Perspective - Open to Negotiation: Phenomenological Assumptions and Knowledge Dissemination

Phenomenological assumptions---assumptions about the fundamental qualities of the phenomenon being studied and how it relates to the environment in which it occurs---affect the dissemination of knowledge from subfields to the broader field of study. Micro-process research in organizational studies rests on implicit phenomenological assumptions that vary in the extent to which micro-processes are viewed as parts of larger systems. We suggest that phenomenological assumptions linking micro-processes to organizational contexts highlight the relevance of micro-process research findings to broader organizational questions and therefore increase the likelihood that the findings will disseminate to the larger field of organizational research. We test this assertion by analyzing studies of negotiation published in top peer-reviewed management, psychology, sociology, and industrial relations journals from 1990 to 2005. Our findings reveal a continuum of open systems to closed systems phenomenological assumptions in negotiation research. Analysis of the citation rates of the articles in our data set by non-negotiation organizational research indicates that more open systems assumptions increase the likelihood that a negotiation article will be cited in organizational studies, after controlling for other, previously identified effects on citation rates. Our findings suggest that subfields can increase the impact they have on the broader intellectual discourse by situating their phenomena in rich contexts that illuminate the connections between their findings and questions of interest to the broader field.

[1]  DoughertyDeborah.  Interpretive Barriers to Successful Product Innovation in Large Firms , 1992 .

[2]  James N. Baron,et al.  Resources and Relationships: Social Networks and Mobility in the Workplace , 1997 .

[3]  C. Ridgeway,et al.  The Social Construction of Status Value: Gender and Other Nominal Characteristics , 1991 .

[4]  Michael G. Pratt,et al.  Symbols as a Language of Organizational Relationships , 2004 .

[5]  Christopher Marquis,et al.  Special Issue: Frontiers of Organization Science, Part 1 of 2: Prospects for Organization Theory in the Early Twenty-First Century: Institutional Fields and Mechanisms , 2005, Organ. Sci..

[6]  Anat Rafaeli,et al.  3. Symbols as a language of organizational relationships , 2001 .

[7]  P. M. Hendryx-Bedalov,et al.  Ethnography , 1998 .

[8]  Elaine B. Hyder,et al.  Knowledge Matters: The Effect of Tactical Descriptions on Negotiation Behavior and Outcome , 1996 .

[9]  L. Pondy.  Organizational conflict: Concepts and models. , 1967 .

[10]  Jin Nam Choi,et al.  The Organizational Application of Groupthink and Its Limitations in Organizations , 1999 .

[11]  Tenbrunsel,et al.  The Negotiation Matching Process: Relationships and Partner Selection. , 1999, Organizational behavior and human decision processes.

[12]  Pamela S. Tolbert,et al.  Institutionalization and Structuration: Studying the Links between Action and Institution , 1997 .

[13]  Joanne D. Martin.  Deconstructing Organizational Taboos: The Suppression of Gender Conflict in Organizations , 1990 .

[14]  Neil Fligstein,et al.  The Intraorganizational Power Struggle: Rise of Finance Personnel to Top Leadership in Large Corporations, 1919-1979 , 1987 .

[15]  R. Friedman,et al.  Differentiation of Boundary Spanning Roles: Labor Negotiations and Implications for Role Conflict , 1992 .

[16]  K. Knorr-Cetina,et al.  Epistemic cultures : how the sciences make knowledge , 1999 .

[17]  R. Merton.  The Matthew Effect in Science , 1968, Science.

[18]  C. Hardy.  Organizations: Rational, Natural and Open Systems , 1983 .

[19]  Paul H. J. Hendriks,et al.  Why share knowledge? The influence of ICT on the motivation for knowledge sharing , 1999 .

[20]  R. Merton,et al.  Genesis and development of a scientific fact , 1979 .

[21]  JoAnne Yates,et al.  Life in the Trading Zone: Structuring Coordination Across Boundaries in Postbureaucratic Organizations , 2006, Organ. Sci..

[22]  Beth A. Bechky.  Sharing Meaning Across Occupational Communities: The Transformation of Understanding on a Production Floor , 2003, Organ. Sci..

[23]  Kenneth G. Brown,et al.  The Very Separate Worlds Of Academic And Practitioner Periodicals In Human Resource Management: Implications For Evidence-Based Management , 2007 .

[24]  Huseyin Leblebici.  New Directions for Organization Theory: Problems and Prospects , 1999 .

[25]  L. Thompson,et al.  Reversing the Gender Gap in Negotiations: An Exploration of Stereotype Regeneration , 2002 .

[26]  Paul R. Carlile,et al.  Transferring, Translating, and Transforming: An Integrative Framework for Managing Knowledge Across Boundaries , 2004, Organ. Sci..

[27]  W. E. Vinacke,et al.  A Behavioral Theory of Labor Negotiations: An Analysis of a Social Interaction System. , 1966 .

[28]  Bradley L. Kirkman,et al.  Perceived Causes and Solutions of the Translation Problem in Management Research , 2007 .

[29]  C. Steele.  A threat in the air. How stereotypes shape intellectual identity and performance. , 1997, The American psychologist.

[30]  Gerald R. Salancik,et al.  An Index of Subgroup Influence in Dependency Networks. , 1986 .

[31]  A. Strauss,et al.  Negotiations: Varieties, Contexts, Processes, and Social Order. , 1979 .

[32]  T. Judge,et al.  What Causes a Management Article to be Cited—Article, Author, or Journal? , 2007 .

[33]  Donald C. Hambrick,et al.  Relative Standing: A Framework for Understanding Departures of Acquired Executives , 1993 .

[34]  Beth A. Bechky.  Object Lessons: Workplace Artifacts as Representations of Occupational Jurisdiction1 , 2003, American Journal of Sociology.

[35]  T. Kuhn.  The structure of scientific revolutions, 3rd ed. , 1996 .

[36]  James A. Wall,et al.  Negotiations , 1991, Managing Indirect Spend.

[37]  B. Raven,et al.  The Bases of Power: Origins and Recent Developments. A Presentation in Honor of John R. P. French on the Occasion of His Receiving the Kurt Lewin Award. , 1992 .

[38]  M. Neale,et al.  The Role of Negotiator Aspirations and Settlement Expectancies in Bargaining Outcomes , 1994 .

[39]  A. Donnellon,et al.  Communication, Meaning, and Organized Action. , 1986 .

[40]  M. Glynn.  When Cymbals Become Symbols: Conflict Over Organizational Identity Within a Symphony Orchestra , 2000 .

[41]  T. Kochan,et al.  Conflict: Toward Conceptual Clarity. , 1972 .

[42]  Tom R. Burns,et al.  Relational Control , 1975 .

[43]  Henry M. Kim,et al.  Relationships among the academic business disciplines: a multi-method citation analysis , 2006 .

[44]  Gary Alan Fine,et al.  Negotiated Orders and Organizational Cultures , 1984 .

[45]  Michelle Gittelman,et al.  Does Geography Matter for Science-Based Firms? Epistemic Communities and the Geography of Research and Patenting in Biotechnology , 2007, Organ. Sci..

[46]  W. Bennis,et al.  The Social Psychology of Organizations , 1966 .

[47]  S. Sitkin,et al.  Big‐B versus Big‐O: what is organizational about organizational behavior?* , 2001 .

[48]  James D. Thompson.  Organizations in Action: Social Science Bases of Administrative Theory , 1967 .

[49]  W. Richard Scott.  Organizations: Rational, Natural, and Open Systems , 1981 .

[50]  J B Martin,et al.  Breaking Down the Walls: Thoughts on the Scholarship of Integration , 2000, Academic medicine : journal of the Association of American Medical Colleges.

[51]  James D. Westphal,et al.  Keeping Directors in Line: Social Distancing as a Control Mechanism in the Corporate Elite , 2003 .

[52]  E. Fox.  Mary Parker Follett: The Enduring Contribution , 1968 .

[53]  D. Morgan,et al.  Sociological Paradigms and Organizational Analysis. , 1983 .

[54]  W. Swann,et al.  Identity negotiation in roommate relationships: the self as architect and consequence of social reality. , 1994, Journal of personality and social psychology.

[55]  T. Kuhn.  The Structure of Scientific Revolutions. , 1964 .

[56]  G. Morgan.  Paradigms, Metaphors, and Puzzle Solving in Organizational Theory. , 1980 .

[57]  R. Pieters,et al.  Who talks to whom? Intra-and interdisciplinary communication of economics journals , 2002 .

[58]  Richard Blackburn,et al.  Citation analysis in the organizational sciences. , 1981 .

[59]  D. R. Maines,et al.  The Negotiated Order Approach To The Analysis Of Social Organization , 1985 .

[60]  Tim Appenzeller,et al.  Beyond Reductionism , 1999, Science.

[61]  P.J.M. Verschuren.  Holism versus Reductionism in Modern Social Science Research , 2001 .

[62]  Michelle Gittelman,et al.  Does Good Science Lead to Valuable Knowledge? Biotechnology Firms and the Evolutionary Logic of Citation Patterns , 2003, Manag. Sci..

[63]  D. Dougherty.  Interpretive Barriers to Successful Product Innovation in Large Firms , 1992 .

[64]  J. Bartunek,et al.  Hidden Conflict In Organizations: Uncovering Behind-the-Scenes Disputes , 1991 .

[65]  S. Ranson.  The Structuring of Organizational Structures. , 1980 .

[66]  K. Jehn.  A Multimethod Examination of the Benefits and Detriments of Intragroup Conflict , 1995 .

[67]  H. A. Overstreet,et al.  The New State: Group Organization the Solution of Popular Government. , 1919 .

[68]  R. Suddaby.  From the Editors: What Grounded Theory is Not , 2006 .

[69]  Mie Augier,et al.  Notes on the Evolution of a Research Community: Organization Studies in Anglophone North America, 1945-2000 , 2005, Organ. Sci..

[70]  A. Nauta,et al.  The executive way: conflict management in corporations , 1997 .

[71]  Jennifer A. Chatman,et al.  Full-Cycle Micro-Organizational Behavior Research , 2005 .

[72]  Morten T. Hansen,et al.  The Search-Transfer Problem: The Role of Weak Ties in Sharing Knowledge across Organization Subunits , 1999 .

[73]  Jacques L. Koko,et al.  The Art and Science of Negotiation , 2009 .

[74]  J. Neter,et al.  Applied Linear Regression Models , 1983 .

[75]  A. Kellerman,et al.  The Constitution of Society : Outline of the Theory of Structuration , 2015 .

[76]  K. Jehn.  A qualitative analysis of conflict types and dimensions in , 1997 .

[77]  Mark S. Granovetter.  The Impact of Social Structure on Economic Outcomes Social Networks and Economic Outcomes: Core Principles , 2022 .

[78]  A. Kieser,et al.  Why the Rigour-Relevance Gap in Management Research is Unbridgeable , 2009 .

[79]  Calvin Morrill,et al.  Conflict Management, Honor, and Organizational Change , 1991, American Journal of Sociology.

[80]  P. Strong,et al.  The case for qualitative research , 1992 .

[81]  Saul A. Rubinstein,et al.  Toward a Stakeholder Theory of the Firm: The Saturn Partnership , 2000 .

[82]  Xueguang Zhou.  The Institutional Logic of Occupational Prestige Ranking: Reconceptualization and Reanalyses1 , 2005, American Journal of Sociology.

[83]  G. Gilbert.  Referencing as Persuasion , 1977 .

[84]  R. Mayntz.  [Rezension] Strauss, Anselm: Negotiations - Varieties, Contexts, Processes, and Social Order (San Francisco: Jossey-Bass, 1978) , 1980 .

[85]  Dennis A. Gioia,et al.  Multiparadigm Perspectives on Theory Building , 1990 .

[86]  Paul R. Carlile,et al.  A Pragmatic View of Knowledge and Boundaries: Boundary Objects in New Product Development , 2002, Organ. Sci..