bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025_split huggingface dataset:
Knowledge or Skills: Which Do Administrators Learn from Experience?
Authors: Nass Clifford 
Published: October 2008

Is increased knowledge or enhanced skills the primary result of learning from experience? This study addresses this question by examining the effects of experience of administrators and the average experience of the administrators' units on four aspects of information-processing performance: need for breadth of information, need for depth of information, receiving more information than needed, and receiving less information than needed. That is, the administrator is viewed as an individual learner operating within an ecology of other learning administrators. Researchers have assumed that skills (information processing abilities gained from learning by doing) are more important than knowledge (the relatively formal and established facts, rules, policies, and procedures within the organization) in predicting how the individual and context effects of experience affect administrators' information-processing performance. However, using a survey of administrators in a multi-unit organization (N = 415), it is demonstrated that a model that assumes that knowledge is the primary intervening variable between experience and enhanced information processing correctly predicts both the individual and context effects of experience on information processing, such as the negative relationship between individual experience and the need for breadth and depth of information and getting less information than needed, and the negative relationships between average experience of an administrators' unit and receiving more information than needed. A model based on skills-acquisition as the primary intervening variable between experience and information-processing performance predicts contrary, and hence incorrect, results, leading us to conclude that knowledge is the primary result of experience for administrators. The experience/knowledge relationship is argued to have implications for understanding worker satisfaction and the liability of newness.
A Socio-Cognitive Model of Technology Evolution: The Case of Cochlear Implants
Authors: Garud Raghu , Rappa Michael A. 
Published: October 2008

This paper examines the social and cognitive processes that unfold over time as a technology develops. Our model focuses on the relationship between the beliefs researchers hold about what is and is not technically feasible, the technological artifacts they create, and the routines they use for evaluating how well their artifacts meet with their prior expectations. The historical development of cochlear implants serves as an illustration of the model. The evidence suggests that there is a reciprocal interaction between beliefs, artifacts, and routines that gives rise to two cyclical processes. One is a process of inversion at the micro level of individual cognition wherein evaluation routines designed to judge specific artifacts begin reinforcing researchers' beliefs. Once evaluation routines become the basis for constructing individual reality, technological claims are perceived as relevant only to those who employ the same routines while appearing as noise to those who employ different routines. The other is a process of institutionalization at the macro level of shared cognition. By institutionalization we mean the development of a common set of evaluation routines that can be applied to all technological paths. Commonly accepted evaluation routines represent a shared reality that strongly shapes the direction of future technological change. The micro- and macro-level processes that shape individual and shared realities place paradoxical demands on researchers in their efforts to develop a new technology. On the one hand, researchers must create and believe in their own realities in order to make progress in their chosen paths and convince others. On the other hand, researchers must also be ready to disbelieve their realities and be willing to embrace the emerging shared reality even if it does not match theirs. How well this paradox is managed can profoundly influence who emerges as the victor or the vanquished during the genesis of a technology.
Executive Judgment, Organizational Congruence, and Firm Performance
Authors: Priem Richard L. 
Published: October 2008

Contingency theory suggests that a match among business-level strategy, organizational structure, and the competitive environment is necessary for high performance. This research asks whether manufacturing firm chief executives judge as “good” those strategy-structure-environment matches recommended by contingency theory. Knowledge of executive judgment is particulary important for two reasons. First, judgment—defined as an individual's understanding of relationships among objects—governs the strategic choices made by top managers. Second, prescriptive strategy theories recommend the judgments that executives “should” use, but there is little evidence specifically tying executive judgment to firm performance. Part of this research is essentially a “laboratory” study of executive judgment that was conducted in the field. Manufacturing firm chief executives' beliefs about cause-and-effect relationships among business-level strategy, structure, environment and performance were ascertained through a judgment task. The second part of the study was a field survey wherein other top executives of each firm reported on their firm's actual strategy, strategy making processes, structure, competitive environment and performance. Both the chief executives' judgments and the actual alignments were compared to the matches recommended as “best” by contingency theory. The hypotheses tested link the two parts of the study. Some predict relationships between judgment policies, realized alignments, and firm performance. Others attempt to identify factors that may lead to differences in executives' judgments. Results indicate that chief executive judgment is strongly related to the actual organizational alignment. Further, judgment policies that favor the strategy-structure-environment matches recommended by contingency theory produce higher performance than do other judgment policies. No support was found for either executive experience or quality of the firm's strategy making process as factors leading to executive judgment. These results suggest that the judgment of top executives is important to both organizational alignment and firm performance.
Institutional Constraints on Economic Reform: The Case of Investment Decisions in China
Authors: Child John , Yuan Lu 
Published: October 2008

The paper examines the process of investment decision making in six Chinese state enterprises during the economic reform which combined moves towards a market system with a continuing role for the state in industrial governance. This placed investment at the boundary between bureaucratic control and market forces, the theory being that enterprise managers would advance investment proposals in response to the market while government authorities retained the right of final approval in the light of broader-based priorities. This mixed “market socialism” model has been treated with considerable scepticism by the so-called “reform economists” in Eastern Europe who doubt that enterprises can pursue policies which are rational in terms of market forces so long as they remain subject to significant administrative influence. Resource dependence and institutional perspectives, in drawing attention to higher administrative agencies as providers respectively of critical resources and of legitimacy for the state enterprises under their purview, also predict that institutional constraints will continue to operate on enterprise decision making. North's discussion of informal institutional arrangements and incremental change gives rise to similar expectations. Detailed examination of the investment decision process at the three major stages of initiation, design and detailing, and final authorization does in fact indicate that it remains heavily dependent upon higher authorities. The reasons for this continuing dependence are discussed and comparisons are drawn with the investment decision process in western countries.
The Kindness of Strangers: The Usefulness of Electronic Weak Ties for Technical Advice
Authors: Constant David , Sproull Lee , Kiesler Sara 
Published: October 2008

People use weak ties—relationships with acquaintances or strangers—to seek help unavailable from friends or colleagues. Yet in the absence of personal relationships or the expectation of direct reciprocity, help from weak ties might not be forthcoming or could be of low quality. We examined the practice of distant employees (strangers) exchanging technical advice through a large organizational computer network. A survey of advice seekers and those who replied was conducted to test hypotheses about the viability and usefulness of such electronic weak tie exchanges. Theories of organizational motivation suggest that positive regard for the larger organization can substitute for direct incentives or personal relationships in motivating people to help others. Theories of weak ties suggest that the usefulness of this help may depend on the number of ties, the diversity of ties, or the resources of help providers. We hypothesized that, in an organizational context, the firm-specific resources and organizational motivation of people who provide advice will predict the usefulness of advice. We investigated these theories in a study of employees of a global computer manufacturer. We collected survey and observational data on the relationships between information seekers and information providers; the number, diversity, resources, and motivations of information providers, and subjective ratings of the usefulness of the advice (from both parties in the exchange) and whether or not the advice solved information seekers' problems. We found that information providers gave useful advice and solved the problems of information seekers, despite their lack of a personal connection with the seekers. The data support the main hypotheses and provide some support for resource and diversity explanations of weak tie influence. We discuss how this organization's culture sustained useful intormation exchange through weak ties.
Resource-based View of Strategic Alliance Formation: Strategic and Social Effects in Entrepreneurial Firms
Authors: Eisenhardt Kathleen M. , Schoonhoven Claudia Bird 
Published: October 2008

Why do firms form strategic alliances? The traditional theoretical answer has been transaction cost explanations. Yet, these explanations which center on transaction characteristics, static efficiency, and routine situations do not capture the strategic and social factors which propel many firms into alliance formation. In this study, however, we combine these alternative social and strategic explanations for alliance formation. Consistent with these explanations, we find that alliances form when firms are in vulnerable strategic positions either because they are competing in emergent or highly competitive industries or because they are attempting pioneering technical strategies. We also find that alliances form when firms are in strong social positions such that they are led by large, experienced, and well-connected top management teams. The underlying logic of alliance formation is, thus, strategic needs and social opportunities. We develop these findings by extending the resource-based view of the firm to alliance formation and then examining the resulting hypotheses using product development alliances. The study is longitudinal and focuses on entrepreneurial semiconductor firms. Overall, strategic and social explanations of organizational phenomena as well as industry, firm, and top management team factors emerge as central in the paper. This suggests that these factors are relevant for predicting alliance formation, especially in high-velocity industries such as semiconductors. We conclude that failure to include social and strategic explanations creates an impoverished view of alliance formation.
The Two Faces of Competition: Dynamic Resourcefulness and the Hypercompetitive Shift
Authors: Thomas L.G. 
Published: October 2008

Competition in the American economy has fundamentally changed over the last few decades, from static to dynamic. This study labels this important change the hypercompetitive shift, and documents it across 200 industries of the US manufacturing sector during I958 to 1991. For industries that undergo a hypercompetitive shift, there is an increase in the cross-firm variance in performance and a rotation in the value-rivalry relationship from a negative association to an inverted-U. As a consequence of these competitive changes, the strategic focus of firms shifts from careful exploitation of given, highly durable strategic assets to the steady creation of many new, rapidly depreciable ones. The key driver of hypercompetitive shift is the dynamic resourcefulness of an industry, or the ease with which new strategic assets can be created. Determinants of dynamic resourcefulness include the dynamism of related transactors (notably consumers and suppliers). the knowledge base of the industry, and structural conditions that promote easy entry.
Technological Platforms and Diversification
Authors: Kim Dong-Jae , Kogut Bruce 
Published: October 2008

As the invention of fundamental new sciences spawns subsequent research, discovery, and commercialization, core technologies branch into new applications and markets. Some of them evolve over time into many derived technologies, whereas others are essentially “dead ends.” The pattern of evolution and branching is called a “technological trajectory.” An intriguing question is whether some firms can ride the trajectory by developing proprietary experience in a “platform technology.” Because the knowledge is proprietary, firms that originate in industrial fields based on a platform technology acquire the technological skills to diversify and to mimic the branching of the underlying technological trajectory. The ability to compete in hypercompetitive markets depends on the acquisition of know-how that is applicable to a wide set of market opportunities. Such capabilities serve as platforms into quickly evolving markets. To respond rapidly to market changes, a firm must have already acquired fundamental competitive knowledge. In a high-technology industry, such knowledge invariably is derived from experience with the underlying science and related technological fields. The authors examine capabilities as platforms by analyzing the temporal sequence of diversification as contingent on market opportunities and previous experience. The pattern of diversification of firms reflects the evolutionary branching of underlying technologies. In that sense, the aggregate decisions of firms are driven by the technological trajectories common across an industrial sector. Certain technologies have wider technological and market opportunities, and consequently experience in those technologies serves as a platform for expansion. The authors propose that a firm's experience in platform technologies increases the likelihood of diversification when environmental opportunities are favorable. The proposition is tested with the sample of 176 semiconductor startup companies founded between 1977 and 1989. Evidence from multidimensional scaling of expert opinion and from an analysis of patent records was gathered to identity relatedness among subfields and the evolutionary direction of the technologies. A discrete hazard model is specified to estimate the effect of technological histories on subsequent diversification. The results confirm the relationship between relatedness and directionality of technologies and the industrial path of diversification. The finding that diversification depends on technological experience and market opportunity has important implications for firms' entry decisions. The authors discuss those implications by describing experience as generating options on future opportunities and distinguishing between the historical path by which the stock of knowledge is accumulated and the path by which new knowledge is generated and commercialized.
Eating Your Own Lunch: Protection Through Preemption
Authors: Nault Barrie R. , Vandenbosch Mark B. 
Published: October 2008

Recent discussions of management practices among successful high-technology companies suggest that one key strategy for success is to “eat your own lunch before someone else does.” The implication is that in intensely competitive, or hypercompetitive, markets, firms with a leading position should aggressively cannibalize their own current advantages with next-generation advantages before competitors step in to steal the market. Given the pace of technological and other types of change, such strategy often requires creating next-generation advantages while the current advantages are still profitable—that is, trading current profits for future market leadership. We capture the tradeoff between a market leader's willingness to reap profits with its current set of advantages and its desire to maintain market leadership by investing in the next generation. Using a competitive model that determines the equilibrium launch time of a next generation advantage, we find that, in absence of lower launch costs for an entrant, the incumbent will be first to launch to maintain its market leadership. That is, regardless of the severity of penalties for being a follower in the next generation, it is optimal for the incumbent to preempt the entrant by launching early—even if the incumbent consequently loses money at the margin. We derive a straightforward condition to determine when an incumbent will make negative incremental profits from its investment in the next-generation advantage. The fact that the condition does not depend on the size of the incumbent's investment costs indicates that the severity of competition, rather than the costs of developing and introducing a next-generation advantage, is what forces firms to cannibalize at a loss. Finally, we find that a preemptive launch can result in an earlier launch of the next generation than is socially optimal, and provide a sufficient condition for that to occur. Although customers are better off as a result of an earlier launch, their gain may be outweighed by the additional costs firms incur from launching prematurely.
Toward the Flexible Form: How to Remain Vital in Hypercompetitive Environments
Authors: Volberda Henk W. 
Published: October 2008

Hypercompetition has received much attention, but an important question has not been answered: What organizational forms lead to success in hypercompetitive environments? Hypercompetition forces firms to move more quickly and boldly and to experiment in ways that do not conform to traditional administrative theory. Bureaucratic vertical forms severely hamper the ability to respond to accelerating competition. Flexible forms, in contrast, can respond to a wide variety of changes in the competitive environment in an appropriate and timely way. The author examines several alternative flexible forms for coping with hypercompetitive environments. Flexibility derives from the repertoire of managerial capabilities (management challenge) and the responsiveness of the organization (organization design challenge). On the basis of theories of control, the author argues that organizational flexibility is inherently paradoxical and requires a constructive friction between change and preservation. The paradox of flexibility is portrayed in a conceptual model that relates competitive environments, certain types of flexibility, and organizational conditions. The author develops a rich typology of organizational forms for coping with hypercompetition, each of which reflects a particular way of addressing change and preservation. Furthermore, he explores different trajectories of organizational development over time, especially those relating to revitalization. The implications of the typology for strategy and organization design research in hypercompetitive environments are profound.
Crossroads—Spontaneous Organizational Reconfiguration: A Historical Example Based on Xenophon's Anabasis
Authors: Aupperle Kenneth E. 
Published: October 2008

This paper examines an ancient historical event that has profound implications regarding the role of organizational culture in facilitating spontaneous organizational reconfiguration. Xenophon's Anabasis documents the successful retreat of a Greek army trapped in Persia in a setting that is comparable to the hypercompetition of today. Spontaneous reconfiguration is seen here to be a vital survival element in hypercompetitive environments, past and present. As a result, a historical case is used as a time-bridge to reveal the importance of rapid and substantive organizational redesign when confronting highly competitive and quickly shifting environments. The Anabasis is also used to animate several of Gareth Morgan's (Morgan, G. 1986. Images of Organization. Sage Publications, Newbury Park.) metaphors. In particular, metaphors pertaining to a biological organism, the brain, and culture are used to parallel the Greek emphasis on body, mind, and spirit. While Xenophon's army is depicted here in terms of being an organic, biological organism, as well as a brain with holographic properties, it is culture that emerges as the truly defining metaphor. The Greek supraculture appears to have played a vital role in facilitating nearly instantaneous organizational restructuring. This was a culture that emphasized an integrative balance between the ethic of community and individuality. Such redesigning properties were essential for an isolated, leaderless army which faced a variety of hostile competitors, rapidly shifting environmental conditions, and starvation. The culture metaphor enables us to see how widely shared values and beliefs can facilitate an organic type of behavioral programming capable of enabling Xenophon's army to transcend the formal attributes of organizational structure. Ultimately, it was culture, not strategy, qualitative and informal properties, not well defined roles and structures, that produced the Greek success. Contemporary organizations that attempt to become more horizontally focused, team oriented, and process driven are adopting a paradigm that is now 2,400 years old. Toynbee would not be surprised: What light have we that we can project upon the darkness of the future? We have the precious light of experience, which has always been Mankind's guide to action in public, as in private affairs. No sensible person, of course, has ever imagined that a mechanical application of past experience to present problems will grind out automatic solutions of these. Experience gives us enigmatic hints, not blueprinted instructions. Yet these hints are invaluable, since they are the only light on the future that we can bring to bear, and where the future that is in question is a society's not an individual's the experience of other societies has the same significance for us as the experience of our contemporaries and our elders is the ordering of our personal lives (Toynbee [Toynbee, A. J. 1953. Greek Civilization and Character. Mentor, New York.], p. xii)