How to attain unity in diversity: one of the central conundrums for organizationsCSS member Dr. Ali Aslan Gümüsay wins OMT Best Published Paper Award

5 August 2021, by CSS

Photo: Franziska Cagic

Congratulations are in order for our member Dr. Ali Aslan Gümüsay!

Together with his colleagues Michael Smets and Tim Morris, Ali Gümüsay won the OMT Best Published Paper Award for the article "'God at Work’: Engaging Central and Incompatible Institutional Logics Through Elastic Hybridity" published at the Academy of Management Journal. The award recognizes the best journal paper in the field organization and management theory published in the previous year that advances the theoretical understanding of organizations, organizing, and management.

Find out what Ali Gümüsay has to say about his great success here.

To find out more about the article, you can check out a video summary here or (if you have instituional access to the Academy of Management Journal) read the paper here.

Title: “God at Work”: Engaging Central and Incompatible Institutional Logics through Elastic Hybridity

Authors: Ali Aslan Gümüsay, Michael Smets and Timothy Morris

Abstract: Based on a 24-month ethnographic case study of the opening of the first Islamic bank in Germany, we make three contributions to the institutional theory literature. First, we outline “polysemy” and “polyphony” as mechanisms that dynamically engage conflicting logics through an organizational–individual interplay. Borrowing from paradox theory, we explain how hybrids can empower individuals to fluidly separate and integrate logics when neither structural compartmentalizing nor organizational blending is feasible because management cannot prescribe a specific balance of logics. Second, we explain the state of “elastic hybridity,” constituted through the recursive, multilevel relationship between polysemy and polyphony. Elastic hybrids maintain unity in diversity. They are capable of institutionally bending without organizationally breaking and thus enable individuals to practice more of their personal convictions at work while still experiencing a sense of shared organizational purpose. Third, we show how contested hybrids can be made to last. By dynamically making logics either less central or more compatible, elastic hybrids become less conflict prone and more resilient without permanently becoming more aligned or estranged.