Oana Branzei is Donald F. Hunter Professor of International Business and Professor of Strategy at the Richard Ivey School of Business, University of Western Ontario, London, Canada. She is also the Director of the Sustainability Certificate program and the founder, convener and host faculty of the Ivey/ARCS PhD Sustainability Academy, an annual event of the Alliance for Research on Corporate Sustainability. Oana held a 2012/2014 visiting appointment with the Center for Positive Organizational Scholarship and the Erb Institute for Global Sustainable Enterprise at the Ross School of Business, University of Michigan. Oana’s research interests, at the intersection of strategy and sustainability, include the pro-social foundations, forms, and functions of business as agents of positive social change and the relational micro-processes of value creation, capture and distribution. She leads major research initiatives on positive social change, social enterprise, sustainable communities, and cross-sector partnerships. At Ivey, Oana has taught in the HBA, MBA, MSc, EMBA and PhD programs. Oana is a field editor for the Journal of Business Venturing and serves on the Editorial Review Boards of the Journal of Management and Academy of Management Learning and Education.
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Garst, G.; Blok, V.; Branzei, O.; Jansen, L.; Omta, O. S. W. F.,
(Forthcoming), "Toward a value-sensitive absorptive capacity framework: Navigating intervalue and intravalue conflicts to answer the societal call for health", Business and Society.
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
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Branzei, O.; Munoz, P.; Whiteman, G.,
(Forthcoming), "Explaining regenerative organizing", Organization and Environment.
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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
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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
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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: © 2018 The Authors 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
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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
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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
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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
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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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Cui, V.; Vertinsky, I.; Robinson, S.; Branzei, O.,
2018, "Trust in the Workplace: The Role of Social Interaction Diversity in the Community and in the Workplace", Business and Society, February 57(2): 378 - 412.
Abstract: Extending the literature on social capital development in the community, this article examines the impact of diverse social interactions (in the community and the workplace) on the development of social trust in the workplace, and investigates whether their effects differ in individualistic and collectivistic cultures. Using survey data collected in Canada and China, the authors find that the diversity of one’s social interactions in the community is positively associated with one’s social trust in the workplace, and this relationship is not significantly different between the two cultures. Diversity of one’s social interactions in the workplace is also positively associated with one’s social trust in the workplace, though only in collectivistic cultures.
Link(s) to publication:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0007650315611724
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Poldner, K.; Shrivastava, P.; Branzei, O.,
2017, "Embodied Multi-Discursivity: An Aesthetic Process Approach to Sustainable Entrepreneurship", Business and Society, February 56(2): 214 - 252.
Abstract: Sustainable entrepreneurship is a vital and growing area of entrepreneurship studies. Although charged with multiple potentially conflicting discourses, sustainable entrepreneurship is usually viewed from a binary logic of business versus sustainability. This article uses an aesthetic process approach to sustainable entrepreneurship to move beyond this binary logic and unearth the tensions between multiple discourses. The authors introduce the construct of embodied multi-discursivity that addresses this issue methodologically as well as conceptually. By combining discourse analysis with aesthetic inquiry, the article pushes the boundaries of traditional qualitative methods. The aim is to encourage sustainable entrepreneurship scholars to expand their methodological horizon to capture the emotionally charged, value-laden processes they study. Embodied multi-discursivity shows how multi-discursive processes of entrepreneurship come into being, how they are disrupted, and how they can break into a duality that ignores the variety of discourses. The authors conclude by drawing some implications for sustainable entrepreneurship.
Link(s) to publication:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1177/0007650315576149
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Jones-Christensen, L.; Siemsen, E.; Branzei, O.; Viswanathan, M.,
2017, "Response Pattern Analysis: Assuring Data Integrity in Extreme Research Settings", Strategic Management Journal, January 38(2): 471 - 482.
Abstract: Strategy scholars increasingly conduct research in non-traditional contexts. Such efforts often require the assistance of third-party intermediaries who understand local culture, norms, and language. This reliance on intermediation in primary or secondary data collection can elicit agency breakdowns that call into question the reliability, analyzability, and interpretability of responses. Herein, we investigate the causes and consequences of intermediary bias in the form of faked data and we offer Response Pattern Analysis as a statistical solution for identifying and removing such problematic data. By explicating the effect, illustrating how we detected it, and performing a controlled field experiment in a developing country to test the effectiveness of our methodological solution, we encourage researchers to continue to seek data and build theory from unique and understudied settings.
Link(s) to publication:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1002/smj.2497
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Jiang, M.; Branzei, O.; Xia, J.,
2016, "DIY: How Internationalization Shifts the Locus of Indigenous Innovation for Chinese Firms", Journal of World Business, September 51(5): 662 - 674.
Abstract: We elaborate theories of indigenous innovation by explaining how internationalization choices help emerging market firms transition from dependence on external knowledge to self-reliance on internal knowledge. Using a 19982007 census dataset of Chinese manufacturing firms, we theorize and test the moderation effect of foreign equity and export orientation on the relationship between knowledge and indigenous innovation. We show that foreign equity dis-incentivizes, while export orientation incentivizes, investments in internal knowledge. We contribute by showing that internationalization choices may radically change indigenous innovation outcomes by shifting the locus of problem solving outside or inside the firm. Our study corroborates the negative direct and indirect effects of external knowledge on indigenous innovation at the firm level previously suggested by China-centric scholars but also shows how two types of internationalization choices may gradually relieve firm-level dependence on imported technology. We bridge the gap between Western research and Chinese thought and practice by introducing a do-it-yourself (DIY) explanation of how firms may implement China’s indigenous innovation (zizhu chuangxin) policy.
Link(s) to publication:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.jwb.2016.07.005
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Maier, E.; Branzei, O.,
2014, "On Time and on Budget: Harnessing Creativity in Large Scale Projects", International Journal of Project Management, October 32(7): 1123 - 1133.
Abstract: Keeping large scale projects on time and on budget is no trivial accomplishment, especially when they rely on creative contributions from multiple individuals and groups that cannot be precisely timed. Simultaneously delivering on all of these aspects requires a flexible and nuanced approach to controls that builds on the discipline instilled in professional practice. We substantiate this insight with 82-day ethnography of a dramatic television series production as it unfolded in real-time. Our analyses reveal three distinct practices enacted by project members to (re)balance creativity within the parameters of the project: 1) analogically linking controls with creative tasks 2) (in)formally attuning creative tasks to controls as the project unfolds and 3) (re)allocating scarce resources to realize creative aspirations of the project. Taken together, these practices organically but predictably (re)balance creativity and control in large scale projects.
Link(s) to publication:
http://dx.doi.org/10.1016/j.ijproman.2014.02.009
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Ivanova, O.; Poldner, K.; Branzei, O.,
2013, "Touch and Feel: Signals that Make a Difference", Journal of Corporate Citizenship, December (52): 102 - 130.
Abstract: We use a multi-source, longitudinal case study of one of the world's first and best eco-fashion brands, Osklen, founded by Oskar Metsavaht in Brazil in 1989, to advance a multi-sensorial signalling theory account of sustainable luxury. Our inductive theory-building extends traditional signalling theory, especially its recent applications to sustainability, by adding an appreciation of multiple senses and leveraging multi-sensorial methodologies increasingly popular in the marketing and design disciplines. In contrast to the traditional literature on signalling from economics which suggests that signals are most influential when they are visible, clear and easy to interpret (thus carrying unambiguous messages from sender to receiver), we show that balancing luxury and sustainability requires and relies on multi-sensorial, complex, even contested signals. We catalogue, classify and compare the signals sent by Osklen within and across the 15 different collections Oskar Metsavaht designed between 2005 and 2013 to explain how signals are deliberately de- and re-composed to combine luxury and sustainability. Our findings encourage sustainability researchers to take senses seriously and offer practical how-to recommendations to luxury designers committed to making a difference.
Link(s) to publication:
http://dx.doi.org/10.9774/GLEAF.4700.2013.de.00010
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