Showing papers in "Strategic Organization in 2006"
TL;DR: The authors argued that the founding team's industry and start-up experience should positively affect new venture performance, and robust empirical support for these arguments has be found in a recent study by the authors.
Abstract: While earlier researchers have argued that the founding team’s industry and start-up experience should positively affect new venture performance, robust empirical support for these arguments has be...
500 citations
TL;DR: The authors examine the issues and actors that have shaped the agenda of shareholder activism on global social issues over the last 35 years and find that a clear agenda has developed, dominated by religious organizations that have sponsored or co-sponsored 1312 of these proposals.
Abstract: We examine the issues and actors that have shaped the agenda of shareholder activism on global social issues over the last 35 years. Our analysis of 2158 US shareholders’ proposals on the topics of international human rights and labor standards reveals that a clear agenda has developed, dominated by religious organizations that have sponsored or co-sponsored 1312 of these proposals. Public pension funds entered the field of global social issue activism after religious organizations had already established the legitimacy of the agenda. We suggest that a social movement perspective on shareholder activism best explains these findings. Religious groups framed the ideas that constitute the global social issues shareholder agenda and mobilized support by reaching out to other types of investors. Public pension funds played a secondary, albeit important, role in agenda creation by championing several of the campaigns initiated by religious innovators.
140 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, a detailed case study of a complex decision process in a public healthcare system is presented, where managers successfully mobilized a system of numbers to make an extremely controversial strategic decision.
Abstract: This article draws on a detailed case study of a complex decision process in a public healthcare system to consider the role and potential power of numbers in strategizing. Because of their association with precision and accuracy, numbers may seem at first sight to be unlikely tools for decision making in contexts characterized by ambiguous goals and diffuse authority.Yet in the case described in this article, managers successfully mobilized a system of numbers to make an extremely controversial strategic decision.The empirical study examines in depth the micro-practices and processes by which the objectivity and legitimacy of a transparently contestable system of numbers were socially constructed in a public forum. By developing a system whose results mapped on to dominant values and interests, by displaying transparency, consistency and competence in defence of the system, and by organizing the decision process in a way that disempowered adversaries, the pro tagonists in the case were able to infuse a d...
120 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors investigate the ex-post innovative benefits that accrue to exporting firms and explore how exporters derive such knowledge-based advantages by examining the relationship between export strategies and innovative productivity.
Abstract: Although a substantial body of research has investigated spillovers to FDI, we know very little about whether, and how, firms stand to benefit from spillovers without making such crossborder investments. In this study I investigate this issue by examining the ex-post innovative benefits that accrue to exporting firms. I argue that exporters access diverse knowledge inputs not available in the domestic market.This knowledge spills back to the focal firm and results in increased innovation. I explore how exporters derive such knowledge-based advantages by examining the relationship between export strategies and innovative productivity. Specifically, I contend that firms that export to developed countries will experience increased innovative productivity. Similarly, firms that reach the foreign market directly rather than relying on export brokers should innovate more, as they maintain closer ties with their information conduits.The empirical analysis is conducted using a stratified representative sample of ...
85 citations
TL;DR: This paper argued that businesses do well only when they are well-configured, and that businesses must first, match organizational priors and match organizational configurations, which is not always the case.
Abstract: Scholars from the configuration school have suggested that businesses do well only when they are well-configured. Specifically, they have argued that businesses must first, match organizational pri...
69 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors examined how proximity in intraindustry networks, geographic location, and technological domain influences the likelihood of acquisition in the pharmaceuticals industry and found that the proximity of two firms in these search contexts increases the likelihood that one will acquire the other.
Abstract: Companies extend their boundaries through acquisitions to new industries, product lines, technologies, markets and geographic locations. Diversification research has focused predominantly on boundary extensions across industries. Using data on 167 intra-industry acquisitions in the pharmaceuticals industry between 1991 and 1996, we study boundary extension in an industry, integrating existing arguments to examine how proximity in intraindustry networks, geographic location, and technological domain influences the likelihood of acquisition. As expected, the proximity of two firms in these search contexts increases the likelihood that one will acquire the other, but the contexts are partial substitutes, proximity in one search context overcoming distance in other contexts.Thus, we find that while pharmaceutical companies are more likely to acquire technologically similar foreign companies, they are more likely to acquire technologically dissimilar alliance partners. Our results contribute to an improved understanding of who buys whom and in doing so, organizational boundary spanning through acquisitions.
64 citations
64 citations
TL;DR: In this article, the authors propose that the relative importance acquirers place on these two risks affects how they utilize information obtained during due diligence and conclude that the initial value acquirers attach to the acquisition opportunity affects first the impact that negative information from due diligence has on their valuations as well as their final acquisition decisions.
Abstract: In conducting due diligence during corporate acquisitions, acquirers obtain new and usually negative information regarding targets’ values Because such information is noisy, acquirers must balance the risk of withdrawing from a value-enhancing acquisition against the risk of persisting with a value-destroying acquisition Drawing on signal detection theory, a rational choice theory of decision making under uncertainty, we propose that the relative importance acquirers place on these two risks affects how they utilize information obtained during due diligenceTo assess this proposition, we undertook an experimental study of decision making in due diligenceThe results are consistent with the assertion that the initial value acquirers attach to the acquisition opportunity affects first the impact that negative information from due diligence has on their valuations as well as their final acquisition decisions
58 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors argue that efficiency, appropriability and competition concerns lead carriers to organize on a haul-by-haul basis, where it is common for a carrier to use both employee drivers and outsourcing at the same time.
Abstract: Most literature examining firms’ make and buy decisions fails to explore when firms use both governance structures for similar transactions. We examine this phenomenon in the trucking industry, where it is common for a carrier to use both employee drivers and outsourcing at the same time. We argue that efficiency, appropriability and competition concerns lead carriers to organize on a haul-by-haul basis.We empirically examine our theory using a unique data from a small trucking firm in St Louis, MO, and find broad support for our hypotheses.We also discuss the possibility of alternative explanations of market power, capacity constraint, agency theory and property right theory for the use of make and buy. We conclude that these theories do not explain this phenomenon in the trucking industry. Thus, we conclude that it is the interaction of efficiency, appropriability and competition concerns that drive the decision to make and buy in the trucking industry.We further postulate that these concerns can manife...
56 citations
TL;DR: In this article, the relative importance of the sources of the option value of a firm's stock options is investigated. But the authors focus on the stock market and do not consider the stock option market itself.
Abstract: Strategy research on real options has emphasized the need to understand better the sources of the option value of the firm.We begin to address this issue by assessing the relative importance of fir...
54 citations
TL;DR: In this article, the authors define organizational learning as greater cognizance of action-outcome relationships and the effects that environmental events have on these relationships and show that two learning me...
Abstract: This study defines organizational learning as greater cognizance of action-outcome relationships and the effects that environmental events have on these relationships. It shows that two learning me...
TL;DR: In this article, the authors identify two areas of research to which actor-network theory can usefully contribute: strategic use of alliances and networks, and continuous effort of discovering what strategy is and what it could be.
Abstract: use of collective categories, while avoiding a move to the opposite extreme of methodological individualism. If we follow the making of such connections (not forgetting to include those with non-humans), the organizational stories we tell – and the way in which resources, routines and capabilities feature in these stories – are likely to be different. As a way of indicating how, we identify two areas of research to which this approach can usefully contribute. In both cases, it should be emphasized that actor-network theory is most suited to the analysis of situations characterized by uncertainty, change and innovation; because it is here that new associations are being formed (and old ones abandoned) most visibly and actively. The first area of research is the strategic use of alliances and networks. This resonates with recent thinking about strategy ecology and business ecosystems (Iansiti and Levien, 2004) in its central emphasis on interdependencies between organizations. Drawing on actor-network theory, strategy researchers may find new ways of articulating success and failure in the strategic use of alliances and networks, precisely by charting how links are being forged and what sorts of actors emerge from the process (Steen and Liesch, 2006). Questions include: how do organizations approach the challenge of benefiting from alliances and networks, and why do or don’t they succeed? How does value emerge from new and diverse types of alliances and networks? What are the implications of increased participation in networks and alliances for firms as strategic actors? The formation, stabilization and harnessing of resources, routines and capabilities can be studied as a feature of specific processes of network building (e.g. how and when do these become an integral part of what makes a firm an attractive partner in an alliance?). The extent to which, through strategic management, a few actors are able to hold a heterogeneous assemblage in place, inhabit their preferred role in the network and control the way it changes over time is a question that may also be investigated empirically with this approach. The second area of research we wish to flag relates to continuous effort of (re)discovering what strategy is and what it could be. Actor-network theory suggests finding the answer to the first question by studying how strategy manifests itself in practice, how it becomes mobilized and stabilized through processes of heterogeneous association. Here we find clear resonances with the strategy-as-practice literature (Whittington, 2003), especially in so far as both approaches advocate research methods that follow practitioners in their enactment of strategy rather than sticking too rigidly to pre-established categories and definitions. However, whereas strategy-as-action puts the human strategic actor centre stage, actor-network theory propagates a further flexibility in the nature and characteristics of the actors involved. This generates the potential, both for practitioners and researchers, to define strategy in new ways by making or finding unexpected couplings and boundaries. It also provides an opportunity for reflections of a more critical nature, for example on the question of how power, influence and gain are distributed in particular types of networks and how this could be different. 308 STRATEG IC ORGANIZAT ION 4(3 )
TL;DR: In this article, the authors investigate how human capital pools and specialized training enable firms to extract superior margins from adopted information technology resources under different environmental contingencies, and find that specialized training for the users of adopted information technologies consistently promotes above-average increases in firmlevel performance.
Abstract: This study offers new insights into the context-contingent origins of attainable competitive advantage.We investigate how human capital pools and specialized training enable firms to extract superior margins from adopted information technology resources under different environmental contingencies. Using longitudinal survey data from a large and representative sample of manufacturing firms, we find that: first, specialized training for the users of adopted information technologies consistently promotes above-average increases in firmlevel performance; second, human capital endowments do not contribute to attained advantage directly, but significantly enhance the performance gains derived from specialized training in low munificence and technologically complex environments; and third, in munificent or technologically simple settings, investments in specialized training are associated with comparable performance gains for adopters with above-average and below-average human capital endowments.
TL;DR: In this paper, the Austrian economic approach has much to offer strategy in that it provides a fresh view of the market as a process in disequilibrium, where real strategizing in conditions of uncertainty takes place.
Abstract: How firms pursue strategies that take advantage of time-specific opportunities, such as whether to enter an industry during an upturn or a downturn, is one of the great unexplored themes of strategic organization The interesting feature of such strategic issues is that they arise only in conditions of disequilibrium In such conditions the usual arguments utilized in strategy discourse, namely whether firms are capturing rents or not, provide little traction This essay is concerned to explore such an issue and its implications for strategy reasoning and strategy research While neoclassical economic orthodoxy is firmly focused on what happens at equilibrium, the Austrian tradition by contrast is concerned with disequilibrium, and specifically with the market process through which firms move towards an equilibrium position As such, the Austrian tradition in economics continues to exercise, quite rightly, a fascination for scholars of strategy (Jacobson, 1992; Foss, 1994; Phelan and Lewin, 2000; Roberts and Eisenhardt, 2003) Most recently, Roberts and Eisenhardt (2003) compare Austrian insights for strategy with those from prevailing approaches to strategic organization They argue that the competitive forces framework that relies on ‘a logic of positioning in relatively stable markets’ or the resource-based view, which relies on ‘a logic of resource leverage in incrementally changing markets’ may miss important features of modern business reality that are associated with market turbulence, uncertainty and disequilibrium They suggest as an alternative to these established approaches an approach to strategy that relies on ‘a logic of sensing and seizing opportunities in turbulent markets’ in keeping with the tenets of Austrian economics and entrepreneurial dynamics Their message is simple: the Austrian economic approach has much to offer strategy in that it provides a fresh view of the market as a process in disequilibrium, where real strategizing in conditions of uncertainty takes place STRATEGIC ORGANIZATION Vol 4(1): 97–108 DOI: 101177/1476127006061034 Copyright ©2006 Sage Publications (London,Thousand Oaks, CA and New Delhi) http://soqsagepubcom
TL;DR: In this article, the causes and consequences of firms meeting each other in multiple markets, and the authors found evidence that multimarket contact reduces competitive pressures. But, they did not consider the impact of such contact on competition.
Abstract: Multimarket research studies the causes and consequences of firms meeting each other in multiple markets, and has found evidence that multimarket contact reduces competitive pressures. Recent work ...
TL;DR: This essay argues that evolutionary theory is the proper foundation for the human sciences, particularly a theory that includes an account of cultural evolution and introduces this theory and describes some implications of it for strategy and organization.
Abstract: Most observers have agreed that the theory of human behavior derived from the assumption of selfish rationality is inadequate to describe human behavior and human organizations (Rousseau et al., 1998). The issue is what other approach to theory building will provide an adequate theoretical toolkit for human behavior. We argue in this essay that evolutionary theory is the proper foundation for the human sciences, particularly a theory that includes an account of cultural evolution. This theory shows how the limited but real altruistic tendencies of humans arose by tribal-scale group selection on cultural norms followed by coevolutionary responses on the part of our genes. Our tribal social instincts in turn act as a moral hidden hand that makes human organizations possible. We introduce this theory and describe some implications of it for strategy and organization. In effect, managers want to control the cultural evolution of organizations so as to make them perform better. Understanding the tribal roots of our social instincts and the dynamic properties of cultural evolution should lead to a better understanding of the potentials of humans to create functional organizations and to a better understanding of how organizations can become dysfunctional and fail. We hope to strike up a dialog with SO!’s readers about the applications of cultural evolutionary theory.