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The gender pay gap among firms' upper echelons is a prominent issue not only because it concerns equality in the workplace, but also because it may impact firms' culture and performance. Responding to calls to better understand how stakeholder expectations and pressures might influence the gender pay gap, this study examines the role of a key stakeholder group, i.e., financial analysts, in curbing the executive gender pay gap. Drawing on the stakeholder and attention-based views of the firm, we contend that analyst coverage may counter the pay gap by: (a) raising other stakeholders' attention on discriminatory pay-setting practices; and (b) reducing information asymmetries in the executive labor market. Both firm- and individual-level econometric analyses on a sample of 38,211 executives working in 3,473 firms support our hypothesis: an increase in analyst firm coverage helps to reduce the gender pay gap among the top executives of S&P 1500 firms between 1992 and 2016. Post-hoc analyses—that use the closure of brokerage houses as an exogeneous shock—lend further support to our claims. Our results advance the literature at the nexus of the stakeholder theory and attention-based view of the firm by unveiling the role of intermediaries in channeling the limited stakeholder attention to certain firms, contributing to the development of a stakeholder-based theory of executive pay.

In this paper, we apply a core/periphery framework to an intraorganizational context to study the interplay between formal and informal core/periphery structures. Specifically, we consider how core positions occupied by inventors in the corporate research and development division of a large multinational high-tech company affect their ability to generate incremental innovations. We theorize and empirically observe that formal and informal core positions have positive and independent effects on the generation of incremental innovations. These effects have a multiplicative impact on innovative productivity when inventors who are core in the informal knowledge-sharing network are also affiliated with a core organizational unit. We also observe, however, that the positive effect of being located at the core of both the informal and formal structures is negatively moderated by individuals' distribution of knowledge ties when these reach outside the core of their informal knowledge-sharing network.

This study proposes and tests a new theoretical model explaining whether, and how, supervisors socialize "temporary newcomers," defined as new organizational members who join an organization on a temporary basis, with a potential, but uncertain, opportunity of receiving a long-term job offer in the future. We suggest that under specific conditions, supervisors first evaluate temporary newcomers' proactivity based on whether they positively stand out by proposing new feasible ideas and by promoting their achievements. On the basis of these initial evaluations, supervisors then decide whether to increase their support of newcomers' creativity (using an investiture approach) or to intensify newcomers' socialization by attempting to change their behavior (using a divestiture approach). When supervisors adopt an investiture approach, it positively influences temporary newcomers' socialization adjustment outcomes, as indicated by increased newcomer job satisfaction, social integration, task performance, organizational and task socialization, challenge stress, and reduced hindrance stress. When supervisors instead adopt a divestiture approach, it has an opposite (thus negative) effect on the same socialization outcomes. We tested our theoretical model using a mix-method design, based on a three-wave longitudinal sample of 325 newcomer–supervisor dyads spanning a wide range of companies and industries, complemented with interviews of 41 supervisors.

In this study we seek to reconcile diverging dominant views on the relationship between firms and their legal environment by offering a cultural contingency perspective. We begin by accepting the notion that a new law will likely exert a powerful influence on targeted firms and that firms' strategic responses include efforts to shape the impact of the new law. However, we suggest that the success of such response will be contingent on the degree of cultural consonance of firms' strategic responses and the dominant cultural context at that time. We elaborate this view in our detailed qualitative and quantitative analyses of the automotive Safety Act of 1966 and the response by targeted firms. We provide evidence showing that the changes in the degree of cultural consonance of firms' strategic response and the predominant cultural beliefs/values explain both the early failure of firms' efforts to shape the impact of the law in the mid-1960s and the later success by the end of the 1970s. We highlight how firms' cultural context provides both a constraint and an opportunity for firms seeking to shape legal environmental pressures, and we conclude by discussing the implications of our dynamic contingency perspective for research on law, culture, and strategy.

Most category studies have focused on established categories with discrete boundaries. These studies not only beg the question of how a de novo category arises, but also upon what institutional material actors draw to create a de novo category. We examine the formation and theorization of the de novo category "modern architecture" between 1870 and 1975. Our study shows that the process of new category formation was driven by groups of architects with distinct clientele associated with institutional logics of commerce, state, religion, and family. These architects enacted different artifact codes for a building based on institutional logics associated with their specific mix of clients. "Modern architects" fought over what logics and artifact codes should guide "modern architecture." Modern functional architects espoused a logic of commerce enacted through a restricted artifact code of new materials in a building, whereas modern organic architects advocated transforming the profession's logic enacted through a flexible artifact code of mixing new and traditional materials in buildings. The conflict became a source of creative tension for modern architects that followed, who integrated aspects of both logics and materials in buildings, expanding the category boundary. Plural logics and category expansion resulted in multiple conflicting exemplars within "modern architecture" and enabled its adaptation to changing social forces and architectural interpretations for over 70 years.