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 & Context (language use). The organization has 527 authors who have published 1709 publications receiving 64682 citations.

Organizational forgetting as strategy

Abstract: After decades of research, the link between organizational learning and competitive advantage is clear: firms that are better at learning are better positioned to take advantage of emerging opportunities and deal with emerging threats, especially ones that require significant organizational change. Firms that are better able to create new knowledge, ‘learning organizations’, are able to innovate more effectively and adapt to changing environmental conditions more quickly and efficiently, gaining competitive advantage over firms that cannot. Research on the nature of organizational knowledge, the processes that support learning and the barriers that prevent it and the functioning of organizational memory systems has all accumulated rapidly. The result is a well-developed perspective on the management of knowledge that provides an effective framework for research and a useful guide for management practice. We find the progress made in understanding organizational knowledge and organizational learning impressive and the resulting framework useful and convincing. At the same time, based on the results of our research into the knowledge dynamics of international joint ventures (Martin de Holan and Phillips, 2003; Martin de Holan and Phillips, in press; Martin de Holan et al., 2004),1 we believe that one important dimension of knowledge in organizations deserves much more attention: the dynamics of organizational forgetting. We are convinced that competitiveness is not just about learning; it is also about forgetting the right things at the right times. Deeply entrenched stocks of knowledge can act as barriers to new learning, or even to the recognition of the opportunity to innovate a new product, service or business model. Unneeded stocks of knowledge require expensive management and can consume critical management attention, leading to a loss of competitiveness. Increasing numbers of collaborations mean increasing opportunities to pick up bad habits from partners that must be forgotten quickly before they adversely affect competitiveness. Furthermore, firms can overlearn from bad experiences, leading to organizational dysfunction, loss of competitiveness and a critical need to forget. We believe that managers must become as skilled at managing forgetting as they have become at managing learning and, we will argue here, management STRATEGIC ORGANIZATION Vol 2(4): 423–433 DOI: 10.1177/1476127004047620 Copyright ©2004 Sage Publications (London,Thousand Oaks, CA and New Delhi) www.sagepublications.com

The Decision of the Supply Chain Executive to Support or Impede Supply Chain Integration: A Multidisciplinary Behavioral Agency Perspective

Abstract: Applying the behavioral agency model developed by Wiseman and Gomez-Mejia (1998), this paper analyzes human resource factors that induce supply chain executives (SCEs) to make decisions that foster or hinder supply chain integration. We examine two internal sources - compensation and employment risk - and one external source - environmental volatility - of risk bearing that can make SCEs more reluctant to make the decision of promoting supply chain integration. We argue and empirically confirm the notion that an employment and compensation system that increases SCE risk bearing reduces the SCE´s willingness to make risky decisions and thus discourages supply chain integration. We also reveal that this negative relationship becomes stronger under conditions of high environmental volatility. In addressing the “so what?” question, we find empirical support for the hypothesis that supply chain integration positively influences operational performance. Even though this decision has positive value for the firm, we found that SCEs discourage supply chain integration when they face higher risk bearing. Hypotheses are tested using a combination of primary survey data and archival measures in a sample of 133 Spanish firms.

Varieties of Capitalism and Investments in Human Capital

Abstract: This paper uses a large-scale database to test the link between corporate governance regimes (specifically, the varieties of capitalism literature), investment in training and economic performance. The evidence presented here does not match with common assumptions that countries can be classified into Anglo-Saxon and other forms of capitalism, supporting a considerable body of the more empirically orientated literature on employment security and human resource development. We propose a new categorization of countries that links types of broad corporate governance regimes and associated sets of regulations with the relative propensity of firms to engage in specific types of investment towards a core stakeholder: employees.

Does the effect of public support for r&d depend on the degree of appropriability?*

Abstract: We explore the interaction between public support for R&D and appropriability using a dataset constructed from the Spanish Community Innovation Survey, for the period 2000–2005 We find that public support policy is less able to stimulate privately financed internal R&D in firms where appropriability mechanisms are more effective On average, the effect of public support for R&D is three times larger for those firms reporting a level of appropriability below the median vis-a-vis those firms for which appropriability is above the median level Furthermore, for supported firms with the highest degree of appropriability, crowding out cannot be ruled out