Peer C. Fiss

While the established, coherence view of internal fit provides a compact representation of firms and strategy, it also discounts the strategic benefits of tensions and contradictions, and downplays strategy creation and change. Here, we develop a novel dialectical alternative to fit-based models of strategy. Within our model, contradictions and tensions serve as a key engine for strategic renewal and transformation. If carefully harnessed through what we call “disciplined incoherence,” contradictions can help firms establish and change their strategies and business models, adapt to and shape their environment, and enhance and sustain their competitive advantage. We offer a dynamic, endogenous view of how configurations are generated, transformed, and maintained, and present a processual alternative to current strategy models that are grounded in equilibrium and coherence assumptions.

Management scholars study phenomena marked by complex interdependencies among multiple explanatory factors that combine to bring about an outcome of interest. Yet, theorizing about causal complexity can prove challenging for the correlational theorizing that is predominant inthe field of management, given its “net effects thinking” that emphasizes the unique contribution of individual explanatory factors.  In contrast, configurational theories and thinking are well suited to explaining causally complex phenomena. In this article, we seek to advance configurational theorizing by providing a model of the configurational theorizing process, which consists of three iterative stages—scoping, linking and naming. In each stage, we develop and offer several heuristics aimed at stimulating configurational theorizing. That is, these theorizing heuristics are intended to help scholars discover configurations of explanatory factors, probe the connections among these factors, and articulate the orchestrating themes that underpin their coherence. We conclude with a discussion of how configurational theorizing advances theory development in the field of management and organizations, and beyond.

Faced with the challenge of multifaceted digital phenomena, researchers in IS and related fields have increasingly adopted qualitative comparative analysis (QCA). However, in the absence of explicit guidelines for how to use QCA for theory development, the popularity and proliferation of QCA possibly amplifies the risk of using QCA in an atheoretical manner, hindering theoretical advancement. In this paper, we offer a conceptual framework and prescriptive guidelines for applying QCA to develop causal recipes that account for complex digital phenomena marked by theoretical and configurational multiplicity. Causal recipes are formal statements explaining how causally relevant elements combine into configurations associated with outcomes of interest. We describe these causal recipes in terms of which causes matter (i.e., factorial logic)  and how these causes combine into configurations (i.e., combinatorial logic) to produce target outcomes, and propose an ecology of configurations that elucidates the explanatory power of multiple configurations as well as their explanatory overlap. Further, we offer two illustrative empirical examples to demonstrate the usefulness of our framework and step-by-step guidelines for applying QCA to deductive theory testing as well as inductive theory development on phenomena marked by multiplicity.

Goal-based categories have recently emerged as an alternative perspective to the dominant account of prototypical market categories. However, key questions remain regarding the mechanisms that would enable stable market exchanges to form around ad hoc and idiosyncratic goal-based categories. Thus, we sought to answer the following question: How can goal-based categorization enable stable market transactions? Through an inductive study drawing on industry discourse, participant observation, and interview data from the online advertising industry, we describe the category infrastructure that enables buyers and sellers to engage in market exchanges using goal-based categorization. Three mechanisms are integral to goal based categorization in market exchanges: dimensioning (establishing a possibility space in which valuation can take place through the identification, addition, and/or deletion of product features), scoping (selecting particular features in the possibility space), and bracketing (excluding certain actors from participating in market transactions). Moreover, the fundamental principle of valuation in goal-based categorization is goal based attribution, which involves iteratively adding and deleting features to accommodate evolving goals. Our findings suggest novel directions for work on goal-based categorization as an important element of valuation in modern markets.

In a growing body of literature on categorization in organization theory, researchers are exploring the stabilizing role of categories and the processes by which they emerge. Because the literature focuses mainly on categories that emerge successfully or are already established, we know much less about why categories fall out of use or fail to emerge. Rather than viewing declining usage or failed emergence as different processes, we argue that they are two aspects of the single problem of understanding what makes a category viable. Focusing on the coherence of the items included in a category and how distinct they are compared to items in other categories, we develop the concept of category viability and argue that viable categories are those found useful for sensemaking, analysis, and coordination because they balance both coherence and distinctiveness to fall within what we call a zone of viability. To illustrate how category viability helps explain both change and continuity of categories, we also offer a framework to describe the process by which categories move in or out of the zone of viability with deliberate actions or with shifting circumstances that change their members or positions relative to other categories.