Edoardo Mollona

Simulating Dynamic Capabilities and Value Creation in Family Firms: Is Paternalism an 'Asset' or a 'Liability'?

The authors conduct a simulation study using system dynamics methods to interpret how and when paternalism affects dynamic capabilities (DCs) and by association value creation in family firms. Their simulation experiments suggest that the effect of paternalism on DCs and value creation varies over time. Initially, increasing levels of family social capital and low levels of paternalism are associated with high rates of DCs and value creation accumulation (asset). Later, higher levels of paternalism produce their pressure to decrease DCs, value creation, and family social capital accumulation rates (liability).

Dynamics of Strategy: A Feedback Approach to Corporate Strategy-Making

The object of the article is a company’s strategic management processes. The aim is to propose a dynamic model to explain how a company’s realised strategy does emerge from interactions of purposes, tensions, and pressures dynamically interplaying. The paper contributes to strategy literature in two directions. First, we expect the model will be useful to management as a reference frame for understanding and efficiently governing a company strategy-making behaviour, both in cases in which the aim is to transform it radically, and when it is to be innovated by means of gradual evolutive change. Second, the model constitutes a set of hypotheses to orient further empirical and theoretical analysis. The analysis which we conduct, examining theoretic contributions and empirical settings, is strongly influenced by the assumption that the subject of the strategic government of companies may benefit from a systemic approach which considers the dynamic interaction among the many processes which impact a company’s situation.

FirmNet: the scope of firms and the allocation of task in a knowledge-based economy

The increasing knowledge intensity of jobs, typical of a knowledge economy, highlights the role of firms as integrators of know how and skills. As economic activity becomes mainly intellectual and requires the integration of specific and idiosyncratic skills, firms need to allocate skills to tasks and traditional hierarchical control may result increasingly ineffective. In this work, we explore under what circumstances networks of agents, which bear specific skills, may self-organize in order to complete tasks. We use a computer simulation approach and investigate how local interaction of agents, endowed with skills and individual decision-making rules, may produce aggregate network structure able to perform tasks. To design algorithms that mimic individual decision-making, we borrow from computer science literature and, in particular, from studies addressing protocols that produce cooperation in P2P networks. We found that self-organization depends on imitation of successful peers, competition among agents holding specific skills, and the structural features of, formal or informal, organizational networks embedding both professionals, holding skills, and project managers, holding access to jobs.

Prestige-based peer sampling service: interdisciplinary approach to secure gossip

The Peer Sampling Service (PSS) has been proposed as a method to initiate and maintain the set of connections between nodes in unstructured peer to peer (P2P) networks. The PSS usually relies on gossip-style communication where participants exchange their links in a randomized way. However, the PSS network organization can be easily modified by malicious nodes running a hub attack, in which they achieve a leading structural position. From this prestigious status, the malicious nodes can severely affect the overlay and achieve several application dependent advantages. We present a novel method to overcome this attack and provide results from simulation experiments that validate our claim. This method is inspired by a simple technique used to detect social leaders in firms organizations that is based on the social (structural) prestige of actors.

Governing Strategy Dynamics

In this chapter we analyze strategic management processes in an organization. Our interest is to understand how top management develops strategic intentions and how those intentions can turn into realized strategy. In our study, we consider both theoretical work and empirical evidence. Our research is greatly influenced by the premise that a systemic approach to strategic governance in organizations is beneficial. Such an approach takes into account the dynamic interaction of numerous processes that affect an organization. In particular, we examine learning processes which give rise to the strategic intentions of top management, managerial processes which top management enacts, and organizational behaviors instigated by top management or developed independently of the executive body. All of these processes unfold in environments which, as a rule, are in a state of constant flux. Our aim, therefore, is to propose a dynamic model of strategy-making (realized strategy) which can be useful to management as a frame of reference for understanding and effectively governing the dynamics of the organizational system and strategy in action. Our model can be applied both in cases where a radical change is needed and in cases when innovation follows an incremental, evolutionary logic.