self Citation Rate:7.20%， Gold OA Rate: 33.33%

Administrative Science Quarterly

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