Eero Vaara

University of Oxford | OX · Saïd Business School

Despite extensive research on stigma, we still lack a comprehensive understanding of how industry stigmatization progresses when constantly contested by resourceful incumbents. To shed light on this issue, we focus on the revealing case of the U.S. tobacco industry between 1980 and 2016. Combining structural topic modeling and discourse analysis to...

In recent years, we have seen a proliferation of research on discursive legitimation, which has shed light on how legitimacy is established through communication. However, this body of work remains fragmented, and there is a need to synthesize and develop a more comprehensive and in-depth theoretical understanding of this vibrant area of research....

In recent years, we have seen a proliferation of research on discursive legitimation, which has shed light on how legitimacy is established through communication. However, this body of work remains fragmented, and there is a need to synthesize and develop a more comprehensive and in-depth theoretical understanding of this vibrant area of research....

Current and future developments in artificial intelligence (AI) systems have the capacity to revolutionize the research process for better or worse. On the one hand, AI systems can serve as collaborators as they help streamline and conduct our research. On the other hand, such systems can also become our adversaries when they impoverish our ability...

This curated debate provides a discussion on impact and its relation to practice-based scholarship, i.e., scholarship grounded in the social theories of practice. Five experienced senior scholars reflect on conceptualizations of impact, how it can be created and disseminated, and on the role of practice-based scholarship in this process. The author...

In this article, based on a Symposium held at the 2022 Academy of Management Meeting, we present a moderated discussion between established scholars in the field of grand challenges—Shahzad (Shaz) Ansari, Natalie Slawinski, and Eero Vaara—focusing on the role of institutional, paradox, and practice theories in research on grand challenges. Our goal...

Although we have seen a growing interest in participatory strategy-making, there is a paucity of knowledge about the role of polyphony and how it may be orchestrated. Our longitudinal analysis of a revealing case reveals how narrative strategy-making unfolded in four temporally overlapping phases: First, a top-down effort to lead participatory stra...

This Element presents and discusses the main trajectories in the evolution of the concept of ambiguity and the most relevant theoretical contributions developed around it. It specifically elaborates on both the intrinsic perspectives on ambiguity as an inherent part of organizational decision-making processes and the more recent strategic perspecti...

Despite the rapid growth of research on organizational sensemaking and an acknowledgment of the critical role of language in the sensemaking process, the literature on sensemaking and language is fragmented. In particular, there is no systematic review that explains the roles and functions of different linguistic elements in meaning construction. T...

Despite a proliferation of research on legitimacy, the ‘grey area’ that lies between legitimacy and illegitimacy remains undertheorized. Responding to calls for further research, we clarify the construct of legitimacy and extend legitimacy theory by providing a conceptual framework for analyzing the legitimacy‐illegitimacy continuum. First, we prop...

Ambiguity has been at the core of organization theory for a long time. It is a lens through which organizational scholars have looked at many aspects of organizational life, including decision-making, strategy, change, communication and stakeholder management. This Element presents and discusses the main trajectories in the evolution of this concep...

In this paper, we investigate the process by which social control agents define wrongdoing over time and the principles they employ in drawing the boundary between right and wrong. We empirically examine how Italian state actors sought over four decades to categorize behaviors in the so-called "gray area," i.e. the conduct of individuals supportive...

In this Dialog, seven scholars consider the theoretical implications and research opportunities a changing environment presents for the Attention-Based View (ABV). With its roots in the 1950s Carnegie School, ABV is expanding and evolving in ways that accommodate the changes in the corporate context characterized by distributed, porous structures o...

Strategy-as-practice (SAP) has become one of the most vibrant areas of contemporary strategy research in the past two decades. As the field has grown significantly , we have witnessed an emergence of distinct streams of research within the SAP research community. Thus, it is time to take stock of this body of work to better understand the structure...

Ambiguity has been at the core of organization theory for a long time. It is a lens through which organizational scholars have looked at many aspects of organizational life, including decision-making, strategy, change, communication and stakeholder management. This Element presents and discusses the main trajectories in the evolution of this c...

Previous research on knowledge work has started to explore how organizational actors deal with pragmatic boundaries that arise from their different interests, priorities, and viewpoints. Material objects, such as visual artifacts, can be used to shape and manipulate pragmatic boundaries, but our understanding of these dynamics is only partial. In t...

Despite a growing interest in power in sensemaking, our understanding of how power is linked with language is still theoretically underdeveloped. To this end, we develop a critical discursive perspective on sensemaking comprised of a three‐part theoretical framework that elucidates the discursive underpinnings of power in organisational sensemaking...

Research summary The purpose of this introduction to the SMS Collection is to take stock of advances in language-based analyses of strategic processes and practices with an eye on the theoretical and methodological insights and opportunities. After a review of the articles included, we develop a framework that identifies four perspectives ranging f...

While in the past, perspectives that focus on language and communication have perhaps not received the attention they deserve in the mainstream literature in strategy and organization, interest in this area has been growing in recent years. The present essay serves to introduce a collection of insightful papers (independently submitted and reviewed...

Entrepreneurship research has long been interested in the emergence of new business activities in various geographical and institutional contexts. However, these studies have largely focused on market and transition economies at the expense of planned economies. To address this limitation, our study focuses on an extreme case: how people envision t...

Strategy process research has yielded a richer understanding of the emergence of strategies from throughout the organization and over extended periods of time; strategy-as-practice research has helped us understand the range of actors involved in strategy and the tools they draw on in their strategy work. The purpose of this chapter is to encourage...

Successful post-acquisition integration hinges on combining hard and soft integration, but insights into how this can be done are scarce. We develop a dynamic model of post-acquisition integration through an in-depth inductive study of a cross-border acquisition. Our model illustrates that the combination of hard and soft integration decisions sets...

Many startups today have adopted a “self-directed” model, which includes flat organizational structures, minimal hierarchy, self-management, and an emphasis on empowerment. When these companies are small, this model confers all sorts of advantages. But it’s hard for companies to stick to that model when they grow and scale. Some companies have succ...

Strategy process and practice research has illuminated the internal dynamics of strategy work – at the cost of backgrounding processes and practices that relate to engagement with external actors. In this conceptual paper, we argue for an extension of this body of work by shifting the locus of research from internal practices and processes towards...

A growing interest in the study of discourses has spread in management research, but so far, it has mostly relied on in-depth qualitative analyses of textual material. With the increasing availability of large textual data, several challenges arise. This paper offers a mixed-methods approach to integrate critical discourse analysis with structural...

By focusing on individual settlements rather than viewing them as part of a trajectory of change, prior research on institutional settlements has not fully captured the dynamics of longer-term institutional change. Yet this would be important to better understand progressive legitimation dynamics; in other words, how successive settlements may incr...

The Covid‐19 crisis makes the study of languages in management even more relevant and timely than before the crisis. This “black and brown epidemic,” as Joseph Betancourt from Massachusetts General Hospital called it, brings to the fore social divisions and hardship, accelerating and magnifying processes and practices of linguistic inequality with...

Irony and humor play an important role in both organizing and organizations, because they both help to collide and contrast ideas as well as mitigate and moderate criticism. Our empirical observations of a senior management team suggest participants frequently use verbal irony and aggressive conversational humor through ‘ironic personae’ – a cast o...

Irony and humor play an important role in both organizing and organizations, because they both help to collide and contrast ideas as well as mitigate and moderate criticism. Our empirical observations of a senior management team suggest participants frequently use verbal irony and aggressive conversational humor through ironic personae, a cast of c...

This paper elucidates the political dynamics of organizational identity breach and reconstruction. Drawing on the revealing case of UNICEF Germany, we develop a process model of four phases of identity breach and reconstruction: build-up of identity tensions, revelation of identity breach, identity reconstruction, and enactment of the reconstructed...

Irony is an effective means of dealing with controversy in organizations, but there is a paucity of knowledge of the various ways in which irony helps managers to do so without necessarily ‘solving’ those issues. By drawing on discursive incongruity theory, we examine the use of irony when managers are confronted with controversial issues in a mult...

This study examines how pluralistic organizations confronting fundamental differences in values can proceed with strategic change. By drawing on a longitudinal case analysis of strategic change in a Nordic city organization, we show how the proponents and challengers play a “rhetorical game” in which they simultaneously promote their own value-base...

We argue that in order to overcome the reductionism and essentialism in institutional theory there is a need to acknowledge that institutions and social actors are co‐constitutive and co‐constructed in processes of communication. We elaborate this argument by drawing on the phenomenological foundation of institutional theory and point to promising...

In this chapter, we focus on national identity in and around multinational corporations (MNCs). We offer three conceptualizations of national identity and demonstrate how it may be studied in MNCs. First, we argue that organizational actors (re)construct their national identities via references to, and associations with, particular ideologies and w...

Research Summary This paper examines how strategy‐makers attempt to reconcile change initiatives with organizational values and principles laid out long before, still encased in strategic identity statements such as corporate mottos and philosophies. It reveals three discursive strategies that strategy‐makers use to establish a sense of continuity...

There is a paucity of knowledge of one key aspect of diversity in and around international organizations: national identity. This is especially the case with research on multinational corporations (MNC) that has focused on cultural differences instead of processes of national identification or national identity construction. Drawing on a critical d...

In organizations, people have to deal with and manage a variety of paradoxes, and this may involve using discursive means such as irony. However, we still know little about the association between irony and paradox in concrete organizational interaction. Our analysis builds on an ethnographic study of journalists and producers at YLE, the Finnish p...

Research Summary The purpose of this paper is to illuminate the role of concepts in strategic sensemaking. Based on a longitudinal real‐time study of a city organization, we demonstrate how the concept of 'self‐responsibility' played a crucial role in strategic sensemaking. We develop a theoretical model that elucidates how strategic concepts are u...

In this chapter we focus on participation in open strategy. We examine how the issue of participation has been dealt with in previous strategy literature and elaborate on how research on open strategy can be linked with and advance this body of work. We identify three main views on participation in strategy research: participation as an inherent pa...

Research Summary: Building on our review of the strategy process and practice research, we identify three ways to see the relationships between the two research traditions: complementary , critical, and combinatory views. We adopt in this special issue the combinatory view, in which activities and processes are seen as closely intertwined aspects o...

Research Summary : The attention‐based view (ABV) has highlighted the role of organizational attention in strategic decision making and adaptation. The tendency to view communication channels as “pipes and prisms” for information processing has, however, limited its ability to address strategic change. We propose a broader role for communication as...

This paper focuses on research on the " human side " of global mergers and acquisitions (M&As). We argue that there is a need for a more fine-grained understanding of the " human side, " which requires conceptualizing M&As as practice-oriented processes. Drawing on the practice approach, we outline avenues for further research on the " human side "...

This paper marks a departure from the focus on external stakeholders in much research on legitimacy and multinational corporations, adopting a social psychological approach to study how MNCs build internal legitimacy for controversial decisions with their subsidiaries. We explore this through a longitudinal, real-time qualitative case study of a re...

The article develops a model which conceptualizes headquarter-subsidiary relations in the multinational corporation as a multilevel discursive struggle between key managers. At the first level, the relations are conceptualized as a discursive struggle over decisions and actions using rationalistic discourses. At the second level, they are viewed as...

The paper advances our understanding of managerial identity work in the context of HQ–subsidiary relations. We argue that a key part of this identity work is related to cultural stereotypes. On the basis of an analysis of two Finland-based MNCs operating in Russia, the paper elucidates three forms of stereotype-based identity work with enabling or...

As organizations expand internationally and their foreign operations become more dispersed, differences in “natural” languages start to influence communication within and beyond their boundaries. In order to cope with these challenges, multinational companies (MNCs) have implicit or explicitly formulated language policies for corporate communicatio...

Mergers and acquisitions (M&As) continue to be prevalent despite frequently yielding disappointing outcomes. Postmerger integration plays a critical role in M&A success, yet many questions about M&A implementation remain unanswered. In this article, we review research on postmerger integration, which we organize around strategic integration , socio...

Despite the proliferation of strategy process and practice research, we lack understanding of the historical embeddedness of strategic processes and practices. In this article we present three historical approaches with the potential to remedy this deficiency. First, realist history can contribute to a better understanding of the historical embedde...

This chapter focuses on the role of narratives in process organization studies. While narratives are often used in processual organization studies, ambiguity and even confusion prevails in how they are understood and mobilized. We identify and elaborate on four narrative perspectives: narrative representation, narrative construction, narrative deco...

Although narrative analysis has made significant advances in organization and management studies, scholars have not yet unleashed its full potential. This review provides an understanding of key issues in organizational narrative analysis with a focus on the role of narratives in organizational stability and change. We start by elaborating on the c...