Gina Dokko

Unpacking Prior Experience: How Career History Affects Job Performance

As individuals change jobs more frequently, it is increasingly important to understand what they carry from their prior work experience that affects their performance in a new organizational context. So far, explanations about the imperfect portability of experience have primarily been about firm specificity of knowledge and skill. We draw on psychological theory to propose additional sociocognitive factors that interfere with the transfer of knowledge and skill acquired from prior related work experience. As we hypothesized, we find that task-relevant knowledge and skill mediates the relationship between prior related experience and job performance and that it acts as suppressing mediator of a negative direct relationship between prior related experience and current job performance. We also find that the positive effect of prior related experience on task-relevant knowledge and skill is attenuated by higher levels of experience within the current firm.

Social Capital for Hire? Mobility of Technical Professionals and Firm Influence in Wireless Standards Committees

The movement of personnel between firms has been shown to have important implications for firms, yet there has been little direct investigation of the underlying mechanisms. We propose that in addition to their human capital, mobile individuals carry social capital, affecting the outcomes of the firms they join and leave by altering the patterns of interaction between firms. In this study, we examine how job mobility affects firm influence in a technical standards setting committee for U.S. wireless telecommunications. We hypothesize and find that hiring individuals who are richer in social capital increases firm influence in technical standards setting committees by increasing the hiring firms social capital. We also find the benefits of hiring social capital are attenuated when an interfirm relationship is maintained by multiple individuals. In contrast, we find that the loss of personnel does not affect a firms social capital or influence over standards directly but that it does have an effect on firm social capital and influence contingent on changes in the firms business strategy. In advancing these arguments, we address the broader question of individuals as carriers of social capital and the conditions under which interpersonal connections are appropriable by firms.

Keeping Steady as She Goes: A Negotiated Order Perspective on Technological Evolution

A central idea in the theory of technology cycles is that social and political mechanisms are most important during the selection of a dominant design, and that eras of incremental change are socially uninteresting periods in which innovation is driven by technological momentum and elaboration of the dominant design. In this essay, we overturn the ontological assumption that social order is inherently stable, drawing on Anselm Strauss’s concept of negotiated order to analyze the persistence of a dominant design as a social accomplishment: an outcome of ongoing processes that reinforce or challenge a socially negotiated order. Thus, we shift focus from battles over standards to periods of normal innovation. We extend the technology cycles model to explain social dynamics in periods of incremental change, and to make predictions specifying how contextual conditions in standards-setting organizations affect social interaction, leading to reinforcement or challenge to a socio-technical order.

One of Us or One of My Friends: How Social Identity and Tie Strength Shape the Creative Generativity of Boundary-Spanning Ties

Social ties to colleagues on other work teams can spur creative ideas and workplace innovation by exposing an individual to diverse knowledge. However, for external knowledge to be recombined into innovation, the knowledge must first be recognized as potentially valuable. Going beyond traditional structural explanations, we predict that the use of diverse knowledge to generate creative ideas and solutions will depend in part on employees’ psychological attachment to the organizational groups to which they belong, i.e., their social identity, and the strength of their social ties. We test our hypotheses in an R&D division of a global high-technology firm, finding that social identity influences the creative generativity of boundary-spanning ties. Specifically, stronger team identity renders interactions with colleagues on other work teams less generative of creative ideas, while identification with an overarching, superordinate group (e.g., a division) enhances creative generativity. We also hypothesize and find that tie strength attenuates the negative effect of team identity.

Venturing into new territory: Career experiences of corporate venture capital managers and practice variation

When organizations adopt new practices, the practices are often modified to fit the new context. We argue that managers who implement new practices modify them, and that the extent of practice variation is determined by these managers’ career experience with the practice itself, and career experience that enables fit assessment between the practice and the adopting firm. We test these arguments by observing information technology firms’ modification of venture capital practices within corporate venture capital units. This study contributes to diffusion research by developing and testing a framework for understanding the role of individuals in practice variation.