Steven W. Floyd

Emerging Issues in Corporate Entrepreneurship

Research on corporate entrepreneurship (CE) has grown rapidly over the past decade. In this article, we identify four major issues scholars can pursue to further our understanding about CE. The issues we explore include various forms of CE (e.g., sustained regeneration, domain redefinition) and their implications for organizational learning; the role of leadership and social exchange in the CE process; and, key research opportunities relevant to CE in an international context. To address the latter issue, we propose a typology that separates content from process-related studies and new ventures vs. established companies. We close with a reassessment of the outcomes in CE research, which becomes particularly salient with the increasing importance of social, human, and intellectual capital in creating competitive advantages and wealth in today’s knowledge economy. Throughout the article, we use the organizational learning theory as a means of integrating our discussion and highlighting the potential contributions of CE to knowledge creation and effective exploitation.

Middle Management’s Strategic Influence and Organizational Performance

This study investigated relationships between middle managers’ formal position, their strategic influence and organizational performance. Among the 259 middle managers represented in the study, managers with formal positions in boundary–spanning sub–units reported higher levels of strategic influence activity than others. At the organizational level of analysis, the study found that firm performance was associated with more uniform levels of downward strategic influence, and more varied levels of upward influence among middle management cohorts. The findings suggest that middle managers’ strategic influence arises from their ability to mediate between internal and external selection environments. In addition, positive effects on organizational performance appear to depend on: (1) whether the overall pattern of upward influence is conducive to shifts in the network centrality of individual managers; and (2) whether the pattern of downward influence is consistent with an appropriate balance between the organization’s need for control and flexibility.

The Middle Management Perspective on Strategy Process: Contributions, Synthesis, and Future Research

During the past 25 years, a substantial amount of research in strategic management has focused on the contributions of middle management. Although useful, the research is characterized by considerable diversity in terms of focal constructs and relationships. The purpose of this review is to organize this research and identify important constructs, relationships, and contributions. The review serves not only to catalog the state of the art and accumulate knowledge; it also facilitates the critique necessary for charting directions and enhancing the cumulative nature of future research.

KNOWLEDGE CREATION AND SOCIAL NETWORKS IN CORPORATE ENTREPRENEURSHIP: THE RENEWAL OF ORGANIZATIONAL CAPABILITY

This paper extends current theory by analyzing the knowledge dynamics and social structure of the internal selection-retention environment. On the knowledge side, our view is that entrepreneurial ideas are subjected progressively to subjectivist, empiricist, and pragmatic criteria in the process of knowledge creation. This argument helps to explain how individual knowledge enters an organizational process and how individual knowledge becomes shared within the group. For social structures, we argue that actor centrality, structural equivalence, and bridging relationships account for an individuals ability to acquire novel information and to achieve a position of influence. Combining these assertions, the paper offers an integrative model that explains how organizations overcome inertia in the capability development process. A series of propositions are deduced as a basis for conducting future empirical research, and the paper closes with a discussion of the models implications for theory and practice.

Managing strategic consensus: the foundation of effective implementation

Executive Overview A frequent complaint of senior executives is that middle and operating managers fail to take the actions necessary to implement strategy. As one top manager told us. “Its been rather easy for us to decide where we wanted to go. The hard part is to get the organization to act on the new priorities.” Implementation problems of this type are often the result of poor middle management understanding and commitment to strategy. In our research weve found that relatively few middle managers articulate the same goals as their superiors. More troublesome, other researchers have found that middle managers who disagree with strategic initiatives frequently work against their implementation. This article examines an approach to implementation that focuses on the level of strategic understanding and commitment shared by managers within the organization. A framework identifying four categories of strategic consensus is introduced and used as the basis for analyzing differences in how managers perce...

Path analysis of the relationship between competitive strategy, information technology, and financial performance

Abstract:This study evaluates the impact of competitive strategy on information technology (it) and of it on organizational performance. In addition, the research model incorporates indirect performance effects from strategy and it alignment. Data is drawn from the survey responses of 127 banks and interviews with 68 bank CEOs. Path analysis separates direct, indirect, and spurious effects. Interview data support the quantitative analysis. The results lend statistical support to the strategy–it relationship described in case studies, and in addition, provide an explanation for inconsistent findings in previous it performance research.

Towards modelling the effects of national culture on IT implementation and acceptance

Two of the most significant forces shaping organizations are globalization and the continued, rapid and, some would say, radical changes taking place in information technology (IT). To date, the extant literature has centred on the technology acceptance model (TAM) because it is arguably one of the most widely cited and influential models used for explaining the acceptance of IT. However, this literature has remained relatively silent with respect to the role that differences in national culture might play in IT acceptance as globalization continues. In order to begin to address this deficit, this paper offers a series of research propositions that explore the potential impact of differences in national culture on IT implementation and acceptance. Specifically, the paper explores the effects of culturally induced beliefs – including individualism–collectivism, uncertainty avoidance, long-/short-term orientation and power distance – on the implementation processes that impact on key variables in the TAM. The paper then discusses the potential importance of the revisions it has made for both researchers interested in employing the model for predicting IT acceptance in cross-cultural contexts and for managers faced with introducing new IT in a global organization.

Inter-Firm Networks and Entrepreneurial Behavior: A Structural Embeddedness Perspective

We develop a theory of the effects of inter-organizational networks on both radical and incremental forms of firm-level entrepreneurial behavior (EB). The central argument is that structural embeddedness, with its focus on the network as a whole, and its two consequences, relational and cognitive embeddedness, individually and collectively influence incremental and radical forms of EB. Relationships in our model are driven by reciprocal interactions between intra- and inter-organizational sensemaking. This reasoning leads us to a dynamic, co-evolutionary model of EB.

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.

The Ritualization of Strategy Workshops

Despite the widespread use of strategy workshops in organizations, few empirical studie examine this phenomenon. The limited research that exists also lacks a theoretical basi for explaining why some workshops achieve their espoused purpose while others do not We offer a theoretical model of strategy workshop dynamics and outcomes by drawin on theories of ritual and ritualization. Our central argument is that variations in charac teristics of ritualization such as the degree of removal, the use of liturgy and the role o specialists influence behavioural dynamics within workshops and thereby the extent t which their purpose is achieved. This perspective extends research on the episodic natur of strategy development and contributes to a theoretically informed view of strategy practices