Showing papers by "Maurizio Zollo published in 2012"

Faking It or Muddling Through? Understanding Decoupling in Response to Stakeholder Pressures

Abstract: We advance a multilevel argument that challenges and qualifies existing explanations of firms' responses to institutional pressures. In an in-depth study of 17 multinational corporations involving 359 interviews with internal and external actors, we find that firms facing identical pressures decouple policy from practice in different ways and for different reasons. When firms' responses are generated locally, without firmwide coordination, these responses can be either intentional or emergent. In the presence of information asymmetry between firms and their stakeholders, we find that managers' responses are intentional (“faking it”) and depend on how they perceive their interests. In the presence of competing stakeholder expectations, responses are emergent (“muddling through”) and depend on the degree of consensus among managers in their readings of the environment. These findings suggest that theories of decoupling need to be broadened to include the role of “muddling through” and the interplay of inter...

A Hegelian Dialogue on the Micro‐Foundations of Organizational Routines and Capabilities

Abstract: This paper aims to further the alignment among different theoretical approaches and future scholarship on the complex themes related to the micro-foundational processes characterizing the emergence and development of organizational routines and capabilities. It has been constructed with a typical Hegelian structure represented by a thesis, an antithesis and an attempt of a synthesis, each presented by different scholars, primed by a common set of questions related to the role of individual actors in shaping organizational change processes. The dialogue is introduced by Koen Heimeriks, followed by Sidney Winter proposing the ‘thesis’ for an evolutionary perspective on the problem, and an ‘antithesis’ is offered by Nicolai Foss with a number of critical points made from different economics and social science perspectives. Finally, Maurizio Zollo offers an attempt of a synthesis between the two positions with some proposals for conceptual and empirical advancement. The dialogue points to a convergence on the usefulness of evolutionary theory as a theoretical lens, but also on the need to add to the central notion of routinized behavior, other stable organizational traits of evolutionary relevance, such as the cognitive, motivational and identity-based antecedents to behavior, as well as key dimensions of intentionality and consciousness of change, which have been so far given either implicit or axiomatic roles. An overarching model of firm evolution that includes these micro-level factors in the context of more collective-level dynamics might help forging collaborative work across different schools of thought, as well as bridging the two levels of analysis in a way that is both theoretically well-grounded and empirically testable.

Can Firms Learn to Acquire

Abstract: This document is the accepted version of an article in the International Journal of Finance, vol. 25, no. 2 (2013), pp. 7709–7738.