Johanna Mair | Hertie School (original) (raw)

Drafts by Johanna Mair

Organization Studies Forthcoming

Literature on categories recognizes that in the early stages of a category, ambiguity can arise f... more Literature on categories recognizes that in the early stages of a category, ambiguity can arise from divergent frames used to define the category. Yet it also largely expects this ambiguity to be either temporary, or else detrimental to the survival and evolution of the category. In this study, we demonstrate and explain how, alternatively, category ambiguity can persist when multiple frames continue to be applied to a category as it progresses into maturity. Drawing on an in-depth qualitative study of the case of social entrepreneurship, we examine how and under what conditions this outcome occurs. We specify two co-occurring conditions that prompt category stakeholders to shift their framing from exclusive to inclusive, enabling category ambiguity to persist. We furthermore show how the use of category frames that draw from pre-existing resonant categories supports the persistence of category ambiguity. We contribute to literature on categories by clarifying the antecedents of category evolution towards a trajectory of persistent ambiguity.

Papers by Johanna Mair

Academy of Management Journal, 2013

Actors who support dissimilar institutional models can overcome conflict and move toward mutually... more Actors who support dissimilar institutional models can overcome conflict and move toward mutually beneficial coexistence. To see how, we studied the emergence of venture philanthropy, a rationalized approach to organizational philanthropy in Europe. Our analysis leverages multiple sources of data and focuses on field-configuring events as settings for interactions. We show how convening-bringing together dissimilar actors-in different types of events creates relational spaces for negotiation over institutional models, their practices, and their underlying assumptions. Front-stage interactions in public spaces are important in making models accessible to a broad audience, whereas backstage interactions in protected spaces allow models to be deconstructed. Our findings show that the interplay between front stage and backstage enables the reframing of institutional models by refining the constituent practices, which neutralizes opposition and facilitates joint courses of action. Our results contrast with popular accounts of competing institutional logics, advance organizational research on the role of events in field trajectories, and expose the collective rationalization of giving.

Academy of Management Journal, 2016

This study advances research on organizational efforts to tackle multidimensional, complex, and i... more This study advances research on organizational efforts to tackle multidimensional, complex, and interlinked societal challenges. We examine how social inequality manifests in small-scale societies, and illustrate how it inheres in entrenched patterns of behavior and interaction. Asking how development programs can be organizing tools to transform these patterns of inequality, we use a program sponsored by an Indian non-governmental organization as our empirical window and leverage data that we collected over a decade. We identify "scaffolding" as a process that enables and organizes the transformation of behavior and interaction patterns. Three interrelated mechanisms make the transformation processes adaptive and emerging alternative social orders robust: (1) mobilizing institutional, social organizational, and economic resources; (2) stabilizing new patterns of interaction that reflect an alternative social order; and (3) concealing goals that are neither anticipated nor desired by some groups. Through this analysis, we move beyond conventional thinking on unintended consequences proposed in classic studies on organizations, complement contemporary research about how organizations effect positive social change by pursuing multiple goals, and develop portable insights for organizational efforts in tackling inequality. This study provides a first link between the study of organizational efforts to alleviate social problems and the transformation of social systems. 1 A review of extant literature on inequality goes beyond this paper. We follow a sociological tradition in analyzing inequality that prioritizes inequalities across groups over inequality across individuals. Our approach is aligned with the work of Tilly (1998) on "categorical inequalities." 2021 Copyright of the Academy of Management, all rights reserved. Contents may not be copied, emailed, posted to a listserv, or otherwise transmitted without the copyright holder's express written permission. Users may print, download, or email articles for individual use only.

Handbuch Innovationsforschung

Handbook of Middle Management Strategy Process Research

Using a Positive Lens to Explore Social Change and Organizations

In the social sector, the subject of scaling has recently emerged as a dominant discourse. The sc... more In the social sector, the subject of scaling has recently emerged as a dominant discourse. The scholarly literature on this phenomenon is in an embryonic stage. In this paper, we provide a clear definition of scaling that makes it a subject for mechanism-based scholarly investigation. An analytical model of organizational scaling is developed that is grounded in a critical realist philosophy of science. Critical realism provides a sophisticated view of reality that enables explicit operationalization of the causal links between actors, mechanisms and outcomes. The analytical model thus provides guidance to and structure for the empirical investigation of an extraordinary organizational example of scaling. A number of propositions for scaling are developed and we reflect on the implications for practitioners and further scholarly research. Much Ado about Scale. The buzz word in social enterprise is “scale.” This is the title of an article by Adrenne Villani (2010) in “Beyond Profit”,...

Organization Theory

Organizations across sectors appear to be shifting their ambitions from solving social problems t... more Organizations across sectors appear to be shifting their ambitions from solving social problems to changing entire social systems. This phenomenon offers a timely opportunity to revisit what came to be known as the third mandate of organizational theory. In this paper we interrogate how organizational scholarship can productively explore and theorize the relationship between organizations and social systems in organized system change – an effort by organizations to alter the conditions that generate the characteristics of social problems and their dynamics of change. As a basis for theorizing organized system change, we develop an analytical scaffold that helps researchers to attend to fundamental aspects of the phenomenon and to achieve parsimony without blanking out complexity. Grounded in realist metatheory and principles, the scaffold reduces ambiguity, provides a backbone for empirical analysis, and favours mechanism-based explanation. We suggest that generating theoretically i...

This study introduces an innovative and inclusive approach to environmental and social problems. ... more This study introduces an innovative and inclusive approach to environmental and social problems. Dhaka, the capital of Bangladesh, suffers from intense solid waste generation, posing a threat to citizens’ health and the environment. Waste Concern, a research-based NGO, realized that the solid waste had a 76% organic content and so started to produce and sell organic compost made from the portion of waste formerly perceived to be of no value. Using a house-to-house collection service, Waste Concern collects the organic residuals directly from households and converts them into compost in decentralized composting plants. The compost is then distributed via the network of a local chemical fertilizer producer. As a result, Waste Concern has created jobs for unskilled workers and reduced the total amount of solid waste to be handled by the municipality, while its compost has helped to improve soil quality – a win-win situation for all stakeholders. More recently, Waste Concern has also st...

Research in the Sociology of Organizations

Social enterprises have long been considered ideal settings for studying hybrid organizing due to... more Social enterprises have long been considered ideal settings for studying hybrid organizing due to their combination of social and economic goals and activities. In this chapter, the authors argue that the current research focus on hybrid organizing foregrounds the paradox, conflicting logics, and multiple identities associated with the pursuit of multiple goals but underappreciates the relationship between hybrid organizing and its institutional context. Recognizing that the primary objective of social enterprises is to tackle social problems, the authors introduce the social problem domain as an analytically useful and theoretically interesting meso-level to examine the role of context for hybrid organizing and to advance conversations on hybridity in organizational theory. Social problem domains offer insights into the political, cultural, and material differences in how various societies deal with social problems, which in turn affects hybrid organizing. The authors provide empirical insights derived from an analysis of social enterprises across three countries and social problem domains. The authors show how the institutional arrangements of social enterprises differ considerably across contexts, and how these arrangements affect how social enterprises become more or less similar compared to traditional ways of organizing in these problem domains. Based on these findings, the authors outline a research agenda on social enterprises that focuses on examining the nature, antecedents, and outcomes of hybrid organizing around social problems across multiple levels of analysis. With this chapter, the authors move the focus of social enterprise research in organizational theory from studying how these organizations cope with multiple logics and goals toward studying how they engage in markets for public purpose.

The SAGE Handbook of Organizational Institutionalism

stigmatized and marginalized individuals and groups (Martí & Fernández, 2013; Soule, 2012) and ex... more stigmatized and marginalized individuals and groups (Martí & Fernández, 2013; Soule, 2012) and exploitation that leads to 'body breakdowns' (Michel, 2011) have also been reported as outcomes of formal and informal policies of exploitation and inequality. These patterns of inequality are engendered by deeply entrenched power structures that are manifest in institutionalized beliefs and rules that dominate social and economic life. These include economic and political ideologies, the class system, gender roles, social structures, discourses and subject positions that have themselves reified societal inequalities. Mair et al. (2012: 820), for example, provide an evocative analysis of the ways in which social inequalities in developing countries are reinforced as market access and opportunities are governed by local institutional arrangements that 'consist of complex interlocks of formal institutions, such as constitutions, laws, property rights, and governmental regulations, and informal institutions, such as customs, traditions, and religious beliefs'. To date, however, the institutional arrangements underpinning, and dynamics of, inequality have been largely overlooked (for an exception see Mair, Wolf & Seelos, 2016). It is this agenda that we take up in our chapter. In doing so, we are responding to recent polemics, prescriptions and calls to engage more with substantive societal

Journal of Management Studies

We argue that accounts of relationships among actors, actorhood and institutions are predominantl... more We argue that accounts of relationships among actors, actorhood and institutions are predominantly based on a spatial metaphor of actors operating within institutions. We outline how an inversion of this metaphor – i.e., the perspective that institutions inhabit actors – may prove generative for theory, particularly with respect to recent discussions about the microfoundations of institutions. We outline how communication and actorhood models function as transmission mechanisms of institutions from one actor to another. We conclude with a discussion of how the inverted metaphor of institutions inhabiting actors can be useful for future theoretical developments.

Academy of Management Annals

With societal inequalities continuing to increase and organizations providing the vast majority o... more With societal inequalities continuing to increase and organizations providing the vast majority of people with their income, we wanted to assess the ways in which organizational practices are implicated in the burgeoning of social and economic inequality. Following an integrative review of the literature drawn from across the social sciences, we found that the multiple ways in which five major organizational practices-hiring, role allocation, promotion, compensation, and structuring-are enacted emerged as being central to the reproduction of inequality. We also uncovered how the persistence of these practices, and the inequality they induce, can be largely attributed to a constellation of three highly institutionalized myths, efficiency, meritocracy, and positive globalization. Our analysis further reveals how, as scholars, we bear a corresponding responsibility to reconsider how we engage in research on and teaching about organizations. The implications of this for our future work are discussed. "For the great enemy of truth is very often not the lie-deliberate, contrived and dishonest-but the myth-persistent, persuasive and unrealistic." (John F. Kennedy, 1962) 1 Copyright of the Academy of Management, all rights reserved. Contents may not be copied, emailed, posted to a listserv, or otherwise transmitted without the copyright holder's express written permission. Users may print, download, or email articles for individual use only.

Academy of Management Journal

We advance a novel idea-centric perspective to study power-laden aspects of institutional life in... more We advance a novel idea-centric perspective to study power-laden aspects of institutional life in fields. Our study includes data from the field of impact investing in Europe from 2006–2018, collec...

Ökologisches Wirtschaften - Fachzeitschrift

Die Arbeit der indischen Organisation Gram Vikas zeigt, dass Social Entrepreneurs Institutionen n... more Die Arbeit der indischen Organisation Gram Vikas zeigt, dass Social Entrepreneurs Institutionen nicht nur verändern, sondern auch neu schaffen. Diese Institutional Entrepreneurs können zentrale Akteure für einen institutionellen Wandel sein.