How managers ‘make meaning’ of business tournament rituals

David Sarpong; Shadrack Asante; Christopher Agyapong Siaw; Nicholas O'Regan; Derrick Boakye

doi:10.1016/j.jbusres.2025.115207

How managers ‘make meaning’ of business tournament rituals

David Sarpong^*, Shadrack Asante, Christopher Agyapong Siaw, Nicholas O'Regan, Derrick Boakye

^*Corresponding author for this work

Research output: Contribution to journal › Article › peer-review

Abstract

In this paper, we examine how managers ‘make meaning’ of business tournament rituals (BTRs)— recognition-based contests in which participating firms get social endorsements and winners receive prestigious awards. In exploring two UK BTRs, we found that managerial orienting systems, made up of beliefs about the identity of their firm, competitors, and customers, and what it takes to compete in their environments, drive managers to compete in BTRs. Their interpretive view of BTRs as sources of strategic capabilities and hard market power, we argue, is constructed, and projected to the viewing public through a set of four distinct but ‘durationally indivisible’temporal frames: validating identity and values, competence signalling, product/service differentiation,and market and industry visibility; these may operate in combination or serially account for the observed managerial preoccupation with BTRs. We discuss the implications of our findings for theory, practice, and future research.

Original language	English
Article number	115207
Number of pages	13
Journal	Journal of Business Research
Volume	189
Early online date	23 Jan 2025
DOIs	https://doi.org/10.1016/j.jbusres.2025.115207
Publication status	Published - Feb 2025

Bibliographical note

Copyright © 2025 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Inc. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons CC-BY license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. You are not required to obtain permission to reuse this article.

Keywords

Business tournament rituals
Frames
Market power
Meaning making
Strategic capabilities

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10.1016/j.jbusres.2025.115207Licence: CC BY 4.0

How managers ‘make meaning’ of business tournament rituals
Copyright © 2025 The Authors. Published by Elsevier Inc. This is an open access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons CC-BY license (https://creativecommons.org/licenses/by/4.0/), which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original work is properly cited. You are not required to obtain permission to reuse this article.
Final published version, 1.27 MBLicence: CC BY 4.0

Cite this

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title = "How managers {\textquoteleft}make meaning{\textquoteright} of business tournament rituals",

abstract = "In this paper, we examine how managers {\textquoteleft}make meaning{\textquoteright} of business tournament rituals (BTRs)— recognition-based contests in which participating firms get social endorsements and winners receive prestigious awards. In exploring two UK BTRs, we found that managerial orienting systems, made up of beliefs about the identity of their firm, competitors, and customers, and what it takes to compete in their environments, drive managers to compete in BTRs. Their interpretive view of BTRs as sources of strategic capabilities and hard market power, we argue, is constructed, and projected to the viewing public through a set of four distinct but {\textquoteleft}durationally indivisible{\textquoteright}temporal frames: validating identity and values, competence signalling, product/service differentiation,and market and industry visibility; these may operate in combination or serially account for the observed managerial preoccupation with BTRs. We discuss the implications of our findings for theory, practice, and future research.",

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How managers ‘make meaning’ of business tournament rituals

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