Managerial dismissal decisions are a common yet challenging task for CEOs, particularly those joining as new CEOs in organizations characterized by strong values. The purpose of this research is to shift the perspective on such decisions from being a quick rational cost–benefit analysis to being value-based and relational, thus creating an ambiguous and often time-consuming decision situation. We take a sensemaking perspective to understand how new CEOs make sense of potential managerial dismissals and how such sensemaking affects their ultimate dismissal decisions. We investigate this question through a multi-case approach, drawing on evidence from six family firms, which represent an extreme context of value-based organizations. We present a model of how dyadic and prospective sensemaking mechanisms shape whether CEOs are able to overcome their hesitancy to engage in managerial dismissals and, thus, engage in reasoned or rejected dismissals. Our findings extend knowledge on managerial dismissals, provide new insights into how new CEOs build their managerial teams, and explain how CEOs of family firms and other value-based organizations balance non-financial goals in difficult decisions.

How new family CEOs use the structural setup they initially find to foster post-succession change in their family firms remains a theoretical and practical puzzle. Building on strategic change and family succession insights, we draw upon 74 interviews from 43 intra-family CEO successions to employ a fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis. We reveal three change-enabling solutions (authority, empowerment, and alignment) and develop a model of how new family CEOs navigate different structural setups. We add configurational insights to strategic change research in entrepreneurial organizations such as family firms, extend knowledge on new CEO power, and provide contingency factors to the role of new CEO distance.

The grand environmental challenge of climate change represents one of the key ongoing, long-term obstacles for organizations. When interrupted by short-term exogenous crises like the COVID-19 pandemic and the shock of the Ukrainian war, the urgency of addressing this grand challenge becomes more pressing, albeit more challenging. While family firms as long-term oriented organizations might generally be well equipped to tackle climate change, we know surprisingly little on how they simultaneously experience and navigate the long-term horizon of grand environmental challenges and the short-term pressures of exogenous crises. Drawing on research around long-term orientation (LTO) and a growing stream investigating intertemporal tensions, we investigate this question building on 41 interviews with nine family firms in the context of the European manufacturing industry. Applying an abductive approach, our findings unveil three intertemporal tensions that unfold when short-term and long-term objectives collide. Besides, we show that family firms, due to their LTO, perceive these tensions with a greater intensity. Navigating the perceived tensions, we identify two mechanisms employed by family firms that mitigate the negative implications of LTO. Doing so, we contribute to extant research on grand challenges and cast light on the downsides of LTO in family firms.

Professionalization has become ubiquitous among a broad range of organizations, promising increased efficiency and legitimacy. However, extant research depicts professionalization mostly as a binary change and largely ignores its temporal and processual nature, resulting in a lack of insights into how professionalization unfolds and how organizations deal with its inherent tensions. Therefore, we take a processual perspective on professionalization, studying it as a transformation toward a more rationalized, managerialized, and formalized organization through multiple practice adoption. Relying on a longitudinal single case study of a Swedish family firm that professionalized its business and family ownership domains, our processual analysis reveals unique types of professionalization and four practice interaction mechanisms through which organizations deal with tensions in the professionalization process. We contribute by conceptualizing a process model of professionalization, casting light on practice interaction mechanisms, and outlining implications of professionalization for organizational goals.

COVID-19 has caused significant and unforeseen problems for entrepreneurs. While entrepreneurs would normally seek social support to help deal with these issues, due to social distancing, physical networks are often not available. Consequently, entrepreneurs must turn to alternative support sources, such as online communities, raising the question of how support is created in such spaces. Drawing on an affordance perspective, we investigate how entrepreneurs interact with online communities and base our qualitative analysis on conversation data (76,365 posts) from an online community of entrepreneurs on Reddit during the COVID-19 pandemic. Our findings draw out four affordances that online communities offer to entrepreneurs (resolving problems, reframing problems, reflecting on situations, refocusing thinking and efforts), resulting in a framework of entrepreneurial support creation in online communities. Thus, our study contributes to debates around (1) entrepreneurs’ support during COVID-19 and (2) digital affordances in the entrepreneurship context.

Organizations often create new businesses, so-called corporate ventures (CVs), with the purpose of fostering innovation. However, not all venture initiatives turn out to be innovative. Prior research in particular refers to the ambivalent role of the parent firm's dominant coalition in fostering or hindering innovation in CVs. Using a configurational (fsQCA) approach, we investigate the interplay of five key conditions at the parent firm, the parent firm-venture intersection, and venture levels that potentially drive CV innovation. Building on 62 interviews from 43 corporate ventures, we identify four equifinal configurations and outline four roles that the dominant coalition plays in creating CV innovation. This study contributes to the understanding of which CV configurations drive innovation, extends the role of the dominant coalition in corporate venturing, and shows how dominant coalition involvement can replace autonomy as a driver of innovation.

An increasing number of workers turn to digital platforms–such as Fiverr, Freelancer, and Upwork–as an alternative to traditional work arrangements. Digital platforms govern how gig workers join, move through, and leave platforms – often with the help of self-learning algorithms. While digital platforms and algorithms take on HRM practices, we know little about how HRM activities unfold on digital work platforms in the gig economy. The study therefore aims to understand how HRM activities apply to and take shape on digital platforms by studying worker perceptions. We combine supervised text analysis with an in-depth qualitative content analysis, relying on 12’924 scraped comments from an online forum of workers on Upwork. We outline five conversations on HRM practices that pertain to access and mobility, training and development, scoring and feedback, appraisal and control and platform literacy and support. Based on these findings, we build five propositions about how digital work platforms employ HRM activities. Our paper contributes to recent work on HRM on digital platforms by (1) developing a new mixed-methods approach that illustrates how the content of HRM practices may differ from traditional organizations, (2) highlighting the changing role of actors in creating HRM practices by introducing the concept of ‘crowd-created’ HRM practices, and (3) conceptualizing how digital platforms employ a ‘hybrid HRM approach’.