Social information processing theory suggests that the chief executive officer’s entrepreneurial orientation is an organisational signal that influences the members’ innovativeness. Middle management teams are expected to be more innovative as they connect senior managers with frontline managers in the dynamic competitive environment of the digital economy. How CEOs guide MMT innovations through EO becomes critical in the process of capturing opportunities and creating value. However, previous research has failed to adequately identify distinct CEO EO manifestations with organisational contexts configurations (...) that influence MMTs innovation. Thus, based on differences in organisational contexts and MMTs’ cognition, this study thoroughly investigates how the vertical manifestation of CEO EO impacts the innovativeness of MMTs. We used fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis on a sample of 117 organisations to determine which configurations of CEO EO vertical penetration within an organisation can stimulate MMT innovativeness. The study discovered four first-level configurations that support stimulating MMT innovativeness respectively when the CEO EO is fully or partially manifested, and without the CEO EO. Moreover, we found the internal reasons for MMTs’ information interpretation heterogeneity, which is critical for realising the coordination and unity of entrepreneurial cognition and behaviours. Finally, these findings’ theoretical and practical implications are discussed. (shrink)

The United Nations ‘Transforming our world: the 2030 Agenda for Sustainable Development’ lays out 17 Sustainable Development Goals to address a range of global issues related to the future of the planet and human well-being. Critics, however, argue that the Agenda, a complex product of multi-stakeholder governance, in its drive to accommodate many competing voices, is overloaded with weakly defined, overlapping and contradictory issues, concepts and buzzwords. These serve to gloss over actual concrete global problems and forces, concealing an underlying (...) free-trade ideology. In this paper, using Multimodal Critical Discourse Analysis, we draw attention to the nature of the documents used to communicate the Agenda. These documents comprise an edifice of self-referential texts that rely heavily on infographics, bullet points, charts and tables. Such formats appear to helpfully simplify, distil information and break things down into workable components. But, we show, through the affordances of these formats, the the vagueness of buzzwords, contradictions and lack of clear causalities can be glossed over, presenting the Agenda as a highly technical, engaging, and above all moral process. These formats are important, therefore, for the legitimization and rhetorical power of the Agenda, necessary for its take-up by governments and organizations around the world. (shrink)