Research Insights

View the Resource By Michelle Shumate, Yannick Atouba, Katherine R. Cooper, Andrew Pilny This research examines the antecedents that motivate and prepare social entrepreneurs to begin social ventures. Drawing from in-depth interviews with 20 social entrepreneurs, this research reveals that there are two paths to social entrepreneurship: the activist path and the business path. Both activist and business social entrepreneurs were motivated by a family legacy or a transformative early

View the Resource By Jennifer Ihm, Michelle Shumate, Julia Bello-Bravo, Yannick Atouba, Niango Malick Ba, Clementine L. Dabire-Binso, Barry R. Pittendrigh Interorganizational networks within organizational fields are important structures for both internal stakeholders, who must navigate them as part of their organizational roles, and external stakeholders, who navigate them for the purposes of resource exchange. This research develops and tests a conceptual model that explains some of the differences in

View the Resource By Michelle Shumate, Noshir Contractor Organizational communication as a field of study has grown tremendously over the past thirty years. This growth is characterized by the development and application of communication perspectives to research on complex organizations in rapidly changing environments. Completely re-conceptualized, The SAGE Handbook of Organizational Communication, Third Edition, is a landmark volume that weaves together the various threads of this interdisciplinary area of scholarship.

View the Resource By Michelle Shumate Hyperlink networks are dynamic systems of representational communication. In order to understand the varied influences on processes that produce these systems, this research examines the evolution of a HIV/AIDS nongovernmental organization (NGO) hyperlink network over one year. The results demonstrate that different factors influence the rate of variation, selection, and retention of hyperlinks. The presence of a greater number of corporate or government hyperlinks to

View the Resource By Amy O’Connor, Michelle Shumate  Informed by the symbiotic sustainability model, this theory-building research compares a stratified subsample (N = 66) from 695 nongovernmental organizations (NGOs) that have relationships with U.S. Fortune 500 companies in 11 industries (N = 155). Using network analysis and centering resonance analysis, the research compares the “about us” statements of three groups of NGOs with different indegree centralities. The results of this study

View the Resource By Andrew Pilny, Michelle Shumate Many nongovernmental organizations’ (NGOs’) instrumental collective action networks exist to produce tangible public goods. Moreover, these organizations’ hyperlinks function to express collective identity. The extent to which both types of collective action are related is unknown. To examine this gap in the research, hyperlinks from 181 NGO websites were analyzed to determine if instrumental collective action offline is related to expressive collective