Profits Uber everything? The gig economy and the morality of category work

In this essay, we address the question of how the strategic and organizational activities of on-demand sharing economy companies such as Uber are labeled and classified. We approach this question through a categorization lens and explore in particular whether sharing economy companies can legitimately frame the individuals who work for them as “independent workers” and what this implies for the nature of the employment relationship in such on-demand business models. Our overall aim in doing this is twofold. First, we highlight and address an important categorization issue in our current society, which has potentially far-reaching consequences for the nature of employment and the securities and protections that workers used to enjoy in many parts of the world. Second, we advance prior research in the strategy and organizational domain by elaborating how acts of categorization are inherently moral and political in nature. In this way, we aim to provoke researchers toward studying the moral basis of categorization work and we provide pointers in this essay for how they might do so

Advancing Qualitative Entrepreneurship Research: Leveraging Methodological Plurality for Achieving Scholarly Impact

This editorial aims to advance the use of qualitative research methods when studying entrepreneurship. First, it outlines four characteristics of the domain of entrepreneurship that qualitative research is uniquely placed to address. In studying these characteristics, we urge researchers to leverage the plurality of different qualitative approaches, including less conventional methods. Second, to help researchers develop high-level theoretical contributions, we point to multiple possible contributions, and highlight how such contributions can be developed through qualitative methods. Thus, we aim to broaden the types of contributions and forms that qualitative entrepreneurship research takes, in ways that move beyond prototypical inductive theory-building

Advancing Qualitative Entrepreneurship Research: Leveraging Methodological Plurality for Achieving Scholarly Impact

This editorial aims to advance the use of qualitative research methods when studying entrepreneurship. First, it outlines four characteristics of the domain of entrepreneurship that qualitative research is uniquely placed to address. In studying these characteristics, we urge researchers to leverage the plurality of different qualitative approaches, including less conventional methods. Second, to help researchers develop high-level theoretical contributions, we point to multiple possible contributions, and highlight how such contributions can be developed through qualitative methods. Thus, we aim to broaden the types of contributions and forms that qualitative entrepreneurship research takes, in ways that move beyond prototypical inductive theory-building

Advancing Qualitative Entrepreneurship Research: Leveraging Methodological Plurality for Achieving Scholarly Impact

This editorial aims to advance the use of qualitative research methods when studying entrepreneurship. First, it outlines four characteristics of the domain of entrepreneurship that qualitative research is uniquely placed to address. In studying these characteristics, we urge researchers to leverage the plurality of different qualitative approaches, including less conventional methods. Second, to help researchers develop high-level theoretical contributions, we point to multiple possible contributions, and highlight how such contributions can be developed through qualitative methods. Thus, we aim to broaden the types of contributions and forms that qualitative entrepreneurship research takes, in ways that move beyond prototypical inductive theory-building

(Un)Mind the gap: How organizational actors cope with an identity–strategy misalignment

In this article, we explore how organizational actors cope with a perceived misalignment between their organization’s identity and strategy. Based on an inductive, interpretive case study at a public broadcasting organization, we identify three cognitive tactics through which organizational members cope with an identity–strategy misalignment: contextualization, abstraction, and fatalism. Furthermore, we show that the enactment of these cognitive coping tactics coincides with specific strategy-related tasks that prioritize different aspects of an organization’s identity and, therefore, invokes different conceptions of the identity–strategy misalignment. Based on these findings, we develop a framework that conceptualizes how organizational members cope with an identity–strategy misalignment. We end the article by discussing the implications of our study for further research on the linkages between organizational identity and strategy

Profits Uber everything? The gig economy and the morality of category work

In this essay, we address the question of how the strategic and organizational activities of on-demand sharing economy companies such as Uber are labeled and classified. We approach this question through a categorization lens and explore in particular whether sharing economy companies can legitimately frame the individuals who work for them as “independent workers” and what this implies for the nature of the employment relationship in such on-demand business models. Our overall aim in doing this is twofold. First, we highlight and address an important categorization issue in our current society, which has potentially far-reaching consequences for the nature of employment and the securities and protections that workers used to enjoy in many parts of the world. Second, we advance prior research in the strategy and organizational domain by elaborating how acts of categorization are inherently moral and political in nature. In this way, we aim to provoke researchers toward studying the moral basis of categorization work and we provide pointers in this essay for how they might do so