Showing papers in "Administrative Science Quarterly in 2004"

Identity ambiguity and change in the wake of a corporate spin-off

Abstract: We report on the findings of an inductive, interpretive case study of organizational identity change in the spin-off of a Fortune 100 company's top-performing organizational unit into an independen...

The Diffusion of Ideas over Contested Terrain: The (Non)adoption of a Shareholder Value Orientation among German Firms:

Abstract: This study offers a sociopolitical perspective on the international spread of corporate governance models. We unpack the heterogeneity of interests and preferences across and within types of shareholders and senior managers over time in an analysis of the adoption of a shareholder value orientation among contemporary German firms. Using extensive data on more than 100 of the largest publicly traded German companies from 1990 to 2000, we find that the influence of major shareholder groups (e.g., banks, industrial corporations, governments, and families) and senior manager types (differing educational backgrounds and ages) can be clearly observed only after redefining these key actors according to common interests and preferences. We also find evidence that German firms engage in decoupling by espousing but not implementing a shareholder value orientation but show that the presence of more powerful and more committed key actors reduces the likelihood of decoupling. We discuss the implications of our finding...

The seller's side of the story: Acquisition as courtship and governance as syndicate in entrepreneurial firms

Abstract: In contrast to the prior acquisitions literature, which has emphasized the buyer's perspective, we examine the seller's perspective. This has important implications for understanding both the acqui...

Friendship and Advice Networks in the Context of Changing Professional Values

Abstract: In this article, I discuss the attributes of friendship and advice networks and hypothesize about their roles in maintaining and changing professional values. Advice networks sustain existing professional values in organizations. They are less likely to transmit new values because advice relations reflect current practice and may be negatively affected by changing values. Friendships rest on intimacy and trust rather than on existing task structures, so they can facilitate the development of new professional values without negatively affecting the friendship network. A longitudinal study of networks and teaching values in four public schools documented an initial alignment of advisors' and advisees' teaching values, followed by transmission of new teaching values through the friendship network. Changing professional values altered the advice network but did not affect the friendship network.

Perceived Control as an Antidote to the Negative Effects of Layoffs on Survivors' Organizational Commitment and Job Performance

Abstract: Two field studies tested the hypothesis that high perceived control may serve as an antidote to the negative effects of layoffs on the employees who are not laid off (survivors). In Study 1, some p...

Strategic Planning as an Integrative Device

Abstract: While alleviating the adverse effects of employees' pursuit of their subgroups' goals over organizational goals is important, finding ways to avoid them may be even more important. In this paper, w...

Stakeholder Rights and Corporate Governance: A Cross-National Study of Hostile Takeovers

Abstract: We examine the role of three types of stakeholders in the uneven adoption of an organizational practice in different countries, arguing that organizational practices achieve widespread use only when they are consistent with the interests of the most powerful social actors as enshrined in legal rights. Building on a "stakeholder-power" approach to corporate governance, we examine whether the interests of shareholders, workers, and banks are consistent with the practice of hostile takeovers. Regressions using data on as many as 37 countries between 1988 and 1998 lend support to predictions that hostile takeovers increase in frequency with the extent to which shareholder rights are protected and decrease with the degree to which workers' and banks' rights are protected. We discuss the implications for the analysis of comparative institutions and for organizational theory.

Bounded Rationality and the Search for Organizational Architecture: An Evolutionary Perspective on the Design of Organizations and Their Evolvability

Abstract: We employ a computational model of organizational adaptation to answer three research questions: (1) How does the architecture or structure of complexity affect the feasibility and usefulness of bo...

A Dynamic Theory of Expertise and Occupational Boundaries in New Technology Implementation: Building on Barley's Study of CT Scanning

Abstract: In this paper, we develop a theory to explain why the implementation of new technologies often disrupts occupational roles in ways that delay the expected benefits. To explore these disruptions, we...

Why are Some Organizations More Competitive than Others? Evidence from a Changing Global Market

Abstract: In this paper, we question the idea that large organizations have advantages that make them particularly potent rivals. We argue that the ability of large organizations to ameliorate competitive constraints insulates them from an important source of organizational development and protects them from being selected out if unfit. Consequently, we predict that although large organizations are likely to do well in technology contests, they also are likely to become weak competitors over time compared with small organizations. We specify this prediction in an explicit model of "Red Queen" competition, in which exposure to competition makes organizations both more viable and stronger competitors. We find support for our ideas in empirical estimates of the model obtained using data on hard disk drive manufacturers. Large organizations led the technology race in this market yet failed to develop into stronger competitors through Red Queen competition compared with their small counterparts. We also find evidence that all organizations in this market generated increasingly global competition, regardless of the competitiveness of their home markets. In these ways, our model elucidates important reasons why some organizations are stronger competitors and reveals how strategies that isolate organizations from competition may backfire.

Managers' Mobility and Market Interface: The Effect of Managers' Career Mobility on the Dissolution of Market Ties

Abstract: Using social embeddedness arguments, this study examines how the mobility of managers in professional service and client firms affects dissolution among their firms' market ties for that service. M...

Right from the Start: Exploring the Effects of Early Team Events on Subsequent Project Team Development and Performance:

Abstract: This study examines if high- and low-performing project teams differ with respect to how they are mobilized and launched and the effects of their mobilization and launch activities and outputs on s...

Knowledge and Competitive Advantage: The Coevolution of Firms, Technology and National Institutions

Abstract: Johann Peter Murmann's excellent book, based on his Ph.D. thesis, investigates the evolution of the synthetic dye industry, from a national industry perspective (U.K., Germany, France, and U.S. dye industry), technology perspective (invention of new synthetic dyes), and national institutional perspective (educational systems and patent laws), from 1856 until World War I. It is a response to the call of many scholars to develop coevolutionary models (Kauf-and takes a significant step forward in articulating a powerful coevolutionary theory that links industrial, technological, and institutional dynamics. Not surprisingly, the book received the 2004 Schumpeter Prize. The central question— or the puzzle, as Mur-mann refers to it—is the shift in industrial leadership from Britain and France to Germany, while these first two countries had more raw material (coal tar) and a large home market. The origins of the synthetic dye industry go back to William Henry Perkin, when he invented the first synthetic dye in London in 1856 —namely, aniline purple dye. Perkin commercialized his technology and, along with British and French entrepreneurs, launched the synthetic dye industry. However, the U.K. firms were not able to sustain their leadership, and by 1870 German firms had a 50 percent market share, controlling 85 percent of the world market by the turn of the century. Why did the Germans come to dominate the market? And why is it that particular German firms became very successful (e.g., Bayer, BASF, and Hoechst) while most other Ger-man firms (e.g., Jä ger) failed? In resolving this puzzle, Murmann eschews single silo theories (cf. Lewin & Volberda, 1999; Volberda & Lewin, 2003), such as resource-based theory (university training of chemists, formal R&D labs of German firms), resource dependence theory (better industrial-academic-government networks of German firms), institutional theories (patent practices, trade associations, and university training in Germany), population ecology theories (higher birth and death rates in the German dye industry), evolutionary theories (high-volume, low-cost production routines of German dye firms), or learning and dynamic capabilities theories (dynamic capabilities and absorptive capacity of German dye firms to develop a broad portfolio of synthetic dyes). With some of these theoretical lenses, such as dynamic capabilities and learning perspectives, scholars have attempted to further elaborate the role of managerial intentionality within German dye firms. With other theoretical lenses, such as population ecology, institutionalism, and, to some extent, evolutionary theories, scholars have discounted the ability of dye firms to self-consciously renew themselves significantly or …

Selection-Based Learning: The Coevolution of Internal and External Selection in High-Velocity Environments

Abstract: To understand the effects of selection on firm-level learning, this study synthesizes two contrasting views of evolution. Internal selection theorists view managers in multiproduct firms as the primary agents of evolutionary change because they decide whether individual products and technologies are retained or eliminated. In contrast, external selection theorists contend that the environment drives evolution because it determines whether entire firms live or die. Though these theories differ, they describe tightly interwoven processes. In assessing the coevolution of internal and external selection among personal computer manufacturers across a 20-year period, we found that (1) firms learned cumulatively and adaptively from internal and partial external selection, the latter occurring when the environment killed part but not all of a firm; (2) internal and partial external selection co- evolved, as each affected the other's future rate and the odds of firm failure; (3) partial external selection had a gr...

Civic Service: What Difference Does It Make?

Abstract: It sounds good when knowing the civic service what difference does it make in this website. This is one of the books that many people looking for. In the past, many people ask about this book as their favourite book to read and collect. And now, we present hat you need quickly. It seems to be so happy to offer you this famous book. It will not become a unity of the way for you to get amazing benefits at all. But, it will serve something that will let you get the best time and moment to spend for reading the book.

How Breakthroughs Happen: The Surprising Truth about How Companies Innovate

Abstract: Once a subset of academic histories of invention and inventors, the “how to innovate” book now occupies a large field of its own. Applying the lessons of our knowledge of innovation to the real world of business is certainly useful, especially when historians of technology are out to prove their worth, but in today’s crowded market one needs a much harder sell. Thus the dust jacket of How Breakthroughs Happen promises “three distinct strategies . . . that managers can implement in their own organizations,” and the subtitle teases the reader with “The Surprising Truth” about the ways that companies innovate. The central idea of Andrew Hargadon’s book is “technology brokering,” which involves bridging the gaps in knowledge and organizations to make the most out of technological advances and carry innovations across industries. The broker is someone who has a broad knowledge of technologies and is able to recombine ideas and processes into something new. These raw materials of innovation might occur in other fields or they might be old ideas waiting to be rediscovered. The technology broker is the person who locates, then mixes and matches these elements into new, commercially successful “breakthrough” technologies. Hargadon takes much the same approach in constructing his analysis, delving into the social sciences for examples and methodology, and bringing the experiences of diverse industries and time periods to buttress his arguments. He begins at the logical beginning: Thomas Edison’s Menlo Park laboratory, which exploited the opportunities offered by the rapid advance of physics and chemistry in the 1870s and applied them to problems in industry and commerce. Edison the great inventor is portrayed as Edison the great networker, and the same approach works for two other innovators discussed at length: Elmer Sperry and Henry Ford. Hargadon persuasively argues that the heroic inventors of the late nineteenth century were no smarter or harder working than any of their peers, just better connected. The emphasis is not on the technology but on the gathering of information and the application of old ideas to new problems. The successful inventors are those who can exploit networks of social ties. Great emphasis is put on the social and cultural aspects of innovation, especially on the operation of informal networks that disseminate information—a welcome break from histories that are anchored to the hardware and never get out of the laboratory. Hargadon worked as an engineer and designer in the computer industry, and the best parts of his book describe the Silicon Valley equivalents of Edison’s Menlo Park “Invention Factory,” T E C H N O L O G Y A N D C U L T U R E