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Research on organizations is increasingly informed by analysis of community context. Community can be conceptualized as sets of relations between organizational forms or as places where organizations are located in resource space or in geography. In both modes, organizations operate interdependently with social institutions and with other units of social structure. Because such relationships channel flows of resources, opportunities are granted or withheld from social actors depending in part on their organization connections. Such considerations encourage analyses of organizations in ways that spread the relevance of results beyond organizationally defined research problem areas.

Research shows that reference group selection underpins critical organizational processes, but less is known about publicly disclosed choices of reference groups, such as those for the evaluation of firm performance. Because audiences, such as investors and analysts, prefer reference groups created by independent entities they can trust, they disapprove of choices of custom peer groups created by reporting firms. Nevertheless, firms frequently choose reference groups that do not conform to audiences' expectations. We seek to explain why firms deviate from these externally held standards even when incurring penalties by developing theory and formulating hypotheses about the influence of chief executive officer (CEO) power. Using data from 10-K filings, we find that firms led by high-power CEOs are more likely to use nonconforming, custom peer groups despite incurring penalties. However, the relationship between CEO power and the use of custom peer groups is weaker when CEOs face greater scrutiny from shareholders and analysts. We also find that low firm performance increases the use of custom peer groups among high-power CEOs. Contrary to our expectations, high CEO compensation attenuates the effect of CEO power on the choice of custom peer groups, arguably because high levels of CEO pay increase scrutiny. Although firms incur costs for using nonconforming reference groups, supplemental analyses reveal that CEOs benefit by receiving higher compensation, especially when performance is low. We conclude by discussing implications for research on publicly disclosed reference groups, the consequences of power, and information disclosure.

Although studies show that organizations engaged in controversial actions often aim to minimize the release of threatening information, scholars know relatively little about what may prompt organizations to increase transparency in these situations. In this study, we focus on support from public opinion as a condition that may influence the disclosure of sensitive performance information to the public. Using the second Iraq War as an empirical context, we focus on the extent to which public officials—Pentagon spokespersons—release and frame information about war performance. This outcome is critical because the way in which organizations communicate their performance to outsiders has often been regarded as a key defensive impression management tactic. We hypothesize that high public support for the war will increase the likelihood that Pentagon officials release information about sensitive combat performance indicators in their press briefings and identify contingencies, such as adversity and organizational spokespersons' power, that moderate this relationship. We also explore whether high public support decreases the strategic use of alternate performance frames that emphasize metrics that signal progress toward a desirable end state. Using a unique data set based on the coding of press briefings, public opinion data, and other public sources, we find support for several of our hypotheses. We discuss implications for understanding the relationship between public opinion and impression management and highlight the importance of extending this research to nongovernmental organizations. Supplemental Material: The online appendix is available at https://doi.org/10.1287/orsc.2022.1598 .

Social structure matters in organizational life, but our understanding of the origins of social network structure remains limited. In this paper, we observe that the literature on individual differences and social networks focuses almost exclusively on ego's views of herself and of her network. Our approach complements this egocentric perspective with a more altercentric view, in which others' perceptions of and reactions to ego's personality and relational behavior shape the structure of ego's network. Our altercentric perspective builds on earlier evidence that the construct of self-monitoring is associated with brokerage, but it suggests that the effect of self-monitoring on brokerage is amplified in those perceived as highly empathic and attenuated in those perceived as lower in empathy. A mechanism that underlies this effect is the greater propensity of others to reciprocate the social interactions of high-empathy, high self-monitors than those low in empathy. We find support for these predictions in a study of the dynamic emergence of a social network among a complete cohort of MBA students and conclude that alters are active agents in the formation of ego's network.

Combining insights from organizational ecology and social network theory, we examine how the structure of relations among organizational populations affects differences in rates of foundings across geographic locales. We hypothesize that symbiotic and commensalistic interpopulation relations function as channels of information about entrepreneurial opportunities and that differing access to such information influences the founding rate. Empirical analyses of U.S. instruments manufacturers support this argument. The founding rate of instruments manufacturers rises with the densities of organizational populations that have symbiotic and commensalistic relationships with instruments manufacturers. These factors encourage the initial foundings of instruments manufacturers in areas where such organizations were not previously found. The dominance of organizational populations tied to instruments manufacturing by symbiotic or commensalistic relations increases the rate of foundings of instruments manufacturers, whereas the dominance of organizational populations that lack these relations decreases it. Finally, we find that interpopulation relationships that hinge on direct contact have less impact on initial foundings as geographic distance increases. These results have implications for research on organizational ecology, entrepreneurship, urban sociology, and economic geography.