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Senior managers' words matter and both how they communicate and what they communicate can have significant consequences for their firms. Further, in a world of instant communication, where individuals can transmit their thoughts instantaneously to a wide range of audiences through many channels, such words can have an immediate impact. While managerial scholars have sought to understand how attributes such as organizational resources, managerial cognition, and firms' degree of diversification can shape an organization's behaviors and subsequent performances, less attention has been paid to how senior managers' communications can influence such outcomes. In this symposium, we present four recent studies that have started to unpack how managerial communication can be shaped by managerial and organizational attributes as well as the consequences of managerial communication. We will start to unpack the factors and mechanisms that shape senior managerial communication and how communications can shape organizational behavior and performance outcomes, thereby helping to deepen our understanding of a particular pathway that can help explain heterogeneity in performances between firms. The ultimate goal of this symposium is to spark interest in the domain of managerial communications and how such communications can have important consequences for firms. Challenging Expectations: Analyst Response to Executive Attention to Different Growth Strategies Author: John Eklund; U. of Southern California Author: Michael J. Mannor; U. of Notre Dame All the World's on Stage: Social Dynamics in Q&A Situations and Evaluations of Organizations Author: Richard Whittington; U. of Oxford Author: Andreas Sebastian Konig; U. of Passau Communicating to Overcome Model Minority Stereotypes: East Asian CEOs in Investor Communications Author: Lingling Pan; U. of Pittsburgh Author: Gerry M. McNamara; Michigan State U. Immigrant CEOs and Leading During a Crisis Author: Prithwiraj Choudhury; Harvard U. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A fundamental characteristic of organizations is that they aggregate the preferences of their members to make organization-level decisions. When examining how preferences are aggregated, prior work has tended to underplay the role of individual preference heterogeneity. We develop a novel approach to derive an organization's utility function from the heterogeneous utility functions of its members and the aggregation structure used. Our key insight to derive the organizational utility function is translating utility functions into choice probabilities and vice versa. We demonstrate that an organizational utility function is not just the sum of individual utility functions but a nuanced amalgamation of the preferences of its members. Our work contributes to a better understanding of the effect of organizational conflict and suggests ways of managing organizational decision-making. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Industry change can come in several forms. In this study, we examine one understudied form involving the interaction between suppliers and incumbent firms and how changes in industry-wide supplier engagement models impact incumbents. We argue that firms working repeatedly with the same suppliers under the existing engagement model develop effective routines and therefore are associated with higher-quality outputs. In contrast, under a new engagement model, the advantage existing suppliers have over new suppliers diminishes, as well-honed routines become constraints and engender complacency, limiting adaptation to the industry-level change associated with the new model. We find support for our theory in the US television programming industry following the entry of Netflix in 2013, coinciding with changes in the industry's predominant supplier engagement model. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Markets have a fundamental information asymmetry problem in evaluating public organizations, as market actors lack detailed firsthand knowledge about organizational capabilities and strategies. Top executive communication helps to address this asymmetry by providing information about firm strategies that signal firm quality and intentions. In this study we use signaling theory to examine how top executive communications about different parts of their firm's strategy provide signals to securities analysts that shape their evaluations of the company. We hypothesize that analysts, working on behalf of shareholders who are interested in stock growth, positively evaluate communication related to externally-oriented strategies that signal alignment with analyst goals for growth, and negatively evaluate communication that focuses on internally-oriented maintenance strategies that signal concerns about firm capabilities and market positioning. We then explore the potential moderating influence of factors that reduce signal efficacy through lower signal intensity or weaker signal consistency. We find support for our arguments using a novel text analysis tool in a random sample of S&P500 companies. In supplemental analysis we find that several contextual factors can also magnify or suppress signal impact, assess which specific strategies have the biggest impact, and identify different patterns for high and low performing firms. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The relationship between managerial attention and firms' innovation efforts is well-established in the extant literature. However, the relationship between attention and the search for and implementation of new innovations is complex. Despite the clear importance both scholastically and managerially of understanding how attention, search behaviors, and adaptation interrelate, our understanding of the mechanisms through which attention is translated or not translated into action is relatively under-developed. In this symposium, we present four recent studies that have started to unpack this relationship between managerial attention and organizational search and adaptation. The goal of this symposium is to spark interest in the broad cognitive underpinnings of technological adaptation, including how managerial attention translates into search and other innovation-related actions during periods of industry change. During such periods firms must rapidly adapt to a changing environment, and the misallocation of valuable resources, like attention, limits the ability to successfully search for new solutions and eventually adapt to the changing environment. Through this symposium, we will start to both unpack the factors and mechanisms that shape the attention-action relationship as well as deepen our understanding of another explanation as to why incumbent firms may struggle to respond to industry change. * The Role of Managerial Attention in Shaping Responses to Industry Change * Presenter: John Eklund; U. of Southern California * Presenter: Manav Raj; New York U. * Fighting the Fires: Online User Community Conflict, Creator Attention and User-Generated Innovations * Presenter: Jay (Jinwon) Park; U. of California, Irvine * Presenter: Seongbin Yoon; U. of California, Irvine * Presenter: John Joseph; U. of California, Irvine * Presenter: Brian Amir Ebrahimi; U. of California, Irvine * Regulatory stringency and external R&D investment in the U.S. Electricity Industry * Presenter: Nilanjana Dutt; Bocconi U. * Presenter: Colleen Cunningham; London Business School * Talking the Walk: Managerial Attention, Exploration, and Investor Valuation of New Technologies * Presenter: Dylan Boynton; U. of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign * Presenter: William Ocasio; U. of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The purpose of this symposium is to foster and accelerate scholarly conversations around the strategy and innovation of the bio-pharmaceutical and healthcare sectors. Our goal not only includes highlighting the aspects of importance of these sectors, but also involves contributing to the emergence of new ideas and research agenda, in light of recent events including Covid-19. We bring together a great set of five working papers and two senior scholars as discussants, who all study important theoretical issues and emerging phenomena in the biopharma and healthcare sectors. We have organized this presenter symposium with three goals in mind. First, to provide and motivate the importance of these sectors as an important empirical setting for strategy and management scholars. Second, to provide a brief overview of the strategy literature that has grounded their studies in these settings. We especially would like to highlight the theoretical insights from studies ranging from the management of innovation to the relationships between incumbents and entrepreneurial firms. Lastly, to introduce the working papers that use these settings that shed light on the direction and trajectory of the literature. * When do Firms Provide Early Access prior to Commercialization? Evidence from Expanded Access Program * Presenter: Sukhun Kang; London Business School * Presenter: Sungyong Chang; London Business School * Targeting vs. Expansion: What does physical connectivity actually provide? * Presenter: Daniel Erian Armanios; Oxford U., Saïd Business School * Presenter: Sunasir Dutta; U. of Minnesota * Presenter: Maria Roche; Harvard Business School * The Problem of Fragmentation and the Paradox of Network Intervention: Evidence From Policy Change * Presenter: Russell James Funk; U. of Minnesota * Presenter: Sohyun Park; U. of Minnesota * Tight or Loose? Unpacking the Impact of Organization Design on the Development &Commercialization * Presenter: John Eklund; U. of Southern California * Looking Beyond Dyad: Impact of Information Environment on Value Capturing from Technology Partners * Presenter: Sandip Bisui; U. of Colorado, Boulder * Presenter: Jeffrey J. Reuer; U. of Colorado, Boulder [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]