Indre Maurer

The Value of Intra-organizational Social Capital: How it Fosters Knowledge Transfer, Innovation Performance, and Growth

While most literature promotes a positive impact of social capital on various organizational performance outcomes, empirical results on the social capital—organizational performance link are not conclusive. We propose that one reason for the discordant findings is that research has largely not accounted for the mediating process steps that translate social capital into organizational performance outcomes. We suggest that organizational performance outcomes of organization members’ social capital hinge on the mediating processes of resource mobilization, assimilation, and use. An empirical study of 218 projects in the German engineering industry supports our theoretical model. Findings show that knowledge transfer (conceptualized as the mobilization, assimilation, and use of knowledge resources) mediates between organization members’ intra-organizational social capital and organizational performance outcomes of growth and innovation performance. The present study thus contributes to a deeper understanding of the value of intra-organizational social capital.

How Dynamic Capabilities Affect the Effectiveness and Efficiency of Operating Routines Under High and Low Levels of Environmental Dynamism

In analysing data on the purchasing routines of 200 small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), this study underscores the overall importance of dynamic capabilities as a way to understand differences in operating-routine performance. The results suggest that dynamic capabilities have different performance effects in high-dynamic and low-dynamic environments. Dynamic capabilities enhance the effectiveness of operating routines under both high and low levels of environmental dynamism. Yet, when analysing the efficiency of operating routines, taking into account the costs of increased effectiveness, dynamic capabilities appear to pay off only under high levels of environmental dynamism.

To Continue or not to Continue? Drivers of Recurrent Partnering in Temporary Organizations

While research has provided ample evidence that temporal (dis-)continuity in partnering is highly consequential for the governance and performance outcomes of temporary organizations, we know much less about the conditions that drive the members of temporary organizations to engage in recurrent partnering. Focusing on project organizations, the present research offers theoretical arguments and related empirical evidence that illuminate when and why project-leading organizations expect to continue collaboration with the same project partner in future projects. Specifically, we show that expectations of recurrent collaboration are a function of backward-looking experiential learning and forward-looking opportunity cost assessments. Our findings contribute to better understanding of temporality in temporary organizations by uncovering a set of factors conducive to explaining when and why the same partners engage in temporary sequences of projects.

Space and Inter-organizational Relations

Conditioned by costs, organizational structures and institutions, innovation is unevenly distributed across space. Extant research has treated the spatial aspect of innovation in various ways, from...

Die Wirkung dynamischer Fähigkeiten auf die Effektivität und Effizienz operativer Prozesse

ZusammenfassungDie strategische Managementforschung sieht in dynamischen Fähigkeiten eine Möglichkeit für Unternehmen nachhaltige Wettbewerbsvorteile zu erlangen. Die vorliegende Studie befasst sich mit der konkreten Wirkungsweise dynamischer Fähigkeiten. Eine Erhebung in 200 deutschen Industrieunternehmen zeigt, dass dynamische Fähigkeiten Unternehmen dabei unterstützen, die Effektivität ihrer operativen Prozesse zu erhöhen. Darüber hinaus kann eine positive Wirkung von dynamischen Fähigkeiten auf die Prozesseffizienz nachgewiesen werden. Diese effizienzsteigernde Wirkung dynamischer Fähigkeiten ergibt sich vor allem durch die Optimierung und Flexibilisierung operativer Prozesse.AbstractExtant research in the field of strategic management highlights the role of dynamic capabilities for achieving sustained competitive advantage. In this study, we examine how dynamic capabilities impact economic performance. An empirical analysis of 200 German industrial enterprises indicates that dynamic capabilities help to enhance the effectiveness of operational processes. Furthermore, our results reveal a positive impact of dynamic capabilities on process efficiency. This efficiency enhancing effect of dynamic capabilities mainly results from the optimization and flexibilization of operational processes.

Alliance Portfolio Diversity and Innovation: The Interplay of Portfolio Coordination Capability and Proactive Partner Selection Capability

This study seeks to explain how the innovation potential entailed in the structural characteristics of a diverse alliance portfolio can be leveraged by two different alliance management capabilities of a focal firm: portfolio coordination and proactive partner selection. An analysis of German biotechnology firms, based on database and survey data, indicates that each alliance management capability positively interacts with portfolio diversity to foster innovation. In addition, regarding their joint influence as capability bundle on the portfolio diversity–innovation link, portfolio coordination and proactive partner selection seem to substitute rather than complement each other. These results suggest that firms realize innovation benefits from a diverse set of external alliance partners only when they focus on and apply internal coordination or partner selection routines to manage these alliances, thus acting as either portfolio coordinators or portfolio configurators.

Portfolio Diversity and Innovation: The Role of Alliance Management Capabilities

Alliance research has recently shifted its focus from a dyadic to a portfolio level introducing the diversity of alliance partners as influential driver of firm innovation. However, empirical resea...