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Use-of-the-past research has advanced our understanding of how top managers instrumentalize past knowledge, events and rhetorical constructions to advance their present-day interests. However, it is unclear how they use the past when they have divergent understandings of the past and different visions of the future. Temporal tensions can lead to a period of unsettlement in organizations, undermine the top management's power base, and open up space for middle managers to take a central role in using the past. Through a longitudinal case study of a Japanese craft firm with a history of over 200 years, we examine how middle managers progressively take an active role in using the past through three processes: temporal mobility, temporal socialization and coalescing the past. Our findings challenge the somewhat linear conception of time in the use-of-the-past literature by elucidating the emergent, in-the-moment evolution of middle managers' strategic use of the past. By adopting a process-analytic lens, our findings extend current understanding of the strategic use of the past as not undertaken by a few powerful individuals in a given moment, but a continually changing process enacted by multiple middle managers with different temporal orientations. Moreover, our findings contribute to the use-of-the-past literature by taking a relational perspective of temporality. Finally, we reconceptualize the strategic flexibility of middle managers from a temporality perspective, showing that they can alter the temporal orientations of those at the top and the bottom.

The innovation management and policy literature suggests that government support generally has a positive effect on SMEs' R&D, innovation performance, and fostering international links. However, research in this field has mainly examined the outcomes, overlooking the impact during the course of the R&D partnership, especially in an international context. Using longitudinal data and a transaction cost (TC) approach, we conduct an in-depth case study of a UK–China innovation program aimed at supporting and facilitating R&D partnerships between UK SMEs and Chinese organizations. Examining 11 UK SMEs with 12 R&D partnerships in this program, we identify four stages of the R&D partnership with Chinese organizations, revealing that government support both positively and negatively affects TCs at each stage. Based on these positive and negative effects, we offer empirical and theoretical contributions, as well as managerial and policy implications to support international R&D partnerships.

Prior research has identified the value of reconnecting dormant ties (i.e., people you used to know), allowing individuals to refresh relationships and mobilize the value inherent in a tie (i.e., its social capital). However, less well understood is how this reconnection process occurs, including how it can be done well or poorly. To address this lack of knowledge, we conducted multi-organizational research combining an inductive, qualitative field study of professional reconnections by individuals in the North Italian textile district (Study 1) and, to validate our findings, a vignette-based experiment with U.S. workers (Study 2). We find that the process of reconnecting dormant ties can and does fail, sometimes dramatically, when people do not refresh the tie and, as a result, do not trust where they stand with each other. Specifically, we find that three elements—remembering, catching up, and perceiving the tie similarly—are key to successfully mobilizing the value of a dormant tie.

Growth is important for the long-term success of a business. Regrettably, the impact of family influence on firm growth is largely neglected. We examine whether family firms have a higher growth rate than their nonfamily counterparts. Based on a large sample of firms across 43 countries over a 10-year period, we show that family firms on average have higher growth rates than nonfamily firms, and this positive effect is greater for family firms operating in strong national institutional environments which are less corrupt, more democratic, more subject to rule of law, and have effective government policies. We also find that the positive effect of family influence on firm growth varies significantly across different types of family firms and different business cycles. These findings show that family control has an economically significant impact on growth rates and important implications for both family firm theory and practice.

The role of brinkmanship in politics and international affairs has captured headlines and popular attention around the globe. It is a behavioral phenomenon whereby to gain concessions actors like states and governments take actions that may not only harm their adversaries, but also themselves. However, hidden from view, and far less understood is its role in business and management. This is an important oversight not only because stakes can be high in business, but also because how members of a firm's dominant coalition respond to existential threats can be critical for organizational outcomes. We introduce the notion of organizational brinkmanship and outline how the process unfolds in a context where family engagement in the business can also serve to heighten potential stakes. With our focus on family business we unravel circumstances where the propensity to maintain historical and current family control over the business can increase susceptibility to engaging in organizational brinkmanship. The cornerstone of our contribution is to develop a conceptual model that explains how the process of brinkmanship can unfold in a family business. We also offer a future research agenda to guide scholarly attention on this important yet under-explored area of research and suggest propositions. This work is particularly timely in light of increasing environmental instability around the globe.