TY - JOUR

T1 - A Process Perspective on Organizational Failure

T2 - A Qualitative Meta-Analysis

AU - Habersang, Stefanie

AU - Küberling-Jost, Jill A.

AU - Reihlen, Markus

AU - Seckler, Christoph

N1 - All authors contributed equally, and they are listed in alphabetical order.

PY - 2019/1

Y1 - 2019/1

N2 - An important stream of the organizational failure literature has proposed process models to describe how firms fail. Despite much progress, this stream is currently at a crossroads. Previous process models try to capture how failure unfolds in singular models that describe organizational failure as the result of either inertia or extremism or as a mixture of both. However, it remains unclear how these competing explanations are related and what underlying mechanisms explain why organizational failure processes unfold as they do. We address these issues by examining failure processes using a qualitative meta-analysis research design. The qualitative meta-analysis allows us to analyse and synthesize the wealth of previously published single-case studies in order to develop process models of organizational failure. The most salient finding of our analysis is that failure processes converge around four distinct process archetypes, which we name imperialist, laggard, villain, and politicized. Each process archetype can be explained by the interplay of distinct rigidity and conflict mechanisms. Differentiating the four process archetypes and explaining the underlying mechanisms helps to resolve some contradictions in the previous failure process literature.

AB - An important stream of the organizational failure literature has proposed process models to describe how firms fail. Despite much progress, this stream is currently at a crossroads. Previous process models try to capture how failure unfolds in singular models that describe organizational failure as the result of either inertia or extremism or as a mixture of both. However, it remains unclear how these competing explanations are related and what underlying mechanisms explain why organizational failure processes unfold as they do. We address these issues by examining failure processes using a qualitative meta-analysis research design. The qualitative meta-analysis allows us to analyse and synthesize the wealth of previously published single-case studies in order to develop process models of organizational failure. The most salient finding of our analysis is that failure processes converge around four distinct process archetypes, which we name imperialist, laggard, villain, and politicized. Each process archetype can be explained by the interplay of distinct rigidity and conflict mechanisms. Differentiating the four process archetypes and explaining the underlying mechanisms helps to resolve some contradictions in the previous failure process literature.

KW - Management studies

KW - mechanisms

KW - Organizational failure

KW - process perspective

KW - qualitative meta-analysis

UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85052531552&partnerID=8YFLogxK

U2 - 10.1111/joms.12341

DO - 10.1111/joms.12341

M3 - Journal articles

VL - 56

SP - 19

EP - 56

JO - Journal of Management Studies

JF - Journal of Management Studies

SN - 0022-2380

IS - 1

ER -