W. Glenn Rowe

Dominant CEO, Deviant Strategy, and Extreme Performance: The Moderating Role of a Powerful Board

This study examines the effect of dominant CEOs – defined as CEOs who are very powerful relative to other executives in their top management teams – on firm strategy and performance. Based on a sample of 51 publicly traded, single-business firms from the US computer industry for the period 1997–2003, our results suggest that firms with dominant CEOs tend to have a strategy deviant from the industry central tendency and thus extreme performance – either big wins or big losses. Further, powerful boards weaken the tendency of dominant CEOs towards extremeness and, more important, improve the likelihood of dominant CEOs having big wins versus big losses. This study reconciles the pessimistic and heroic views regarding dominant CEOs, and suggests that the notion of power balance should be considered in a broader context.

The GE Paradox: Competitive Advantage Through Fungible Non-Firm-Specific Investment

This study addresses two questions: (a) Does General Electric have an exceptional ability to develop non-firm-specific general management talent, and (b) how can GE’s investment into non-firm-specific, nonproprietary managerial capabilities be explained theoretically? The authors’ analysis provides evidence that GE has an extraordinary managerial development capability. Their theory suggests that GE’s managerial development process is valuable, rare, inimitable, and organized to be exploited, and therefore, a source of sustained competitive advantage. This process produces a flow of managers with the potential to be sources of temporary competitive advantage for GE. Outward flow of executive talent is a required byproduct of the process.

Navy Stories Behavior Versus Professional Control

This article proposes contingencies of behavior and professional control. The authors use two autoethnographic accounts to lend support to their theoretically derived propositions that using behavior control, when professional control is expected and appropriate, decreases organizational effectiveness. They argue that the more discrepant the expectations, the more negative will be the effect, especially if the discrepancy persists over time. They suggest that professional control should be employed when intense socialization is present and organization-specific skills have been developed. The autoethnographic accounts are based on lived experiences that occurred in the Canadian Navy while one of the authors was an officer in that navy. The authors argue that the lived experiences help to generalize back to theory—an important step in theory development.

Effects of the environment on illegal cartel activity

Purpose – Using resource dependency theory, the purpose of this paper is to examine what elements in the business environment may be associated with the formation and continuance of cartels. Design/methodology/approach – The authors employ a unique data set of 148 cartel data points from the 1970s to 2008 which have at least one American company involved to quantitatively test causal relationships. The authors also interview key class action anti-trust attorneys for their views and opinions on the impact of these environmental factors on cartel formation and continuance. Findings – The authors find statistically significant relationships between the pursuit and maintenance of industry profits and the dynamism in the industry, and illegal behavior as represented through price fixing by business cartels. The authors find that in the attorneys’ opinion, it is also the pursuit of individual corporate profits and munificence that are associated with these cartels. Practical implications – This research further...