Resource Allocation and Resource Redeployment.

This symposium focuses on the question of how diversified firms should allocate resources among their different areas of business -- a fundamental issue within strategic management research. Despite the importance of the topic, after early classic studies (e.g. Bower, 1970), there was a decline in the strategy field in research in which the topic of resource allocation was in the foreground of the studies. Instead, resource allocation played a secondary role in papers which focused on issues such as international expansion, corporate entrepreneurship initiatives, or divestment decisions (Birkinshaw, 1997; Hoskisson, Johnson, and Moesel, 1994; Tan and Vertinsky, 1996; Wright and Ferris, 1997). Recently, there has been a resurgence in research which directly focuses on the topic of resource allocation and redeployment (for overviews, see Busenbark, Wiseman, Arrfelt, & Woo, 2017; Folta, Helfat, & Karim, 2016; Sengul, Almeida Costa, & Gimeno, 2019). Results from these recent empirical studies yielded mixed findings regarding the question of how efficiently multi-business firms are able to allocate resources internally among their different business units. In order to move our understanding of this important issue forward, there is a pressing need for more theory building and empirical research in corporate strategy. In order to assist in this re-energizing of resource allocation research, it is the goal of this symposium to bring together contributions from different angles on the topic of resource allocation. Specifically, the symposium considers four diverse perspectives on resource allocation; namely regarding (i) innovation-related outcomes of different resource allocation strategies on the headquarters level, (ii) the interrelationships between different areas of business in the portfolio of a diversified firm, (iii) the management of uncertainty when discovering opportunities for resource redeployment, and (iv) a capabilities-based understanding of why some firms are more successful than others in allocating resources. This symposium therefore contributes to the broadening of our understanding about how diversified firms should allocate resources among their different areas of business. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]