Administrative Science Quarterly Online Table of Contents Alert
The March 2025 issue of Administrative Science Quarterly is available online:
Vol. 70, No. 1
We are celebrating the 70th volume of ASQ in 2025, and it is worth pausing to reflect on how far we have come. At our 50th anniversary we were just moving to electronic submissions (yes, we used to use the postal service to share our work). To mark the occasion, we have added a bonus essay in every issue this year—highlighting current challenges and offering reflections on where we might turn our attention. You can find some reflection on ASQ’s history and details of the upcoming essays in my letter from the editor (as well as in the first essay, by Bechky and Davis, in this issue).
The empirical articles in this timely issue speak to stigmatization in an authoritarian regime, an occupation’s demise as university goals of recycling broadened to sustainability, the persistence of organizational imprints in the face of disruption, and the challenges of relationships—in clients obtaining trustworthy and expert opinions from doctors, in incorporating the interests of beneficiaries in an organization’s social impact initiatives, and in managing perceptions of competition in interorganizational collaborations. And don’t forget the book reviews: These are wonderful ways to learn about a range of topics, and they are often exceptionally enjoyable to read. Ashleigh uses a recent book review as an example of great writing in her post, “Sitting in your Reader’s Chair,” in our Substack newsletter!
Resisting the Algorithmic Management of Science: Craft and Community After Generative AI
Beth A. Bechky and Gerald F. Davis
Online publication dramatically reduced publishing costs and has increased both the quantity and quantification of publications. In this essay honoring ASQ’s 70th year of publication, Bechky and Davis outline the negative effects of the algorithmic management of science, from the warping of the journal impact factor as a meaningful metric to the potential for AI to entirely automate knowledge production in the social sciences. The authors explore how organizational scholarship can be revitalized through reinforcing deep intellectual engagement in our craft and reinforcing core processes in both tenure and journal reviews to uphold our community.
Wasted? The Downstream Effects of Social Movement–Backed Occupations
Grace Augustine, Leanne Hedberg, Tae-Ung Choi, and Michael Lounsbury
How is it possible that actors bring positive, movement-backed change to their organizations but lose their jobs in the process? Through an analysis of 25 years of online conversations, this article investigates how recycling coordinators embedded recycling in their higher education institutions and yet, in doing so, eventually experienced occupational demise. The authors show how coordinators successfully institutionalized, operationalized, and provided a financial justification for recycling, with the dynamics of these strategies ultimately undermining the expansion of jurisdiction for their occupation.
Stigmatization by an Authoritarian Government: Russian NGOs Under the 2012 Foreign Agents Law
Anastasiya Zavyalova
How are new forms of stigma created? In an illustrative study of the 2012 Russian foreign agents law, Zavyalova shows how the Russian government used this law in a top-down process of stigmatization, increasingly targeting long-standing organizations and, eventually, the media and individuals. The author develops a model of stigmatization, demonstrating how the authoritarian government created a new form of stigma and broadened the suppression of select organizations and individuals. As organizations attempted to cope in a variety of ways, Zavyalova reveals the unfolding dynamics by highlighting the slow international response and lagged media coverage.
Mechanisms of Organizational Imprinting: From Entrepreneur to Organization
Markus C. Becker
This article conducts a longitudinal case study of Zeiss, a German manufacturer of optical instruments, to investigate how entrepreneurs imprint organizations. Spanning nearly 150 years and focusing on the firm’s founder and business partner, Becker shows that the founders’ early decisions, teaching, role modeling, and formalized rules left structural, behavioral, and product imprints that persisted in the face of extreme disruptions. This process study advances organizational imprinting research by identifying mechanisms of imprinting and by elaborating micro-level theories of imprinting by individuals.
Referral Triads
Mathijs de Vaan and Toby Stuart
What are the benefits of a referral from a trusted source? Third-party referrals facilitate client‒expert matches and can generate post-match trust, but this article finds a potential tension in these dynamics. Leveraging medical claims data, the authors show that patients have confidence in referrals to specialists initiated by their primary care physicians. Yet, strong ties between the physician and the specialist can diminish the quality of the match between the patient’s condition and the specialist’s expertise. This results in worse outcomes for patients. The study’s findings thus offer a rare window into the quality of brokered matches.
Competition in Collaboration: The Problem of (Mis)Aligned Perception
Sruthi Thatchenkery and Henning Piezunka
Why does competitive tension—a common, well-understood issue—continue to derail interorganizational collaborations? Focusing on the U.S. software industry, the authors find that perception is key: When only one firm perceives the other as a competitor, it leads to misaligned perceptions, differing expectations about behavior and performance, and subsequent failure. The article highlights the importance of perceptual alignment in developing effective collaborations and explores how different types of triadic relationships can mitigate the negative impact of misalignment.
Harambee! A Triadic Perspective on Social Impact: Organizations, Evaluators, and Target Beneficiaries in Kenya
Anna Kim
The beneficiaries of social impact actions are often seen as passive recipients of organizational efforts. Bringing the perspective of beneficiaries to explain the organization‒evaluator‒beneficiary triad, Kim studies the conditions supporting a corporate social responsibility project in Kenya. The author shows how target beneficiaries obtained needed leverage with the organization by corroborating the organization’s stated outcomes to evaluators. Beneficiaries then redirected the organization’s off-the-shelf practices preferred by the organization‒evaluator dyad toward more contextual practices that upheld their own goals and objectives.
Book Reviews
Robert N. Eberhart, Michael Lounsbury, and Howard E. Aldrich (eds.). Entrepreneurialism and Society: New Theoretical Perspectives (vol. 81). Entrepreneurialism and Society: Consequences and Meanings (vol. 82)
Patricia H. Thornton
Michel Anteby. The Interloper: Lessons from Resistance in the Field
Tammar B. Zilber
Christina Lubinski. Navigating Nationalism in Global Enterprise: A Century of Indo-German Business Relations
Stephanie Decker
Dovev Lavie. The Cooperative Economy: A Solution to Societal Grand Challenges
Gerard George
Michèle Lamont. Seeing Others: How Recognition Works—and How It Can Heal a Divided World
Brandy Aven
Peter H. Kim. How Trust Works: The Science of How Relationships Are Built, Broken, and Repaired
Oliver Schilke
Christine E. Evans and Lars Lundgren. No Heavenly Bodies: A History of Satellite Communications Infrastructure
Chad Navis
William S. Harvey. Reputations at Stake
Donald Lange
Our student-run ASQ Blog features interviews with ASQ authors that offer insights into the research and writing process. To stay informed, follow us on LinkedIn and subscribe to our newsletter on Substack for all the latest ASQ announcements and information. The most recent Substack includes writing tips from our Associate Managing Editor, Ashleigh Imus, that you don’t want to miss!
Christine Beckman, University of California, Santa Barbara
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Christine Beckman
University of Southern California
Santa Barbara CA
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