Arie Y. Lewin

Microfoundations of Internal and External Absorptive Capacity Routines

The 20 years following the introduction of the seminal construct of absorptive capacity (AC) by Cohen and Levinthal (Cohen, W. M., D. A. Levinthal. 1989. Innovation and learning: The two faces of RD Cohen, W. M., D. A. Levinthal. 1990. Absorptive capacity: A new perspective on learning and innovation. Admin. Sci. Quart.35(1) 128--152) have seen the proliferation of a vast literature citing the AC construct in over 10,000 published papers, chapters, and books, and interpreting it or applying it in many areas of organization science research, including organization theory, strategic management, and economics. However, with very few exceptions, the specific organizational routines and processes that constitute AC capabilities remain a black box. In this paper, we propose a routine-based model of AC as a first step toward the operationalization of the AC construct. Our intent is to direct attention to the importance of balancing internal knowledge creating processes with the identification, acquisition, and assimilation of new knowledge originating in the external environment. We decompose the construct of AC into two components, internal and external AC capabilities, and identify the configuration of metaroutines underlying these two components. These higher-level routines are expressed within organizations by configurations of empirically observable practiced routines that are idiosyncratic and firm specific. Therefore, we conceptualize metaroutines as the foundations of practiced routines. The ability of organizations to discover and implement complementarities between AC routines may explain why some firms are successful early adopters and most firms are imitators. Success as an early adopter of a new management practice or an innovation is expected to depend on the extent to which an organization evolves, adapts, and implements the configuration of its internal and external absorptive capacity routines.

Evaluating the administrative efficiency of courts

In addition to being held accountable for judicial decision, courts, like other public agencies, can and should be evaluated in terms of their administrative efficiency. This paper illustrates how courts can be evaluated in terms of their relative administrative efficiency, using a new approach--data envelopment analysis (DEA)--first proposed by Charnes et al. [1]. The DEA is based upon the economic notion of Pareto optimality which states that a given decision making unit (DMU) is inefficient if some other DMU, or some combination of other DMUs, can produce at least the same amounts of all outputs with less of some resource input and not more of any other resource. Conversely a DMU is said to be efficient if the above is not possible. Charnes et al. [1] generalized the usual input/output ratio measure of efficiency for a given unit in terms of a fractional linear program with fractional constraints. In the case of courts, the efficiency of any particular court is calculated by forming the ratio of a weighted sum of outputs to a weighted sum of inputs, where the weights for both outputs and inputs are to be selected in a manner that calculates the Pareto-Koopmans efficiency of the court. This paper reviews the DEA method and illustrates its application to a data base for 100 criminal superior courts in North Carolina.

Managing partnerships and strategic alliances: raising the odds of success

Raising the odds of success of strategic alliances can have important performance consequences. It requires recognition that alliances are embedded in the strategies of each of the partners. The odds of success increase when the symmetry in the strategic exploitation/exploration intent of the partners is present at the start and is re-calibrated and maintained over time. However, the surfacing of asymmetry is not necessarily a sign of failure but should be expected as both the strategies of the parents and of the alliance evolve over time. In this paper we outline a framework for considering the strategic decisions for entering into an alliance and some of the key issues involving the management process of alliances. Our research and experience documents that this simple yet powerful framework will work to raise the odds of a successful strategic alliance.

Sensitivity and Stability Analysis in DEA

Abstract : Sensitivity analyses may be regarded as a mathematical programming counterpart of significance testing in statistics since each is concerned with examining allowable ranges of variation in the data. In statistical analysis, this may take the form of examining ranges of possible chi sq values obtained from the data relative to a fitted function from and hypothesized class of statistical distributions. In linear programming, it may take the form of ascertaining ranges within which data may be varied without requiring a change in the set of vectors that constitute an optimum basis. Additional keywords: Reprints.

Interdependency, Competition, and the Distribution of Firm and Industry Profits

Coordination of interdependencies among firms productive activities has been advanced as a promising explanation for sustained heterogeneity in capabilities among firms. In this paper, we extend this line of research to determine the industry structures and patterns of expected firm profits for the case when difficulty optimizing interdependent activities does, in fact, generate and sustain capability heterogeneity among firms. We combine a widely used agent-based model where firms search to discover sets of activities that complement one another (reducing overall costs or raising product quality) with traditional economic models of competition among profit-maximizing firms. The agent-based model produces a distribution of performance (interpreted as variable cost or product quality) among firms and the competition models determine resulting industry outcomes including patterns of entry, exit, and profits. The integration of economic models of competition among firms with an agent-based model of search for improvement by firms reveals a rich relationship between interdependencies in production functions and industry structure, firm profits, and industry average profitability.

Women in Academia

Although our study was conducted in only one physical science discipline, and although most of the individual tests did not yield statistically significant differences, the data consistently yielded a trend in the direction of the existence of discrimination against women in academia. This leads us to the tentative conclusion that when two equally qualified applicants are being considered for an academic position, a male would be chosen over a female. However, a woman with clearly superior qualifications, in competition with an average man, is likely to be recognized. The bias seems to hold especially for higher-quality schools, in departments with younger and newer chairmen, and for chairmen from schools located in the eastern and western parts of the country. The underutilization of potentially qualified women in science represents lost opportunities to society and to science in terms of the overall goal of advancing science. To the extent that the bias reflects strongly held cultural norms, change will come slowly. However, structural changes within the institutions that employ and train women scientists may be achieved sooner through the active intervention of outside agencies, for example, the enforcement by the Department of Health, Education, and Welfare of the Equal Opportunities Act in colleges and universities (19). In addition, such federal grant-awarding agencies as the National Science Foundation and the National Institutes of Health could be given a mandate to make a special effort to identify and award grants and other forms of recognition to deserving women scientist.

Interdependency, Competition, and Industry Dynamics

Asystematic understanding of industry dynamics is critical to strategy research because individual firm performance dynamics both reflect and affect change at the industry level. Descriptive research on industry dynamics has identified a dominant pattern where prices fall, output rises, and the number of firms rises and then falls over time. Several models have been advanced to explain these patterns, with a particular focus on explaining why a shakeout in the number of firms occurs. In the most prominent models, shakeout is generated by rising realized heterogeneity among firms that either is assumed to be unrecognized but determined ex ante or is generated by stochastic innovation outcomes coupled with convex adjustment costs and scale advantages in innovation and learning. In this paper, we develop an alternative model where heterogeneity develops among firms over time (leading to a shakeout) because firms must make choices about highly interdependent productive activities where the ideal combinations cannot be easily deduced or imitated. By combining two established models (a Cournot model of competition with an NK model of interdependency in production activities), we are able to advance an alternative explanation for the observed patterns of industry behavior, including shakeout. We show that variation in the potential for interdependency in activities among industries is able to explain varying levels of shakeout as well as differing patterns of entry and exit among industries. Notably, the model generates several empirical predictions not apparent in past research and several that directly conflict with the results of prominent alternative models of industry dynamics. Specifically, we show that when the potential for interdependency within an industry is low, entry slows down and incumbent survival is all but assured, whereas in industries where the potential for interdependencies is high, shakeouts are severe and the rates of entry and exit remain high over longer time periods, with decreasing survival rates for incumbents.

Perspective---Rigor and Relevance in Organization Studies: Idea Migration and Academic Journal Evolution

This perspective paper addresses the issues of rigor and relevance in organizational studies in the context of idea migration and journal evolution. We argue that creeping parochialism can happen to any journal, which reflects an evolving narrowness within boundaries of academic subcommunities. Evidence suggests that ideas do migrate across academic subcommunities, although the underlying process is not well understood and the idea flow is not symmetrical. Two kinds of knowledge relevance are discussed---the value for end users such as managers in organizations, and the value for ones own or other academic subcommunities. We argue that the most important mission of Organization Science (OS) is to be a “source” journal for academic subcommunities in organization studies by attracting and publishing new theories and ideas that increase the varieties of knowledge about organizations.

Conceptual Issues in Services Offshoring Research: A Multidisciplinary Review

Offshoring has emerged as an important economic and social phenomenon that has generated intense interest from practitioners, the popular media, and policy makers. In addition, there is a nascent but rich research literature on offshoring developing in management, international business (IB), and related fields. In this review, we survey and integrate offshoring literature from several disciplines and draw implications of this review for management and IB research. We conclude that offshoring may challenge some aspects of established management and IB theory or require revision and/ or modification of those theories. We adopt a multilevel coevolutionary perspective as one potential integrative approach to offshoring research and identify important future areas for further enrichment of this emerging area.

Knowledge Creation and Organizational Capabilities of Innovating and Imitating Firms

Knowledge, innovation and technological progress have been central themes of research in macro- and microeconomics, innovation processes and strategy. Schumpeter’s (1942) seminal book Capitalism, Socialism and Democracy is often credited with originating and stimulating interest, theoretical development and research on processes of creative destruction, involving new products, processes, markets, resources and organizations, and the role of the entrepreneur.