Ann Langley’s research while affiliated with University of Warwick and other places

Abstract 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 for the symposium was to bring these theoretical perspectives into conversation, reflect on the strengths and weaknesses of the lenses, and discuss potential intersections for future research on grand challenges. We present the panelists’ prepared remarks as well as the interactive discussion covering four topics: the limitations of existing concepts and theories, materiality, impact, and relations between theory and practice. As part of these four discussion topics, we also present questions and reflections from the audience. We conclude by summarizing insights gleaned from the symposium about critical gaps and avenues for future research.

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 for the symposium was to bring these theoretical perspectives into conversation, reflect on the strengths and weaknesses of the lenses, and discuss potential intersections for future research on grand challenges. We present the panelists’ prepared remarks as well as the interactive discussion covering four topics: the limitations of existing concepts and theories, materiality, impact, and relations between theory and practice. As part of these four discussion topics, we also present questions and reflections from the audience. We conclude by summarizing insights gleaned from the symposium about critical gaps and avenues for future research.

This study contributes to the literature on organizational identity work by examining the ongoing micro-political processes of influence and negotiation that arise as conceptions of organizational identity are proposed and debated in the moment. To do so, we focus on interaction episodes, rather than on top management discourses or participant narratives as the key locus of organizational identity work. Specifically, based on a longitudinal case study of an open innovation organization from inception, we reveal five patterns of interactive organizational identity work emerging over time, that we label monologue, polyphony, dialogue, deadlock and rupture. While Monologue is a one-sided pattern that involves the dominance of a single voice, Polyphony involves episodes of engaged collective conversation about identity issues that lack clear resolution. In Dialogue, we see interactions where critical issues accumulate towards temporary compromises on identity concerns, while the Deadlock pattern arises when compromises appear unattainable, potentially culminating in Rupture, as interactions around identity lead members to dissociate themselves from the organization. We show how the direct and indirect focus on organizational identity issues (i.e., whether identity is the focal topic of conversation, or emerges as an issue underlying another decision), as well as the intensity of personal identity engagement among participants (i.e., the degree to which the conversation addresses speakers’ personal identity commitments) may be implicated in the emergence of these patterns. Moreover, we show how the multiplicity and singularity of identity constructions are expressed through the different interaction patterns, with variable consequences for organizational collaboration and continuity among organization members.

How do senior managers of social mission-driven organizations build and sustain stakeholders’ emotional resonance with organizational identity beliefs over time in the face of repeated existential threats? This is an important question, given the dependence of many such organizations on external stakeholders who provide the resources necessary for survival. In this paper, we investigate the case of Solidum, a philanthropic organization devoted to poverty causes. Drawing on ethnographic, interview and archival data over 20 years, we develop a process model showing how senior managers may create and sustain stakeholder emotional resonance through three practices of emotional resonance work: building emotional bridges, enrolling stakeholders in collective soul-searching and materializing an appealing identity symbol. We show that stakeholder emotional resonance needs to be continually renewed and reshaped in the face of ongoing challenges associated with macro-organizational trends and the routinization of existing practices that can result in the dissipation of emotional resonance over time. The paper contributes to the literature on organizational identity maintenance by drawing attention to the active managerial work required to sustain stakeholder emotional resonance over time to allow mission-driven organizations to survive and prosper.

Our paper investigates the dynamic interplay of narratives of individual and collective leadership within a professional service firm, where an organizational narrative of collective leadership prevails. We explain how it is possible for ‘everyone’ to claim a leadership identity for themselves while simultaneously granting a leadership identity to the collective. We identify multiple leadership archetypes embedded in individuals’ identity narratives, representing their differing senses of themselves as leaders and their alignment with the organizational narrative of collective leadership. These archetypes are mutually constitutive, representing centripetal and centrifugal tendencies in relation to the organizational narrative of collective leadership. We show how individuals committed to collective leadership nevertheless construct an individual leader (the Avatar identity archetype) to embody the collective on their behalf, and this enables them to grant leadership to the collective in the abstract. We emphasise the persistent sacralization of leadership in individual and organizational narratives, even in avowedly collectivist contexts, and the value of narrative-based perspectives in highlighting practitioners’ ability to navigate and accommodate the messy coexistence of collective and individual leadership. Our study shows the importance of integrating dialectically the individual and collective dimensions of leadership, emphasizing the mutually constitutive nature of individual and collective leadership narratives.