Dynamic Stereotyping Across Occupations. How Management Academics and Practitioners Negotiate the Knower-Doer Stereotype in Interaction

Despite the growing debate on the difficult relationship between management theory and practice, we still know little about what happens when academics and practitioners meet in liminal contexts, and how they deal with perceived differences. We study a corporate executive program where management academics and R&D managers draw on the 'knower-doer' stereotype to exchange knowledge about technology innovation management. We introduce the concept of dynamic stereotyping -i.e. using readily available occupational images to engage immediately in temporary and fluid exchanges with members of other occupations. Dynamic stereotyping (anticipation, reaction and reversal) can help reduce the relational insecurity experienced by academics and practitioners when they meet and promote the transition from abstracted to more embodied and realistic views of each other. We contribute to the theory-practice debate and to the literatures on stereotypes and occupations by providing a process-based view on stereotyping and the conditions favoring dynamic versus rigid stereotyping

To wear many different hats: how do scholar-practitioners span boundaries between academia and practice?

Scholar-practitioners are those individuals who succeed in spanning the boundaries between academia and practice. Guillaume Carton and Paula Ungureanu‘s research sought to better understand scholar-practitioners; the multiple roles they perform across each world, the perceived synergies and tensions, and the strategies employed to manage them. A key tension exists between institutional pressures for hyper-specialisation and scholar-practitioners’ personal aspirations that their multiple roles will be integrated in a more legitimate professional structure

Bridging the Research–Practice Divide: A Study of Scholar-Practitioners’ Multiple Role Management Strategies and Knowledge Spillovers Across Roles

This study investigates the relationship between multiple role management strategies and knowledge spillovers across roles. We focus on a particular category of boundary-spanning professionals, the scholar-practitioners—professionals who work across the boundaries of academic and practice worlds—and apply a role theory lens to study (a) the sources of interrole conflict they experience at role boundaries, (b) the strategies of multiple role management they enact, and (c) the knowledge spillovers associated to such strategies. We develop a grounded model that describes three role management strategies, which occupy different positions on a role separation–integration continuum, and generate different mechanisms of knowledge spillover. Our study sheds light on the understudied relationship between role management strategies and knowledge consequences, and the type of tensions individuals experience in this process. In addition, we discuss how the strategic management of teaching, research, and practical application roles can help bridge academic and managerial practice worlds

Blockchain for good and the making of hype. How digital ventures and the media engage in technological prefigra- tion to co-construct hypes around emergent digital mar- kets

Technological hypes have always characterized societies because new technologies afford to do things previously thought to be beyond the grasp of humanity. One of the main mechanisms of hype creation is the prefiguration of social disruption: making visible in the present the image of a desired or ideal condition of social change in the future using public talk, symbolization, and commoditization. The consequence is the ‘future industries’ creation of predic- tions and prophecies by actors involved with the emergent hype. As the hype rises, these actors use the means of the present to perform the desired ends of the future, such that ‘real utopias’ or ‘as-if realities’ emerge as tangible, embodied, and inhabited. This study unpacks how hypes about emergent digital technolo- gies, particularly blockchain technology, are shaped by actors’ efforts to navigate multiple logics to pursue the promise of social disruption. It studies how entre- preneurs’ and media’s different prefigurative strategies contributed to the emer- gence of hype around the field of blockchain for social good. Specifically, it doc- uments the importance of technological logic to integrate and reconcile multiple logics (market and community) and different prefiguration strategies (long-term and short-term) enacted by different actors (i.e., ventures and the media) in the emergent market. We contribute to the literature on hypes in entrepreneurship, the role of multimodality in entrepreneurship, and multiple logic work in emer- gent digital fields by highlighting the role of prefiguration and the understudied role of technology as a societal logic with constitutive and performative effects

From Broker to Platform Business Models: A Case Study of Best Practices for Business Model Innovation in Hybrid Interorganizational Partnerships

This study is concerned with how hybrid partnerships – i.e., multiparty cross-sector partnerships dealing with broad problems that go beyond the scope and scale of single partners – set up, implement, and then innovate business models. In particular, we draw on a hybrid partnership for open innovation where six public and private organizations came together with the intention to set up and implement joint innovation projects with large-scale impact at the regional level. Two business models of hybrid partnerships are discussed in this chapter, the brokering model and the platform model, as well as the mechanisms of transition from the first to the latter. Our findings suggest that while the platform model seems more appropriate for complex projects in which a wide number of heterogeneous interests coexist, both models present advantages and disadvantages. We suggest that advantages and disadvantages of hybrid partnership business models should be considered in a relational manner, by focusing on how the business model innovation will impact on each parameter of the current model and, at the same time, on how manageable the parameters of the new model are in terms of partnership strategy, structure, and mobilizable resources

How does organizational space help organizations cope with the challenges of ambidexterity and continue to innovate? A space reorganization experiment in a transitioning organization

Influenced by internal and external factors, organizations are increasingly operating in divergent fields that require them to develop ambidextrous competencies. While research relating ambidexterity to aspects such as strategy and innovation has reached a maturity stage, we still know little about the strategic processes that allow organizations to implement ambidexterity, and in particular about the role that organizational space can play in an organization\u2019s attempt to become ambidextrous. By conducting a qualitative study in the medical and scientific division of the Italian National Olympic Committee trying to incorporate an exploitation logic in addition to its dominant exploration logic, we describe a two-phase experiment in which the organization leveraged the organizational space as a transition tool towards ambidexterity, while also trying to maintain its exploration innovation-driven competitive advantage. We find that organizational space can be used as a coping tool against identity and competence threats triggered by organizational transition to ambidexterity, affording both integration and differentiation of the ambidextrous logics

Making Matters Worse by Trying to Make Them Better? Exploring Vicious Circles of Decision in Hybrid Partnerships

Our research is concerned with how and why vicious circles of decision occur in hybrid partnerships. The literature reports three types of decision dysfunctions that can alter the trajectory of multi-stakeholder collaborations: escalation of commitment, procrastination and indecision. While previous studies focused on one dysfunction at a time, we inquire about cases in which dysfunctions coexist and interact in the same partnership. Employing multiple sources of qualitative data, we conducted a longitudinal field study in a cross-sector partnership that co-created and managed a science park. We offer an in-depth account of ‘vicious circles of decision’ in which partners’ attempts to solve a dysfunction paradoxically led to the accumulation of additional dysfunctions. We explain that the process is more likely to happen when solutions are (1) conditioned by the very risk–opportunity tensions they try to solve and (2) inscribed in material artefacts for greater visibility. As well as augmenting the literature on hybrid partnerships, we contribute to the debate in organization studies about the evolution of collaborations within frames of concurrent risk–opportunity tensions and theorize about the role of materiality in such processes

Seizing the Potentialities of Open Science: From a Community to a Platform Journal

The adventure of the Research Group on Collaborative Spaces (RGCS)[1] started in March 2014. At that time, our network was not an association. It was a Working Group settled in France, in the UK and in Canada gathering researchers and practitioners interested in topics of new collaborative work and collaborative spaces[2]. Quickly came on the way the issue of Open Science (OS) and Citizen Sciences. To develop knowledge commons (for society and organizations) and to explore impactful, inclusive, responsible, resonant new practices, methods and concepts about and for collaborative practices, OS appeared quickly as a promising spac

Collaboration and Identity Formation in Strategic Interorganizational Partnerships: An Exploration of Swift Identity Processes

We investigate how collective identity formation processes interplay with collaboration practices in an inter-organizational partnership promoting regional innovation. We found that initial collaboration challenges are dealt with by setting up an early “swift identity” which is associated with material artifacts to increase its strength and stability (“swift identity reification”). However, as the partnership evolves, the reified identity becomes misaligned with partners’ underdeveloped collaboration practices. To ensure realignment, new attempts at reification are performed, as partners buy time for learning how to collaborate. Our findings contribute to extant identity research by proposing alternative (i.e. “swift” and “reified”) mechanisms of identity formation in contexts characterized by both heterogeneity challenges and integration imperatives. They also integrate the debate about the role of identity formation in the evolution of interorganizational partnerships. For both literatures, we highlight the important role of materiality

Multiplex boundary work in innovation projects: the role of collaborative spaces for cross-functional and open innovation

Purpose This study investigates the role of collaborative spaces as organizational support for internal innovation through cross-functional teams and for open innovation with external stakeholders. In particular, the study focuses on collaborative spaces as tools for multiplex (i.e., simultaneous internal and external boundary management in innovation projects). Design/methodology/approach The authors conducted a qualitative study in a multi-divisional organization that set up in its headquarters a collaborative space for collaborative product development. Data were collected through semi-structured interviews and participant observations. Findings Findings highlight that the relation between expectations and experiences about the collaborative space impact on employees\u27 ability to perform boundary work inside and outside the organization. In addition to the collaborative space\u27s affording role for expectations about hands-on collaborative innovation (space as laboratory), the study also highlights a set of collaboration constraints. These latter are generated by perceived boundary configurations (i.e. degree of boundary permeability and infrastructure in internal and external collaborations) and by discrepancies between expectations (space as laboratory) and actual collaboration experiences in the space (i.e. space as maze, cloister, showcase and silo). We show that space-generated constraints slow down internal and external boundary work for innovation and generate a trade-off between them. Originality/value Using the process-based perspective of boundary work, the paper connects studies on cross-functional teaming and open innovation through the concept of “multiplex boundary work.” It also contributes to the literature on boundary work by showing the challenges of using collaborative spaces as organizational support tools for multiplex boundary spanning