Rallying the Troops and Defending against Sanctions: A Government Body Breaking Decision-Making Rules to Fund Entrepreneurial Ventures

Dean A. Shepherd, Jeaneth Johansson, Malin Malmström, Joakim Wincent

Journal of Management Studies · 2021 · Volume 58 · Issue 2

Abstract

Critical to top management’s organizing efforts are the formal rules for how organizational members are to make decisions. However, employees can break top management’s decision-making rules. Although scholars have investigated rule breaking at the individual and group levels of analysis, research is needed into how members come together as a group to break an organization’s decision-making rules, and how groups’ rule breaking persists. To address this important research gap, we draw from a real-time qualitative investigation of both the breaking and following of decision-making rules to develop a group model that: (1) explains how an individual can trigger his or her group to break decision-making rules to generate perceived benefits for the group and/or others external to the organization, (2) provides insights into the mechanisms by which rule breaking persists, and (3) highlights the norms of developing and perpetuating groups’ breaking decision-making rules.

Keywords

decision making, entrepreneurial funding, government, groups, rule breaking

Enable JavaScript for citation tools and additional paper interactions.