Long Range Planning最新文献

We draw on the Upper Echelons theory to investigate the effect of CEO liberalism—as reflected by core beliefs on the liberal-conservative spectrum—on firm engagement in corporate social irresponsibility (CSI). We argue that CEO liberalism is related to an asymmetric treatment of shareholders and other non-shareholding stakeholders. Specifically, we distinguish CSI behavior toward shareholders from CSI behavior toward non-shareholding stakeholders and predict that while CEO liberalism reduces CSI behavior toward non-shareholding stakeholders, it also increases CSI behavior toward shareholders. We further identify governance contingency factors, such as institutional ownership, board composition, and compensation mechanisms, that moderate the predicted main relationships. We test our predictions with a sample of S&P 500 firms between 2000 and 2009 and find support for most of our hypotheses.

This article deepens the analysis of the strategic balance perspective's boundary conditions through the lens of competitive dynamics, focusing on the particular case of small firms. We propose that competitive interdependence shapes the link between strategic similarity and small-firm performance. Specifically, we examine this boundary condition in terms of competitive asymmetry and market overlap between a small firm and two reference points, namely the industry leader and peers. We find that the effect of strategic similarity differs depending on whether there is competitive asymmetry and on the level of market overlap.

Research on big data analytics has been burgeoning in recent decades, yet its relationship with strategy continues to be overlooked. This paper reviews how big data analytics and strategy are portrayed across 228 articles, identifying two dominant discourses: an input-output discourse that views big data analytics as a computational capability supplementing prospective strategy formulation and an entanglement discourse that theorizes big data analytics as a socially constructed agent that (re)shapes the emergent character of strategy formation. We deconstruct the inherent dichotomies of the input-output/entanglement divide and reveal how both discourses adopt disjointed positions vis-à-vis relational causality and agency. We elaborate a semiotic view of big data analytics and strategy that transcends this standoff and provides a novel theoretical account for conjoined relationality between big data analytics and strategy.

The nature of the relationship between growth and profitability remains inconclusive, despite prior research. To contribute to a better understanding of the growth-profitability relationship, we examine its non-linear character. We achieve this by deconstructing growth into organic and acquisitive modes, and by theorizing how the particular costs and benefits of each mode affect the profitability, which we measure as return on assets. Furthermore, we propose that the interaction of these two modes can also affect profitability. By studying these relationships with a panel data set of established German firms during a 13-year period, we uncover an inverted U-shaped relationship between growth and profitability that is mainly driven by acquisitive growth. These decreasing returns at higher levels of acquisitive growth are related to the higher internal costs of managing acquisitions. Consistent with our logic, we find that organic growth has a declining positive profitability effect. The interaction of both growth modes also shows that increasing acquisitive growth negatively impacts the positive effect of organic growth on profitability.

Organizations need to shift from the existing path and form a new path (i.e., realizing path transformation) after disruptive environmental changes, and yet it is a difficult process hardly known in the literature. This study reports on a comparative case study to examine middle managers’ roles in organizational path transformation. We show that middle managers can facilitate organizational path transformation first by breaking the lock-in state via individual exploration and collective assessment, and then by triggering self-reinforcing effects to form a new strategic pattern via external resource acquisition and synergistic internal deployment. In contrast, middle managers who conduct individual exploration, individual assessment, and independent resource deployment can create obstacles for organizational path transformation. Organizational contexts are likely the underlining cause for the differences between these two kinds of behaviors. This research contributes to the literature by revealing how middle managers facilitate or impede path transformation, and by identifying organizational contexts that influence their different behaviors.

We advance performance feedback theory by showing how decision makers respond to inconsistent performance feedback on multiple goals, and how status shapes these responses for introducing behavioral changes. We argue that inconsistent performance feedback on primary and secondary goals decrease decision makers' propensity to initiate changes, while their high status operates both as a critical asset that motivates solution search for fixing a performance shortfall on a primary goal and as a resource buffer against self-enhancement beliefs when addressing inconsistent feedback on multiple goals. We test our arguments using a dataset of 107,791 Airbnb properties and find support for our hypotheses. We discuss the contributions of our findings to the performance feedback theory.

How emerging-market firms can catch up with forerunners from advanced economies is a key issue in the economic and technology literature. Research has suggested that acquisitions are a viable tool for firms in emerging markets to reduce the productivity gap with global leaders, but the empirical evidence on this matter is still far from conclusive. Contributing to this debate, this paper examines the impact of cross-border vs. domestic acquisitions on the labor productivity of firms across different sectoral environments. Studying the acquisitions pursued by Chinese listed firms over one decade, we find that cross-border acquisitions are positively associated with firms' labor productivity and that this effect is particularly strong in high-tech sectors and among leading firms. We also find that domestic acquisitions are positively associated with firms’ labor productivity and that this effect is particularly strong in low-tech sectors and among laggards. We further investigate the mechanisms underlying the acquisition–productivity link and contend that “technological innovation” is the primary mechanism by which acquisitions enhance firm productivity in high-tech sectors, whereas “enhancing operating efficiency” is the primary mechanism by which acquisitions enhance firm productivity in low-tech sectors.

How a successful business model (BM) is designed is a key question in the business model innovation (BMI) literature. Delving on the shared concept of BM as a configuration of components and interdependencies, we take a cognitive perspective to study the conceptual combination as a central process in BMI. We investigate the complexity of conceiving a new BM configuration, through a longitudinal study of the emergence of “The Huffington Post” which combined newspaper and blog in a disruptive and successful BM. With our research we theoretically frame the dynamic interplay between the three cognitive mechanisms of conceptual combination and the system of interdependent components of an emerging BM. Our findings unveil how the overall process unfolds and specifically delves into the dynamic iteration of composing and experimenting with the new configuration until the overall coherence is reached. Hence, we advance the literature by showing how the conceptual combination of a new BM is a complex effort and comprises some iterative cycles, vital to reach a coherent configuration which could secure a superior performance.

Using ‘simple rules’ may enable managers to take organizational decisions more rapidly. While prior research presents advantages of simple rule use during strategy formation, we lack insights into how firms can deliberately create simple rules and mitigate the challenges during strategy implementation. This is particularly interesting for established firms struggling to leverage their wealth of experience. We explore how managers of a multinational corporation deliberately create and use simple rules to implement the firm's growth strategy. Drawing on interviews and secondary data, we reveal the activities through which managers ensure the relevance and legitimacy of codified simple rules, yet also establish causality between simple rules and outcomes. Simple rule creation is accomplished via bottom-up identification and lateral validation, its use via consistent top-down guiding and timely adaptation. Our findings contribute to the growing body of research on the evolution of simple rules and aspects of strategy implementation more generally.

We analyze the role and effect of ecosystem leadership understood as the exercise of effort towards others with the purpose of establishing and maintaining an ecosystem around a focal systemic innovation. While there has been much attention to the firms that sponsor ecosystems in the ecosystem literature, ecosystem leaders are usually characterized in an atheoretical manner, and the emphasis is on, leadership in existing ecosystems, thus neglecting the role leadership might play in ecosystem emergence. We clarify and provide theoretical grounding for the important role of leadership in emerging and maturing ecosystems. Building on transaction cost economics, we conceptualize an ecosystem as a governance structure that enables and sustains coordination and cooperation among multiple economic agents towards a focal innovative value proposition. Our basic argument is that the emergence of such an ecosystems is hampered by coordination and cooperation problems which markets and the price system cannot solve by itself. Resolving these problems requires assistance, and such assistance is what we call ecosystem leadership. To further characterize the exercise of leadership we use Teece's tripartite dynamic capabilities scheme. Leadership enables ecosystem emergence through three externally-oriented dynamic capabilities: facilitating the formation of a shared vision (sensing), inducing others to make ecosystem-specific investments (seizing) and engaging in ad hoc problem solving to create and maintain stability (reconfiguring/transforming). The latter capability in particular often continues to be important in a mature ecosystem. We provide a characterization of these capabilities and argue that the ecosystem leader role in a mature ecosystem likely stems from having successfully exercised these capabilities and that their exercise also puts the leader in a prime position for value capture. We discuss implications of our arguments for ecosystem theories, for managers and for policy makers.