Balagopal Vissa

A Matching Theory of Entrepreneurs' Tie Formation Intentions and Initiation of Economic Exchange

This study advances our understanding of network dy namics by applying matching theory to examine entrepreneurs’ intentions to add new ties t o their personal network. I propose that task complementarity and social similarity are important matching criteria that influence entrepreneurs’ interpersonal tie formation intentio s, and test whether good matches increase the likelihood of initiation of economic exchange ties. The novel research design using data from business cards of new people met by a panel of Indi an entrepreneurs reveals effects of matching and suggests that while entrepreneurs intentionally pursue valuable connections they may be only partially accurate in their assessment of value.

Business Group Affiliation and Firm Search Behavior in India: Responsiveness and Focus of Attention

This paper investigates the effects of organizational form on problemistic search. We contrast how Indian firms affiliated with business groups and unaffiliated firms evaluate performance and react by adjusting their internal technology search and external market search. We propose that, compared with unaffiliated firms, business group--affiliated (BG-affiliated) firms are more externally oriented in setting aspiration levels and more likely to respond to low performance in the market domain. We find support for an external orientation of BG-affiliated firms and find that group affiliation determines the responsiveness to performance feedback in different search domains. The findings suggest a need to add considerations of organizational form and governance to the theory of organizational search.

Modernizing Without Westernizing: Social Structure and Economic Action in the Indian Financial Sector

In seeking to understand whether the transition by Asian countries to market economies mirrors the path taken by the West, we ask how embedded network ties between equity analysts and the CEOs of the firms they follow in India influence the accuracy of analysts’ earnings forecasts. We contrast traditional institutions of caste and regional language with contemporary institutions such as universities as the locus for such ties. We posit that CEOs from the post-economic-reform generation in India are more likely to transfer material private information via their school ties while pre-reform generation CEOs favor caste or language ties. We then contrast domestic business groups (BGs) with western MNCs as organizational contexts and argue that BGs legitimate the transfer of private information along particularistic ties, whereas MNCs mitigate such transfers. Our conceptual framework is supported by analyses that draw on a sample of 1,552 earnings forecasts issued from 2001 to 2010 by 296 equity analysts. Our findings suggest that the embeddedness perspective should be broadened to incorporate the influence of larger historical social structures within which economic action is embedded, and to view BGs as carriers and repositories that blend modern management practices with particularistic behavioral patterns among top executives.

How Do Entrepreneurial Founding Teams Allocate Task Positions

How do founding team members allocate task positions when launching new ventures? Answering this question is important because prior work shows both that founding team members often have correlated expertise, thus making task position allocation problematic; and initial occupants of task positions exert a lingering effect on venture outcomes. We draw on status characteristics theory to derive predictions on how co-founders’ specific expertise cues and diffuse status cues drive initial task position allocation. We also examine the performance consequences of mismatches between the task position and position occupant. Qualitative fieldwork combined with a quasi-experimental simulation game and an experiment provides causal tests of the conceptual framework. We find that co-founders whose diffuse status cues of gender (male), ethnicity (white) or achievement (occupational prestige or academic honors) indicated general ability were typical occupants of higher ranked positions, such as CEO role, within the founding team. In addition, specific expertise cues that indicated relevant ability predicted task position allocation. Founding teams created more financially valuable ventures when task position occupants’ diffuse status cues were typical for the position; nonetheless position occupants with high diffuse status cues also appropriated more of the created value. Our results inform both entrepreneurship and status characteristics literature.