Koen H. Heimeriks

Microfoundations of Routines and Capabilities: Individuals, Processes, and Structure

This article introduces the Special Issue and discusses the microfoundations of routines and capabilities, including why a microfoundations view is needed and how it may inform work on organizational and competitive heterogeneity. Building on extant research, we identify three primary categories of micro‐level components underlying routines and capabilities: individuals, social processes, and structure. We discuss how these components, and their interactions, may affect routines and capabilities. In doing so, we outline a research agenda for advancing the fields understanding of the microfoundations of routines and capabilities.

Do Firms Learn to Manage Alliance Portfolio Diversity? The Diversity-Performance Relationship and the Moderating Effects of Experience and Capability

Building on organizational learning theory, this study examines whether firms learn to manage alliance portfolio diversity. We argue that alliance portfolio diversity may be advantageous as well as disadvantageous for alliance portfolio performance. Subsequently, we theorize that the diversity-performance relationship is moderated by the firms alliance experience and capability. Bridging the previously separated literature of diversity and learning, our findings show a curvilinear relationship between diversity and performance. More important, using survey data, we reveal some key processes through which firms learn to manage alliance portfolio diversity.

A Hegelian Dialogue on the Micro‐Foundations of Organizational Routines and Capabilities

This paper aims to further the alignment among different theoretical approaches and future scholarship on the complex themes related to the micro‐foundational processes characterizing the emergence and development of organizational routines and capabilities. It has been constructed with a typical Hegelian structure represented by a thesis, an antithesis and an attempt of a synthesis, each presented by different scholars, primed by a common set of questions related to the role of individual actors in shaping organizational change processes. The dialogue is introduced by Koen Heimeriks, followed by Sidney Winter proposing the ‘thesis’ for an evolutionary perspective on the problem, and an ‘antithesis’ is offered by Nicolai Foss with a number of critical points made from different economics and social science perspectives. Finally, Maurizio Zollo offers an attempt of a synthesis between the two positions with some proposals for conceptual and empirical advancement. The dialogue points to a convergence on the usefulness of evolutionary theory as a theoretical lens, but also on the need to add to the central notion of routinized behavior, other stable organizational traits of evolutionary relevance, such as the cognitive, motivational and identity‐based antecedents to behavior, as well as key dimensions of intentionality and consciousness of change, which have been so far given either implicit or axiomatic roles. An overarching model of firm evolution that includes these micro‐level factors in the context of more collective‐level dynamics might help forging collaborative work across different schools of thought, as well as bridging the two levels of analysis in a way that is both theoretically well‐grounded and empirically testable.

Micro-level learning and alliance portfolio performance

This study examines learning mechanisms to explain why some firms extract superior economic rents from their alliance portfolios. In particular, we examine the relationship between alliance experience and the use of learning mechanisms, as well as the impact of learning mechanisms on a firms capability to manage alliance portfolios. The results are based on a detailed survey among 192 alliance managers and Vice-Presidents reporting on over 3400 alliances initiated over the period 1997?2001. The empirical findings reveal what micro-level learning mechanisms contribute to manage alliance portfolios successfully and empirically validate how lessons from prior alliances can be leveraged across a firms entire alliance portfolio.