Literature Positioning (orgsci-literature-positioning)

When to trigger

• Your introduction reads as "no one has studied X" (gap-spotting)
• You cannot name the specific conversation your paper joins
• Reviewers cite literatures you did not engage, or say "this is not positioned"
• Your micro paper ignores the macro literature on the same construct (or vice versa)

Join a conversation, do not spot a gap

Organization Science is interdisciplinary — it draws on organization theory, strategy, sociology, economics, and psychology — so positioning is not citing everything; it is locating one conversation and advancing it. Replace gap-spotting with problematization: surface and challenge an assumption the existing literature takes for granted, then show how your study revises it. Because the editorial standard is overall contribution ("theoretical novelty is neither necessary nor sufficient"), positioning should make clear which contribution source you are claiming — new theory, new data, methodological insight, a new setting that tests generalizability, a sharper mechanism, or relevance to a social problem or grand challenge.

Position across levels and disciplines

• Name the home conversation. One literature where your paper is unmistakably a member — and the canonical works that define it.
• Bridge levels honestly. If your phenomenon has both a micro and a macro literature (e.g., individual learning vs. organizational learning; identity vs. organizational identity), engage both and state which you extend. Organization Science readers span micro to macro; a one-sided review reads as parochial.
• Translate borrowed theory. When you import sociology, economics, or psychology, make the organizational stakes explicit — why does an organizations audience care?
• Set up the contribution. The positioning should leave the reader expecting exactly the contribution your discussion will deliver, no more and no less.

Anti-patterns

• A "literature review" that summarizes everything and argues nothing.
• Gap-spotting ("understudied," "neglected") with no challenged assumption.
• Ignoring the sibling literature at the other level of analysis.
• Citing a discipline's theory without translating it to an organizational problem.

Positioning pass for Organization Science

Treat this skill as an executable review pass, not a prose hint. First lock a level map, a mechanism paragraph, and the cover-letter contribution statement; then judge whether the current manuscript answers the venue's real reader: interdisciplinary organization reviewers who ask whether the mechanism travels across levels of analysis.

• Do the pass: Build a three-column map: incumbent conversation, unresolved tension, and this manuscript's delta; include one sibling-venue omission that would make a referee doubt the fit.
• Return a ledger: give claim / evidence / risk / manuscript location rows, so the next agent can edit rather than rediscover the issue.
• Sibling guard: compare against AMJ for empirical management framing, ASQ for organization-theory depth, Management Science for formal/quantitative operations; if a sibling owns the contribution, recommend re-routing before polishing format.
• Submission-ready gate: do not give final advice until the pack's resources/official-source-map.md has been checked for upload-week rules and the manuscript has one concrete fix for the largest venue-specific risk.

Output format

【Home conversation】the one literature this paper joins
【Challenged assumption】what the field takes for granted that you revise
【Cross-level / cross-discipline bridges】micro↔macro, borrowed theory translated
【Contribution source set up】new theory / data / method / setting / mechanism / social relevance
【Next step】orgsci-methods or orgsci-contribution-framing