Brown Bag Series - Paper Abstracts 2009

Paulo Prochno

Title: Bringing Learning Back to Knowledge Transfer

Abstract:
The current literature on knowledge transfer has explored two supposedly conflicting theoretical perspectives on knowledge transfer: one that proposes adaptation of practices to the specific characteristics of the setting that knowledge is being transferred to, another that calls for full replication of practices from the source to the recipient. With conflicting theoretical perspectives and empirical results, it is still hard to translate these research findings into more practical implications for managers, who are usually caught between the need to adapt practices and the many challenges associated with that adaptation (and the possible negative performance implications). This paper brings a discussion on the evolution of learning in a knowledge transfer process, based on a one-year ethnography that followed a complex cross-border transfer of multiple practices. This transfer process suggests that, even in instances where full replication is desired and planned for, adaptation emerges as actors develop higher order learning capabilities.

Ben Hallen

Title: The Purchase of Embeddedness: Can Venture Capital Firms Buy Their Way Into Networks?

Abstract:
This paper examines the extent to which organizations can form new network ties by offering more favorable deal terms and quicker partnership evaluations to potential partners. Although there has been considerable research on inter-organizational network tie formation, this research has tended to emphasize the importance of previously formed network ties and affiliation-based status. In contrast to these factors that are largely beyond an organization’s short-term control, I explore the extent to which organizations may “purchase” their network embeddedness using the more immediate levers of favorable deal terms and evaluation speed. Integrating a social exchange/equity logic and a signaling logic, I argue that both an organization’s relative deal terms and its partnership evaluation speed have a curvi-linear (inverted-U) relationship with the organization’s formation of new network ties. Using 3,166 reviews in which anonymous entrepreneurs rated the relative deal terms and evaluation efficiency of 477 U.S.-based venture capital firms, I test and find support for this argument. Overall, I contribute to the inter-organizational network dynamics literature the insight that organizations are highly limited in their ability to “purchase” embeddedness, as attempts at doing so may be seen as counter-productive signals of desperation and lower-quality.

Yue Maggie Zhou

Title: TASK STRUCTURE, ORGANIZATION MODULARITY AND HIERARCHY

Abstract:
The trade-offs between a modular and an integrated organization structure have recently attracted great research interest. This paper examines the role of a hierarchical structure in balancing these trade-offs. While a modular structure relieves some cognitive burden imposed upon the central coordinator in an integrated structure, the degree of organization modularity is constrained by the nature of the underlying interdependencies in the task system. When such interdependencies are highly complex or indecomposable, a modular structure is less favorable for coordination purpose. In these situations, a hierarchical structure with intermediate coordinating units between the central coordinator and the base units is preferred. The argument is tested with information on production systems and organization structures of U.S. equipment manufacturers from 1993 to 2003. I measure task complexity and decomposability according to the input-output flows between business segments within firms. I measure organization modularity and hierarchy using the number of base units and supervisory units, respectively, in firms’ organization charts. My results show that for moderate task systems – systems with below medium levels of task complexity, the degree of organization modularity decreases with task complexity, suggesting the coordination benefit of integration. However, for complex task systems – systems with above medium level of task complexity, the degree of organization modularity increases with task complexity and decomposability. In the meanwhile, for complex task systems, organization hierarchy increases with task complexity but decreases with task decomposability. These findings highlight the constraints firms face in designing modular organization structures and the role of hierarchical structures in coordinating inter-module interdependencies.

Byungchae Jin

Title: Top Management Team Diversity, Conflict, Process, and Innovation: Disentangling Constructive and Destructive Innovation Mechanisms (with Long Jiang, Patrick Maggitti, Ken Smith, and Paul Tesluk)

Abstract:
We develop and test theory to explain how alternative forms of diversity in top management teams (TMTs) relate to differential innovation outcomes. Utilizing data collected from 60 high technology TMTs, we found that demographic and psychological diversity, respectively, relate to task and emotional conflict, which positively or negatively relate to firm innovation. We also found that CEO transformational leadership and TMT social integration play moderating roles in alleviating the relationships between diversity and conflict and between task and emotional conflict. Our findings help theorize the diversity-innovation linkage by disentangling the trajectories of constructive and destructive innovation in the TMT context.

Scott Livengood

Title: Can You Hear Me Now? An Austrian Economics View of the Market Process: Examining Market Discourse as a Sensemaking Mechanism of Entrepreneurial Actions

Abstract:
The Austrian school of economics has long studied the interaction of market participants – focusing particularly on entrepreneurs – and their impact on the market process. Central to this process, however, is the oft-overlooked phenomenon of market discourse, or the objective and subjective information exchanged in the marketplace that helps market participants make sense of firms’ entrepreneurial actions. Entrepreneurial actions, such as new product introductions, infuse new information and drive the market process by moving the market either toward or away from existing market conditions. These actions cause socio-cognitive conflict for market participants, who engage in discourse as a sensemaking mechanism to reduce this conflict and eventually either accept or reject the new action, which is essentially the market process. However, little is known regarding the impact of entrepreneurial actions and the process of how market discourse moves the market, which has implications for industry evolution, competitive dynamics, firm strategy, and performance.