Jorge Walter

The Lack of Consensus About Strategic Consensus: Advancing Theory and Research

The purpose of this article is to describe the theoretical and methodological reasons for the inconsistent findings on the value of strategic consensus. This analysis suggests the need for (a) definitions of consensus that align the locus and content of agreement with the study context and theoretical premises; (b) measures of consensus that take account of locus as well as differences in how the content of strategy is perceived by top-, middle-, and lower-level managers; (c) research designs wherein assumptions about the locus and content of consensus govern the choice of antecedents; and (d) more consistent use of moderators.

Dormant Ties: The Value Of Reconnecting

The social networks literature suggests that ties must be maintained to retain value. In contrast, we show that reconnecting dormant ties---former ties, now out of touch---can be extremely useful. Our research prompted Executive MBA students to consult their dormant contacts about an important work project; outcomes compared favorably to those of their current ties. In addition, reconnecting previously strong ties led to all of the four benefits that are usually associated with either weak ties (efficiency and novelty) or strong ties (trust and shared perspective). These findings suggest that dormant relationships---often overlooked or underutilized---can be a valuable source of knowledge and social capital.

Decision Making Within and Between Organizations: Rationality, Politics, and Alliance Performance

This study extends research on strategic decision making into the realm of strategic alliances by examining the interactive effect of decision process characteristics at the firm and alliance levels on alliance performance. Located both within and at the boundary between partners, alliance-related decision processes have to balance each partner’s self-interest on one hand and collective actions on the other hand, with both partners being dependent on each other’s collaboration. Using primary, cross-sectional data obtained from 103 high-technology alliances, the authors study the effects of procedural rationality and politics in decision making. The results corroborate the importance of procedural rationality that facilitates collective actions between alliance partners but also uncover the pitfall of an unconditional reliance on procedural rationality at the firm level. The results further show that politically charged decision processes impair decision makers’ ability to reconcile individual interests both within and between alliance partners and therefore jeopardize alliance performance.

Disentangling Alliance Management Processes: Decision Making, Politicality, and Alliance Performance

Using a sample of 106 organizations engaged in strategic alliances, we develop and test a framework of alliance-related organizational decision-making processes and their impact on alliance performance. With regard to direct effects, our results show a negative impact of decision-making recursiveness and no significant relationship for openness and procedural rationality. Acknowledging the importance of the organizations micropolitical context in which these decision processes are embedded, we also test the moderating influence of politicality. Our findings provide support for our hypotheses that in a context of low politicality, the decision-making characteristics of openness and procedural rationality have a positive influence, whereas recursiveness negatively affects alliance performance. In a context of high politicality, however, openness and procedural rationality exert a negative influence, and the negative impact of recursiveness is aggravated. We suggest that alliance-related decision making cannot be adequately understood without explicitly considering the micropolitical context in organizations.

Strategic alignment: A missing link in the relationship between strategic consensus and organizational performance

Despite the increasing sophistication of the literature on strategic consensus and the compelling arguments linking it to organizational performance, empirical research has produced mixed findings. To address this conundrum, we examine the contingent role of strategic alignment—that is, to what extent decision makers place importance on strategic priorities that are responsive to, or fit, the demands of the external environment faced by the organization—as a salient missing link. Our findings from a sample of 349 university faculty members in 63 academic departments suggest that the consensus–performance relationship is stronger for lower levels of strategic alignment, whereas at higher levels of alignment, consensus appears to have little effect. Our discussion traces implications of these findings for existing theory and future research.

Relational Enhancement How the Relational Dimension of Social Capital Unlocks the Value of Network-Bridging Ties

We propose and test a novel approach to the dilemma that the very network-bridging structure most likely to provide access to novel knowledge may be ill-suited for the cooperation needed to successfully transfer that knowledge. We theorize that the relational dimension of social capital (e.g., tie strength) can act as a substitute for the structural benefits of network closure, and so a network-bridging tie yields more value when it is also strong. We further investigate if it is emotional closeness, interaction frequency, or trust that underlies this “relational enhancement” effect. The results from analyzing a bounded network in a large consulting firm and egocentric networks in the engineering division of a large manufacturer provide support for the relational-enhancement effect of tie strength and further identify trust as the key mechanism allowing network actors to unlock the value embedded in their network-bridging ties.

Learning Activities, Exploration, and the Performance of Strategic Initiatives

This study examines the contingent effect of the degree of exploration characterizing strategic initiatives on the relationship between group-level organizational learning activities (i.e., searching, processing, codifying, and practicing) and the performance of strategic initiatives. Results from a sample of 96 strategic initiatives conducted by three large European insurance corporations provide broad, albeit not unanimous, support for our prediction that the four learning activities are more beneficial when the degree of exploration is high. Moreover, for initiatives with lower degrees of exploration, we found no significant association of searching, processing, codifying, or practicing with initiative performance. These findings suggest that effective organizational learning depends not only on investments in learning activities, but also on the alignment between these investments and the degree of exploration inherent in the learning task.

Strategic Decision Processes in the Realm of Strategic Alliances

This chapter constitutes, to the best of my knowledge, the first review of the empirical literature on strategic decision processes in the realm of strategic alliances. I focused my review on those decision processes that are strategic, i.e., that deal with the question of how alliance-related strategies are formulated and implemented, and what impact formulation and implementation have on alliance and partner firm performance. By providing a synthesis of empirical findings on decision processes in interfirm collaborations, I intend to make two contributions: (1) outline the substantial body of knowledge that this research stream — in contrast to the fragmented and incoherent body of research on general alliance processes (Bell et al. 2006; Hennart 2006) — has accumulated, and discuss both its academic and managerial relevance; and (2) based on this review, I suggest a number of promising avenues for future research.

Before They Were Ties: Predicting the Value of Brand-New Connections:

Complementing and extending prior studies on the value of existing work relationships, this study examines whether we can predict the value of brand-new ties before people ever meet. We examine this question by developing three sets of hypotheses reflecting the three main perspectives in the social networks literature: the resource (actor), dyadic (tie), and structural (network) perspective. To test our hypotheses, we asked executives to reach out for advice from someone they had never met and to complete a survey of their various thoughts about the other person both before and after making a connection. We find support for all three perspectives after a connection has been made; however, before tie formation, we find evidence only for the structural perspective. Our results suggest that the lack of reliable information about strangers obscures which brand-new ties will turn out to be more valuable but that surrounding network structures remain a reliable predictor of value, even for brand-new ties.

Experiential Learning, Bargaining Power, and Exclusivity in Technology Licensing

Licensing has become the central form of interfirm technology transfer and commercialization in the market for inventions. However, despite the large representation and growth of this business model, the resolution of key contractual provisions is still regarded as idiosyncratic, and little is known about how experience with prior relationships or bargaining power position affects contract outcomes. In an attempt to further understand how these transactions unfold, we present and test a theoretical framework disentangling experience benefits and transaction costs associated with licensors’ prior involvement in out- versus in-licensing deals and how they affect the important, yet contentious, contractual provision of nonexclusivity. Drawing on transaction cost, experiential learning, and bargaining power theories, we develop new insights explaining when licensors are likely to realize nonexclusive contracts as a function of their prior licensing deals, and when bargaining power moderates the relationships between prior deals and nonexclusivity. Leveraging a 27-year sample of bioscience licensing transactions, this study reveals the dynamic tension between the benefits and transaction costs arising from prior interfirm collaborations, and how a firm’s history of collaborations, alongside its bargaining power position, influences contractual outcomes.