Jatinder S. Sidhu

Mission Statements:: Is it Time to Shelve Them?

A mission statement has long been argued to lead to better performance by aiding strategy formulation and implementation. Empirical evidence to support this argument is however lacking in the literature. This has led to a considerable waning of managerial confidence in mission statements in recent years. This article reports the results of an empirical investigation into the dynamic multi-media domain in The Netherlands. Statement content as well as process were taken into account when studying the impact of mission statements. The findings are consistent with the thesis that a mission statement can lead to superior performance. Managerial implications of the findings are discussed.

Management Innovation and Adoption of Emerging Technologies: The Case of Cloud Computing

This paper examines the effect of management innovation on a firms ability to effectively adopt an emerging core technology. Organizing for technological change is often associated with structural dilemmas for incumbents: while structural contingent solutions such as spatially separated units and parallel organizations have been frequently discussed as enablers of handling contradictory requirements of existing and emerging technologies, there is empirical evidence that such solutions are likely to be either unfeasible or unsustainable in the cases of core technologies. Our analysis on the adoption process of a new core technology by a large telecommunication firm reveals the role of management innovation in fulfilling seemingly paradoxical structural requirements of knowledge accumulation in a dynamic knowledge environment. We discuss how a novel structural approach enabled the organization to overcome rigidities in the existing routines and foster a favorable environment for adoption of cloud technology and to overcome organizational challenges, with which the firms conventional practices failed to commensurate.This paper examines the effect of management innovation on a firms ability to effectively adopt an emerging core technology. Organizing for technological change is often associated with structural dilemmas for incumbents: while structural contingent solutions such as spatially separated units and parallel organizations have been frequently discussed as enablers of handling contradictory requirements of existing and emerging technologies, there is empirical evidence that such solutions are likely to be either unfeasible or unsustainable in the cases of core technologies. Our analysis on the adoption process of a new core technology by a large telecommunication firm reveals the role of management innovation in fulfilling seemingly paradoxical structural requirements of knowledge accumulation in a dynamic knowledge environment. We discuss how a novel structural approach enabled the organization to overcome rigidities in the existing routines and foster a favorable environment for adoption of cloud technology and to overcome organizational challenges, with which the firms conventional practices failed to commensurate.

The Conjoint Influence of Top and Middle Management Characteristics on Management Innovation

Management innovation entails the introduction of new-to-the-firm changes in management structures, processes, and practices intended to improve organizational functioning. We draw on relational demography theory to elucidate how behavioral dispositions stemming from top management and middle management similarity in professional characteristics (functional background and educational level) and biodemographic characteristics (age and gender) may facilitate management innovation. We argue that while a throughput functional orientation of top management can be expected to stimulate management innovation, greater similarity between top and middle management will strengthen the association between top management throughput orientation and management innovation by (1) engendering consistency in behavioral expectations between the managerial echelons and (2) motivating middle management to engage in extrarole behaviors. We test our theory on a sample of more than 8,000 top and middle managers in a cross-section of 33 organizations from 2000 to 2008 and adopt a novel content analysis-based measure of management innovation. We find compelling support for the moderating influence of professional similarity between top and middle management but uncover more complex patterns for cross-echelon similarity in biodemographic characteristics. We discuss implications for understanding the role of managers in management innovation, joint consideration of top and middle management characteristics in organizational change processes, the interplay between various types of innovation, and the measurement of management innovation. Promising future research directions are suggested.

Business Domain Definition Practice: Does it Affect Organisational Performance?

Abstract How do organisations conceptualise their business domain, in other words, their competitive boundaries, and how can this influence their strategic choices and performance. This article finds that delineating competitive boundaries relatively narrowly, with an organisations technological competencies as the reference point, is positively associated with sales growth in turbulent industries. In contrast, in stable industries, conceptualising competitive boundaries relatively broadly to circumscribe substitute product organisations is positively correlated with sales growth. Additionally, results suggest that in both environment types, explicitly articulating what the business domain of an organisation is leads to superior performance. Management implications are drawn.

Top management team search and new knowledge creation: How top management team experience diversity and shared vision influence innovation

This article probes the vital role a top management team (TMT) plays in the coupling of knowledge elements assembled through local and nonlocal search into radically new, exploratory innovations and incrementally new, exploitative innovations. It theorizes that the materialization of exploratory and exploitative innovations from a firms recombinatory stock of knowledge elements is contingent on the interplay between a TMTs experience diversity and its shared vision. Multigroup structural equation modeling of data from a large cross-section of firms in the Netherlands supports the theoretical model. We find that although greater variation in TMT experiences fosters exploratory innovations, lesser variation promotes exploitative innovations. A shared TMT vision moderates these relationships. We discuss the implications for research and practice.

Independent Directors' Professional Role Identities,Board Effectiveness, and Firm Performance

Much of prior research on board of directors examines the effects of independent directors from their function as monitors or resource providers. Relatively little attention has been paid to their ...