Ari Ginsberg

Converting to For-Profit Status: Corporate Responsiveness to Radical Change

This study examined organizational adaptation to a radical environmental shift—a dramatic change in federal policies toward health maintenance organizations (HMOs) that removed key advantages of no...

A Sociocognitive Network Approach to Organizational Analysis

Following the lead of other contributors to cognitive organizational theory, this paper offers a sociocognitive network methodology that represents a sharp departure from traditional approaches to organizational analysis. After outlining the contours of a sociocognitive perspective of organizational dynamics, we present a highly flexible, but reproducible methodology that allows us to uncover and quantify differences in the content of organizational reference frames. We then demonstrate how the resulting indices of cognitive content may be merged with standard sociometric data, creating a network matrix that measures the sociocognitive connectedness of an organizations participants and enables us to identify and monitor barriers to organizational innovation and change.

Adaptive Learning in Organizations: A System Dynamics-Based Exploration

This paper employs a system dynamics-based framework to examine the limitations of experiential learning as a guide for decision-making in organizations. This framework departs from the more traditional approach to modelling experiential learning processes in organizations by emphasizing the systematic interaction between decision-making agents and their environments, rather than the effects of varying degrees of noise on performance. We present the results of a series of computer simulations that examined the consequences of adaptive learning in organizations by concentrating explicitly on the link between individual decisions and the system-level consequences generated by the interaction of individual choices. The results show that experience is a poor basis for learning primarily because the understanding of structural relations between individual actions and their aggregate consequences is confounded by nonlinear dynamics, time delays, and misperception of feedback.

The Influence of Corporate Venture Capital Investment on the Likelihood of Attracting a Prestigious Underwriter

Prior research underscores the critical role of prestigious underwriters in shaping the success of the initial public offering (IPO) process, particularly for young firms that do not have much of a track record. Recent scholarly work has shown that the likelihood of a start-up securing a lead prestigious underwriter is influenced by its ability to provide important signals of organizational legitimacy, as conveyed in the employment experiences of the firm’s top management team. Building further on theories of organizational attention and decision making, this chapter seeks to examine whether lead prestigious underwriters also consider different types of signals of organizational legitimacy that might be suggested by the

Unpacking the Effects of Corporate Venture Capital Investor Ties on the Reduction of Price Discounting among IPO Firms

We examine how ties to different kinds of corporate venture capital (CVC) investors help new ventures overcome the liabilities of market newness they encounter when seeking to undergo an initial public offering (IPO). We analyze a sample of 315 IPO firms with ties to CVC investors and find that the offering price is less discounted when these CVC investors are part of a commercial bank, or in a company that is a member of a major stock exchange. We also find that the effect of an affiliation with a CVC investor in a company that is a member of a major stock exchange is stronger in hot markets than in cold markets, while an affiliation with a CVC investor in a commercial bank is not. Our results suggest that the IPO market recognizes that know-how and prominence based signals conveyed by CVC investor affiliations provide additive reductions of price discounting, and that the certification value that prominence based signals provide also depends on the market conditions in which the IPO takes place.We examine how ties to different kinds of corporate venture capital (CVC) investors help new ventures overcome the liabilities of market newness they encounter when seeking to undergo an initial public offering (IPO). We analyze a sample of 315 IPO firms with ties to CVC investors and find that the offering price is less discounted when these CVC investors are part of a commercial bank, or in a company that is a member of a major stock exchange. We also find that the effect of an affiliation with a CVC investor in a company that is a member of a major stock exchange is stronger in hot markets than in cold markets, while an affiliation with a CVC investor in a commercial bank is not. Our results suggest that the IPO market recognizes that know-how and prominence based signals conveyed by CVC investor affiliations provide additive reductions of price discounting, and that the certification value that prominence based signals provide also depends on the market conditions in which the IPO takes place.