Zeki Simsek

Ambidexterity and Performance in Small-to Medium-Sized Firms: The Pivotal Role of Top Management Team Behavioral Integration:

While a firm’s ability to jointly pursue both an exploitative and exploratory orientation has been posited as having positive performance effects, little is currently known about the antecedents and consequences of such ambidexterity in small-to medium-sized firms (SMEs). To that end, this study focuses on the pivotal role of top management team (TMT) behavioral integration in facilitating the processing of disparate demands essential to attaining ambidexterity in SMEs. Then, to address the bottom-line importance of an ambidextrous orientation, the study hypothesizes its association with relative firm performance. Multisource survey data, including CEOs and TMT members from 139 SMEs, provide support for both hypotheses.

A Primer on Internet Organizational Surveys

With so many individuals linked to the Internet and so many possible ways to reach them, the debate for organizational scholars is no longer over whether Internet self-administered surveys are possible but rather over the comparative understanding and the relative advantages and disadvantages of these surveys. Because relevant research has generally been fragmented and narrow in scope, making comparisons difficult, the authors review and assess the research on Internet selfadministered surveying modalities of electronic mail and the World Wide Web. Then, they provide recommendations that address problematic and controversial aspects of these modalities, including ways to increase the representativeness of samples, construct sampling frames, increase response rates, and manage anonymity and confidentiality.

Telecommuting's differential impact on work-family conflict: is there no place like home?

The literature on the impact of telecommuting on work-family conflict has been equivocal, asserting that telecommuting enhances work-life balance and reduces conflict, or countering that it increases conflict as more time and emotional energy are allocated to family. Surveying 454 professional-level employees who split their work time between an office and home, the authors examined how extensively working in this mode impacts work-to-family conflict and family-to-work conflict, as well as the contextual impact of job autonomy, scheduling flexibility, and household size. As hypothesized, the findings suggest that telecommuting has a differential impact on work-family conflict, such that the more extensively individuals work in this mode, the lower their work-to-family conflict, but the higher their family-to-work conflict. Additionally, job autonomy and scheduling flexibility were found to positively moderate telecommutings impact on work-to-family conflict, but household size was found to negatively moderate telecommutings impact on family-to-work conflict, suggesting that contextual factors may be domain specific.

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 impact of transformational CEOs on the performance of small- to medium-sized firms: does organizational context matter?

Although theory suggests that CEOs who engage in transformational leadership should have a positive effect on firm performance, most empirical examinations using data drawn from larger firms have failed to find support for this linkage. Given that the organizational complexity associated with larger firms has been viewed as a central obstacle to establishing this important link, the authors examined the impact of CEO transformational leadership on firm performance in smaller, privately held firms. After first explaining why the less complex context of these firms provides a setting for transformational CEOs to play a more direct role in enhancing firm performance, they then further clarified the nature of this link by hypothesizing 3 contingencies that they argued are particularly salient: firm size, CEO founder status (founder or nonfounder), and CEO tenure. Results from a multisource survey of CEOs and their top management teams in 121 firms and 2 time-lagged measures of performance, 1 objective and 1 perceived, provided consistent support for these hypotheses.

Modelling the Joint Impact of the CEO and the TMT on Organizational Ambidexterity

While researchers continue to debate how firms might attain ambidexterity, recent research demonstrates that top management teams (TMTs) play a pivotal role. We enrich this line of inquiry by specifying a model that blends the effect of the CEO and the TMT on ambidexterity. Specifically, given the importance of networking and building social capital to the access of timely, valuable, and diverse information, we first envision that the CEOs network extensiveness will positively impact ambidexterity. Next, we argue that this impact will be bolstered when the CEO–TMT interactional interface, including communication richness, functional complementarity, and power decentralization, enable the entire TMT to process disparate information demands essential to attaining ambidexterity. We test and find general support for our model using multi-source survey data from 122 small- to medium-sized enterprises (SMEs).

The Electronic Survey Technique: An Integration and Assessment:

Even though e-mail is the most widely used computer-mediated communication medium, its considerable potential as a survey technique has received little attention from management scholars. Using a three-dimensional framework focused on sampling issues, nonsampling errors, and comparative performance, the authors review and integrate previous research on the electronic survey technique and provide an assessment of the comparative trade-offs vis-à-vis other techniques. Moreover, they provide recommendations for future researchers interested in using this approach. Finally, they conclude that although this approach poses unique challenges and drawbacks, when an unbiased sampling frame exists or can be constructed, it allows researchers to inexpensively gather data with less effort than other available approaches.

Decision Comprehensiveness and Corporate Entrepreneurship: The Moderating Role of Managerial Uncertainty Preferences and Environmental Dynamism

Although comprehensiveness is considered among the most salient and enduring strategic decision-making characteristics in organizations, its influence on firm behaviour has remained elusive. As a first step, our study builds and tests a model that specifies the influence of comprehensiveness on the firms pursuit of corporate entrepreneurship. Our core argument is that while comprehensiveness helps decision-makers gain the knowledge needed to escape the ignorance and overcome doubt associated with this pursuit, this beneficial influence is conditional upon managerial uncertainty preferences, together with the level of dynamism in the external environment. Findings from a large sample study of CEOs from 349 SMEs provide general support for this argument and associated hypotheses.

“What’s Past Is Prologue” A Framework, Review, and Future Directions for Organizational Research on Imprinting

Organizational researchers have long used imprinting as a theoretical lens for a historically embedded understanding of diverse, significant phenomena for explanatory, evaluative, and managerial purposes. The intuitive appeal of imprinting has facilitated its widespread diffusion throughout numerous disciplines and research fields, but the growing fragmentation of associated theory and evidence has blurred our understanding of the nature, sources, and mechanisms of imprinting as well as the context in which imprinting shapes the behavior and outcomes of distinct entities. To address these issues, we begin by developing a framework for generalizing theoretical constructs, statements, and relationships across levels of analysis, contexts, and disciplinary boundaries. Using the core themes of this framework, we next provide a systematic review of 119 imprinting studies allowing for more definitive statements about what we know, do not know, and should know about imprinting. Finally, by building on the review, together with the proposed framework, we chart a focused course for future inquiry and applications for organizational research on imprinting.

CEO Social Capital and Entrepreneurial Orientation of the Firm Bonding and Bridging Effects

Prior studies demonstrate the role of various facets of CEOs’ individual characteristics in shaping a firm’s entrepreneurial orientation (EO). We complement this line of research by theorizing and testing the impact of CEOs’ social capital on EO. From an original, multisource survey data set of 122 Chinese technology firms, we find that a CEO’s bonding social capital with organizational members from various functional units has an inverted U-shaped relationship with firm EO, while the CEO’s bridging social capital with the firm’s diverse set of external stakeholders has a positive association with EO. In addition, we find that the relationship between CEO bridging social capital and EO becomes stronger as the firm’s environmental instability increases.