Exploration versus exploitation: Emotions and performance as antecedents and consequences of team decisions

We analyze performance and emotions as antecedents and consequences of team strategic decisions to explore a new routine versus exploiting an existing one. In a laboratory study, we examine team decision making over time and draw causal inferences about the relationships among team emotions, team performance, and explore–exploit decisions. We use self‐report data to measure team emotions, and validate results with psychophysiological data. We find that declines in performance increase the likelihood that teams decide to explore new routines rather than exploit existing ones. We also find a marginal positive effect of positive emotions, as measured by both self‐report and psychophysiological data, on team decisions to explore a new routine. Further, teams successful at implementing new routines report increased positive emotions, as measured by the self‐report data. This relationship is fully mediated by performance change. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

ARE IMPACTS OF EARLY INTERVENTIONS IN THE SCANDINAVIAN WELFARE STATE CONSISTENT WITH A HECKMAN CURVE? A META‐ANALYSIS

“Early intervention” has been a mantra in recent debates about human capital investment. Strong theoretical models motivate this focus by predicting that investment in children is most cost‐effective when they are young. The “Heckman curve” summarizes this idea visually (Heckman, 2006). However, hardly any reviews scrutinize this hypothesis empirically in modern welfare states such as those in Scandinavia that already invest heavily during early childhood. Any such review is ideally based on interventions conducted as randomized controlled trials (RCTs), set in the same welfare state, and comparable across ages through cost‐standardized effects. This meta‐analysis assembles cost‐standardized effect estimates from 10 RCTs, including a total of 18 intervention arms and 30,578 participants (aged 1.5–24 years), conducted by the same research center in the Scandinavian welfare state of Denmark. These interventions show significant effects relative to their costs, despite the large baseline investment level. Interventions targeted at younger children tend to produce larger effects, consistent with the Heckman curve. However, variation in the effect size within age groups is as large as it is across age groups. This indicates that both the quality and timing of investments matter and that “early interventions” are not necessarily superior to later interventions.     

Theoretical Perspectives on the Internationalization of Firms

The purpose of this article is to build a coherent framework of the four main theories relating to the internationalization of firms, in order to facilitate better business teaching and research. Yet, theories of the internationalization of firms are broad and rest on different underlying assumptions. With the purpose of clarifying the potential for integration of partial theories and fragments in a more logically connected theoretical area, this article offers a meta‐theoretical overview of four perspectives within international business economics: Research and its related background, basic assumptions, study area, and implications of the theories in the internationalization of the firm.     

Can organizational climate be managed? Making emotions rational

A leader's job is often to attempt achieving organizational alignment. Many theories propose climate as an effective means to help leaders carry out this task. Nevertheless, our understanding of which exact actions are needed to manage climate remains somewhat diffuse. We present a new cognitiveoriented view on climate, which enables us to discuss the influence of climate on managing the balance between integration and adaptation. In this article, we argue that climate is not as easy to manage as previously argued. In the short run, climate may serve as an effective emotional inertia to maintain the system in fit, as long as it is properly perceived and supported by the leadership style. In the longer run, climate is more influential to change, making it difficult to perceive it properly. This challenge may lead to transformative changes, causing leaders to have little control.