Every year the "Verband der Hochschullehrer für Betriebswirtschaft e.V." awards a notable international publication with the "Best Paper Award". Nominated this year is Dr. Ali Aslan Gümüsay from the Vienna University of Economics and Business together with professor Michael Smets and professor Tim Morris. Their article ‘God at Work’: Engaging central & incompatible institutional logics through elastic hybridity” was published in the Academy of Management Journal.

Insights of their work from the press release:

When organisational purposes conflict: leading with deliberate vagueness

Traditional leadership models tend to emphasise the importance of clarity and of aligning organisational members behind a single, powerful vision or purpose.
But what happens when there is no single purpose?

An increasing number of organisations are seeking new solutions to societal challenges by deliberately embracing competing principles, such as profits and social impact. Established methods for managing the tensions inherent in these hybrid organisations are separation (a standalone commercial arm is created, for example) or blending (such as developing a common organisational identity that attempts to blend beliefs and activities). However, the potential for conflict is high, and sometimes such solutions simply won’t work, particularly when the principles of the organisation seem irreconcilable or deeply conflicting. How, then, can the leaders of such organisations address the challenge of working with more than one goal or purpose?

In the Academy of Management Journal paper 'God at work’: engaging central and incompatible institutional logics through elastic hybridity authors Ali Aslan Gümüsay, Michael Smets and Tim Morris draw on a 24-month ethnographic case study of the opening of the first Islamic bank in Germany, the KT Bank. The highly personal nature of faith and the incompatibility of Islamic teaching with much of conventional Western banking practice make the competing logics in this case particularly intense.  

For further information visit: https://vhbonline.org/wissenschaftsfoerderung/vhb-preise/nominierungen-2020/nominierungen-best-paper-award-2020/sting-abstract