Gianpaolo Abatecola

Arthur Stinchcombe's “liability of newness”: contribution and impact of the construct

Purpose – This conceptual paper aims at providing the readers of the Journal of Management History with an evaluation of the overall impact of Arthur Stinchcombes liability of newness construct on the management literature about organizational evolution over time.Design/methodology/approach – The paper adopts an historical approach for discussing the development of those theoretical and empirical trajectories which, drawing on Stinchcombes seminal underpinnings, have been developed by scholars over the second half of the twentieth century. The most recent enhancements on this topic are also discussed.Findings – The analysis demonstrates that the impact of the liability of newness on the related literature is great and twofold. On the one hand, it emerges that this concept has directly inspired a number of subsequently formulated constructs, such as the liabilities of smallness, adolescence and aging. On the other hand, it is evidenced that Stinchcombes seminal insights still constitute one of the most ...

Organizational adaptation: an update

Purpose – The purpose of the article is to contribute to the debate on organizational adaptation by providing both scholars and practitioners with reasoned observations as to where this research domain is and, perhaps, could be going, and as to what important questions and gaps still exist in this research area.Design/methodology/approach – The article tries to inform the conversation through updating the lenses of the “determinism versus voluntarism” approach seminally used by Astley and Ven de Ven for commenting on the state of the art in the 1980s. In particular, the article aims at enhancing the debate through a timely critical discussion of the extant literature, whose comparative analysis starts from the 1960s.Findings – The analysis mainly indicates that, since Astley and Van de Vens milestone, the dichotomy between determinism and voluntarism has been reduced, although it still exists. The co‐evolutionary approach can constitute a promising tool for the further reducing of the dichotomy, but more...

Untangling self-reinforcing processes in managerial decision making. Co-evolving heuristics?

Purpose – Over the last 30 years, specific investigations into self-reinforcing processes in managerial decision making have been gaining momentum within the mainstream literature of management. However, to date, it is claimed that understanding these processes properly still requires additional research efforts. Thus, the purpose of this conceptual paper is to follow this claim. Design/methodology/approach – The paper tries to inform the conversation about self-reinforcing processes in managerial decision making through adopting lenses drawing from the biological philosophy of organizational change. In particular, the co-evolutionary approach to organizational change, with a focus on CEOs, and/or top management teams (TMT), is adopted. Findings – As its core contribution, the paper proposes that self-reinforcing processes in the CEOs/TMTs’ decision making can occur because of the emergence (and subsequent consolidation) of co-evolving heuristics. On this basis, the paper also prospect potential avenues f...

Real estate management: past, present, and future research directions

This article aims at discussing how the literature about the real estate management has been evolving over time. To date, both scholars and practitioners substantially converge in maintaining that, if properly performed, that bundle of operations known as corporate real estate management (CREM) can positively affect the overall corporate profitability. Nonetheless, this assumption seems to need more empirical evidence if it wants to be consolidated. Furthermore, although CREM is still the most addressed area of inquiry, over the last years, the attention to related topics, such as the managing of construction projects, has been increasing also. We believe that, in the future, the attention to these topics will increase proportionally to the growing relevance of environmental and social sustainability issues.

Board effectiveness in corporate crises. Lessons from the evolving empirical research

Purpose – This article aims to comment on how the empirical research on board effectiveness in crisis contexts has been evolving over time. Over the years, the empirical evidences have demonstrated that particular board features can improve the survival chances of firms suffering a crisis and, to date, experts agree that discussing these evidences is necessary for the further improvement of knowledge in this field. Design/methodology/approach – This is a critical review article. Findings – Valuable evidences emerge from the review. For example, it seems that board independence has a key role in enhancing the performance of firms suffering a crisis. At the same time, the review suggests that further refinement is needed for supporting (or eventually refuting) the idea that boards and/or Chief Executive Officers (1) must be replaced to achieve successful turnaround strategies. Originality/value – On the basis of its findings, the review also prospects a number of conceptual and methodological implications f...

Upper Echelons and Executive Profiles in the Construction Value Chain: Evidence from Italy

Which executive profiles currently govern the construction value chain? Addressing this lively research question is the key point of our article and it appears central to scholars, practitioners, and policymakers interested in project management in general, and construction and real estate in particular. For this reason, we draw from Upper Echelons Theory in studying the executive profiles of 109 important firms currently active in Italy. Our statistical analysis shows that, although homogeneity substantially regards the executives gender, age, and level of education, heterogeneity is associated more with his or her functional background. We thus prospect some conceptual and methodological avenues for further analyses in this challenging area of research.

Entrepreneurial competences, liability of newness and infant survival: Evidence from the service industry

Purpose What entrepreneurial competences can increase the start-ups’ infant survival chances? How can the liability of newness be successfully handled? Positioned in this research stream, which, especially over recent years, has been particularly lively also in the Journal of Management Development, the purpose of this paper is to meet not only the research, but also the education and practice-oriented purposes of the journal. Design/methodology/approach How can routines’ exploitation counteract the liability of newness? How can entrepreneurial orientation oppose it? Why is the liability of adolescence important when discussing the performance of start-ups? To address these questions, taken separately into account, the paper presents a set of three case studies from the service industry, each of which is based on a specific research design. Findings The authors found that the routines’ exploitation mechanisms, the degree of entrepreneurial orientation of the founding team, and the stock of the initial assets, could be all considered consistent predictors of new ventures’ infant survival. The authors thus believe that the findings may offer a useful contribution both to current and prospective managers and entrepreneurs. Originality/value Stinchcombe’s assumption about the tremendous failure rate associated with the earliest stage of start-ups’ life cycle has been proved to be valid at least in the most recent evidence from both Europe and the USA. At the same time, formalizing a checklist of competences appropriate to increase the possibilities of organizational infant survival appears as a priority not yet accomplished. Thus, the study is aimed at providing some useful food for thought on this issue.

Reviewing cognitive distortions in managerial decision making: Toward an integrative co-evolutionary framework

Why and how do cognitive distortions in managerial decision making occur? All organizations are imperfect systems (Katz and Kahn, 1966), with wrong decisions often just round the corner. As a consequence, addressing these important questions continues to be particularly lively in the management development area, especially in terms of its intended contribution to the de-biasing activity. Thus, the purpose of this paper is to provide the current scientific dialogue on the topic with updated lenses, which can also be innovative from some aspects.,The review framework is based on the recent, impactful article on biases in managerial decision making by Kahneman et al. (2011), and on Bazerman and Moore’s (2013) perspective on emanating heuristics, considered as the causes of biases. Accordingly, the authors derive four intertwined thematic clusters of heuristics, through which the authors systematically group and critically analyze the management literature mostly published on the topic since 2011.,From the analyzed clusters the authors propose an integrative framework of emanating heuristics, which focuses on the co-evolving relationships and potentially self-reinforcing processes in and between them.,The value of the contribution is threefold: from a methodological perspective, to the authors’ knowledge, the studies adopted as the basis of the analysis have not yet been simultaneously used as a comprehensive ground for updated reviews on this topic; from a conceptual perspective, the emerging integrative co-evolutionary framework can help explain the dangerous connections among cognitive traps and emanating heuristics; and from a practical perspective, the resulting framework can also be helpful for future de-biasing attempts in the business arena.

Real estate management: what boundaries? A European approach

Real estate has always played a key role in the economy of industrialised countries. To date, fine-tuned studies have started to grow and develop to inform about the evolution of real estate management as a per se discipline for education, research and practice. Increasing reviews have also systematised what is hot and what is not in terms of research trends within this field. However, what seems to remain largely unaddressed is the appropriate conceptual and methodological classification of the boundaries delimiting the field itself. We do believe that this gap is not minor for both the research and practice, in that it negatively affects the possibility of conducting appropriate analyses from both qualitative and quantitative perspectives. We have thus conceived this article as an intended contribution to filling the stated gap.

Corporate governance e performance delle società per azioni : un'analisi empirica delle public utilities quotate alla Borsa Valori di Milano

What kind of relationship, if any, exists between corporate governance and performance? Despite a lively scholarly commitment, conclusive results on this research question are still missing in the literature. This paper aims to contribute to fill this gap by presenting quantitative evidence from the population of the Italian public utilities listed at the Milan Stock Exchange in the years between 2000 and 2008.