Margaret A. White

Learning and Knowledge Transfer in Strategic Alliances: A Social Exchange View

Although social interactions and exchanges between partners are emphasized as imperative for alliance success, comprehensive examination of how social exchanges facilitate learning and knowledge transfer in strategic alliances is lacking. Drawing on social exchange theory, we examined the effects of social exchange processes between alliance partners on the extent of learning and knowledge transfer in a strategic alliance. An empirical examination of data collected from alliance managers of 144 strategic alliances revealed that social exchanges such as reciprocal commitment, trust, and mutual influence between partners are positively related to learning and knowledge transfer in strategic alliances.

Performance of Acquisitions of Distressed Firms

In 51 acquisitions of financially distressed firms, related business combinations in which the acquirers had prior acquisition experience performed best. However, business relatedness and acquisition experience had no effect on performance in a control group of 46 acquisitions of firms that were not distressed. The results imply that tacit knowledge about the acquisition process and about how to integrate and manage the assets of distressed firms may be keys to their successful acquisition.

A Contingency Model of New Manufacturing Firm Performance

A survey of new manufacturing firms yielded significant support for hypothesized relationships between psychological differences, background characteristics, and scanning behavior of the owner/founder and firm performance. In addition, a proposed contingency model of new manufacturing firm performance was tested using moderated regression analysis. This model suggests that a linear combination of psychological, background, and scanning characteristics of the owner/founder acting on firm performance may be moderated by industry dynamics.

Scanning actions and environmental dynamism

While it is generally accepted that scanning supports organizational adaptation to the environment, scanning behavior may vary with the amount of environmental change. Information processing perspectives suggest that scanning activity will increase in response to increasing environmental uncertainty. Yet, social cognition perspectives suggest that scanning decreases at high and low levels of uncertainty since useful information is either unattainable or is already known. Using a combined perspective in a strategic decision‐making context, this study hypothesized that scanning would be greatest at high and low levels of uncertainty to support identification of previously unexploited niches. Results indicate that the level of environmental dynamism combined with the managers functional position explains scanning behavior.

Using stories to create change: The object lesson of Frederick Taylor’s “pig-tale”

Just over 100 years ago, Frederick Taylor conducted the pig-iron handling experiments. After reviewing discrepancies in Taylor’s accounts of these experiments, some have concluded that the episode was no more than a “pig-tale.” Through the use of historiographic approaches, including evaluation of Frank Gilbreth’s 1912 filmed recreation, this research supports Taylor’s use of the “pig-tale.” Taylor told the story to persuade listeners that even the most basic processes could be improved for the joint prosperity of employer and employee. When evaluating historical records, we must not allow relatively minor discrepancies to overshadow the object lesson of the story.

Unobtrusive measurement of psychological constructs in organizational research

Measurement in organizational psychology is dominated by the use of approaches that require the cooperation of a respondent—namely, questionnaires and interviews. The goal of this article is to increase and improve the use of unobtrusive measures as a supplemental means to assess psychological constructs in organizational research. Specifically, we first illustrate the merit and necessity of utilizing unobtrusive measures. Next, we review the literature employing unobtrusive measures to assess psychological constructs and then discuss threats to validity associated with these approaches. Finally, we offer recommendations to enhance the effectiveness of unobtrusive measures in future research.

Building understanding in strategy research: The importance of employing consistent terminology and convergent measures

While the strategy discipline has made significant strides in measurement practices since its inception, questions persist regarding the use of different terminology and nonconvergent measures to represent a single construct within our field (see, for example, Cording et al., 2010; Hitt et al., 2004; McKinley, 2007; Suddaby, 2010). In this essay, we emphasize the importance of rectifying these practices to facilitate the cross-disciplinary conversation and systematic building of understanding that has long been a goal of strategy research (Cannella and Paetzold, 1994; Meyer, 1991; Nag et al., 2007). We focus on the utilization of consistent terminology and convergent measurement for three reasons. First, employing different terminology and nonconvergent measurement inhibits the accumulation of knowledge and understanding regarding a phenomenon (McClelland et al., 2010; Oxley et al., 2010; Singh et al., 2003; Suddaby, 2010). What should be a building process to better understanding of a phenomenon can become a hodge-podge of terms and measures that hinders this process. Second, as we detail in our essay, despite the well-recognized perils to knowledge accumulation associated with these practices, they occur in many domains of strategy research. Third, if the field is to continue to build understanding in a cross-disciplinary and systematic fashion, these issues are particularly salient: it is essential that we refer to constructs in a way that fosters conversations across disciplinary and domain boundaries and develop measures that converge on the constructs that we are discussing so that the understanding developed is valid. 445239 SOQ10210.1177/1476127012445239Hill et al.Strategic Organization 2012

Management of technological innovation: Individual attitudes, stress, and work group attributes

Abstract This article reports a study investigating the correlates of attitudes toward change and attitudes toward working with computers. Subjects were employees in a large university library undertaking a large scale automation transition, and data were collected during the initiation stage of the innovation process. Results indicate that faith in management, specific work demands, somatic symptoms and specific work group attributes are correlated with the two attitudinal variables. This finding underscores the efficacy of examining correlates (which may be less resistant to change) in conjunction with attitudes toward change and attitudes toward specific innovations.

The influence of managerial myopia on firm strategy

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to examine the effects of temporal myopia (focussing on the short-term) and spatial myopia (focussing on the current market) on firm strategy. Specifically the paper investigates the effects of temporal and spatial myopia on the persistence and conformity of firm strategy. Additionally, the paper tests how environmental munificence moderates these effects. A secondary purpose of this paper is to develop a replicable method of measurement of temporal and spatial myopia. Design/methodology/approach – The authors conducted a manual content analysis of letters to shareholders for 100 firms over three years to measure spatial and temporal myopia. After collecting strategy variables and control variables from Compustat, the authors utilize a random-effects panel methodology. Findings – The results indicate that strategy is influenced by both temporal and spatial myopia. Specifically, temporal myopia creates a focus on the firms current strategy, leading to a persistent strategy over time and spatial myopia focusses firm decision makers on better known technologies and competitors, leading to conformity to industry strategic profiles. Additionally, the paper tests how environmental munificence influences these relationships. In total, the paper finds that the differing types of managerial myopia have distinct influences on firm outcomes. Originality/value – This paper makes two important contributions to the literature on managerial myopia. First, the paper investigates the differential effects of both spatial and temporal myopia on firm strategy, topics that have been relatively overlooked in empirical investigations of decision making. Second, the paper develops replicable measures for both temporal and spatial myopia, which have been previously suggested to limit the ability to empirically test the implications of managerial myopia (Laverty, 1996).

Juxtaposition of Chester I. Barnard and Frederick W. Taylor: forerunners of management

Much has been written about the works of Chester I. Barnard and Frederick W. Taylor but little attempt has been made by scholars to compare Barnard and Taylor. Barnard is a successor of Taylor and this may be one of the reasons why there has been a reluctance to place them side‐by‐side. The purpose of this paper is to capture the similarities and differences that existed in the thinking of these two individuals who greatly influenced management thinking during the twentieth century.