David Obstfeld

California State University, Fullerton | CSUF · College of Business and Economics

Organizational members face a motivational dilemma in influencing the social relationships of others: The organization benefits from high connectedness among employees, but personal advantages accrue to those who occupy brokerage positions between disconnected others. In this study, we draw on the organizational paradox perspective to argue that th...

This paper contributes a narrative dimension for the temporality of organizational sensemaking. Reconciling sensemaking with a broader understanding of time not only provides a more in-depth treatment of time in sensemaking. It also helps overcome existing dichotomies in temporal theorizing to advance a more dynamic temporal theorizing in organizat...

Current research underscores how college education can reflect broader social inequality through the disproportionate flow of resources to elite universities and the advantaged students they serve. In contrast, under-resourced comprehensive universities disproportionately serve underrepresented minority, first-generation, and working-class students...

This study explores the causal relationship between conflict and actions taken by teams to accomplish their tasks. We differentiated between two forms of action trajectories, routines, and creative projects and used a laboratory experiment with a 2 (task conflict: yes vs. no) × 2 (interpersonal conflict: yes vs. no) factorial design to test how tas...

Research abstract We introduce an assembly perspective of entrepreneurial action in early‐stage projects, developed in a process model of microsocial network dynamics. The model comprises four conceptual elements: (a) an initial entrepreneurial projection or goal, which motivates and guides network‐based action, and evolves as the venture unfolds;...

Brokerage has assumed an increasingly important role in social network research and organizing more generally. Social network research has traditionally defined brokerage in structural terms as a broker who stands between two disconnected parties. Alongside this structural definition, network research has generally made assumptions about, but rarel...

We adopt a sociopolitical perspective to examine how an employee's political skill works in conjunction with social network structure to relate to the employee's innovation involvement and job performance. We find that employee innovation involvement mediates the relationship between political skill and job performance and that the number of struct...

Research Summary: In contrast to previous research that emphasized macro‐to‐macro relationships, this study investigates how strategic decision characteristics shape the creative process at the organizational micro‐level. Whereas individual creativity thrives on novel combinations of diverse knowledge and perspectives, we argue that the characteris...

A theory of the creative project—the underexamined, nonroutine trajectory for getting new things done—is the focus of this chapter. First, the chapter draws on insights from pragmatist philosophy with respect to the interplay of routine and nonroutine action. Next, the chapter summarizes the organizational literature’s treatment of routine and nonr...

This chapter addresses social network structure and process to explain how brokerage functions to get new things done. First, innovative action is described as often unfolding in triads through brokerage. Second, the chapter explains how network structure sets the context for action, emphasizing the distinction between open and closed social networ...

This chapter illustrates the BKAP model with an extended ethnographic case to show how network and knowledge processes interact to produce routine-based innovative action over time. The chapter first provides relevant context for the automotive design process, after which the author walks through the extended case in three phases of activity and an...

This chapter applies the BKAP model of action to a number of important theoretical and empirical puzzles that have been confronted by organization theorists in particular and by social scientists more generally. Specifically, the chapter explores the applicability of the BKAP model to central issues in artistic movements with a case study of the Ba...

The relational astuteness that underlies brokerage process and knowledge articulation is the major focus of this chapter. One’s ability to encode a communication has to work hand in hand with the ability to read one’s audience, in order to shape the knowledge that is to be articulated and manage relationships. The chapter first examines the social...

This chapter examines the essential role of knowledge articulation in enabling brokers to mobilize and coordinate others’ actions to get new things done. First, the chapter examine the tacit/explicit conceptualization of knowledge and its implications for knowledge articulation. Second, the chapter revisits Carlile’s 3T model (knowledge transfer, k...

This chapter illustrates the BKAP model through an extended ethnographic case to show how network and knowledge processes interact to produce project-based innovation. An ethnographic case study in the same automotive setting found in Chapter 4 illustrates the emergence of creative projects launched in pursuit of innovation. Specifically, this chap...

Mobilizing people to pursue action that “gets new things done” depends critically on the effective orchestration of social networks and knowledge sharing. This orchestration is vital to the pursuit of innovation, especially in a world increasingly reliant on collaborative projects that assemble actors with diverse interests, abilities, and knowledg...

This article discusses the virtues of using podcasts in the classroom by focusing on the pedagogical merits of one podcast: StartUp. The StartUp podcast provides a compelling first-person account of the entrepreneurial journey, as told by an award-winning radio journalist. Episodes from the podcast can be used to engage students and improve their a...

New work in social network theory and research has begun to explore the role of social network process alongside social network structure. Where a first wave of social network research located social network process as implicit in social network structure, new work has argued for a more sophisticated capture of the social network action within soci...

Creative projects, emergent trajectories of interdependent action that introduce change into a social context, and organizational routines, repetitive trajectories of interdependent action, represent two forms of organizational coordination. Organizations involve evolving ecologies of projects and routines where projects evolve into, punctuate, and...

This paper extends tertius iungens social network dynamics to theorize the micro-social level of entrepreneurial activity – the social dynamics of relatively small numbers of actors surrounding the formation and early growth of new ventures. We animate these ideas with a focus a project-based view of entrepreneurship that emphasizes the collective...

Previous research has highlighted the importance of tertius iungens (TI) orientation, a strategic orientation toward connecting people in one’s social network to implementing and integrating ideas. In this research, we investigated whether TI orientation also contributes to individual creativity, and how an organization’s strategy making processes...

We argue for a broadened approach to brokerage by distinguishing between brokerage emphasizing a particular structural pattern in which two otherwise disconnected alters are connected through a third party ("brokerage structure") and the social behavior of third parties ("brokerage process"). We explore a processual view of brokerage by examining t...

This paper presents a framework for action that accounts for both how organizations get routine things done and how they pursue markedly new things through "creative projects." Based on this framework, organizational routines and creative projects are viewed as two types of action trajectories differing with respect to their repetitiveness. An ethn...

The theory of creativity and exploratory search developed by Simon, March, and their followers in the Carnegie school relies on a coolly cognitive account of motivation. We argue that a more robust theory would give affect greater prominence. Our approach is inspired by Dewey's (2002 Human Nature and Conduct. Prometheus: Amherst, MA) analysis of th...

David Obstfeld é professor na Universidade da Califórnia em Irvine, EUA, onde atualmente pesquisa sobre os processos de inovação social, criação de conhecimento e estratégia. Doutorou-se pela Universidade de Michigan, e sua tese recebeu o University of Michigan’s Likert Award de melhor trabalho em estudos organizacionais. Nesta entrevista, o profes...

Sensemaking involves turning circumstances into a situation that is comprehended explicitly in words and that serves as a springboard into action. In this paper we take the position that the concept of sensemaking fills important gaps in organizational theory. The seemingly transient nature of sensemaking belies its central role in the determinatio...

This study examines the microprocesses in the social networks of those involved in organizational innovation and their strategic behavioral orientation toward connecting people in their social network by either introducing disconnected individuals or facilitating new coordination between connected individuals. This tertius iungens (or “third who jo...

A large sample survey study was conducted to test hypotheses derived from an ethnographic inquiry into how knowledge creation and innovation are accomplished. Field observations of an automotive design process suggest that knowledge articulation and social network mobilization are fundamental to knowledge creation and innovation. Individuals effect...

A multimethod ethnographic and survey study was conducted on how knowledge creation and innovation were accomplished. The yearlong ethnography focused on what forms tacit knowledge took in an organization and the various ways it was surfaced and conveyed in the product development process. Field observations of an automotive design process suggeste...

We examine social entrepreneurship from a structural perspective, distinguishing between two structures of social capital and their associated entrepreneurial strategies: structural holes and the ‘disunion’ strategy versus social cohesiveness and the ‘union’ strategy. These two strategies represent alternative ways social entrepreneurs access and m...

High Reliability Organizations (HROs) have been treated as exotic outliers in mainstream organizational theory because of their unique potentials for catastrophic consequences and interactively complex technology. We argue that HROs are more central to the mainstream because they provide a unique window into organizational effectiveness under tryin...