‘Never let a crisis go to waste’: entrepreneurship in the age of coronavirus

Entrepreneurs can respond to opportunity in three ways: business-as-usual, pivoting, and new venture creation, write Ali Aslan Gümüsay and Pegram Harriso

Engaging with grand challenges:An institutional logics perspective

The institutional logics perspective has the explanatory power and potential to further contribute to our understanding of some of the most pressing societal concerns of our time. In this article, we develop the logics perspective along four analytical dimensions – macro-level positioning, contextuality, temporality and value plurality – which, we argue, can be leveraged to research and address grand challenges. We elaborate the currency of these dimensions in the context of the grand challenge of climate change. In doing so, we demonstrate the overall value of a logics perspective for engaging grand challenges

‘GOD AT WORK’: ENGAGING CENTRAL AND INCOMPATIBLE INSTITUTIONAL LOGICS THROUGH ELASTIC HYBRIDITY

Based on a 24-month ethnographic case study of the opening of the first Islamic bank in Germany, we make three contributions to the institutional theory literature: First, we outline polysemy and polyphony as mechanisms that dynamically engage conflicting logics through an organizational-individual interplay. Borrowing from paradox theory, we explain how hybrids can empower individuals to fluidly separate and integrate logics when neither structural compartmentalizing nor organizational blending are feasible because management cannot prescribe a specific balance of logics. Second, we explain the state of elastic hybridity, constituted through the recursive, multi-level relationship between polysemy and polyphony. Elastic hybrids maintain unity in diversity. They are capable of institutionally bending without organizationally breaking and thus enable individuals to practice more of their personal convictions at work while still experiencing a sense of shared organizational purpose. Third, we show how contested hybrids can be made to last. By dynamically making logics either less central or more compatible, elastic hybrids become less conflict-prone and more resilient without permanently becoming more aligned or estranged

Did COVID lockdowns harm entrepreneurship? Not exactly

The prevalent view is that COVID lockdowns have severely harmed entrepreneurship, but have they? Gorgi Krlev, Katharina Scheidgen, Franziska Günzel-Jensen, Miriam Wolf, and Ali Aslan Gümüsay write that physical distancing created new digital spaces and led to unconventional ways of integrating new people, new products, and new purpose into entrepreneurship. They observed instances in which entrepreneurs opened their mind in fundamental ways to provide services which deviated clearly from their original mission

Authoritarianism, Populism, and the Global Retreat of Democracy: A Curated Discussion

To the surprise of many in the West, the fall of the USSR in 1991 did not lead to the adoption of liberal democratic government around the world and the much anticipated “end of history.” In fact, authoritarianism has made a comeback, and liberal democracy has been on the retreat for at least the last 15 years culminating in the unthinkable: the invasion of a democratic European country by an authoritarian regime. But why does authoritarianism continue to spread, not only as an alternative to liberal democracy, but also within many liberal democracies where authoritarian leaders continue to gain strength and popularity? In this curated piece, contributors discuss some of the potential contributions of management scholarship to understanding authoritarianism, as well as highlight a number of directions for management research in this area.publishedVersio

Entrepreneurship from an Islamic perspective

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