Jacob Lyngsie

Organizational design correlates of entrepreneurship: The roles of decentralization and formalization for opportunity discovery and realization:

Extant research offers relatively little insight into the organizational design correlates of entrepreneurship in established firms. We argue on theoretical grounds that the same organizational designs support the realization as well as the discovery of opportunities. Specifically, decentralized structures are associated with opportunity realization as well discovery, and this effect is reinforced by formalization. Decentralization gives managers the discretion and autonomy needed to recognize and realize opportunities, while formalization enables the standardization and codification of actions and processes. To test these ideas, we use a data-set based on paired responses from 474 Danish firms operating in several industries for our analyses. We find that decentralization and formalization have direct, positive, and significant associations with opportunity realization. We also address how these organizational design variables are related to opportunity discovery. We find similar effects. We discuss the theoretical and practical implications of our reasoning and results, such as implications for the idea in the innovation and organizational learning literatures that optimal performance over time requires that firms either vacillate between organizational designs or adopt ambidextrous designs.

The strategic organization of the entrepreneurial established firm

The entrepreneurship field predominantly focuses on start-ups, opportunity discovery and single individual. These overall characteristics mean that the field has difficulties conceptualizing and theorizing the entrepreneurial activities of established firms. In particular, the links between organizational designs, the various entrepreneurial activities of organizational members and firm-level entrepreneurial entrepreneurial outcomes are not well-understood. We sketch a research program for understanding the strategic organization of the entrepreneurial established firms.

Wise Choices: How Thoroughness of Opportunity Appraisal, Incentives, and Performance Evaluation Fit Together

Firms need to invest their scarce resources into the most promising new business opportunities (e.g., new engineering technologies). Yet, the literature on strategic entrepreneurship pays little attention to how, and how thoroughly, firms appraise potential opportunities based on technical as well as managerial criteria. Given that such evaluation takes considerable time, energy, attention, and skill on the part of employees, we propose that firms need to establish a fit between the thoroughness of opportunity appraisal and their reward as well as performance evaluation practices. Evidence from a double-respondent sample of 565 Danish firms supports our theoretical expectations.