Research summary: In this study, we propose and test a multi-stakeholder perspective to address variation in innovation performance across firms. Specifically, we analyze how a focal firm's ...innovation performance is shaped by its political stakeholders (local and central governments) and economic stakeholders (suppliers, buyers, and competitors). Using a data set consisting of over 26,400 Chinese firms, we first find support for our predictions that a focal firm's innovation performance will be enhanced by both its government connections and the innovativeness of its economic stakeholders. We then analyze whether the interdependent effect of these political and economic stakeholders is more likely to be synergistic versus antagonistic, and find evidence consistent with the antagonistic view. Managerial summary: We show how a firm's innovativeness is influenced strongly by its relationships to external stakeholders. Specifically, we examine the potentially dual-edged role of political stakeholders (local and central governments) and economic stakeholders (suppliers, buyers, and competitors). Using extensive data on Chinese firms, we find: (a) that the higher the level of government connections, the greater a firm's innovativeness; (b) that firms located in proximity with more innovative economic stakeholders also tend to have higher innovation performance. We also look beyond these independent positive effects to examine the joint effect of these two forms of stakeholder influence, and here we see that more influence is not always better. Specifically, we find that the innovation benefit that typically accrues to firms in proximity to more innovative economic stakeholders is weakened when those firms also have higherlevel government connections.
Strategic Alliance Structures Albers, Sascha; Wohlgezogen, Franz; Zajac, Edward J.
Journal of management,
03/2016, Letnik:
42, Številka:
3
Journal Article
Recenzirano
While strategic alliances have emerged in recent years as common and important structural vehicles for business development, surprisingly little is known about how collaborative activities are ...organized and administered within these governance structures. We see classic organizational scholarship as useful insofar as it both provides clear classifications that distinguish alternative intraorganizational designs and explicates how they affect the inner workings of organizations. Existing alliance classification schemes based on type of collaborative activity, partner characteristics, or legal structure, on the other hand, rarely delineate important differences of how collaborative work is organized among partners. We seek to redress this shortcoming by developing a framework of alliance structural parameters based on classic organizational design considerations. Specifically we identify and discuss five key design parameters for alliances: the structural interface between partners, the structural “intraface” within partners, and the specialization, formalization, and centralization of the alliance organization. We show how consideration of these five parameters provides a deeper understanding of alliance governance and suggest how partner organizations can achieve differential levels of connectivity and steering for their collaborative ventures.
We extend research on the diffusion of corporate practices by providing a framework for studying practice variation during diffusion processes. Specifically, we theorize about how population-level ...mechanisms of diffusion link with organization-level mechanisms of implementation that lead to the adaptation of practices. We also identify technical, cultural, and political elements of fit (or misfit) between diffusing practices and adopters and analyze how the process of attaining fit across these elements can trigger different patterns of adaptation.
Scholars have found consistent evidence that directors who served on boards of firms accused of misconduct face reputational penalties in the director labor market. While commonly interpreted in ...terms of an "ex post settling-up" process that penalizes directors for failing in their role as monitors of management, the fundamentally social basis of the director labor market suggests that the ex post settling-up process may also incorporate a resource-provisioning role for directors as conferrers of legitimacy. We analyze how growing socioeconomic pressures that aim to redress the longstanding underrepresentation of female and ethnic minority directors may lessen, for these sought-after directors, the penalties typically imposed by the labor market in the aftermath of corporate misconduct. Using a rich proprietary data set on financial misconduct and directors' demographic characteristics, we find strong support for our hypotheses regarding a possible "reputational immunity" effect. We also provide supplementary analyses demonstrating the specific mechanisms underlying our predictions, and establishing the robustness of the results to a variety of alternative explanations. We discuss the implications of our theoretical perspective and empirical findings for future research on corporate governance, corporate misconduct, and the duality of minority status as it relates to discriminatory outcomes in modern labor markets.
This paper examines the adjustments firms make to the composition of their portfolios of technology-sourcing vehicles (i.e., alliance, acquisition, or go-it-alone) in response to poor innovative ...performance. We advance a behavioral perspective on the make/buy/ally question, suggesting that differences in financial slack will generate different portfolio decisions. Specifically, we posit that firms with greater levels of financial slack are more likely to respond to poor innovative performance by opting for (1) greater vehicle diversification, and (2) new sourcing vehicles, while firms with lessfinancial slack will respond by (1) downscoping their portfolio of sourcing vehicles, and (2) reverting to more familiar vehicles. We find support for our predictions using extensive data from the population of U.S. public pharmaceutical firms from 1992 to 2006.
For firms seeking to strategically combine their resources with those of other firms, two popular alternative governance structures emerge: alliance or acquisition. In this paper, we propose a dyadic ...perspective to examine how and why configurations of two firms' resources and capabilities affect the costs and benefits associated with each governance structure. More specifically, we posit that factors such as (1) the resource similarity and complementarity between a pair of firms. (2) the combined relational capabilities of a pair of firms, and (3) the partner-specific knowledge between a pair of firms will affect the likelihood of observing that pair of firms forming an alliance vs. engaging in an acquisition. We test and find support for our hypotheses using extensive longitudinal data a sample of the largest firms in the United States from 1991 to 2000.
Research summary: This study suggests that strategy and organizational scholars seeking to analyze the impact of exploitation on exploration would benefit by moving away from the generally assumed ...unitary perspective on exploitation. Specifically, we propose a multifaceted perspective on exploitation by theoretically and empirically distinguishing between repetitive exploitation versus incremental exploitation. We argue that repetitive exploitation can impede exploration and delay firms' responses to environmental changes, while incremental exploitation can impel exploration and accelerate firms' responses to environmental changes. We test our arguments using extensive longitudinal data from the hard disk drive (HDD) industry, and our supportive empirical findings highlight the relevance of our distinction between the two types of exploitation and their very different effects on exploration. Managerial summary: This study offers a solution to the puzzle of why many believe firms cannot excel at advancing existing practices and developing new initiatives, typically described as the trade-off between exploitation and exploration. We introduce the distinction between repetitive and incremental exploitation and show that only the former type of innovation generates rigidity toward exploration, whereas the latter actually promotes exploration. More specifically, our evidence from the hard disk drive industry shows that those firms emphasizing incremental innovation (as opposed to repetition of their existing practices) were most likely to remain explorative over time, whereas firms emphasizing more repetitive innovation proved less open to changes. We discuss the implications of our findings as suggesting that firms seeking to optimize their innovativeness over the long term should strive to remain active in incrementally innovating their existing practices.
This study develops a symbolic management perspective on strategic change to predict and test the antecedents and consequences of how firms frame strategic change. Using data from a sample of ...contemporary German corporations, we find support for our predictions that firms (1) use specific framing language that fits better with their divergent stakeholder preferences, (2) use language that decouples espousal and actual implementation of strategic change, and (3) realize positive market responses to institutionally appropriate frames of change.
In this study we seek to reconcile diverging dominant views on the relationship between firms and their legal environment by offering a cultural contingency perspective. We begin by accepting the ...notion that a new law will likely exert a powerful influence on targeted firms and that firms’ strategic responses include efforts to shape the impact of the new law. However, we suggest that the success of such response will be contingent on the degree of cultural consonance of firms’ strategic responses and the dominant cultural context at that time. We elaborate this view in our detailed qualitative and quantitative analyses of the automotive Safety Act of 1966 and the response by targeted firms. We provide evidence showing that the changes in the degree of cultural consonance of firms’ strategic response and the predominant cultural beliefs/values explain both the early failure of firms’ efforts to shape the impact of the law in the mid-1960s and the later success by the end of the 1970s. We highlight how firms’ cultural context provides both a constraint and an opportunity for firms seeking to shape legal environmental pressures, and we conclude by discussing the implications of our dynamic contingency perspective for research on law, culture, and strategy.
While strategy researchers have devoted considerable attention to the role of firm-specific capabilities in the pursuit of competitive advantage, less attention has been directed at how firms obtain ...these capabilities from outside their boundaries. In this study, we examine how firms' multiplex network ties in business groups represent one important source of capability acquisition. Our focus allows us to go beyond the traditional focus on network structure and offer a novel contingency model that specifies how different types of network ties (e.g., buyer-supplier, equity, and director), individually and in complementary combination, will differentially affect the process of R&D capability acquisition. We also offer an original analysis of how other aspects of network structure (i.e., network density) in business groups affect the efficacy of network ties on R&D capability. Empirically, we provide an original contribution to the capabilities literature by utilizing a stochastic frontier estimation to rigorously measure firm capabilities, and we demonstrate the value of this approach using longitudinal data on business groups in emerging economies. We close by discussing the implications of our supportive results for future research on firm capabilities, organizational networks, and business groups.
