Learning to collaborate through collaboration: How allying with expert firms influences collaborative innovation within novice firms

Research summary : Strategic alliances have been recognized as a means for firms to learn their partners' proprietary knowledge; such alliances are also valuable opportunities for partner firms to learn tacit organizational routines from their counterparts. We consider how relatively novice technology firms can learn intraorganizational collaborative routines from more experienced alliance partners and then deploy them independently for their own innovative pursuits. We examine the alliance relationships between Eli Lilly & Co. (Lilly), a recognized expert in collaborative innovation, and 55 small biotech partner firms. Using three levels of analysis (firm, patent, and inventor dyad), we find that greater social interaction between the partner firm and Lilly subsequently increases internal collaboration among the partner firm's inventors. Managerial summary : Can collaborating externally advance internal collaboration? Yes. Our research found that collaboration among scientists at small, early‐stage biotechnology firms significantly increased after these firms formed highly interactive R&D alliances with a large pharmaceutical company known for its expertise in such collaboration. It is well known that alliances help new firms learn specific new technologies and commercialize innovations. Our study broadens the scope of potential benefits of alliances. New firms can also learn collaboration techniques, deploying them internally to enhance their own abilities in collaborative innovation. Managers should take this additional benefit into consideration in developing their alliance strategies. Pursuing alliance partners with expertise in collaboration and keeping a high level of mutual interactions with partner firm personnel should be important considerations to extract this value. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Financial benefits and risks of dependency in triadic supply chain relationships

The economic consequences of interdependent relationships with suppliers and customers have long been of interest to supply chain managers and academics alike. Whereas previous studies have focused on the benefits or risks of embedded relationships that accrue to buying firms, this study simultaneously investigates the effects of a supplier's and a customer's embeddedness, arising from resource dependency, on a focal firm's financial performance in triadic supply chain relationships. Using 1,144 unique focal firm-years for U.S. firms from Compustat, we find that a supplier's and a customer's dependency both increase the focal firm's performance in terms of return on assets (ROA) and return on sales (ROS) by increasing asset turnover (ATO). As levels of supplier and customer dependency on the focal firm increase, however, the economic benefits of customer dependency diminish beyond a certain point, while those of supplier dependency continue to increase above that threshold. Thus, our findings show the paradoxically differing risks of the supplier's versus the customer's dependency, while establishing the unequivocal economic benefits of supplier and customer relations for focal firms in the middle of concentrated triadic relationships.     

The embedding process of community ventures: creating a music festival in a rural community

Community entrepreneurship is a potentially powerful mechanism to improve the well-being of rural communities. To mobilize inhabitants for collective action, an emerging community venture must be embedded within a local community. Yet, the embedding process of community ventures is not well understood. Accordingly, this study explores how a community entrepreneur (CE) embedded an emerging community venture into a rural community and simultaneously stimulated social change in the community. Drawing on a longitudinal case study of a CE who created a jazz music festival in a rural Norwegian community, a dynamic conceptual framework was developed that highlights the roles and mechanisms that support the embedding process. The CE promoted social change by introducing external impulses to the local community and assumed a bridging role between the villagers and external actors in the embedding process. Some villagers assumed local embedding roles, while several external actors assumed external embedding roles. I identified four strategies that were used to increase the embeddedness of the community venture in the rural community and one strategy that was used by the CE to de-embed the venture in order to avoid constraints imposed by the local community. The importance of the different roles and mechanisms changed over time.     

Global,national and local practices in multinational corporations: towards a sociopolitical framework

This paper intends to shed some light on strategies and power resources of subsidiary managers and employee representatives involved in ‘charter changes’ and the implementation of ‘best practices’ developed elsewhere. Research shows that local managers face a dilemma in that they need both internal legitimacy (within the MNC itself) and external legitimacy (within the local context). It is argued that the power resources key actors draw on in the (internal) decision-making processes of ‘charter changes’ are intertwined with certain (external) national business system (NBS) characteristics, an aspect often neglected in North American research about MNCs. The authors identify three key influences, which restrain or empower local management and employees in their ability to make strategic choices and gain power within the MNC. They are (1) the overall strategic approach of the multinational group, (2) the strategic position and the economic performance of the subsidiary itself and (3) the degree of institutional embeddedness of the subsidiary in the host country. Comparative mini-case studies are used to illustrate the effect of local management and employee representatives' empowerment on their ability to retain skills and work practices supportive of a diversified quality production process in the face of MNC pressure to adopt global ‘best practices’ based on more standardized production processes.     

新创企业的社会网络嵌入研究

社会网络是新创企业生存与发展的一个环境要素。新创企业可以利用社会网络获取信息资源、降低不确定性、树立企业声誉、产生引介与桥接效应。同时,新创企业也必须提供其特有的交易内涵,与网络成员即交易对象建立双边或多边互动关系。新创企业并不是被动嵌入外部关系网络的,而可以主动选择或塑造其外部关系网络,并且通过适当的策略选择,推动关系网络演变升级。     

企业网络结构与知识获取的关系模型

以往研究主要从合资企业和战略联盟等不同视角对企业的知识获取进行了解释,较少关注网络结构对企业知识获取的影响。本文基于社会网络理论,讨论了网络结构和知识获取间的互动关系,建立了一个多层次关系模型。从企业自身、企业之间和企业网络等三个层次分别考察了网络结构特征与知识获取的动态作用关系,并提出了相应的理论命题。     

Analysing the forces shaping employee involvement and participation (EIP) at organisation level in liberal market economies (LMEs)

Employee involvement and participation (EIP) continues to attract significant interest from academics and practitioners alike, often in terms of so‐called newer forms of employee engagement and informal consultation. However, although the history of EIP shows that multiple channels are the norm in most organisations, it is still rare for representative, direct and informal EIP to be discussed in the same study. This article breaks new ground by developing measures for the breadth and depth of EIP, as well as analysing the forces at and beyond organisation level which shape management choices about which forms to adopt and how to embed them more deeply in organisations. Data were collected from 86 interviews and associated documentary analysis at and beyond organisational level in four liberal market economies (LMEs) (UK, Ireland, Australia and New Zealand) in order to identify how forces at national and organisational level shaped the breadth and depth of EIP in 25 case study organisations. The article's main conclusion is that while institutional forces – such as legislation, government action and intermediary bodies – do have an influence in LMEs, the way in which management interprets more immediate organisational forces remains significantly important in embedding EIP within organisations.     

Synthesizing content models of employee turnover

To identify a set of broad factors that reflect the constructs measured in three content models of employee turnover, we hypothesized 19 scales would reduce to five factors related to employee job‐search behavior and actual turnover decisions: one's affect toward the organization, work environment, instrumental attachment, extraorganizational ties, and sense of obligation. Using a sample of 888 staff members from a large university, the factor structure was confirmed. Multivariate regression results also indicated one's work environment, instrumental attachment, and sense of obligation were significantly and negatively related to both job search and turnover, with work environment and instrumental attachment exhibiting the strongest effects. Extraorganizational ties were only significantly and negatively related to job search. Interestingly, affect toward the organization was not significantly related to either job search or turnover. Path analyses indicated the effects of four of the factors on turnover were fully mediated by job search, with instrumental attachment the sole factor that was only partially mediated. Our model provides a foundation for future researchers to test the uniqueness of new predictors of turnover, as well as guidance to practitioners regarding where resources might be best utilized in curbing turnover.     

嵌入性理论研究综述

通过分析国内外有关嵌入性理论的原始研究文献,对嵌入性理论的发展脉络、分析框架和层次结构进行了综述,并对未来理论发展提出了相关建议。