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Introduction -- Shapeholders -- Social activists -- Media -- Politicians -- Regulators -- Align with a purpose -- Anticipate -- Assess -- Avert -- Acquiesce -- Advance common interests -- Assemble to win -- Pope Francis, a CEO worth emulating

Traffic congestion costs the United States more than $67 billion annually. Over the next 25 years, this problem will be exacerbated as traffic is expected to double. One approach to dealing with these problems is simple, straightforward, and fair. The Freeing Alternatives for Speedy Transportation (FAST) Act repeals prohibitions in federal law in order to permit expansion of congested interstate corridors paid for by user-fees. With the FAST Act, states would have the option to create new voluntary-use FAST lanes, expanding road capacity to reduce congestion. The legislation includes three important conditions: Fees will be collected using only non-cash, electronic technology—no tolls and no tollbooths; the voluntary fee is charged on new lanes only, and the revenues generated are dedicated to those new FAST lanes; and when the revenues collected from FAST lane users have repaid the costs of the FAST lanes, the fees disappear. It's time for new thinking and a new approach in federal transportation policy.

Studies show that blending multiple categories rather than fitting one category cleanly undermines the appeal of market offerings, but in science and technology, blending multiple categories has been a formula for creating important new categories like nanotechnology. What enables such blends to earn approval and become recognized as new categories? We argue that reactions to category blending are affected by both micro and macro factors. Specifically, blend reactions are affected at the micro level by cognitive limits, especially as blends are repeated, and at the macro level by domain-specific logics for judging quality. Using data on nanotechnology patents, we test this argument by analyzing two dimensions of approval: time to approval and citations by subsequent patents. In addition to showing that blending has different effects on these two dimensions of approval, our findings suggest that reactions to blending are moderated, as argued, by (1) institutional logics that value novel combinations and (2) the repetition of blends that came to define nanotechnology. Our study contributes to theory by linking approval of category blends to cognitive limitations and cultural and institutional logics of evaluation.

Analogies to financial markets have proven powerful in establishing novel or potentially controversial business concepts, even in contexts that deviate significantly from financial markets. This phenomenon challenges theory that suggests analogies work best when elements from a source and target domain map closely to each other. To develop a theory that explains how organizations make initially imperfect analogies "work," we use a case study of online advertising exchanges, a market-inspired model for buying and selling online advertising space. We find that as organizations stretch an initially misfitting exchange analogy from financial markets to online advertising, they iteratively bend their activities in superficial, structural, and generative ways to match the analogy and position themselves for advantage in the new space being created. Whereas prior studies emphasize shared cognition about familiar domains as the reason why analogies work, our study offers a dynamic account in which stretching, bending, and positioning combine to not only establish the financial market analogy but also subtly change the understanding of markets.

We contribute to a growing focus on variation in diffusion processes by examining the ways in which contested practices are modified as they spread among adopters. Expanding on prior diffusion accounts, we argue that the extensiveness and similarity of a practice will vary in response to both population- and organization-level mechanisms. To examine these issues, we study variation in "golden parachute" contracts, a controversial corporate governance practice that emerged and spread widely during the hostile takeover wave of the 1980s. Using a concept network approach to analyze the composition of parachute plans, we find evidence of mechanisms that both increase and decrease extensiveness and variation of golden parachutes. Our findings hold implications for accounts of practice diffusion over contested terrain by revealing substantial variation in the course of diffusion.