Oana Branzei

• Albareda, L.; Branzei, O., (Forthcoming), "Biocentric Work in the Anthropocene: How Actors Regenerate Degenerated Natural Commons", Journal of Management Studies
  Abstract: As natural commons vital to selves, organizations, and institutions collapse under cumulative anthropogenic pressures, can human agency still reverse some of the damage already done? This article explores how emerging forms of social symbolic work regenerate degenerated natural commons. Using a five-year multi-sited immersive ethnography of natural commons that had collapsed, we explain how actors (re)turn to the biophysical roots of socio-ecological systems to take care, work with, and care for nature. We show how actors’ comprehension develops over time by connecting their social-symbolic construction of natural commons post collapse with three sets of practices we label biomanipulation, biofacilitation, and bioaffiliation. We inductively theorize biocentric work as a processual form of social-symbolic work that connects three cycles of material abduction, relational intercession, and discursive grounding. Our tri-cyclical process model underscores the biophysical foundations of social-symbolic work in the Anthropocene by explicitly and iteratively situating self, organizations and institutions in the states and dynamics of natural commons.

  Link(s) to publication:

  http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/joms.13080

• Lashitew, A. A.; Branzei, O.; van Tulder, R., 2024, "Community Inclusion under Systemic Inequality: How For-Profit Businesses Pursue Social Purpose", Journal of Management Studies, January 61(1): 230 - 268.
  Abstract: In countries where systemic inequality is pervasive, purposeful businesses that assume wider societal responsibilities try to counteract its effects by including marginalized social groups in their value creation processes. While current research documents a variety of business approaches for community inclusion, the nature, drivers and effectiveness of these inclusionary practices are not fully understood. We develop and empirically validate a framework of community inclusion that explicates the mechanisms through which purposeful businesses generate civic wealth – or economic and social benefits – to disadvantaged community groups. We differentiate between commercial practices that recast existent firm-centric processes towards creating value for marginalized groups and collaborative practices that aim to devise novel, participatory processes for engaging marginalized groups. Analysis of primary data from a sample of 430 small businesses in seven African countries confirms that the effect of social purpose on civic wealth is partially mediated by the two inclusionary practices. Businesses are more likely to extend the scope of their inclusion through collaborative practices when they receive favourable external validation and when institutional voids are low. We contribute to the literature by documenting the role of social purpose in motivating the pursuit of community-level goals and by unpacking the specific inclusionary practices used to achieve them.

  Link(s) to publication:

  http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/joms.12907

• Gualandris, J.; Branzei, O.; Wilhelm, M.; Lazzarini, S. L.; Linnenluecke, M.; Hamann, R.; Dooley, K. J.; Barnett, M. L.; Chen, C., 2024, "Unchaining supply chains: Transformative leaps toward regenerating social–ecological systems", J. Supply Chain Manag., January 60(1): 53 - 67.
  Abstract: The worsening climate, biodiversity, and inequity crises have existential implications. To help resolve these crises, supply chains must move beyond a minimal harm approach. Instead, supply chains must make positive contributions to and harmoniously integrate with the living systems around them. Despite agreement on this urgent need, supply chain management research still lacks a shared roadmap for establishing economically sustainable supply chains that actively regenerate social?ecological systems. This essay deepens the understanding of regenerative supply chains, inviting supply chain scholars and practitioners to rally around timely questions and codevelop new answers. We first scrutinize the paradigmatic assumptions that continue to anchor contemporary research and practice in supply chain management, showing how these once helpful assumptions now hold the community back from seeking much needed solutions. We then offer real-world examples and synthesize emerging arguments from multiple disciplines to propose three new principles of regenerative organizing: proportionality, reciprocity, and poly-rhythmicity. We also delve into the implications of pursuing these regenerative principles for supply chain coordination, governance, and resilience. Finally, we reflect on the fit of empirical research designs and methods for examining the creation of new regenerative supply chains and the conversion of existing supply chains.

  Link(s) to publication:

  https://doi.org/10.1111/jscm.12314

  http://dx.doi.org/10.1111/jscm.12314

• Zeyen, A.; Branzei, O., 2023, "Disabled at Work: Body-Centric Cycles of Meaning-Making", Journal of Business Ethics, July 185(4): 767 - 810.
  Abstract: A 22-month longitudinal study of (self)employed disabled workers (Following the preference of the lead author who identifies as disabled, the linguistic self-presentation by our participants, the precedent of (Hein and Ansari, Academy of Management Journal 65:749–783, 2022), and the clarification note included in Jammaers & Zanoni’s recent review of ableism (Jammaers and Zanoni, Organization Studies 42:429–452, 2021), we chose, and consistently use, the term “disabled employees” throughout the paper. We do so to underscore the premise of the social model of disability, which explains that “people are disabled first and foremost by society, not by their individual, biological impairment. To us this term most clearly highlights that it is society (and possibly organizations) that disable and oppress people with impairments, by preventing their access, integration and inclusion to all walks of life, making them ‘disabled’.” (Jammaers and Zanoni, Organization Studies 42:429–452, 2021: 448)) models the growing centrality of the body in meaning-making. We inductively explain how body dramas of suffering or thriving initially instigate cycles of meaning deflation and inflation at work. Our disjunctive process model shows that, at the beginning of the pandemic, disabled workers performed either dramas of suffering or on dramas of thriving. However, as the global pandemic unfolded, disabled workers begun crafting composite dramas that deliberately juxtaposed thriving and suffering. This conjunctive process model stabilized meaning-making at work by acknowledging the duality of the disabled body, as both anomaly and asset. Our findings elaborate, and bridge, emerging theories of body work and recursive meaning-making to explain how disabled workers explicitly enroll their bodies to make meaning at work during periods of societal upheaval.

  Link(s) to publication:

  https://doi.org/10.1007/s10551-023-05344-w

  http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10551-023-05344-w

• Branzei, O.; Fathallah, R.; Jack, S.; Batjargal, B.; Wennberg, K.; Mickiewicz, T.; Stam, W., 2023, "The End of Resilience? Managing Vulnerability Through Temporal Resourcing and Resisting", Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice, May 47(3): 104225872110538 - 104225872110538.
  Abstract: We induce a first-person conceptualization of entrepreneurial resilience. Our seven-year, two-study ethnography shows that entrepreneurs enact resilience as a four-step process of managing vulnerability: they richly experience episodes of adversity, self-monitor across episodes, reassess personal thresholds and reconcile challenges with coping skills. Entrepreneurs manage vulnerability by (1) modifying (stretching and shrinking) objective time and (2) changing their subjective experience of time as working with or against the clock through temporal resourcing or temporal resisting. We extend the theory and practice of entrepreneurial resilience by elaborating the interplay of objective and subjective time in managing vulnerability in recurrent and unprecedented crises.

  Link(s) to publication:

  https://doi.org/10.1177/10422587211053809

  http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/10422587211053809

• Ryan, A.; Geiger, S.; Haugh, H.; Branzei, O.; Gray, B.; Lawrence, T.; Cresswell, T.; Andersen, A.; Jack, S.; McKeever, E., et al., 2023, "Emplaced partnerships and the ethics of care, recognition and resilience", Journal of Business Ethics, May (184): 757 - 772.
  Abstract: The aim of the SI is to bring to the fore the places in which cross-sector partnerships (CSPs) are formed; how place shapes the dynamics of CSPs, and how CSPs shape the specific settings in which they develop. The papers demonstrate that partnerships and place are intrinsically reciprocal: the morality and materiality inherent in places repeatedly reset the reference points for partners, trigger epiphanies, shift identities, and redistribute capacities to act. Place thus becomes generative of partnerships in the most profound sense: by developing an awareness of their emplacement, CSPs commit to place, and through their place-based commitments produce three intertwined modalities of place-specific ethics that bind CSPs and place: ethic of recognition, an ethic of care, and an ethic of resilience. Our authors have found vivid examples of how emplaced CSPs embody these ethics, signaling hope for the sustainability of our (always hyper-local) life-worlds.

  Link(s) to publication:

  http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10551-023-05368-2

• Dorado, S.; Antadze, N.; Purdy, J.; Branzei, O., 2022, "Standing on the Shoulders of Giants: Leveraging Management Research on Grand Challenges", Business and Society, May 61(5): 1242 - 1281.
  Abstract: We advance research on how businesses engage with the complex social problems currently known as Grand Challenges. We study the concepts that preceded the term Grand Challenges, the connected ontologies that ground them, and the diversity of perspectives they offered. We construct a knowledge map that includes well-researched obstacles, such as governance obstacles hindering engagement and sensemaking obstacles limiting the ideation of novel and creative efforts. But we also build on prior research to identify curation obstacles, which precede engagement and define which problems receive social attention, and adaptation obstacles, which create uncertainty over workable solutions and bias the momentum of social systems toward the status quo. Our broader view on the obstacles defining Grand Challenges opens new pathways and identifies underexplored levers by which to understand and influence business engagement with complex social problems.

  Link(s) to publication:

  http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/00076503221087701

• Garst, G.; Blok, V.; Branzei, O.; Jansen, L.; Omta, O. S. W. F., 2021, "Toward a value-sensitive absorptive capacity framework: Navigating intervalue and intravalue conflicts to answer the societal call for health", Business and Society, July 60(6): 1349 - 1386.
  Abstract: The majority of studies on absorptive capacity (AC) underscore the importance of absorbing technological knowledge from other firms to create economic value. However, to preserve moral legitimacy and create social value, firms must also discern and adapt to (shifts in) societal values. A comparative case study of eight firms in the food industry reveals how organizations prioritize and operationalize the societal value health in product innovation while navigating inter- and intravalue conflicts. The value-sensitive framework induced in this article extends AC by explaining how technically savvy, economic value–creating firms diverge in their receptivity, articulation, and reflexivity of societal values.

  Link(s) to publication:

  http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0007650319876108

• Poldner, K.; Branzei, O.; Steyaert, C., 2019, "Fashioning Ethical Subjectivity: The Embodied Ethics of Entrepreneurial Self-formation, Organization", Organization, December 26(2): 151 - 174.
  Abstract: Organizational ethics has attracted increasing attention, but how individuals make sense of themselves as ethical subjects is a yet to be explored domain. The few empirical articles on ethical subjectivity have focused on how people within organizations seek to find a balance between a sense of ethical selfhood and dominant organizational discourse. We are interested in the role of the body and embodied experiences in constructing the entrepreneurial self and how this process unfolds over time. Viewing entrepreneuring as an ethical practice, we rely on a larger study of 58 entrepreneurs and a smaller multi-modal ethnography of three entrepreneurs in the ethical fashion industry. Drawing on the Deleuzian four folds of subjectivity that we employ as an analytical device, the data analysis reveals how our protagonists use the body as sensor, source, and processor in constructing themselves as ethical subjects. Our study complements rational perspectives on ethical decision making in entrepreneurship and establishes the body as a primary mechanism for one’s formation as an ethical subject. Through connecting the body with ethics, we aim to disclose the continuous subtle interaction between morality and materiality in the process of entrepreneuring. Our abductive framework discloses how one’s body prompts and informs the development of moral actions and material artifacts.

  Link(s) to publication:

  https://journals.sagepub.com/doi/10.1177/1350508418793990

  http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/1350508418793990

• Parker, S. C.; Gamble, E.; Moroz, P. W.; Branzei, O., 2019, "The Impact of B Lab Certification on Firm Growth", Academy of Management Discoveries, March 5(1): 55 - 77.
  Abstract: We investigate the impact of B Lab certification – a rapidly growing type of third-party certification for organizations with social and/or environmental missions – on the short-term growth rates of certifying firms. To date, this kind of certification has generally been regarded as an unalloyed good for the organizations that adopt it; but prior research has overlooked the possibility that it may also entail attentional deficits and internal organizational disruption, leading to a short-term growth slowdown. Our study reports results based on a novel, hand-collected dataset of 249 mainly privately held North American Certified B Corporations over 2011-2014. Our results, derived from a difference-in-difference framework, and augmented with insights from a set of in-depth interviews, identifies a short-term growth slowdown arising from certification, which is more pronounced for the smallest and youngest firms. These findings highlight the need for management theorists to pay greater attention to internal re-organization costs as well as external benefits flowing from B Lab certification; they also carry important practical implications for organizations contemplating certification.

  Link(s) to publication:

  https://journals.aom.org/doi/10.5465/amd.2017.0068

  http://dx.doi.org/10.5465/amd.2017.0068

• Fathallah, R.; Branzei, O.; Schaan, J-L., 2018, "No place like home? How EMNCs from hyper turbulent contexts internationalize by sequentially arbitraging rents, values, and scales abroad", Journal of World Business, November 53(5): 620 - 631.
  Abstract: Combining historical and longitudinal comparative case methodologies for nine nascent EMNCs over 12 years, we explain how their evolving relationship to a hyper turbulent home country motivates largely unplanned yet aggressive internationalization. Firms progressively mitigate the damaging effects of their rapidly deteriorating home context by pursuing a sequence of three institutional arbitrage modes. They first arbitrage rents to stabilize their rocky domestic operations, then arbitrage values to safeguard their threatened core identity, and finally arbitrage scales to transcend their limited growth prospects. The induced stepwise process of internationalization yields similar patterns for purely domestic firms, exporters, and foreign direct investors.

  Link(s) to publication:

  http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jwb.2018.04.001

• Branzei, O.; Parker, S. C.; Moroz, P. W.; Gamble, E., 2018, "Going pro-social: Extending the individual-venture nexus to the collective level", Journal of Business Venturing, September 33(5): 551 - 565.
  Abstract: The aim of this Special Issue is to demonstrate how drawing on multidisciplinary insights from the literature on prosociality can broaden the individual-opportunity nexus to make room for a variety of actors. Five feature articles emphasize the collective level of the analysis, underscoring the social distance between the entrepreneurs and the different communities they serve. Leveraging construal level theory, we abductively derive an organizing framework that helps us articulate how stretching or compressing social distance can transform initial opportunities into occasions for serving the greater good. We identify two distinct mechanisms present in all five empirical studies that explain how the needs and hopes of many others may add creativity, consistency and connectivity to one's venture. We also connect these abductive insights with the two editorials that follow this introduction and nudge our collective attention towards the research opportunities awaiting our academic community once we begin to relax the egocentric reference point that, until recently, has defined the discipline of entrepreneurship.

  Link(s) to publication:

  http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jbusvent.2018.06.007

• Maslach, D.; Branzei, O.; Rerup, C.; Zbaracki, M., 2018, "Noise as signal in learning from rare events", Organization Science, April 29(2): 225 - 246.
  Abstract: Firms increasingly have access to information about the failure events of other firms through public repositories. We study one such repository that accumulates reports of adverse events in the medical device industry. We provide qualitative evidence that shows how firms select a sample of adverse events and then engage in inferential learning. We show that firms use the reports of others to extract new valid knowledge from the adverse events in other firms. We use quantitative evidence to explore how a public repository can be used to provide more direct evidence of vicarious learning. Our findings challenge some standard assumptions about vicarious learning. First, we show that the learning in a repository does not come from referent others. Instead, it emerges directly from failure events that might ordinarily be dismissed as noise. Second, we show that the learning does not come from copying others. Instead, it is constructed by firm members as they assemble individual failure events to identify possibilities they had not considered. Third, in contrast to vicarious learning where the referent others and rare events provide the context, repository-based learning requires that actors impose their own context as part of the learning process. Our qualitative and quantitative evidence serve explanatory purposes by showing how firms use a repository of failure events to identify moments of valid learning, and exploratory purposes by investigating how we can demonstrate reliable learning from a repository of failure events.

  Link(s) to publication:

  http://dx.doi.org/10.1287/orsc.2017.1179

• Branzei, O.; Frooman, J.; McKnight, B.; Zietsma, C., 2018, "What Good Does Doing Good do? The Effect of Bond Rating Analysts’ Corporate Bias on Investor Reactions to Changes in Social Responsibility", Journal of Business Ethics, March 148(1): 183 - 203.
  Abstract: © 2016, Springer Science+Business Media Dordrecht. In this study, we explore how investors reconcile information on firms’ social responsibility with analysts’ assessments of future firm risk in the pricing of long-term bonds. We ask whether investors pay attention to small strides toward and/or small slips away from socially responsible behavior, arguing that analysts’ corporate bias toward gains and against losses influences investor reactions to corporate social responsibility. We hypothesize that analysts notice and reward improvements in social responsibility, yet excuse lapses. We find support for this hypothesis, using a unique dataset of long-term bonds that combines lagged measures of firm-level financial and social performance with bond-specific data pertaining to risk of default and pricing. The empirically robust asymmetry in investor responses to small but often cumulative increases versus decreases in corporate social responsibility reveals an under-examined root cause of longer-term, larger-scale distortions in financial market returns regarding corporate social performance. Our findings elaborate earlier behavioral research on how corporate bias influences analysts’ short-term assessments of economic risk, by theorizing why this corporate bias may influence long-term assessments of social risk. Our work also motivates more critical scrutiny of the role analysts play in revising the future risk of today’s social action versus inaction.

  Link(s) to publication:

  https://link.springer.com/article/10.1007/s10551-016-3357-6

  http://dx.doi.org/10.1007/s10551-016-3357-6

• Moroz, P. W.; Branzei, O.; Parker, S. C.; Gamble, E., 2018, "Imprinting with purpose: new pro-social opportunities and B Corp certification", Journal of Business Venturing, March 33(2): 117 - 129.
  Abstract: Certified B Corporations are for profit ventures that have chosen to embrace third party voluntary social and environmental audits conducted by B Lab: a highly entrepreneurial non-profit enterprise in its own right. In this Special Issue, we focus on the lifecycle of Certified B Corporations and its relevance to the entrepreneurial journey. To do so we argue for and highlight research at the intersection of prosocial certification and opportunities to surface patterns and processes, which we believe add significant value to ongoing conversations in the field of entrepreneurship while also charting new pathways. We develop a framework of prosocial venturing and certification that pinpoints several elements of likely consequence and curiosity to providing new insights on the entrepreneurial process that hint at the importance of opportunity, identity metamorphosis and sedimentation/superseding work. In so doing, we offer our interpretation of how the exploration of prosociality may add to conversations on how and why ventures resist or embrace change over time, to what effect and ultimately, how opportunities may be reBorn.

  Link(s) to publication:

  http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jbusvent.2018.01.003

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