"Connected to a Sinking Ship? Firm Performance in a Besieged Autocracy" by Chris Hartwell

Third Reading Club review focusing on Journal of Management article

We are back to our reading club this week after a longer break. And we are getting ready for next week’s MBH webinar (Monday, 1 June), where we will be talking to Chris about this very paper. It’s free for British Academy of Management Members, and membership for doctoral students is as little as £30!

For more information on the event, check out the registration page here.

Wanna read the piece yourself? Here’s your reference:

Hartwell, C. A. (2025). Connected to a Sinking Ship? Firm Performance in a Besieged Autocracy. Journal of Management, 01492063251359201. https://doi.org/10.1177/01492063251359201

This piece is a bit of a first for the Reading Club — the first quantitative article we are reading here. My ignorance on the finer points of quants technique shall be offset in the webinar by a very knowledgeable discussant, Ms Hailin (Helen) Lu, one of my doctoral students, who knows her quantitative tools.

And it is a first in a different way — the piece positions itself as methodologically abductive. More on that later.

After the paywall, the detailed review — for the true aficionados of History in Organization. ;-)