Source register

Bernstein, E. S. (2012). The Transparency Paradox: A Role for Privacy in Organizational Learning and Operational Control. Administrative Science Quarterly 57(2): 181–216. DOI: 10.1177/0001839212453028

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Embedded participant-observers and a field experiment at the second-largest mobile phone factory in the world, in China. A modest increase in group-level privacy sustainably and significantly improved line performance; the qualitative evidence points to privacy supporting productive deviance, localized experimentation, distraction avoidance and continuous improvement. The whole paper is free to read, which matters here — it carries more of this book's argument than any other source.

Criscuolo, P., Salter, A. & Ter Wal, A. L. J. (2014). Going Underground: Bootlegging and Individual Innovative Performance. Organization Science 25(5): 1287–1305. DOI: 10.1287/orsc.2013.0856

ProofPublisher record·Full text, free (Imperial)

The quantitative study of bootlegging inside a large R&D organisation, at individual level. Bootleg effort is associated with high individual innovative performance, and the authors assess the direction of causality before saying so. The two mechanisms the book uses are theirs: exploration of uncharted territory, and delayed assessment of embryonic ideas. The contingency the book returns to in Part II is also theirs — costs and benefits depend on how heavily organisational norms are enforced.

Waters-Lynch, J., Allen, D. W. E., Potts, J. & Berg, C. (2025). Shadow user innovation: governing covert generative-AI use for dynamic-capability renewal. Innovation, 1–17. DOI: 10.1080/14479338.2025.2519546

ProofPublisher record·Full text, free (open access)·Earlier working-paper version (SSRN)

A theory paper, and the book says so where it uses it. The authors name covert workplace use of consumer generative AI shadow user innovation, placing it at the junction of internal user innovation and shadow IT. They model two triggers — acute work-process pain and strong concealability — and a revelation threshold at which expected gain from disclosing exceeds expected sanction risk. They argue covert artefacts create a learning blind spot that stalls sensing, seizing and reconfiguring, and set out a four-way governance matrix: repressive, permissive, integrative, structural. It derives testable propositions; it does not report a test. Received October 2024, accepted June 2025, published open access.

Tyre, M. J. & von Hippel, E. (1997). The Situated Nature of Adaptive Learning in Organizations. Organization Science 8(1): 71–83. DOI: 10.1287/orsc.8.1.71

ProofPublisher record·Full text, free (MIT DSpace)·Author's copy

Problem-solving around new production equipment during early factory use. Adaptation turns out to be a situated process: different organisational settings contain different kinds of clues about the underlying issue, offer different resources for generating and analysing information, and evoke different assumptions in the people solving the problem. As a result, problem-solvers must move back and forth between settings before they can identify what is actually causing a fault. The authors argue this adds a dimension to a literature that had focused almost entirely on social knowledge exchange. A companion paper covers the same terrain from another angle: von Hippel, E. & Tyre, M. J. (1995), 'How learning by doing is done: problem identification in novel process equipment', Research Policy 24(1): 1–12. The book states plainly that this is a case study in a small number of plants, and that the authors were studying equipment start-up rather than governance.

Edmondson, A. C. (1999). Psychological Safety and Learning Behavior in Work Teams. Administrative Science Quarterly 44(2): 350–383. DOI: 10.2307/2666999

ProofPublisher record·Full text, free (MIT)·Harvard DASH record

Introduces team psychological safety — a shared belief held by members of a team that the team is safe for interpersonal risk taking — and tests it in a multimethod field study of 51 work teams in a manufacturing company. Team psychological safety is associated with learning behaviour; team efficacy is not, once psychological safety is controlled for. Learning behaviour mediates between psychological safety and team performance. The manufacturing setting is worth noting given this book's proof case: the founding psychological-safety study was run on a factory, not in a lab. Won the Academy of Management's Outstanding Publication in Organizational Behavior award for 2000.

Chatterjee, A. & Hambrick, D. C. (2007). It's All About Me: Narcissistic Chief Executive Officers and Their Effects on Company Strategy and Performance. Administrative Science Quarterly 52(3): 351–386. DOI: 10.2189/asqu.52.3.351

ProofPublisher record·Penn State repository record

An empirical study of 111 CEOs in the computer hardware and software industries between 1992 and 2004, using four unobtrusive measures of narcissism: prominence of the CEO's photograph in the annual report, prominence in company press releases, use of first-person singular pronouns in interviews, and pay relative to the second-highest-paid executive. Narcissism was positively related to strategic dynamism and grandiosity and to the number and size of acquisitions, and produced extreme and fluctuating performance — big wins and big losses — while leaving firm performance on average no better and no worse than under non-narcissistic CEOs. The book states the four measures and that average result correctly, and uses the average result to remove the villain framing rather than to support it. It also flags the two obvious limits itself: the evidence concerns chief executives of large listed firms rather than plants, and the measures are ingenious stand-ins.

March, J. G. (1991). Exploration and Exploitation in Organizational Learning. Organization Science 2(1): 71–87. DOI: 10.1287/orsc.2.1.71

ProofPublisher record·Full text, free (NTNU course PDF)·JSTOR stable URL

Considers the relation between the exploration of new possibilities and the exploitation of old certainties, and the complications in allocating resources between them — particularly those created by the distribution of costs and benefits across time and space, and by ecological interaction. Two situations are modelled: mutual learning between organisation members and an organisational code, and learning and competitive advantage in competition for primacy. The central argument is the one the book relies on: adaptive processes, by refining exploitation more rapidly than exploration, tend to become effective in the short run and self-destructive in the long run. Note that this is a simulation paper, not a field study — the mechanism is modelled, and that is worth knowing before leaning on it as evidence.

Brown, G., Lawrence, T. B. & Robinson, S. L. (2005). Territoriality in Organizations. Academy of Management Review 30(3): 577–594. DOI: 10.5465/amr.2005.17293710

ProofPublisher record·Full text, free (author's copy, Thomas Lawrence)

The paper that established territoriality as an organisational construct. Members become territorial not only over physical space but over ideas, roles and relationships — the extension to ideas is what makes it usable here. Territoriality is defined as an individual's behavioural expression of feelings of ownership toward a physical or social object, with psychological ownership as the antecedent. The behaviours divide into marking (identity-oriented and control-oriented) and defending (anticipatory and reactionary). The authors discuss consequences for organisational commitment, conflict, preoccupation and individual isolation — noting that territoriality has positive consequences for commitment as well as negative ones, which is worth preserving rather than flattening. A candid retrospective by the lead author is worth knowing about: Brown, G. (2024), 'Reflections on a (Failed) Launch: Revisiting and Reflecting on Territoriality in Organizations', Journal of Management Inquiry, DOI 10.1177/10564926241261915.

Amabile, T. M., Goldfarb, P. & Brackfield, S. C. (1990). Social influences on creativity: Evaluation, coaction, and surveillance. Creativity Research Journal 3(1): 6–21. DOI: 10.1080/10400419009534330

ProofPublisher record·HBS record

Two experiments crossing evaluation expectation with the presence of others. In the first, presence was operationalised as coaction; in the second, as surveillance, with half the subjects believing they were being watched. Creativity ratings were made by expert judges. The effects of evaluation expectation were consistently strong, on a verbal task in Study 1 and an artistic task in Study 2. Coaction had no effect. Surveillance had a weak negative effect, and there was some evidence that the surveillance effect operated through experienced evaluation rather than observation itself.

Nonaka, I. (1994). A Dynamic Theory of Organizational Knowledge Creation. Organization Science 5(1): 14–37. DOI: 10.1287/orsc.5.1.14 — with Nonaka, I. & Takeuchi, H. (1995), The Knowledge-Creating Company, Oxford University Press

ProofPublisher record·Full text, free (University of Kentucky course PDF)·JSTOR stable URL

The source of the tacit/explicit distinction the book relies on. Organisational knowledge is created through continuous conversion between tacit and explicit knowledge — the SECI model — with the argument that firms are not passive users of existing knowledge, and that organisation and environment shape knowledge creation together. Written at the Institute of Business Research, Hitotsubashi University. The point the book takes from it is that tacit knowledge resists codification, which is why work that lives in someone's hands does not travel through a reporting system. Earlier related pieces worth knowing: Nonaka (1990), 'Redundant, overlapping organization', California Management Review; and Nonaka (1991), 'The knowledge-creating company', Harvard Business Review 69(6): 96–104 — the latter is an HBR article rather than a research paper and should not be cited as evidence.

Bouquet, C. & Birkinshaw, J. (2008). Weight Versus Voice: How Foreign Subsidiaries Gain Attention From Corporate Headquarters. Academy of Management Journal 51(3): 577–601. DOI: 10.5465/amj.2008.32626039

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Questionnaire and archival data on 283 subsidiaries of multinational enterprises. Three findings. Attention decisions are partly based on the structural position a subsidiary occupies in the corporate system — its weight. A subsidiary also has a voice of its own that it can use to attract attention, through initiative-taking and profile-building. And the relationship between voice and headquarters attention is moderated by two features of the subsidiary's situation: geographic distance and downstream competence. A related paper by the same authors extends the picture: Bouquet & Birkinshaw (2009), 'The dynamics of attention markets in multinational enterprises'.

Arrow, K. J. (1962). The Economic Implications of Learning by Doing. The Review of Economic Studies 29(3): 155–173. DOI: 10.2307/2295952 — related: Arrow, K. J. (1962), Economic Welfare and the Allocation of Resources for Invention, in The Rate and Direction of Inventive Activity, Princeton University Press, 609–626

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The theoretical counterpart to Wright's empirical regularity: Arrow's account of learning by doing treats experience accumulated through production as a source of productivity growth that cannot be bought or accelerated, only accrued. The book's use is precise about what it is doing — Arrow supplies the theory for the pattern Wright observed, and the book states plainly that neither Wright nor Arrow wrote about approval processes, so the extension to organisational gatekeeping is the author's own bridge and is labelled as such. That labelling matters and should be preserved in any edit.

Malmendier, U. & Tate, G. (2005). CEO Overconfidence and Corporate Investment. Journal of Finance 60(6): 2661–2700. DOI: 10.1111/j.1540-6261.2005.00813.x — and Malmendier, U. & Tate, G. (2008). Who makes acquisitions? CEO overconfidence and the market's reaction. Journal of Financial Economics 89(1): 20–43. DOI: 10.1016/j.jfineco.2007.07.002

ProofPublisher record (2005)·Publisher record (2008)·Author's page (Berkeley)

The 2005 paper studies managerial overconfidence and corporate investment in a sample of 477 large publicly traded Forbes 500 companies over 1980–1994, building three measures of overconfidence from CEOs' own decisions about their personal option and share portfolios (Holder 67, Longholder, Net Buyer). The 2008 paper finds the odds of making an acquisition are 65 per cent higher for a CEO classified as overconfident, with the effect largest where the merger is diversifying and does not require external financing, and a market reaction at announcement significantly more negative.

Morrison, E. W. & Milliken, F. J. (2000). Organizational Silence: A Barrier to Change and Development in a Pluralistic World. Academy of Management Review 25(4): 706–725. DOI: 10.5465/amr.2000.3707697 — with Milliken, F. J., Morrison, E. W. & Hewlin, P. F. (2003), An exploratory study of employee silence: Issues that employees don't communicate upward and why, Journal of Management Studies 40(6): 1453–1476, DOI: 10.1111/1467-6486.00387

ProofPublisher record (2000)·Full text, free (author copy, PDF)·Publisher record (2003)

The paper that named the concept. The authors argue that powerful forces in many organisations cause widespread withholding of information about potential problems or issues by employees, and call this collective-level phenomenon organizational silence. Their model identifies contextual variables that create conditions conducive to silence, and traces the collective sensemaking dynamics through which a shared perception forms that speaking up is unwise. The collective framing is what the book uses: silence as a property of the setting rather than of the individual. The 2003 Milliken, Morrison and Hewlin paper is the empirical companion on what employees do not say upward, and why.

Ocasio, W. (1997). Towards an Attention-Based View of the Firm. Strategic Management Journal 18(S1): 187–206. DOI: 10.1002/(SICI)1097-0266(199707)18:1+<187::AID-SMJ936>3.0.CO;2-K

ProofPublisher record·Full text, free (PDF)

The theoretical anchor for the attention currency. The central argument is that firm behaviour results from how firms channel and distribute the attention of their decision-makers: what decision-makers do depends on which issues and answers they focus on, and what they focus on depends on the situation and on how the firm's rules, resources and relationships distribute issues, answers and decision-makers into particular communications and procedures. That last clause is the one the book relies on — attention is allocated by structure, not by merit, so a good small idea can be structurally invisible. Ocasio developed the view further in 'Attention to attention', Organization Science 22(5): 1286–1296 (2011).

Wright, T. P. (1936). Factors Affecting the Cost of Airplanes. Journal of the Aeronautical Sciences 3(4): 122–128. DOI: 10.2514/8.155

ProofPublisher record·Full text, free (University of Vermont PDF)

The origin of the learning curve. Wright, then at Curtiss-Wright Corporation, analysed how the cost of building aircraft fell as cumulative quantity rose, and reported that direct labour required per airframe declined by roughly 20 per cent with each doubling of cumulative output — the classic 80 per cent curve. The regularity has been reproduced across a very wide range of technologies since and is now often called Wright's Law. The book states the finding without attaching a percentage, which is the safer choice: the 20 per cent figure is real and traceable to this paper, but the curve varies by industry, commonly cited in the 60–95 per cent range, so a single number would mislead. Available in full at no cost.

Adler, P. S., Goldoftas, B. & Levine, D. I. (1999). Flexibility Versus Efficiency? A Case Study of Model Changeovers in the Toyota Production System. Organization Science 10(1): 43–68. DOI: 10.1287/orsc.10.1.43

ProofPublisher record·Full text, free (Berkeley Haas, author's copy)

A case study of NUMMI, the Toyota subsidiary in Fremont, California, which achieved high efficiency through a highly bureaucratic organisation while remaining unusually flexible at model changeover. Analysing two major model changes, the authors identify four mechanisms: metaroutines — routines for changing other routines; enrichment, with workers and suppliers contributing to nonroutine tasks while working in routine production; switching, separating routine and nonroutine work temporally; and partitioning, letting differentiated subunits work in parallel. Success with all four depended on training, trust and leadership. The book flags the obvious limitation itself — one factory, and an exceptional one.

Hayward, M. L. A. & Hambrick, D. C. (1997). Explaining the Premiums Paid for Large Acquisitions: Evidence of CEO Hubris. Administrative Science Quarterly 42(1): 103–127. DOI: 10.2307/2393810

ProofPublisher record·Repository record (Monash)

A sample of 106 large acquisitions, in which four indicators of CEO hubris were strongly associated with the size of the premium paid: the acquiring company's recent performance, recent media praise for the CEO, a measure of the CEO's self-importance, and a composite of those three. The association strengthened where board vigilance was weaker — a high proportion of inside directors, or the CEO also serving as board chair. Acquiring firms' shareholders lost on average, and the greater the hubris and the premium, the greater the loss. The book's figure of 106 large acquisitions matches the published record exactly.

Roll, R. (1986). The Hubris Hypothesis of Corporate Takeovers. The Journal of Business 59(2, Part 1): 197–216. DOI: 10.1086/296325

ProofPublisher record·JSTOR stable URL·Author's copy (UCLA Anderson)

The origin of the hubris explanation for value-destroying acquisitions. Roll argues that hubris on the part of individual decision-makers in bidding firms can explain why bids are made even when a valuation above the current market price represents a positive valuation error — firms infected by hubris simply pay too much. He then reconsiders the existing empirical evidence on mergers and tender offers in that light, arguing it supports hubris as well as it supports the competing explanations of taxes, synergy and inefficient target management. Worth being precise about what this is: a reinterpretation of existing evidence and a proposed explanation, not a new empirical test. Hayward & Hambrick (1997), which the book cites alongside it, is the study that put indicators to it.

Jensen, M. C. (1986). Agency Costs of Free Cash Flow, Corporate Finance, and Takeovers. American Economic Review 76(2): 323–329.

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The interests and incentives of managers and shareholders conflict over questions such as the optimal size of the firm and the payment of cash to shareholders, and these conflicts are especially severe in firms with large free cash flows — cash beyond what can be invested profitably in the firm's own opportunities. Absent agency costs, management would return resources that cannot be used productively to shareholders; with agency costs, that may not happen without control mechanisms limiting managerial discretion. The paper's empirical anchor is poor acquisitions by oil companies into industries outside oil and gas: very large cash flows, no valuable investment opportunities in the core business, and diversifying acquisitions as the outlet. That is the shape the book uses — the pressure to deploy capital at scale rather than to spend it well.

Grijalva, E., Harms, P. D., Newman, D. A., Gaddis, B. H. & Fraley, R. C. (2015). Narcissism and Leadership: A Meta-Analytic Review of Linear and Nonlinear Relationships. Personnel Psychology 68(1): 1–47. DOI: 10.1111/peps.12072

ProofPublisher record·Full text, free (author's copy, Nebraska)

A meta-analysis pulling together decades of mixed findings. Its central move is the one the book uses: separating leadership emergence from leadership effectiveness. Narcissism shows a positive relationship with emergence and no relationship with effectiveness. The positive effect on emergence is explained by leader extraversion. The authors also examine nonlinear relationships, which is where the book's 'curve rather than a line' comes from. The book's account matches the paper's own summary of its contributions.

Anderson, C., Brion, S., Moore, D. A. & Kennedy, J. A. (2012). A Status-Enhancement Account of Overconfidence. Journal of Personality and Social Psychology 103(4): 718–735. DOI: 10.1037/a0029395

ProofPublisher record·Full text, free (UC eScholarship)·Working-paper version (Berkeley IRLE)

Six studies. Studies 1–3 found overconfidence leads to higher social status in both short- and longer-term groups, using naturalistic and experimental designs. Study 4 used a Brunswikian lens analysis and found that overconfidence produces a behavioural signature that makes a person appear competent to others — which is the mechanism the book relies on: the overconfidence is read as ability because it is not recognised as overconfidence. Studies 5 and 6 measured and manipulated the desire for status, finding the status motive itself promotes overconfidence. The book notes the limitation that these samples are largely not senior executives, which is correct.

Grant, A. M. (2013). Give and Take: A Revolutionary Approach to Success. New York: Viking / Penguin.

ProofAuthor's page

A trade book, flagged as such in the text on first use. Grant is an organisational psychologist at Wharton with a substantial peer-reviewed record, but this title is a general-audience synthesis of his own and others' research, not a primary source. Where the book needs the underlying evidence for reciprocity styles or prosocial motivation rather than the popular framing, Grant's journal articles should be cited instead.

Pinder, C. C. & Harlos, K. P. (2001). Employee silence: Quiescence and acquiescence as responses to perceived injustice. Research in Personnel and Human Resources Management 20: 331–369. DOI: 10.1016/S0742-7301(01)20007-3

ProofPublisher record·Emerald chapter page

The paper that splits silence in two, which is the distinction the book depends on. Acquiescent silence is withholding because the employee believes speaking would be futile — resignation and disengagement rather than fear. Quiescent silence is withholding out of fear of negative consequences. The authors develop both forms with their behavioural, affective and cognitive components, and offer a model of why some mistreated employees become silent, how some break their silence, and what organisational contexts produce and reinforce it. Later work confirms the practical weight of the distinction: acquiescent silence has been found to mediate the relationship between justice perceptions and emotional exhaustion, withdrawal and performance more completely than quiescent silence does.

Detert, J. R. & Edmondson, A. C. (2011). Implicit Voice Theories: Taken-for-Granted Rules of Self-Censorship at Work. Academy of Management Journal 54(3): 461–488. DOI: 10.5465/amj.2011.61967925

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Four studies of implicit voice theories — taken-for-granted beliefs about when and why speaking up at work is risky or inappropriate. Study 1 uses interview data from a large corporation and finds that fine-grained implicit theories underlie reluctance to voice even pro-organisational suggestions, which is the point the book leans on: this is not whistleblowing, it is people not mentioning an improvement. Study 2 tests generalisability; Studies 3 and 4 develop survey measures for five such theories and establish their discriminant and incremental predictive validity for workplace silence. The authors conclude that implicit voice theories are widely held and significantly add to the explanation of workplace silence.

Andrieu, C. F. A., Bartoletti, R. L., Milhabet, I., Denis-Noël, A. & Steiner, D. D. (2026). From speaking up to shutting down: The cognitive costs of non-instrumental voice. Acta Psychologica 262: 106163. DOI: 10.1016/j.actpsy.2025.106163

ProofPublisher record·Repository record·Author's publication list

Repeated experience of voice that produces no result impairs executive functioning: performance impairments on a cognitive task, lower self-reported motivation and reduced perceived control, with no accompanying rise in perceived distraction or fatigue. The authors read this as repeated informational non-contingency undermining the supervisory system that coordinates executive processes, broadening acquiescent silence from a motivational state to a cognitive risk factor.

Staw, B. M. (1976). Knee-deep in the big muddy: A study of escalating commitment to a chosen course of action. Organizational Behavior and Human Performance 16(1): 27–44. DOI: 10.1016/0030-5073(76)90005-2

ProofPublisher record·Full text, free (San José State University course PDF)

The origin of escalation of commitment. A simulated business investment decision in which 240 business school students took part in a role-playing exercise, with personal responsibility and decision consequences as the manipulated independent variables. Participants committed the greatest resources to a previously chosen course of action when they were personally responsible for the negative consequences — the responsibility condition is the finding, not merely the persistence. Staw later developed the self-justification account in 'The escalation of commitment to a course of action', Academy of Management Review 6: 577–587 (1981). The book treats this correctly as origin plus field evidence plus open dispute rather than settled fact; see the Martens & Orzen entry for the replication failures. Note the sample: 240 business students in a role-play, which is worth keeping in view when the phenomenon is applied to plant-level capital decisions.

Brown, G. & Baer, M. (2015). Protecting the turf: The effect of territorial marking on others' creativity. Journal of Applied Psychology 100(6): 1785–1797. DOI: 10.1037/a0039254

ProofPublisher record·APA PsycNet record

Two studies on what happens when someone marks a territorial claim over their own ideas and then asks others for feedback. Study 1 finds that control-oriented marking — signalling that an idea is claimed — inhibits invited creativity in the people asked to respond, an effect mediated by their intrinsic motivation. Study 2 finds that independent versus interdependent self-construal moderates the effect on others' intrinsic motivation and creativity. The mechanism is precise and unusually relevant to this book: the damage is not to the owner of the idea but to everyone invited to improve it — asking for help while signalling ownership suppresses the help. Both authors contributed equally.

Mueller, J. S., Melwani, S. & Goncalo, J. A. (2012). The Bias Against Creativity: Why People Desire but Reject Creative Ideas. Psychological Science 23(1): 13–17. DOI: 10.1177/0956797611421018

ProofPublisher record·Full text, free (author's copy)·Cornell eCommons record

People reject creative ideas even while stating creativity as a goal. The authors propose a bias against creativity that is not necessarily overt and is activated when people are motivated to reduce uncertainty. Two experiments manipulated uncertainty by different methods, including an uncertainty-reduction prime; both demonstrated a negative bias against creativity relative to practicality under uncertainty, and the bias interfered with participants' ability to recognise a creative idea. That last point is the one the book uses: the rejection is not a considered judgement about a recognised creative idea, it is a failure to see it as one.

Bateman, N. A. (2005). Sustainability: the elusive element of process improvement. International Journal of Operations & Production Management 25(3): 261–276. ISSN 0144-3577 — with McLean, R. & Antony, J. (2014). Why continuous improvement initiatives fail in manufacturing environments? A systematic review of the evidence. International Journal of Productivity and Performance Management 63(3): 370–376

ProofBateman publication list (author's institution)·McLean & Antony record

Bateman documents sustainability as the missing element of process improvement — initiatives that succeed initially and then decay. McLean and Antony's systematic review groups the causes of continuous-improvement failure in manufacturing under eight core themes — motives and expectations, organisational culture and environment, management leadership, implementation approach, training, project management, employee involvement levels, and feedback and results — organised into a three-stage model. Neither source is used in the book to support a failure percentage, which is correct: figures like the widely repeated 75 per cent change-programme failure rate circulate without a traceable origin and are exactly what the book's no-folklore-numbers discipline excludes.

Bettis, R. A., Bradley, S. P. & Hamel, G. (1992). Outsourcing and industrial decline. Academy of Management Executive 6(1): 7–22. DOI: 10.5465/ame.1992.4274298

ProofPublisher record·HBS faculty record

The argument the book's Chapter 3 chain begins from, and the wording is worth having exactly: a whole series of incremental outsourcing decisions, taken individually, may each make economic sense, but collectively they may represent the surrender of the business's capability to compete. That is a claim about incrementalism rather than about outsourcing as such — which is why it belongs in this book specifically. The authors are explicit that outsourcing properly understood and managed as part of strategy can aid competitiveness; the paper is about improper use. Based on the authors' research with firms in North America, Europe and Asia. Note that some sources give the page range as 7–16 rather than 7–22; the Academy of Management record gives 7–22. Note also that this is a practitioner-facing journal — Academy of Management Executive, an executive-overview format — rather than a peer-reviewed empirical study, and should be characterised as an argument rather than as evidence.

Kotabe, M. & Mol, M. J. (2009). Outsourcing and financial performance: A negative curvilinear effect. Journal of Purchasing & Supply Management 15(4): 205–213. DOI: 10.1016/j.pursup.2009.04.001 — with Kotabe, M., Mol, M. J. & Murray, J. Y. (2008), Outsourcing, performance, and the role of e-commerce: A dynamic perspective, Industrial Marketing Management 37(1): 37–45, DOI: 10.1016/j.indmarman.2007.06.011

ProofPublisher record (2009)·Full text, free (Warwick WRAP)·Publisher record (2008)·Full text, free (Warwick WRAP)

There is an optimal degree of outsourcing, at which firms outsource some activities and integrate others, and deviations from it lower performance in a negatively curvilinear fashion. The 2009 paper finds empirical support using 1995 and 1998 data on manufacturing businesses in the Netherlands, and shows the curve steepens under high uncertainty. The 2008 paper sets out the inverted-U argument. A later extension applies the same shape to market share across a panel of over 19,000 observations: Kotabe, M., Mol, M. J., Murray, J. Y. & Parente, R. (2012), Journal of the Academy of Marketing Science 40(2): 329–346. One nuance worth keeping in mind: the curve is symmetric in the original — too little outsourcing also costs performance — whereas the book emphasises the right-hand side. The book does describe it as an inverted U and says there is a healthy amount, so this is a matter of emphasis rather than error.

Weigelt, C. (2009). The impact of outsourcing new technologies on integrative capabilities and performance. Strategic Management Journal 30(6): 595–616. DOI: 10.1002/smj.760

ProofPublisher record

Outsourcing gives a firm access to a new technology but does not guarantee that it can then integrate that technology with its existing business processes and leverage it in the market. Building on the resource-based and knowledge-based views, the paper studies the effect of outsourcing on subsequent market performance and on integrative capabilities — a firm's capacity to use and assimilate a new technology with its processes and build on it. The empirical setting is banks' outsourcing strategies for internet adoption, using survey and archival data. The performance consequences of outsourcing are found to be negative, and outsourcing is less detrimental for firms with experience in a prior related technology. Note also a separate Weigelt SMJ paper often confused with this one: Weigelt, C. (2012), 'Performance implications of outsourcing for technological innovations', SMJ, DOI 10.1002/smj.951. Resolved 2026-09-08: the earlier working note asked whether the book's comparative claim — that heavier external sourcing raises rather than lowers the need for internal capability — was supported, or whether it should be softened to the abstract's weaker 'access does not guarantee integration'. Neither was necessary. The comparative is carried by the paper's own moderator: outsourcing is less detrimental where prior related capability exists, which is an interaction, not the weaker main claim. Chapter Three now rests the passage on that moderator rather than on an inference from the integrative-capabilities construct, and names the banking setting inline, since Chapter Three has no 'Where the evidence stops' section to carry it.

Liu, P., Yuan, L. & Jiang, Z. (2025). The dark side of algorithmic management: investigating how and when algorithmic management relates to employee knowledge hiding? Journal of Knowledge Management 29(2): 342. DOI: 10.1108/JKM-04-2024-0507

ProofPublisher record·Emerald listing

Builds on psychological ownership theory to test how algorithmic management affects employee knowledge hiding, validating the model through a situational experiment and a multi-wave field study with full-time employees in organisations that had implemented algorithmic management, analysed by analysis of variance, regression and path analysis. The design the book describes — situational experiment plus multi-wave field study — matches the published record. Paywalled; abstract open.

Masoudnia, Y. & Szwejczewski, M. (2012). Bootlegging in the R&D Departments of High-Technology Firms. Research-Technology Management 55(5): 35–42. DOI: 10.5437/08956308X5505070

ProofPublisher record·Taylor & Francis listing

Based on 55 in-depth interviews with bootleggers working in the R&D departments of 34 high-technology companies, examining why employees hide innovative activity from the rest of the organisation and especially from senior management. The reported primary motivation was the individual's desire to do work that would benefit the organisation — which is the finding the book uses. Sample sizes in the book (55 bootleggers, 34 firms) match the published record exactly.

Miller, P. & Wedell-Wedellsborg, T. (2013). Innovation as Usual: How to Help Your People Bring Great Ideas to Life. Boston: Harvard Business Review Press.

ProofPublisher record

A trade book, flagged as such in the text on first use. It argues that innovation is better treated as an everyday behaviour to be built into ordinary working practice than as a matter of set-piece brainstorming or dedicated innovation programmes — which is the claim this book borrows. It is a practitioner argument, not a study, and carries no original evidence. Where the same chapter needs documented evidence of continuous-improvement programmes decaying, Bateman (2005) and McLean & Antony (2014) are the sources to lean on, and the book already says so.

Kotter, J. P. (2012). Accelerate! Harvard Business Review, 90(11), 44–58. Expanded as Kotter, J. P. (2014). Accelerate: Building Strategic Agility for a Faster-Moving World. Boston: Harvard Business Review Press.

ProofHBR article

A practitioner framework rather than an empirical result, and flagged as such in the text. Kotter proposes a second, network-like operating system running alongside the management hierarchy — a volunteer coalition with a guiding structure and a strategic change agenda. Chapter Twelve borrows the phrase for the shape of the problem and departs from Kotter on the remedy: it proposes wiring rules applied to the existing hierarchy rather than a second organisation, and says so explicitly in its caveats section. No controlled test of the framework was found in either direction.

Cyert, R. M. & March, J. G. (1963). A Behavioral Theory of the Firm. Englewood Cliffs, NJ: Prentice-Hall. ISBN 0-631-17451-6

ProofEncyclopedia entry (SAGE)·Sixtieth-anniversary review

The origin of organisational slack, and of the behavioural theory of the firm generally. Written at Carnegie Mellon, where March, a political scientist, had joined Cyert, an economist. It rejects the two assumptions the prior theory of the firm rested on — profit maximisation and perfect knowledge — and treats larger firms as coalitions of individuals and groups with differing goals, run by boundedly rational managers who cannot fully predict consequences or may not have fully formed preferences. Its four relational concepts are quasi-resolution of conflict, uncertainty avoidance, problemistic search and organisational learning. Note the lineage this book depends on: Cyert and March is the foundation both for Ocasio's attention-based view and for March (1991) on exploration and exploitation, so three of this book's theoretical anchors descend from the same 1963 source. Worth stating once rather than presenting them as independent lines of support.

Brunell, A. B., Gentry, W. A., Campbell, W. K., Hoffman, B. J., Kuhnert, K. W. & DeMarree, K. G. (2008). Leader Emergence: The Case of the Narcissistic Leader. Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin 34(12): 1663–1676. DOI: 10.1177/0146167208324101

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Three studies in which participants completed personality questionnaires and then took part in four-person leaderless group discussions. All three found a link between narcissism and leader emergence, with the power dimension of narcissism predicting emergence while controlling for sex, self-esteem and the Big Five. Study 3 found an association between narcissism and expert ratings of leader emergence in a group of executives — which is the basis for the book's line about high scorers rising even where the observers were trained to assess leadership.

Chamorro-Premuzic, T. (2019). Why Do So Many Incompetent Men Become Leaders? (And How to Fix It). Boston: Harvard Business Review Press. ISBN 9781633696327

ProofPublisher record·Origin article, free

A trade book, flagged as such in the text on first use. It synthesises existing leadership research rather than reporting new findings, and the core argument is the one this book borrows: organisations equate leadership potential with traits such as overconfidence and narcissism that help people get selected for a role but backfire once they hold it. That maps onto the emergence/effectiveness split established empirically by Grijalva et al. (2015), which is the citation to lean on where evidence is needed. The book grew out of a 2013 Harvard Business Review article of the same title, which is freely available and states the confidence-mistaken-for-competence thesis directly. The author is a business psychologist at UCL and Columbia. Note that the argument is framed substantially around gender and the under-representation of women in leadership; if this book cites it only for the confidence/competence point, that is a legitimate narrowing but should not be mistaken for the work's main thrust.

Martens, N. & Orzen, H. (2021). Escalating commitment to a failing course of action — A re-examination. European Economic Review 137: 103811.

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A laboratory re-examination of Staw (1976). Martens and Orzen do not reproduce the original result: no increase in average investment following negative feedback. A second, independent failed replication reaches a similar conclusion — 'Escalation of commitment is independent of numeracy and cognitive reflection', DOI 10.18559/ebr.2021.2.2. The book treats escalation of commitment as origin plus field evidence plus open dispute, never as settled.

Katz, R. & Allen, T. J. (1982). Investigating the Not Invented Here (NIH) syndrome: A look at the performance, tenure, and communication patterns of 50 R&D project groups. R&D Management 12(1): 7–20. DOI: 10.1111/j.1467-9310.1982.tb00478.x

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The paper that gave Not Invented Here an empirical basis, defining it as the tendency of a project group of stable composition to believe it holds a monopoly of knowledge in its field, and therefore to reject outside ideas to the detriment of its own performance. Carried out in a large laboratory across 50 R&D project groups. Performance rises to about 1.5 years of mean team tenure, holds steady for a period, and by five years has declined noticeably — accounted for by a marked fall in communication both among group members and between them and critical external information sources. The book's figure of fifty R&D project groups matches exactly. The mechanism is worth noting for this book's purposes: NIH here is a function of tenure and communication decay, not of individual arrogance.

Antons, D. & Piller, F. T. (2015). Opening the Black Box of Not Invented Here: Attitudes, Decision Biases, and Behavioral Consequences. Academy of Management Perspectives 29(2): 193–217. DOI: 10.5465/amp.2013.0091

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A framework paper unpacking Not Invented Here into two components: the source of the knowledge — distinguishing organisational, contextual (disciplinary) and spatial (geographical) externality — and the valuation error, either underestimating the knowledge's value or overestimating the cost of obtaining it. The authors set out that NIH can be diagnosed by testing the rationale used to disqualify an idea, and identify ego-defensive and utilitarian mechanisms behind it. A later empirical paper from the same group tests countermeasures across 565 global R&D projects: Hannen, J., Antons, D., Piller, F., Salge, T. O., Coltman, T. & Devinney, T. M. (2019), 'Containing the Not-Invented-Here Syndrome in external knowledge absorption and open innovation', Research Policy 48(9) — useful if the book ever wants evidence rather than framework here.

Boudreau, K. J., Guinan, E. C., Lakhani, K. R. & Riedl, C. (2016). Looking Across and Looking Beyond the Knowledge Frontier: Intellectual Distance, Novelty, and Resource Allocation in Science. Management Science 62(10): 2765–2783. DOI: 10.1287/mnsc.2015.2285

ProofPublisher record·Full text, free (author's copy)·HBS record

The authors designed and ran a grant proposal process at a leading research university, randomising the assignment of evaluators to proposals to generate 2,130 evaluator–proposal pairs. Evaluators systematically gave lower scores both to proposals close to their own areas of expertise and to proposals that were highly novel.

Nohria, N. & Gulati, R. (1996). Is Slack Good or Bad for Innovation? Academy of Management Journal 39(5): 1245–1264. DOI: 10.5465/256998

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An inverse U-shaped relationship between slack and innovation: both too much and too little slack are detrimental. The mechanism the authors propose is the one that makes the shape honest rather than convenient — slack fosters greater experimentation but simultaneously diminishes discipline over innovative projects, and the two pull against each other. Tested on comprehensive worldwide data covering 264 functional departments of two multinational corporations. The book's description, 'found an inverted U, which is the honest shape', is accurate. A follow-up paper puts the question directly: Nohria, N. & Gulati, R. (1997), 'What is the optimum amount of organizational slack?', European Management Journal 15(6): 603–611. Note also the lineage — organisational slack as a concept originates with Cyert & March (1963), which the book cites separately.

Junni, P., Sarala, R. M., Taras, V. & Tarba, S. Y. (2013). Organizational Ambidexterity and Performance: A Meta-Analysis. Academy of Management Perspectives 27(4): 299–312. DOI: 10.5465/amp.2012.0015

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A meta-analysis pooling prior studies of organizational ambidexterity and performance to reconcile mixed results. The book's figure of 66 studies matches the published record. The headline finding is as the book states it: positive and significant ambidexterity–performance relationships.

Frazier, M. L., Fainshmidt, S., Klinger, R. L., Pezeshkan, A. & Vracheva, V. (2017). Psychological Safety: A Meta-Analytic Review and Extension. Personnel Psychology 70(1): 113–165. DOI: 10.1111/peps.12183

ProofPublisher record·Full text, free (Old Dominion Digital Commons)

Draws on 136 independent samples representing over 22,000 individuals and nearly 5,000 groups, to meta-analyse the antecedents and outcomes of psychological safety. The book's figures — 136 samples, more than 22,000 individuals — match the published abstract exactly. The paper compares effect sizes across antecedents to establish which matter most, and tests whether psychological safety predicts task performance and organisational citizenship behaviours beyond related constructs such as positive leader relations and work engagement. Related summaries of the findings report psychological safety strongly associated with work engagement, job satisfaction and commitment, and moderately associated with task performance and citizenship behaviours — a gradient consistent with the book's statement that the sharing and learning links are the stronger ones.

Dixit, A. K. & Pindyck, R. S. (1994). Investment Under Uncertainty. Princeton: Princeton University Press. ISBN 9780691034102

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The standard formal treatment of irreversible investment under uncertainty, and the source of the real-options logic the book uses: when an investment cannot be undone and the future is uncertain, the option to wait has value, which raises the threshold a project must clear before it is worth committing to now rather than later. This is a book rather than a journal article — a scholarly monograph, not a trade book, so it does not fall under the book's trade-source flagging rule, but it is theory rather than empirical evidence and should be characterised that way. The book's sentence, that Dixit and Pindyck 'worked out the formal consequences', describes it correctly.

Doms, M. E. & Dunne, T. (1998). Capital Adjustment Patterns in Manufacturing Plants. Review of Economic Dynamics 1(2): 409–429. DOI: 10.1006/redy.1998.0011 — earlier as Working Paper 94-11, Center for Economic Studies, U.S. Census Bureau (1994)

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Takes the theoretical result that investment may occur in lumpy episodes and asks how lumpy investment actually is, using US Census plant-level manufacturing data. The finding the book uses: roughly 50 per cent of an average plant's cumulative investment over a 15-year period is concentrated in two to three contiguous years. The paper also reports a strong inverse relationship between plant size and lumpiness — smaller plants have considerably larger spikes — and that plants undergoing ownership changes or industry switches show somewhat larger spikes.

Handley, S. M. (2012). The perilous effects of capability loss on outsourcing management and performance. Journal of Operations Management 30(1–2): 152–165. DOI: 10.1016/j.jom.2011.10.003

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Outsourcing engagements pursued for aggressive cost savings often involve disposing of organisational resources, which can produce significant operational capability loss in the outsourcing firm. The paper investigates the direct effect of that capability loss on outsourcing performance and on the firm's ability to manage the supplier relationship — which is the loop the book describes: lose competence, manage the relationship worse, get worse outcomes. Author affiliation is Rutgers Business School.

Silic, M. & Back, A. (2014). Shadow IT — A view from behind the curtain. Computers & Security 45: 274–283. DOI: 10.1016/j.cose.2014.06.007

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Defines shadow IT as all hardware, software or other solutions used by employees inside the organisational ecosystem that have never received formal IT department approval. The study analyses an organisation's shadow IT software database directly, using a triangulation approach — which is why it is worth citing over the many survey-based treatments: it looks at what was actually installed rather than what people reported. The authors emphasise shadow IT's dual nature, capable of being both efficient in place of formal systems and a source of security exposure. The same group has continued the line into shadow AI: Silic, M. (2025), 'From Shadow IT to Shadow AI — Threats, Risks and Opportunities for Organizations', Strategic Change, DOI 10.1002/jsc.2682 — directly relevant to this book's argument and worth considering as an addition.