Papers by Christine Quinn Trank
Proceedings - Academy of Management, Aug 1, 2024
Academy of Management Proceedings, 2016
This interactive panel symposium will explore how universities, researchers, and constituencies s... more This interactive panel symposium will explore how universities, researchers, and constituencies strategically and symbolically create, communicate and value research. Specifically, we will explore: a) the meaningfulness of the evaluation standards and valuation criteria that different audiences including policymakers, managers, other researchers, and society at large attribute to our research across the globe: Does what we do matter and to whom? How do these different constituencies measure the value of our research? and, b) The embeddedness and alignment (or misalignment) of the value of our research in broader systems of organizational, industrial, national, regional, institutional and societal cultures: How do administrative constraints, managerial and societal needs, university rankings, educational and developmental goals and strategies shape our valuation of research? Do standards such as those posed by the AACSB and Research Excellence Framework (REF), as well as other global mimetic and cognitive ...
Academy of Management Review, Apr 1, 2013
An introduction is presented to the journal's book review section which focuses on the role o... more An introduction is presented to the journal's book review section which focuses on the role of books as a source of management knowledge, the quantification of book influence through the counting of citations, and the potential role of the book review as a platform for scholarly discussion.
Oxford University Press eBooks, Dec 5, 2016
We explore and extend an emerging interest in understanding the relationship between language and... more We explore and extend an emerging interest in understanding the relationship between language and history in organizational identity work. Recent research has focused attention on the role of “temporal talk” in creating identity—that is, how discourse about the past, present, and future constructs identification. These studies understate the degree of agency in temporal talk and fail to capture the importance of history as a competitive resource. We introduce the term “rhetorical history” to draw attention to the high degree of deliberate and strategic use of persuasive language to construct historical identity narratives in corporations. We also elaborate the understanding, within organizations, of history as critical resource that can be deployed to manage membership with a broad range of organizational stakeholders.
Proceedings - Academy of Management, Aug 1, 2008
This study examines the relationship between three design attributes--decentralization, alignment... more This study examines the relationship between three design attributes--decentralization, alignment, and influence--and organizational-level safety outcomes. We assessed safety-related practices embe...
Academy of Management Review, Nov 28, 2012
Journal of Leadership & Organizational Studies, 2011
Using survey methodology, this study examines employee perceptions of two key organizational desi... more Using survey methodology, this study examines employee perceptions of two key organizational design factors (employee empowerment and alignment of safety practices) and their relationship with nonreporting of employee injuries and near misses. Results show employee perceptions of alignment of safety practices are related to decreased levels of unreported near misses and unreported first aid injuries. However, perceptions of employee empowerment generated counterintuitive results, indicating empowerment is associated with increased levels of unreported near misses. Given the importance of reporting safety incidents, including near misses, to improving safety outcomes, the results reveal that organizational designs that empower employees with regard to safety may yield unintended—and undesirable—consequences.
Academy of Management Review, 2015
The article critiques the television program "The Wire," with a particular emphasis on ... more The article critiques the television program "The Wire," with a particular emphasis on what can be gleaned from it about management, trade, and society. The authors say the show demonstrates how policing, politics, and education are driven by performance measures, as well as the impact of unintended consequences stemming from seemingly minor managerial decisions. In their view "The Wire" shows how trade is governed by global capitalism. They illustrate these and other observations through examples cited from several of the shows seasons
Academy of Management Learning and Education, 2016
Academy of Management Learning & Education, 2016
Academy of Management Proceedings, 2008
This study examines the relationship between three design attributes--decentralization, alignment... more This study examines the relationship between three design attributes--decentralization, alignment, and influence--and organizational-level safety outcomes. We assessed safety-related practices embe...
Institutional Work
T he concept of institutional work (Lawrence & Suddaby, 2006) offers an important new way to ... more T he concept of institutional work (Lawrence & Suddaby, 2006) offers an important new way to frame institutional analysis, connecting disparate (at least in the empirical literature) institutional processes such as creating, maintaining, and disrupting institutions. With its focus on practical action within organizational fields, institutional work is concerned with the status of the institution itself, rather than simply the impact of institutions on other actors in an organizational field (Lawrence & Suddaby, 2006). We contribute to the study of institutional work by theoretically and empirically examining the question of how an institution maintains its impact on an organizational field in the face of change and the emergence of alternative mechanisms for structuring a field. As such, we are working with a case of institutional work that Battilana and D'Aunno (this volume) describe as practical-evaluative agency aimed at maintaining institutions. Specifically, we examine this in the context of legitimating organizations – organizations such as accrediting bodies, regulatory organizations, and governance associations – established to maintain particular institutional arrangements. Individuals and organizations play an important role in organizational fields and the ongoing reproduction of institutions (Berger & Luckmann, 1966). Legitimating organizations maintain particular institutional arrangements by conferring legitimacy on other social actors and establishing mechanisms of compliance and membership (e.g. Lawrence, 2004). Although institutions represent a mechanism through which new processes, actors, and organizational forms can be integrated into a field (Greenwood, Suddaby & Hinings, 2002), legitimating organizations are often the public vehicle and symbolic touchstone for these institutional processes.
Academy of Management Review, 2012
Academy of Management Learning & Education, 2015
In the months after I received the wonderful news that I was going to become the editor of Academ... more In the months after I received the wonderful news that I was going to become the editor of Academy of Management Learning and Education, my world turned upside down. My husband, Doug Trank, began end-of-life care. He died in October. I wanted to share this not to begin my first issue as editor on a dark note, but a hopeful one. Doug was an educator at heart. He started teaching at a public school in Ogallala Nebraska, and ended his career with a triple faculty appointment at The University of Iowa-in Rhetoric (where he retired as department chair), Communication Studies, and Curriculum and Instruction. When news of his death hit the Internet, I was flooded with notes and calls from his former students and colleagues. Most of them were very personal, and contained some version of the words, "If it weren't for Doug. . ." Others noted his contributions to scholarship and practice in teacher training at universities as well as his advocacy for the centrality of communication, speech, and theater to education at the K-12 level. As I considered the outpouring of affection and admiration, it struck me that both were connected to his passion for his discipline and for education. With this introduction, I extend a particular invitation to scholars across the management and organization disciplines to bring their own disciplinary passion into the education conversation. AMLE is a journal of the Academy of Management; its domain is ours as well. Thankfully, in the Academy we rarely share the same views of the world, but we research, argue, advocate, and critique with a view to making things better. And so it is with AMLE, as I join my predecessors, Ken Brown, Ben Arbaugh, James Bailey, and Roy Lewicki, who started and sustained this journal over more than 10 years with a commitment to make sure the many voices have a forum. As I join them, however, it is worth remembering that AMLE is not a niche journal, but one that can serve all management disciplines as a resource and as a place to publish their work.
Academy of Management Learning & Education, 2003
Journal of Management Inquiry, 2012
Textbooks have been described as vehicles through which research is transferred to future practit... more Textbooks have been described as vehicles through which research is transferred to future practitioners. However, the sociology of scientific knowledge suggests that textbooks are not simply collected accounts of discrete “findings, ” but rather represent a highly stable and institutionalized pedagogy. The question then becomes, to what extent are new areas of research that have gained traction in the academic literature moved into textbooks, particularly when that research would introduce a new paradigm to a coherent pedagogical story? To explore this question, we examine textbooks to uncover the extent and manner of integration of recent research using institutional theory to study topics in strategic management. Finding significant variation in integration among textbooks, we discuss factors that can explain this variation and suggest avenues for systematic, theory-driven research on the textbook. “I remember my first day as a teaching assistant in front of a class of 150 student...
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Papers by Christine Quinn Trank