Nandini Rajagopalan

Strategic Decision Processes: Critical Review and Future Directions

This article develops an integrative framework of strategic decision processes based on a review of the past literature. The framework incorporates environmental, organizational, and decision-specific antecedents of process characteristics, and their process and economic outcomes. Key empirical studies are reviewed in the context of the framework and major patterns and contradictions are identified. Based on this review, useful implications for theory building, research methods and managerial practice are identified and several directions for future research are presented.

Strategic orientations, incentive plan adoptions, and firm performance: evidence from electric utility firms

This study examines the performance implications of the fit between strategic orientations and incentive plan characteristics. Research hypotheses are based on a framework that draws upon managerial discretion and agency theories to identify the links between firm strategy, managerial motivation and control, managerial risk-bearing, and incentive plan characteristics. A pooled cross-sectional, time series research design is used to test hypotheses in a sample of 50 electric utility firms. Consistent with theory, results indicate that annual bonus plans that use cash incentives and accounting measures of performance lead to better performance among firms with Defender strategic orientations. In contrast, firms with Prospector strategic orientations realize performance benefits when they adopt stock-based incentive plans and use market measures to evaluate managerial performance.

WHEN THE KNOWN DEVIL IS BETTER THAN AN UNKNOWN GOD: AN EMPIRICAL STUDY OF THE ANTECEDENTS AND CONSEQUENCES OF RELAY CEO SUCCESSIONS

Taking an organizational learning and adaptation perspective, we compared “relay” CEO successions with nonrelay inside successions and outside successions. Data on 204 CEO successions between 1993 ...

GOVERNANCE THROUGH OWNERSHIP: CENTURIES OF PRACTICE, DECADES OF RESEARCH

The governance of organizations with dispersed ownership has received academic attention for over seven decades. Early research focused largely on managerial opportunism and mechanisms for minimizi...

Industry structure and CEO characteristics: an empirical study of succession events

Based on 134 CEO succession events in nondiversified, manufacturing firms, this study examines the relationships between industry structure and the characteristics of CEO successors. The paper also explores the performance implications of the fit between industry structure and CEO successors. Results indicate that industry structure plays an important, but not pervasive, role in explaining variations in newly selected CEOs. Specifically, the higher the level of industry product differentiation, the lower the organizational tenure, the higher the educational level and the greater the likelihood of a nonthroughput background in the CEO successor; the higher the industry growth rate, the lower the organizational tenure and age of the CEO successor. However, findings provide very limited support for the normative view that firms which match CEO successor characteristics to industry structure realize better postsuccession performance than those with lower levels of fit.

CEO Characteristics: Does Industry Matter?

This study examined the relationships between a comprehensive set of industry conditions and CEO characteristics utilizing data from a broad range of U.S. manufacturing industries. Pooled cross-sectional time series analyses indicated that industry conditions played a limited role in explaining variations in CEO firm tenure, educational level, functional background, and functional heterogeneity. Results of subgroup regression analyses indicated that although high performers appeared to align the studied CEO characteristics more closely to industry conditions than low performers, differences between the industry coefficients in the two groups are generally small.

Alliance Capabilities: Review and Research Agenda

A significant amount of empirical work has examined the role of alliances in enhancing firms’ innovative output and economic performance. Most of this research directly relates organizational and environmental attributes to alliance-related outcomes. However, in recent years, empirical research has begun to recognize the crucial role of alliance capabilities in explaining performance heterogeneities across alliances and across firms engaging in alliances. But no systematic review of the growing body of empirical research on alliance capabilities has been undertaken to help us understand why and how capabilities matter. In our paper, we first review prior empirical research on alliance capabilities, their antecedents, and their outcomes in terms of a framework that distinguishes between (1) three levels of analysis, an individual alliance versus a portfolio versus a dyad; and (2) two stages of the alliance, preformation versus postformation. We then advance the literature through an integrative conceptual framework of alliance capabilities that distinguishes capabilities in terms of their effects on value creation and value capture. Finally, we synthesize the insights from our review and integrative framework to provide methodological suggestions and identify underexplored theoretical themes for future work.

A Cognitive Model of CEO Dismissal: Understanding the Influence of Board Perceptions, Attributions and Efficacy Beliefs

Extant literature that examines the role of boards in the CEO dismissal process has focused on the impact of board composition. However, it has rarely considered the influence of sense making and interpretation on CEO dismissal. This paper draws on the strategic change literature, which demonstrates a link between cognitions and action, to develop a three-stage framework in which we articulate how sense making (stage 1) and interpretation (stage 2) impact the decision to dismiss a CEO (stage 3). More specifically, the boards perception of performance, its attributions of performance and efficacy assessment of the CEO, and the boards composition impact the decision to dismiss the CEO. The resulting model illuminates the domain of board cognitions and board composition within CEO dismissal decisions and facilitates future empirical research.

A Multi-Theoretic Model of Strategic Decision Making Processes

This chapter develops an overarching theoretical framework for one important aspect of the strategy process literature, namely, strategic decision making (SDM) processes. We develop a multi-theoretic framework which draws on the linear, adaptive, and interpretive views of strategy (Chaffee 1985). A focused review of the literature along the theoretical linkages embedded in the framework highlights the major gaps in our understanding of the what, the why, and the how of SDM processes. We conclude with an agenda for future research to address these gaps.

Top Managerial Cognitions, Past Performance, And Strategic Change: A Theoretical Framework

In our framework, we examine the influence of both reactive and proactive cognitive variables on strategic change. Reactive sources that impact strategic change are perceptions and attributions – cognitions that determine the “what” and the “why” of performance. Perceptions are first-order cognitions that assess what is the performance feedback: positive or negative? After performance feedback is perceived, attributions are second-order cognitions that attempt to establish why the performance is positive or negative.