Administrative Science Quarterly Online Table of Contents Alert
The March 2026 issue of Administrative Science Quarterly is available online:
Vol. 71, No. 1
We kick off our first issue in volume 71 with two articles that explore firms' responses to social issues and two that investigate workers' reputations and relationships. Empirical investigations of two very different settings-CrossFit gyms and LGBT social movement organizations-demonstrate that the structure of firms' environments, from local community embeddedness to the interorganizational division of labor, has an impact on firms' responses to social issues. Two papers build theory around workers' relationships, showing how platform creatives manage how they respond to their audiences and how power-line workers share information about potential co-workers. Another article takes a microhistorical perspective on strategy emergence, showing how Nokia's anticipation and reaction to events that do not occur shape their later strategies. Finally, we learn about how evaluative stigma associated with employer failures influences the careers of non-executive employees. Happy reading!
Near-Histories and Strategy Emergence: A Microhistorical Perspective
Juha-Antti Lamberg, Eero Vaara, Pasi Nevalainen, and Henrikki Tikkanen
This study shows that near-histories, or strategic decisions and actions that do not ultimately occur, can spur dynamics that lead to profound strategic consequences for organizations. Focusing on two key episodes in Nokia Corporation's evolution in the 1970s and 1980s, the authors create a process model showing how anticipatory reactions, mobilization of networks, revision of expectations, and the emergence of a new strategic direction can influence organizational strategy. The study shows how near-history episodes, which result in affective reorientation and relationship restructuring, can be generative forces that shape organizational trajectories.
CrossFit in the Crosshairs: A Community-Embedded Theory of Firm Responsiveness to Social Issues
Enrico Forti, Alessandro Piazza, and Joost Rietveld
When and why do firms act on social issues? Whereas most research studies these questions by focusing on firm-level or issue characteristics, here the authors find that structural aspects of local community are relevant to firms' behavior. Focusing on the CrossFit CEO's controversial statements after the murder of George Floyd at the hands of police in 2020, the authors develop a theory that links network closure, segregation patterns, and issue connectedness in communities to local gyms disaffiliating from CrossFit. They find that the social issue was less salient in local communities with stronger inward-focused ties and with greater ethnic segregation. In contrast, firms were more likely to respond when they were in communities connected to populations affected by Floyd's death and when they were more dependent on the local community.
How Activists Collaboratively Divide the Labor of Making Change: The Case of LGBT Rights
Lisa Buchter and Elise Lobbedez
This study contributes to emerging research on how insider and outsider activists in social movement organizations (SMOs) collaborate to pursue common agendas. Studying the LGBT movement in French workplaces, the authors introduce the concept of collaborative division of labor, showing how SMO actors adopt different roles and leverage positions, postures, and expertise to reach their goals. The study examines how SMO actors interact as they practice four strategies: amplifying one another's actions, compelling organizations to respond, threatening organizations' reputations, and engaging in complementary datactivism. The authors reveal new forms of division of labor among social movement actors, show that such division is multidirectional, and demonstrate how these new forms help people to achieve outcomes.
Reputation on the Line: How the Third-Party Dilemma Shapes Trust in High-Risk Work
Luke N. Hedden and Michael G. Pratt
How workers build trust has mainly focused on the trustor (the one making a trust decision) and the trustee (the one the trustor is deciding to trust or not). But in some contexts, third parties deeply influence whether and how workers build trust. These authors study linemen-the men and women who work on power lines-and reveal how third-party assessments of potential co-workers are essential for maintaining safety in an interdependent job with a high rate of injury and death. They find that line workers grapple with a third-party dilemma: the simultaneous need to report accurate reputational information about these workers in order to keep trustors safe and the need to protect their own reputations, which can suffer if a recommended worker fails to meet expectations. The dynamics resulting from workers' communication practices in the face of this dilemma tend to diminish trust within the triad. The study emphasizes the importance of work context and of going beyond dyadic trust models.
Beyond Blame: Evaluative Stigma, Attribution, and Employee Careers after Employer Failure
Tristan L. Botelho and Matt Marx
Prior studies have explored how employer failure affects organizational leaders, but what about the outcomes for non-executive employees? Using data from the U.S. Census and the automatic speech recognition industry, the authors develop a theoretical framework to reveal career outcomes for employees, finding that employer failure does not harm employees' subsequent wages and career opportunities as it can for organizational leaders. Exceptions include when the failure involves scandal or when employees belong to certain marginalized demographic groups. By considering all employees, not only those in the upper echelons of organizations, the study expands understanding of how employer failure affects employees' careers, and integrates relevant research on careers, evaluations, stigma, and attribution.
Audience Entanglement: How Independent Creative Workers Experience the Pressures of Widespread Appeal on Digital Platforms
Julianna Pillemer, Spencer Harrison, Chad Murphy, and Yejin Park
Many creative workers on digital platforms work hard to gain widespread appeal, but when they do gain it their relationships with their audiences can change. In this inductive study, the authors theorize that after obtaining a large audience, platform creators go through stages of audience entanglement and dysfunctional entanglement; in response, some creators then develop entanglement management strategies, which can lead to a new stage: functional entanglement. This new stage allows creators to simultaneously draw meaning from their audience and to feel that their platform work is sustainable. The study breaks new ground by unpacking the interplay between audience responses and creator meaning-making, showing how creators manage audiences while remaining true to their work.
Book Reviews
Robert W. Fairlie, Zachary Kroff, Javier Miranda, and Nikolas Zolas. The Promise and Peril of Entrepreneurship: Job Creation and Survival Among U.S. Startups
Maryann Feldman and Jing Deng
Amy J. Binder and Jeffrey L. Kidder. The Channels of Student Activism: How the Left and Right Are Winning (and Losing) in Campus Politics Today
Brayden G King
François-Xavier de Vaujany, Robin Holt, and Albane Grandazzi (Eds.). Organization as Time: Technology, Power and Politics
Blagoy Blagoev
Baruch Fischhoff. Bounded Disciplines and Unbounded Problems: A Vision for Management Science
Alan D. Meyer
Mary J. Waller and Seth A. Kaplan. Crisis-Ready Teams: Data-Driven Lessons from Aviation, Nuclear Power, Emergency Medicine, and Mine Rescue
Georg Rilinger
Lizhi Liu. From Click to Boom: The Political Economy of E-Commerce in China
Shuang L. Frost
Jerald Hage, Joseph J. Valadez, and Wilbur C. Hadden. Saving Societies From Within: Innovation and Equity Through Inter-Organizational Networks
Arkangel M. Cordero
Marion Fourcade and Kieran Healy. The Ordinal Society
Michael Sauder
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Beth Bechky, University of California, Davis
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Beth Bechky
Professor
UC Davis
Davis CA
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