Rishikesha T. Krishnan

Bio: Rishikesha T. Krishnan is an academic researcher from Indian Institute of Management Indore. The author has contributed to research in topics: Emerging markets & Multinational corporation. The author has an hindex of 13, co-authored 37 publications receiving 525 citations. Previous affiliations of Rishikesha T. Krishnan include Indian Institute of Management Bangalore & Indian Institute of Management Ahmedabad.

Family Firms and Technology Innovation: Testing Competing Hypotheses

Abstract: Family firms and business groups play an important role in several emerging economies. In this paper we study how different aspects of family ownership and control influence technology innovation i...

Factors Influencing Choice of Business Strategies by Government Research Laboratories under Pressure to Increase External Earnings: An Exploratory Study

Abstract: Concerned by the seeming lack of accountability of government research laboratories, governments the world over have adopted fiscal control measures to make them more business-like and responsive to user needs. These have typically consisted of expecting them to generate a portion of their revenues from actual users of their services. In this study we examined the strategies adopted by five government research laboratories in India in response to a policy directive that they should generate at least one third of their budget from external sources, particularly industry. The performance of these laboratories, functioning under the aegis of the Council of Scientific & Industrial Research, was studied over an eight-year period after the policy was proposed. All the laboratories studied worked in areas where they could develop product or process technologies for use by industry.The major finding of this study was that the strategies adopted by the laboratories were influenced substantially by the founding conditions, early leadership and the resultant organizational culture of the laboratory and these appeared to play a bigger role than the structure of the industry served by the laboratory or the nature of the technology involved. The main implication of this is that control measures like external earnings targets are unlikely to achieve policy objectives if they are applied across-the-board without attention to the history, culture and competencies of individual laboratories.

"MNE R&D in Emerging Markets: Arbitrage, Adaptation & Aggregation in Global Innovation Networks"

Abstract: Emerging markets, long a source of cheap labor, is increasingly staking its claim to a bigger share of global innovation. We extend Ghemawat’s Arbitrage, Adaptation, and Aggregation (AAA) framework...

Measuring the Ethical Orientation of MBA Students: A Scale Development

Abstract: This paper describes the process of development of a context-specific scale to measure the Ethical Orientation of Indian MBA students. There has been a lot of interest regarding Business Ethics during the last two decades and Business Ethics courses have become part of MBA curriculum in many business schools. But our understanding of the impact of business education on the Ethical Orientation of MBA students remains inadequate. This exercise of scale development is a part of a larger study aimed at understanding the impact of the Business Education on the MBA students.Survey of literature indicates that scales for measuring 'Ethical Orientation' are predominantly quantifications of normative ethical philosophies like, 'Teleology9, 'Deontology', 'Relativism' and 'Justice'. Some researchers also developed descriptive context-specific scales.Objective of this study is development of a context- specific scale to measure the 'Ethical Orientation' of Indian MBA students. As part of this process, a list of items, which captures the construct 'Ethical Orientation' as applied to MBA students has been identified, Face Validity and Content Validity has been verified. In addition dimensionality of the scale has been assessed through exploratory factor analysis and Reliability has been checked by making use of the Chronbach Alpha Test. To develop a purified scale this process has been repeated twice with independent samples. This process of purification resulted in the development Qf a Purified six-dimensional Ethical Orientation Scale with 16-items. These dimensions have been labelled as 4Situationalism\'Ethical Schism', "Preparedness to Pay the Price', 'Relativism', 'Competition Ethics' and 'Capitalist Ethic'. While two of these six dimensions are similar to the dimensions identified in the literature, the other four appear to be new. The descriptive and context-specific focus of this research might have been the reason for the emergence of these new dimensions. Rather than a single Ethical Orientation score, this six-dimensional context-specific scale seems to be capable of providing much greater insight into the 'Ethical Orientation' of MBA students.While this exercise of scale development has given a deeper insight into the structure of the 'Ethical Orientation' of Indian MBA students, to ensure that the scale captures all the significant dimensions of the 'Ethical Orientation' of the MBA students and meets all the essential psychometric requirements, further testing and development of this scale may be necessary.

The iron cage revisited: Institutional isomorphism and collective rationality in organizational fields (Chinese Translation)

Abstract: What makes organizations so similar? We contend that the engine of rationalization and bureaucratization has moved from the competitive marketplace to the state and the professions. Once a set of organizations emerges as a field, a paradox arises: rational actors make their organizations increasingly similar as they try to change them. We describe three isomorphic processes-coercive, mimetic, and normative—leading to this outcome. We then specify hypotheses about the impact of resource centralization and dependency, goal ambiguity and technical uncertainty, and professionalization and structuration on isomorphic change. Finally, we suggest implications for theories of organizations and social change.

Investigating the factors that diminish the barriers to university-industry collaboration

Abstract: Although the literature on university–industry links has begun to uncover the reasons for, and types of, collaboration between universities and businesses, it offers relatively little explanation of ways to reduce the barriers in these collaborations. This paper seeks to unpack the nature of the obstacles to collaborations between universities and industry, exploring influence of different mechanisms in lowering barriers related to the orientation of universities and to the transactions involved in working with university partners. Drawing on a large-scale survey and public records, this paper explores the effects of collaboration experience, breadth of interaction, and inter-organizational trust on lowering different types of barriers. The analysis shows that prior experience of collaborative research lowers orientation-related barriers and that greater levels of trust reduce both types of barriers studied. It also indicates that breadth of interaction diminishes the orientation-related, but increases transaction-related barriers. The paper explores the implications of these findings for policies aimed at facilitating university–industry collaboration.

Relative absorptive capacity and interorganizational learning

Abstract: Much of the prior research on interorganizational learning has focused on the role of absorptive capacity, a firm's ability to value, assimilate, and utilize new external knowledge. However, this definition of the construct suggests that a firm has an equal capacity to learn from all other organizations. We reconceptualize the firm-level construct absorptive capacity as a learning dyad-level construct, relative absorptive capacity. One firm's ability to learn from another firm is argued to depend on the similarity of both firms' (1) knowledge bases, (2) organizational structures and compensation policies, and (3) dominant logics. We then test the model using a sample of pharmaceutical–biotechnology R&D alliances. As predicted, the similarity of the partners' basic knowledge, lower management formalization, research centralization, compensation practices, and research communities were positively related to interorganizational learning. The relative absorptive capacity measures are also shown to have greater explanatory power than the established measure of absorptive capacity, R&D spending. © 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Schumpeterian Analysis of Economic Catch-up: Knowledge, Path-Creation, and the Middle-Income Trap

Abstract: One of the puzzles about why some countries have stronger economic growth than others revolves around the so-called 'middle-income trap', the situation in which a country that has grown strongly gets stuck at a certain level. In this book, Keun Lee explores the reasons why examples of successful catching-up are limited and in particular, why the Asian economies, including China, have managed to move, or are moving, beyond middle-income status but economic growth has stalled in some Latin American countries. This is one of the first studies to demonstrate using patent analysis that the secret lies in innovative systems at the firm, sector and country levels which promote investment in what the author calls 'short-cycle' technologies and thereby create a new path different from that of forerunning countries. With its comprehensive policy framework for development as well as useful quantitative methods, this is essential reading for academic researchers and practitioners.