The micro-foundations of industrial diversification through foreign acquisitions: The multifaceted role of CEO experience

This paper examines the micro-foundations of cross-border industrial diversification strategies. We study the impact of observable CEO experience attributes on the propensity to acquire foreign target firms in unrelated (versus related) industries. Our findings, based on a sample of UK-based firms that engaged in cross-border acquisitions between 2010 and 2016, support an inverted U-shaped relationship between life experience of the CEO and the likelihood of engaging in unrelated foreign acquisitions. Further, we find that CEOs' broad-based work experience, across countries or industries, is associated with a higher propensity to engage in unrelated foreign acquisitions. Finally, CEOs’ education experience in MBA-type qualifications is associated with a preference for related foreign acquisitions. We discuss the theoretical implications of these findings and outline directions for future research in the context of micro-foundations in international business, strategic leadership, and upper echelons theory.     

Board leadership structure and diversity over CEO time in office: A test of the evolutionary perspective on Italian firms

An evolutionary perspective on CEO-board relations suggests that CEO objectives and interests change over time, and that board roles should shift accordingly, from CEO leadership development during the early stages of CEO time in office toward monitoring during the latest stages. This study examines how two board characteristics, board leadership structure and board diversity, shape innovation investment among Italian firms. Empirical results support the hypothesized effects, suggesting that the board’s effects are contingent upon CEO time in office.     

Business model diversification: Demand relatedness,entry sequencing,and curvilinearity in the diversification-performance relationship

This study integrates research on business model diversification (BMD) and demand-side theory to examine the relationship of BMD to performance and the sequencing of business model additions. We begin by explaining and demonstrating that the overall degree of BMD has an inverted U-shaped relationship with firm performance. We next highlight the particular role that demand relatedness plays in BMD. We first provide evidence that the inverted U-shaped relationship flattens in times of financial shocks, consistent with arguments that the benefits of BMD from consumers’ willingness-to-pay for simultaneous use of multiple business models may diminish during shocks. Second, we argue that firms tend to sequence the addition of new business models based on demand relatedness, and we provide evidence that the degree of demand relatedness between a core and a target business model enhances the likelihood of diversification into that target business model.     

Two heads are safer than one: Changes in CEO duality and venture failure

We study the dynamics of a major design choice in the governance of ventures: whether to distribute power at the top of the venture between a separate CEO and board chair. We propose that ventures are more likely to combine (separate) their CEO and chair positions when operational performance is poor (strong), demonstrating behavior in line with the threat rigidity thesis. Paradoxically, however, ventures would most benefit from a separate CEO and board chair when operational performance is poor. Empirical analysis of data from the Australian mining industry offers general support for our theory, with some interesting nuances. We discuss the implications of our findings for emerging conversations in the literatures on venture boards, boards of directors, and entrepreneurship.     

On the Measurements of Board Composition: Poor Consistency and a Serious Mismatch of Theory and Operationalization

Over two dozen operationalizations of board composition can be identified from the empirical literature. A structural equations confirmatory factor analysis (LISREL 8.03) suggests that these operationalizations do not constitute a single construct of board independence. Instead, analyses strongly indicate three separate constructs. Common operationalizations of board composition, then, are neither tenable surrogates for one another nor are they interchangeable. Implications for empirical aggregation of studies, theory/measurement convergence, and the current corporate governance public policy debate are discussed.     

Exploring team mental model dynamics during strategic change implementation in professional service organizations. A sensemaking perspective

The purpose of this paper is to provide a deeper process understanding of team mental model dynamics in a context of strategic change implementation. To do so, we adopt a change recipient sensemaking perspective with the objective to identify salient determinants of team mental model dynamics. We aim to contribute to the managerial and organizational cognition literature by identifying critical micro-foundations that shape team cognition and interpretation processes during strategic change implementation. This adds to the field’s understanding of the under-researched collective dimension of strategic processes in general and strategic change implementation more specifically. Through an explorative case study conducted at a professional service organization, we identified five determinants of team mental model dynamics: coherence between ostensive and performative aspects of organizational routines, equivocality of expectations, dominance of organizational discourse, shifts in organizational identification and cross-understanding between departmental thought worlds. Case findings reveal that implementation processes of strategic change become intricate and difficult if change recipient sensemaking is not effectively acted upon. The five determinants identified require adequate managerial attention in order to avoid slipping into organizational inertia. As a consequence, professional workers are unable to ‘drop their tools’ and fail to integrate the strategic change effort in updated team mental models.     

Reconsidering ordinary and dynamic capabilities in strategic change

Dynamic capabilities research explains the ability of firms to respond to dynamic environments by reconfiguring inert and insufficiently flexible ordinary capabilities. However, more recent research ascribes the routines that constitute ordinary capabilities the ability to evolve endogenously. This study aims to develop dynamic capability research by increasing our understanding of the relations between and the roles played by ordinary and dynamic capabilities in producing purposeful responses to environmental dynamism. Drawing on longitudinal, qualitative data, we show how ordinary capabilities make important contributions to organizational responses to dynamic environments. Our findings pose challenges to key assumptions of extant dynamic capabilities research and allow us to explicate new roles for ordinary and dynamic capabilities, thus advancing the understanding of the relation between dynamic and ordinary capabilities and advancing understanding of one of the central issues in dynamic capabilities research: firms’ capacity to respond to changing environments.     

Diversification,relatedness and growth options value: Beyond a linear relationship

This paper investigates how corporate diversification affects a firm's growth options value. We adopt a real options approach from which diversification is seen as both a way to exploit current growth options (option exercise effect) and as a source of future options to expand (option creation effect). We focus on two dimensions of this strategy: degree of diversification and relatedness between segments. Using a panel sample of U.S. firms from 1998 to 2014, and accounting for the endogenous nature of the diversification decision, we find a U-form relationship between diversification degree and growth options value, suggesting that this strategy may primarily become a source of growth options after a certain point. Relatedness has an inverse U-relation with growth options value, suggesting that positive effects from synergies are limited to a certain level after which negative effects from duplicities prevail. Results also reveal that such an inverse U-linkage of relatedness is less pronounced in high diversifiers than in low ones. This study extends the applicability of the real options approach to strategy, and suggests the relevance of a multidimensional and contingent view in the diversification debate.     

Climate change communication: a provocative inquiry into motives, meanings, and means

The deliberately provocative theme of this article is that perceived difficulties in climate change communication (CCC)--e.g., indifference about or denial of climate change's reality, negative consequences, anthropogenic causes, or need to mitigate or adapt to it-are partly the fault of climate change communicators. Fischhoff's model of risk communication development is used to demonstrate that CCC to date has tended to stress persuasion, rather than social movement mobilization or deliberation, and with a focus on the model's early stages. Later stages are not necessarily better, but a more diverse strategy seems superior to a focus perhaps narrowed by empathic, ideological, psychological, and resource constraints. Furthermore, even within persuasion, emphasizing a wider set of values, consequences, and audiences could be fruitful. Social movement mobilization has its own set of weaknesses, but usefully complements persuasion with a focus on developing power, subverting mainstream assumptions, and engaging people in collective action. Deliberation similarly has its drawbacks, but unlike the other two approaches does not define the solution-or even, necessarily, the problem-in advance, and thus offers the chance for people of contending viewpoints to jointly develop concepts and action agendas hitherto unimagined. Simultaneous pursuit of all three strategies can to some degree offset their respective flaws, at the potential cost of diffusion of energies and contradictory messages. Success in CCC is by no means guaranteed by a more diverse set of strategies and self-reflection by communicators, but their pursuit should better reveal CCC's limits.     

Strategy implementation and organizational change: How formal reorganization affects professional networks

Strategy implementation is difficult, particularly as it often requires changes in formal organization structures. Prior research has shown that change in the formal structure may affect employee networks. Yet, we know relatively little about how such changes affect different network ties. This paper considers how formal structural change affects senior managers’ ability to maintain their intraorganizational networks. The hypotheses are tested on sample of 884 work-related relationships of 96 partners in a global professional services firm. This firm had recently implemented a new strategy, which led to a change in the product-market focus and the resulting formal structure. Our findings reveal that the characteristics of a specific network tie determine whether it is affected by formal structural change. In particular, we find that network ties that are highly embedded in the social structure are more likely to be affected by change in the formal structure. In contrast, ties that are relationally embedded are less likely to be affected by change in the formal structure. We discuss the theoretical and practical implications of these results. In particular, the findings may have consequences for the success of strategy implementation and strategic transformation efforts.     

The interface of the top management team and the board: A dynamic managerial capabilities perspective

Although top management teams use their human capital, social capital, and cognition (i.e., dynamic managerial capabilities) to drive strategic change in their firms, faultlines within these teams may dampen the strategic change that they produce. While boards can enable but also restrict these change efforts, we know little about how precisely a board's monitoring and advice-giving condition the impact of the top management team's dynamic managerial capabilities on strategic change. We clarify how intense monitoring and advice-giving affect strategic change when faultlines between the top management team's and board's dynamic managerial capabilities are more or less salient. We explain that intense monitoring further stifles both the breadth and speed of strategic change that can be accomplished, and that this is more pronounced when the faultlines between the two bodies are strong. Furthermore, we outline that intensive advice-giving can be beneficial in improving the breadth of strategic change, but more so when these faultlines are weak and less so when they are strong. Notably we illuminate that the reverse happens in terms of speed of strategic change: intensive advice-giving can be detrimental engendering a further dampening of strategic change speed which is more pronounced when these faultlines are strong but less when they are weak.     

The relationship between organisational change and being a perpetrator of workplace bullying: A three-wave longitudinal study

ABSTRACT

While research has unravelled the association between organisational change and being a target of workplace bullying, scholars have still to shed light on the perpetrator perspective of this association. In the current study, we further the literature by investigating the relationship between exposure to organisational change and being a perpetrator of workplace bullying. We introduced perceptions of psychological contract breach as a mechanism that accounts for the process in which exposure to organisational change leads employees to direct bullying behaviours to other members of the organisation. Using three-wave longitudinal data from 1994 employees we estimated a between-subjects mediation model controlling for autoregressive effects. Results confirmed our hypothesis that exposure to organisational change at Time 1 was positively related to being a perpetrator of workplace bullying at Time 3 through perceptions of psychological contract breach at Time 2. These findings suggest that organisations should invest in factors that lower employees’ likelihood to perceive psychological contract breach in the aftermath of organisational change because these perceptions may indeed result in the enactment of workplace bullying towards other members of the organisation.     

Comparison as Incentive: Newsvendor Decisions in a Social Context

Explicit formal mechanisms dominate the discussion about incentives in Operations Management, yet many other mechanisms exist. Social comparison between peers may provide strong implicit incentives for individuals. Social comparison arises naturally in all social settings and may thus be unintended; however, many companies deliberately use it to motivate employees. In this study, we model a social context in which purchasers evaluate their performance relative to their peers; a feeling of inferiority results in a negative contribution to utility, whereas a feeling of superiority results in a positive contribution. We find that social comparison induces characteristic deviations from the newsvendor optimum ordering decision: if fear of inferiority outweighs anticipation of superiority, then purchasers herd together; the converse scenario incites actors to polarize away from each other. In both cases, actors will deviate from ordering the newsvendor optimum in order to satisfy social goals. Demand correlation and profit margins moderate the extent of the deviation.     

Fresh in the saddle: The influence of a new CEO's vision and origin,and CEO succession type on market actors' reactions

CEO succession is a critical event in the life of a company. How external stakeholders respond to it, can affect the company's valuation. This study investigates how securities analysts' and investors' reactions to CEO succession are affected by the interplay between the charisma of the new CEO's vision, the new CEO's origin (whether an insider or outsider), and the type of CEO succession (whether routine, dismissal or interim). Drawing on the literature on signaling, we suggest that because a charismatic vision emits a positive signal about the company's future performance, it will affect market actors' reactions by either weakening or strengthening the influence of the signals emitted by other succession context contingencies, namely, CEO origin and succession type. To test our predictions regarding analysts' and investors' reactions, we respectively analyze panel data and conduct an event study. The results support most of our predictions. We discuss the study's contributions and implications.     

Scenario planning,cognition, and strategic investment decisions in a turbulent environment

We explore how scenario planning contributes to cognitive dynamics and strategic investment decisions in a changing environment. Our research is based on an in-depth, longitudinal case study of Shell's ventures in Russia between 1994 and 2016. We show that Shell's scenarios did not foresee some major events that occurred in the turbulent Russian energy market. However, the scenarios envisaged the rising role of gas, the strategic relevance of the gas transportation infrastructure, and the growing interventionism of the Russian government. The scenarios thus helped Shell's managers to adapt their strategic beliefs and ultimately enabled them to notice, assess, and respond successfully to external changes—even though these changes had not been foreseen in the scenarios. Shell has been the first (and, for almost a decade, the only) foreign company to produce and export gas from Russia.     

Exploring a theoretical foundation for HRD in society: toward a model of stakeholder-based HRD

This article explores a theoretical foundation of human resource development (HRD) that can be adopted to explain the increasing use of HRD interventions and practices in the wider context of society and the world. While there has been growing interest in and literature about the societal meaning of HRD, previous research has focused mostly on HRD practices and lacked a theoretical framework that could explain and characterize the interactions between HRD and society. Based on a review of current approaches to the HRD–society nexus, we suggest that the nexus can be better understood when complex interactions between internal and external stakeholders of an organization are recognized, and we introduce the stakeholder-based HRD (SBHRD) model as a tool for identifying the interactions between HRD and society and the characteristics of the interactions with regard to plurality, interdependency, and legitimacy. The SBHRD model carries theoretical implications of possible changes in the epistemology of HRD, pushing forward well-being as the purpose of HRD, and enlarging HRD research topics. From a practical standpoint, the SBHRD model enhances the value of social responsibilities of corporations and ethical management, enlarges the scope and beneficiaries of HRD activities, increases the opportunities of collaboration with adult education, and points to different modes of communication in practice.     

Technological change and the technology intelligence process: a case study

Various reasons are brought forward for the demise of companies in the face of fundamental technological change. Most often blamed is an insufficient technology intelligence process. However, existing research is contradictory on how this process should be organised. Therefore it is the objective of this case study to derive insight into the organisation of the technology intelligence process by analysing it in the context of radical technological change. The results of a study of the technology intelligence practices of 25 multinational companies are presented. Firstly, the structural, hybrid and informal forms of co-ordination of technology intelligence processes are presented as three parallel layers. Secondly, a framework for the distribution of tasks between the three layers of co-ordination are described and the preconditions necessary for efficient technology intelligence processes are shown. Thirdly, the results are contrasted with past research and conclusions are drawn for further research.     

非营利组织理事会角色与责任研究--基于中美比较分析的视角

无论是理论上的逻辑推理,还是实践中的经验总结,都揭示出非营利组织理事会所扮演的角色和承担的责任要重于企业董事会,清晰地界定理事会角色与责任是非营利组织治理的首要课题.利用因子分析可以将理事会角色与责任分为高级人力资源管理、决策、财务管理、筹资、维护与任务环境关系五类.通过中美之间的比较分析,可以以美国为参照系,折射出中国非营利组织理事会角色与责任的现实状况.实证分析的结果显示,发达国家非营利组织理事会在承担角色和责任方面要全面领先于中国.而就中国而言,基金会理事会在某些方面优于社会团体.     

Leadership and institutional change in the public sector: The case of secondary schools in England

Leadership should be viewed as being embedded in a societal context and influenced by (as well as influencing) the institutional environment of organizations. Extant research on leadership, however, has largely neglected the effect of the institutional environment. To redress this imbalance we examine leadership in the context of institutional change in secondary school education in England. Specifically, we examine the co-existence of an emerging, government-prescribed, results-oriented approach to leadership (the new institution) with a more traditional professional value-based approach (the old institution). Our methodological approach utilized both quantitative and qualitative methods. The quantitative analysis suggests that there are no significant performance differences between the two leadership approaches. Furthermore, school context does not appear to influence the leadership style employed. The qualitative analysis enabled us to better interpret these findings and to examine the enactment of leadership. The analysis suggests that although the new regulatory environment has fostered the development of the results-oriented leadership, it has not fully replaced professional value-based leadership. Rather, we found pockets of resistance to the policy-prescribed approach precisely in those areas that were targeted by the policy, namely, in schools with high percentage of socially deprived students. We conclude that a complex relationship exists between leadership and its institutional context.     

Socioeconomic Vulnerability and Adaptation to Environmental Risk: A Case Study of Climate Change and Flooding in Bangladesh

In this article we investigate the complex relationship between environmental risk, poverty, and vulnerability in a case study carried out in one of the poorest and most flood-prone countries in the world, focusing on household and community vulnerability and adaptive coping mechanisms. Based upon the steadily growing amount of literature in this field we develop and test our own analytical model. In a large-scale household survey carried out in southeast Bangladesh, we ask almost 700 floodplain residents living without any flood protection along the River Meghna about their flood risk exposure, flood problems, flood damage, and coping mechanisms. Novel in our study is the explicit testing of the effectiveness of adaptive coping strategies to reduce flood damage costs. We show that, households with lower income and less access to productive natural assets face higher exposure to risk of flooding. Disparity in income and asset distribution at community level furthermore tends to be higher at higher risk exposure levels, implying that individually vulnerable households are also collectively more vulnerable. Regarding the identification of coping mechanisms to deal with flood events, we look at both the ex ante household level preparedness for flood events and the ex post availability of community-level support and disaster relief. We find somewhat paradoxically that the people that face the highest risk of flooding are the least well prepared, both in terms of household-level ex ante preparedness and community-level ex post flood relief.