Alfred A. Marcus

Victims and Shareholders: The Dilemmas of Presenting Corporate Policy During A Crisis

Corporate crises—such as accidents, scandals, and product safety incidents—exacerbate stakeholder demands in such a way that conflict can arise between the interests of shareholders and crisis vict...

Rules Versus Discretion: The Productivity Consequences of Flexible Regulation

Using data from electric utilities, this study shows that spending on well-designed regulations has a positive productivity impact but that spending on less well-designed regulations has a negative effect. Better-designed regulations are flexible and grant firms latitude on how to meet goals, allow them time to deploy new means to meet goals, and set ambitious goals that stretch them beyond current practices.

Introduction to the Special Research Forum on the Management of Organizations in the Natural Environment: A Field Emerging From Multiple Paths, With Many Challenges Ahead

An increasing amount of high-quality research has been conducted in the past decade on the topic of managing organizations in the natural environment. The authors trace this evolution using path an...

The dialectics of competency acquisition: pollution prevention in electric generation

Strategy researchers now recognize that distinctive competencies are critically important for sustained competitive advantage. The processes by which such competencies are acquired, however, has only started to be examined. Connections between macro-industrial system level properties and micro-developments in proprietary technology at the firm level need to be made. This paper argues that system-wide properties, such as long-standing elementary and opposing logics in societal forces like governments and markets, and micro-developments, such as the firms capacity to search for talent, technology, and ideas and to harmonize what it learns internally, can contribute in significant ways to the creation and acquisition of new competencies. Based on the case of pollution prevention in electric generation, it shows how the system-wide properties channel and direct the paths that the acquisition of new competencies take and how they interact with micro-developments at the firm level.

When does the ISO 9000 quality assurance standard lead to performance improvement? Assimilation and going beyond

ISO 9000 is a management standard that provides customers with assurance that their registered suppliers have a consistent quality system to which they adhere. This paper draws on four sources to show how ISO 9000 can lead to performance improvement: 1) theories of induced innovation and improvisation; 2) the literature on ISO 9000; 3) a case study of a telecom company; and 4) a survey of 1,150 North American companies. We find that the extent to which ISO 9000 is associated with performance improvement depends on the level of its assimilation, and the degree to which an organization goes beyond the minimal requirements of the standard.

The Causes and Consequences of Leveraged Management Buyouts

A growing proportion of corporate restructuring is in the form of leveraged management buyouts (LBOs), but this activity is controversial, and critics have said that it involves ethical problems and redistributional issues. This article uses the existing theoretical and empirical literature to suggest research questions about why LBOs occur and what will be their likely consequences.

Implementing Externally Induced Innovations: A Comparison of Rule-Bound and Autonomous Approaches

This research analyzed how nuclear power plants implemented safety review innovations introduced by the Nuclear Regulatory Commission after the Three Mile Island accident. The findings suggested th...

Implementing ISO 9000: performance improvement by first or second movers

When an organization implements a new managerial practice how should timing affect its decision? Should it be among the organizations that implement the new management practices early, i.e. first movers, or wait for others to implement and implement it a later time, i.e. second movers. The literatures findings with regard to many management practices, especially those that deal with quality, such as total quality management, suggest that while first movers implement a new management practice because of real needs and a high fit between what the practice suggests and their needs (technical efficiency), second movers implement the new management practice because of customer pressure and the fear of falling behind the competition (external pressure). Second movers just mimic first movers, and the new practice does not really fit with their operations. Thus, the new management practice achieves more for the first movers than the second movers. In this paper we ask whether this premise holds for the ISO 9000 quality standard, one which was specified in considerable detail by outside forces but was implemented in many different ways by organizations. Our results are based on a survey of 1150 quality managers who implemented ISO 9000. We find that learning is a more important factor than timing in explaining ISO 9000 performance. First movers achieve a high level of performance because they learn from their own experience, and second movers achieve a high level of performance because they learn from the experience of others. Whether an organization is a first mover or second, the ones that benefit from ISO 9000 are those who learn.

ON USING EVENT-STUDY METHODOLOGY IN STRATEGIC MANAGEMENT RESEARCH

Abstract Researchers in strategic management have increasingly employed finance methodologies including event studies to assess the impact on corporate wealth of various announced events, including restructuring, changes in leadership, and mergers and acquisitions. This paper presents the assumptions of event-study methodology and discusses its limitations in light of recent findings in finance. Rather than a powerful and general methodology, this paper argues for a limited and extremely careful use of stock-price data.

Firms, Regulatory Uncertainty, and the Natural Environment

This introduction presents a framework managers can use to deal with regulatory uncertainty and also introduces and summarizes how the papers in this special issue address what managers can expect, do, and gain from regulatory uncertainty.