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The purpose of this perspective paper is to advance understanding of absorptive capacity, its underlying dimensions, its multilevel antecedents, its impact on firm performance, and the contextual factors that affect absorptive capacity.Twenty years after the Cohen and Levinthal 1990 paper, the field is characterized by a wide array of theoretical perspectives and a wealth of empirical evidence. In this paper, we first review these underlying theories and empirical studies of absorptive capacity. Given the size and diversity of the absorptive capacity literature, we subsequently map the existing terrain of research through a bibliometric analysis. The resulting bibliometric cartography shows the major discrepancies in the organization field, namely that (1) most attention so far has been focused on the tangible outcomes of absorptive capacity; (2) organizational design and individual level antecedents have been relatively neglected in the absorptive capacity literature; and (3) the emergence of absorptive capacity from the actions and interactions of individual, organizational, and interorganizational antecedents remains unclear. Building on the bibliometric analysis, we develop an integrative model that identifies the multilevel antecedents, process dimensions, and outcomes of absorptive capacity as well as the contextual factors that affect absorptive capacity. We argue that realizing the potential of the absorptive capacity concept requires more research that shows how \"micro-antecedents\" and \"macro-antecedents\" influence future outcomes such as competitive advantage, innovation, and firm performance. In particular, we identify conceptual gaps that may guide future research to fully exploit the absorptive capacity concept in the organization field and to explore future fruitful extensions of the concept.

Purpose The purpose of this study was to investigate the relationship between shared leadership, as a collective within-team leadership, and innovative behavior, as well as antecedents of shared leadership in terms of team composition and vertical transformational and empowering leadership. Design/Methodology/Approach Data were obtained from a field sample of 43 work teams, comprising 184 team members and their team leaders from two different companies. Team leaders rated the teams' innovative behavior and their own leadership; team members provided information on their personality and their teams' shared leadership. Findings Shared and vertical leadership, but not team composition, was positively associated with the teams' level of innovative behavior. Vertical transformational and empowering leadership and team composition in terms of integrity were positively related to shared leadership. Implications Understanding how organizations can enhance their own innovation is crucial for the organizations' competitiveness and survival. Furthermore, the increasing prevalence of teams, as work arrangements in organizations, raises the question of how to successfully manage teams. This study suggests that organizations should facilitate shared leadership which has a positive association with innovation. Originality/Value This is one of the first studies to provide evidence of the relationship between shared leadership and innovative behavior, an important organizational outcome. In addition, the study explores two important predictors of shared leadership, transformational and empowering leadership, and the team composition in respect to integrity. While researchers and practitioners agree that shared leadership is important, knowledge on its antecedents is still in its infancy.

A number of recent authors (Galles and Pearl, Found Sci 3 (1):151–182, 1998; Hiddleston, Noûs 39 (4):232–257, 2005; Halpern, J Artif Intell Res 12:317–337, 2000) advocate a causal modeling semantics for counterfactuals. But the precise logical significance of the causal modeling semantics remains murky. Particularly important, yet particularly under-explored, is its relationship to the similarity-based semantics for counterfactuals developed by Lewis (Counterfactuals. Harvard University Press, 1973b). The causal modeling semantics is both an account of the truth conditions of counterfactuals, and an account of which inferences involving counterfactuals are valid. As an account of truth conditions, it is incomplete. While Lewis's similarity semantics lets us evaluate counterfactuals with arbitrarily complex antecedents and consequents, the causal modeling semantics makes it hard to ascertain the truth conditions of all but a highly restricted class of counterfactuals. I explain how to extend the causal modeling language to encompass a wider range of sentences, and provide a sound and complete axiomatization for the extended language. Extending the truth conditions for counterfactuals has serious consequences concerning valid inference. The extended language is unlike any logic of Lewis's: modus ponens is invalid, and classical logical equivalents cannot be freely substituted in the antecedents of conditionals.

Since the publication of David Lewis' Counterfactuals, the standard line on subjunctive conditionals with impossible antecedents (or counterpossibles) has been that they are vacuously true. That is, a conditional of the form 'If p were the case, q would be the case' is trivially true whenever the antecedent, p, is impossible. The primary justification is that Lewis' semantics best approximates the English subjunctive conditional, and that a vacuous treatment of counterpossibles is a consequence of that very elegant theory. Another justification derives from the classical lore than if an impossibility were true, then anything goes. In this paper we defend non-vacuism, the view that counterpossibles are sometimes non-vacuously true and sometimes non-vacuously false. We do so while retaining a Lewisian semantics, which is to say, the approach we favor does not require us to abandon classical logic or a similarity semantics. It does however require us to countenance impossible worlds. An impossible worlds treatment of counterpossibles is suggested (but not defended) by Lewis (Counterfactuals. Blackwell, Oxford, 1973), and developed by Nolan (Notre Dame J Formal Logic 38:325-527, 1997), Kment (Mind 115:261-310, 2006a: Philos Perspect 20:237-302, 2006b), and Vander Laan (In: Jackson F, Priest G (eds) Lewisian themes. Oxford University Press, Oxford, 2004). We follow this tradition, and develop an account of comparative similarity for impossible worlds.

In this paper we propose an extension of Defeasible Logic to represent and compute different concepts of defeasible permission. In particular, we discuss some types of explicit permissive norms that work as exceptions to opposite obligations or encode permissive rights. Moreover, we show how strong permissions can be represented both with, and without introducing a new consequence relation for inferring conclusions from explicit permissive norms. Finally, we illustrate how a preference operator applicable to contrary-to-duty obligations can be combined with a new operator representing ordered sequences of strong permissions. The logical system is studied from a computational standpoint and is shown to have linear computational complexity.

Fine suggests that the possible worlds semantics for counterfactuals faces a more serious difficulty, which can't be so easily remedied or ignored. For the semantics requires that the truth-value of a counterfactual statement should be preserved under the substitution of logically equivalent antecedents. But this substitution principle is incompatible with the combination of certain intuitively compelling counterfactual judgments and certain intuitively compelling principles of reasoning. Thus adoption of the semantics forces people to make an unpalatable choice between the particular counterfactual judgments, on the one hand, and the general principles of counterfactual reasoning, on the other. He also proposes an alternative semantics, using possible states in place of possible worlds, which avoids the difficulties and which is more satisfactory than the possible worlds semantics in a number of other respects.

Heeding the call for a deeper understanding of how cross-sector social partnerships (CSSPs) can be managed across different contexts, this article integrates ideas from institutional theory with current debate on cross-boundary collaboration. Adopting the point of view of business actors interested in forming a CSSP to address complex social problems, we suggest that \"appropriateness\" needs shape business approaches toward partnering for social change, exerting an impact on the benefits that can be gained from it. A theoretical framework is proposed that identifies and frames four CSSP styles, as resulting from combinations of dominant institutional orientations in a field and its general level of coherence. We show how, depending on prevailing institutional logics, intervention models underlying the CSSP have to emphasize either the business soundness of the initiative or its social value, together with a consistent leadership style. Moreover, while directive approaches based on concentrated governance structures aimed at setting the rules of the game are shown to prevail in fields characterized by low level of institutional coherence, participative models emerge in more established fields, with CSSP's promoter playing an integrative role through distributed governance structures. The article concludes with a summary and implications of an institutional-based view of CSSPs.

The traditional Lewis-Stalnaker semantics treats all counterfactuals with an impossible antecedent as trivially or vacuously true. Many have regarded this as a serious defect of the semantics. For intuitively, it seems, counterfactuals with impossible antecedents—counterpossibles—can be non-trivially true and nontrivially false. Whereas the counterpossible \"If Hobbes had squared the circle, then the mathematical community at the time would have been surprised\" seems true, \"If Hobbes had squared the circle, then sick children in the mountains of Afghanistan at the time would have been thrilled\" seems false. Many have proposed to extend the Lewis-Stalnaker semantics with impossible worlds to make room for a non-trivial or non-vacuous treatment of counterpossibles. Roughly, on the extended Lewis-Stalnaker semantics, we evaluate a counterfactual of the form \"If A had been true, then C would have been true\" by going to closest world—whether possible or impossible—in which A is true and check whether C is also true in that world. If the answer is \"yes\", the counterfactual is true; otherwise it is false. Since there are impossible worlds in which the mathematically impossible happens, there are impossible worlds in which Hobbes manages to square the circle. And intuitively, in the closest such impossible worlds, sick children in the mountains of Afghanistan are not thrilled—they remain sick and unmoved by the mathematical developments in Europe. If so, the counterpossible \"If Hobbes had squared the circle, then sick children in the mountains of Afghanistan at the time would have been thrilled\" comes out false, as desired. In this paper, I will critically investigate the extended Lewis-Stalnaker semantics for counterpossibles. I will argue that the standard version of the extended semantics, in which impossible worlds correspond to maximal, logically inconsistent entities, fails to give the correct semantic verdicts for many counterpossibles. In light of the negative arguments, I will then outline a new version of the extended Lewis-Stalnaker semantics that can avoid these problems.

A uniform theory of conditionals is one which compositionally captures the behavior of both indicative and subjunctive conditionals without positing ambiguities. This paper raises new problems for the closest thing to a uniform analysis in the literature (Stalnaker, Philosophia, 5, 269–286 (1975)) and develops a new theory which solves them. I also show that this new analysis provides an improved treatment of three phenomena (the import-export equivalence, reverse Sobel-sequences and disjunctive antecedents). While these results concern central issues in the study of conditionals, broader themes in the philosophy of language and formal semantics are also engaged here. This new analysis exploits a dynamic conception of meaning where the meaning of a symbol is its potential to change an agent's mental state (or the state of a conversation) rather than being the symbol's content (e.g. the proposition it expresses). The analysis of conditionals is also built on the idea that the contrast between subjunctive and indicative conditionals parallels a contrast between revising and consistently extending some body of information.

A new model of persuasion is presented. A listener first announces and commits to a codex (i.e., a set of conditions). The speaker then presents a (not necessarily true) profile that must satisfy the codex in order for the listener to be persuaded. The speaker is boundedly rational in the sense that his ability to come up with a persuasive profile is limited and depends on the true profile and the content and framing of the codex. The circumstances under which the listener can design a codex that will implement his goal are fully characterized.