Although much has been written on declines and turnarounds, virtually no research has examined stakeholders' influence in an existence threatening crisis of an organization. This paper provides a theory and a historical case study that show how the most influential stakeholders can be identified and managed during an organizational survival. The proposed model demonstrates how stakeholders' influence in organizational survival consists of both direct resource dependence- and structure-based forms of power. The case analysis then describes an examination of actual stakeholder influences and changes in them during the decline and turnaround process. Finally, based on the findings of the case analysis and the influence identification, propositions are developed. They relate specific types of behaviours of influential stakeholders to the probability of organizational survival, showing how stakeholder management can be operationalized in an organizational turnaround. Copyright Blackwell Publishing Ltd 2006.

This study addresses the essential question of causal complexity and diversity related to the influence of institutions on the direct investments (FDI) of multinational enterprises. Using a relatively new methodological approach of fuzzy-set analysis, and 47 host countries from the period 1999 to 2003, the paper analyses how and why countries with different degrees of membership in different institutional constraints either attract or do not attract FDI. The findings show that institutional factors have diverse influences. Similar institutions may even be associated with different outcomes if different regional categories of countries are examined. Countries may neither be attractive nor unattractive owing to the presence or absence of a single institutional factor. Instead, the outcome usually results from a combination of institutional conditions. Moreover, there typically are several possible paths to a specific outcome. The study confirms some of the propositions of previous theory, but, most importantly, it explains why earlier research has provided conflicting conclusions related to institutional factors. The study also offers an approach for future international business research to apply fuzzy-set methods and develop mid-range theories. Journal of International Business Studies (2008) 39, 652–669. doi:10.1057/palgrave.jibs.8400371

The authors give a critical reading of the research interests of state-of-the-art corporate political activity (CPA) literature. They demonstrate that a noncritical tendency in the literature to view CPA as a strategic activity, aimed at making profit, may encourage firms to sociopathic behavior in their political activities. Using psychiatric literature, the authors explore the nature of sociopathic CPA. They draw on a recent discussion initiated by virtue theorists, exploring firm moral agency in order to suggest the opening of several new research areas, within CPA literature, more sensitive to moral questions.

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One of the basic objectives in organization research is to examine how some organizational occurrence or outcome comes about or, even more fundamentally, to explain how things work. I argue that we can shed more light on these issues by examining the mechanisms driving the organizational processes. In this article I attempt to elucidate the nature of organizational mechanisms, thereby providing a coherent explanatory foundation for process research and processual research strategies. In order to illustrate the nature of mechanisms and explanations by mechanisms, a case study of the organizational decline and failure process of the Finnish conglomerate Tampella is reported.Keywords: Mechanisms, explanation, organizations, processes, organizational decline. words in total.3 During the recent decades, the organization theory literature has paid substantial attention to processual phenomena. As a result, much of our current knowledge of organizations comes from explanations such as how a strategy emerges, how particular organizational outcomes come about and how processes work (e.g.