IE University

About: IE University is a education organization based out in Segovia, Castilla y León, Spain. It is known for research contribution in the topics: Corporate governance & Supply chain. The organization has 527 authors who have published 1709 publications receiving 64682 citations.

Necessity as the mother of ‘green’ inventions: Institutional pressures and environmental innovations

Abstract: Drawing on institutional theory and innovation literature, we argue that greater regulatory and normative pressures concerning environmental issues positively influence companies' propensity to engage in environmental innovation. Analysis of environment-related patents of 326 publicly traded firms from polluting industries in the United States suggests that institutional pressures can trigger such innovation, especially in those firms displaying a greater deficiency gap (i.e., firms polluting relatively more than their industry peers). Moreover, we find that this effect is stronger when asset specificity is high, and that the availability of resources plays different roles depending on the type of pressures (regulatory vs. normative).Copyright © 2012 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

The Evolution of Research on Coordination Mechanisms in Multinational Corporations

Abstract: The mechanisms of coordination used by Multinational Corporations (MNCs) are studied, through an exhaustive literature review. A pattern of evolution is found: as time has passed, researchers have concentrated more on subtler and informal mechanisms, abandoning their unidimensional focus on structural issues. It is suggested that the increase in the study of those mechanisms may be due, among other reasons, to the fact that MNCs are indeed making more use of them. That could be explained by changes in the international competitive environment, which force firms to adjust their strategies, requiring ever more multidimensional coordination.

Hierarchies and the Organization of Knowledge in Production

Abstract: This paper studies how communication allows for the specialized acquisition of knowledge. It shows that a knowledge-based hierarchy is a natural way to organize the acquisition of knowledge when matching problems with those who know how to solve them is costly. In such an organization, production workers acquire knowledge about the most common or easiest problems confronted, and specialized problem solvers deal with the more exceptional or harder problems. The paper shows that the model is consistent with stylized facts in the theory of organizations and uses it to analyze the impact of changes in production and information technology on organizational design.