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Research Summary: Variance decomposition methods allow strategy scholars to identify key sources of heterogeneity in firm performance. However, most extant approaches produce estimates that depend on the order in which sources are considered, the ways they are nested, and which sources are treated as fixed or random effects. In this paper, we propose the use of an axiomatically justified, unique, and effective solution to this limitation: the “Shapley Value” approach. We show its effectiveness compared to extant methods using both simulated and real data, and use it to explore how the importance of business group effects varies with group diversification and internationalization in a large, representative sample of European firms. We thus demonstrate the method's superior accuracy and its usefulness in asking and answering new questions. Managerial Summary: A key contribution of strategic management research to managerial practice is identifying drivers of firm performance that operate at firm, corporation, industry, and national levels. A branch of this research measures the relative importance of factors at these different levels in producing variation in firm performance, thus helping top managers focus efforts on aspects of their businesses most likely to yield performance differences. However, estimates produced by extant methods are sensitive to method used, and to modeling choices made. This paper proposes the use of the “Shapley Value” approach, which is free from such sensitivity, shows its effectiveness compared to extant methods, and uses it to explore how the importance of factors at the level of the business group varies with group diversification and internationalization.

Existing work has shown how, in platform ecosystems, firms can capture above-average rents by controlling hard-to-replace segments. However, initial conditions can have a lasting effect on a platform owner's ability to capture value as the ecosystem in which it operates evolves. We develop a theoretical framework that first considers the role of bargaining power and industry life cycle stage, showing how these shape initial governance arrangements and the platform owner's subsequent ability to capture value based on the rigidity of these arrangements. We then develop propositions, focusing on contingencies that moderate this degree of governance rigidity in platform ecosystems. Our framework helps understand the combined effects of initial conditions and governance rigidity as key drivers of a platform owner's ability to capture rents. Once we consider these dynamics, controlling a hard-to-replace segment may neither be sufficient nor necessary to obtain a large share of the value created by an ecosystem.

How firms capture value from their innovations has long interested strategy and innovation scholars. Prior work has focused on legal, economic, and social mechanisms for isolating knowledge from imitation as crucial to this process. Our contribution extends this stream of research by identifying how design choices about the way knowledge is manifested (e.g., into routines, blueprints, prototypes, or products) can inhibit a counterparty’s ability to imitate knowledge relating to a focal innovation. We derive six theoretically distinct types of knowledge manifestation that can be used for these ends, consider their impacts on the awareness, motivation, and capability of a counterparty seeking to imitate the focal knowledge, and organize them into a novel two-dimensional conceptual framework for comparison. By doing so, we add design mechanisms to the strategic toolbox of isolating mechanisms available for capturing value from innovation. This addition opens up a new channel through which organizational choice endogenously shapes appropriability regimes and introduces knowledge manifestations as an important unit of analysis for understanding innovation strategy.

We study the performance implications of dynamic environments for a leader’s rivalry-based imitation efforts in a setting with multiple rivals. We disentangle competitive interactions from environmental changes to show that a leader’s simple rules to either imitate the closest rival in terms of attributes (her neighbor) or the closest rival in terms of rank (her challenger) can help to maintain the performance gap to her competitors. Using a computational model and an empirical test, we find that environmental changes alter the tradeoffs between imitation accuracy and the responsiveness to threats from distant rivals. Consequently, when environmental changes are infrequent and minor, neighbor imitation is more effective in maintaining the lead, whereas challenger imitation prevails as environmental changes become more frequent and substantial.

In this study, we explore how boundary-spanning units positioned at the interface of different social domains change boundary positions over time in response to changing stakeholder demands. To do ...

When is imitation of follower actions an effective competitive strategy for a leader? Building on prior work in competitive dynamics from the Austrian School perspective, we propose that imitation ...

Nowadays a lot of ports and quays are constructed in the areas with seasonal ice cover. Ice can prevent marine operations and lead to lost of time and therefore lost of money. One of the solutions to prevent ice adfreeze to marine and ocean structures is heating of the quayage. Heating prevents ice formation and provides acceptable conditions for loading/unloading of the vessels. The process and technology for this process are not properly described in the existing literature. However, estimation of the amount of the heat which is needed to prevent ice formation is vitally important and influences the entire construction project. The amount of heat can be estimated by a numerical simulation. The work also proposes the mathematical way for rough estimation of the power needed to prevent freezing in the ice. Mathematical estimation correlated with the numerical estimation. Calculations are made for possible time for the vessel to spend in the port – two weeks of freezing during −10 °C (140 freezing-degree-days).

In this work the estimation of the load from the ice level on freeze into the ice structure is presented. Nowadays a big uncertainty exists when estimating a freeze-in effect. Considerable inexactness in the ice loads estimation could lead to great differences in the cost of the structures. Proper estimation of ice loads will reduce the cost of constructions. If the structure is freezing-in during no change of sea level — ice collars are occurring. Ice collars could lead to increase of the horizontal ice load from the ice level on the structure. The overview of the existing recommendations is presented. The thermo-dynamical task for calculating ice collar profile was investigated during the present work. The numerical methods were used to calculate an increase of the load when freeze-in effect occurs. Physical experiments were conducted to verify the models. Results of the work provide provisional method for estimation of the ice loads on the freeze into the ice structures.

Academy of Management Proceedings, 2019 (1), ISSN:0065-0668, ISSN:2151-6561, ISSN:1543-8643, ISSN:0896-7911

Knowledge is a source of competitive advantage for organizations but its public good character makes attempts at expropriation difficult to detect and guard against. While prior work has considered...

Ice loads is one of the most important parameters which should be taken into consideration for arctic structures. Ice load highly depends on the ice thickness. It is always recommended to consider the ice thickness data from field observations. However if data is not available it is necessary to calculate the thicknesses of ice level. Calculation is also important for the areas where the thermal fluxes through structure should be taken into the consideration. In this work numerical simulation of Stefan problem for determining of ice level thickness is presented. The results show good correlation between empirical, experimental data and the results from finite element simulation of Stefan problem.

Many established organizations rely on unsponsored R&D projects to sustain and support corporate renewal. These ideas that emerge from dark corners of the organization are often the result of inventors’ proactive creative efforts. Yet, little is known about the origins of these creative efforts, and what drives individuals to decide for or against engagement in such behavior. Building on the notion of middle-status conformity, we argue for the existence of a curvilinear (U-shaped) relationship between inventors’ status and their participation in autonomous inventive efforts. We argue that this effect is further moderated by factors influencing the salience of existing status-granting institutions, specifically the novelty of the technological domain of the invention, the competitive position of the wider organization, and the inventors’ geographic location. Using a unique dataset of invention disclosures from a global technology-based firm, we find general support for our hypotheses. We propose implications for theories of innovation, networks, and status that add to our understanding of proactive forms of creative effort.

There is a large body of research in the fields of strategic management and economics that seeks to understand the sources of heterogeneity in firm performance. One approach to this has been to dec...

A large and increasing share of global economic activity takes place in ecosystems organized around platforms through which distinct groups conduct transactions. Smartphone application (app) market...

This paper provides a contingent perspective on value capture in ecosystems, combining insights from industry evolution and governance inseparability literatures. We argue that ecosystem leaders th...

How and why do individuals make sacrifices to protect similar others within vulnerable contexts? We explore how self-disclosure of one’s identity as a member of a marginalized community can trigger...

Ensuring that organizational innovation generates value increasingly requires effective marketing management. Prior studies, however, report conflicting effects of chief marketing officer (CMO) leadership on how well the firm exploits innovation. These inconsistencies may be associated with firm-level innovation effort, customer focus, and industry type. We analyze archival data from 587 interviews with global CEOs to explain the effect of CMO leadership on outcomes of organizational innovation. CMO leadership of the firm’s primary innovation mode is positively associated with product–market innovation effort but not marginal revenue from innovation. CMO leadership also moderates the relationship between customer focus and innovation revenue. Predictive validity testing shows that these effects are especially important for service firms. The benefits of CMO-led innovation have specific limitations that firms must consider for organization-wide innovation efforts.

Since patent data became accessible in the 1980s, we have known that research using this data?while providing tremendous opportunities?rests on important assumptions about how patents are actually generated by firms. It is well known that firm-level selection processes shape the likelihood that firms decide to patent or not an invention. What is unknown is to what extent these processes leave the results of work using patent data at risk of being distorted by sample selection bias. To understand the magnitude of this bias, we replicate two important prior studies using data from a novel, proprietary dataset, which contains more than 35,000 invention disclosures made by inventors within a single firm, only some of which went on to be patented. We find strong indications for the presence of significant selection bias in patent studies in examining the variance of creative outcome distributions and the impact of past experience in subsequent inventions. We highlight what the nature of this bias may mean for our current body of knowledge, and provide suggestions of how this issue should be addressed in future research.

Organizational routines play an important role in a number of organizational and strategic management theories, including the capability, resource-based, knowledge-based, evolutionary and practice perspectives. However, to date the concept of organizational routines has proven difficult to operationalize. This has severely restricted the use of this concept in empirical work and limited new theory development. Building on prior work conceptualizing routines as (components of) firm capabilities and on the knowledge-based view of the firm, this paper identifies a number of attributes which can be used to characterize organizational routines. I then discuss the relationships between routine attributes, routine value and routine imitability, as well as the moderating role of the environment in which the organization competes. Finally, I consider how a firm's choices regarding routine structure and knowledge management affect routine attributes, and how these relationships are moderated by the broader organizational context. The resulting theoretical framework can be used to consistently theorize about and analyze routines that operate in different contexts. This framework contributes to the literature on organizational routines by opening the door for more empirical work that takes the routine as its unit of analysis, and by providing a foundation for new theory development.

When is imitation of follower actions an effective competitive strategy for a leader? Building on prior work in competitive dynamics and rivalry-based imitation, we propose that imitation is an effective means of staying ahead in winner-takes-all competition in uncertain environments with low information asymmetry. This is because imitation reduces likely differences in performance between rivals, therefore reducing the likelihood of the follower overcoming the initial advantage of the leader. Furthermore, we argue that the effect of imitation is moderated by the degree of environmental uncertainty and by the relative competitive positioning of the leader with respect to the follower. Our theoretical arguments are supported by an analysis of data on head-to-head boat races from the America’s Cup World Series. By illuminating the importance of environmental contingencies in competitive interaction we extend our understanding of competitive dynamics and of the performance consequences of imitation.

Hypotheses concerning the effect of configurations of causal conditions on an organizational outcome play a prominent role in management theory. However, empirical methods suitable for testing hypo...