What they know vs. what they do: how acquirers leverage technology acquisitions

Existing research suggests that in acquisitions of small technology‐based firms by large established firms post‐merger integration both enables and hinders acquirers' efforts to leverage the technology of acquired firms. This apparent paradox can be resolved once we account for the qualitatively distinct ways in which acquirers leverage technology acquisitions. Integration helps acquirers use the acquired firm's existing knowledge as an input to their own innovation processes (leveraging what they know), but hinders their reliance on the acquired firm as an independent source of ongoing innovation (leveraging what they do). We also show that experienced acquirers are better able to mitigate the disruptive consequences of the loss of autonomy entailed by integration, though we find no evidence that they achieve greater coordination benefits from integration. Copyright © 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Right person in the right place: How the host country IPR influences the distribution of inventors in offshore R&D projects of multinational enterprises

Research summary : Prior work has shown that the strength of the intellectual property regime (IPR) in a host country influences offshore R&D to that country. Building on this work we propose that the strength of the IPR in a host country differentially influences the threat of knowledge leakage on projects that are produced for the location where the multinational firm is headquartered (home) versus the offshore location to which the R&D project is sent (host). We argue and show that when the host location has a weak IPR, fewer host inventors are involved in host R&D projects when compared to home R&D projects. We test our hypotheses using a dataset of patents held by US assignees, but coinvented in 43 host locations with differing IPR strength. Managerial summary : Multinational enterprises often cite the weak IPRs at emerging economy host destinations as a significant impediment to offshore R&D activities in those countries, despite the abundant supply of inexpensive scientific talent there. We find that the weak IPR at the host destination is a greater impediment to offshore R&D that is aimed for end use at the host market than for R&D that is aimed for end use globally or in the home market. Since IPRs are local, a weaker IPR at the host location does not protect IP that is relevant to the host market. Since the IPR at the home country is more relevant for technologies aimed at the home market, the IPR at the host country is irrelevant for such R&D projects. Copyright © 2015 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Newcomer and Organizational Socialization Tactics: An Interactionist Perspective

During the past 15 years, organizational socialization research has focused on two issues. The first is the need for researchers to take an interactionist perspective on the process. The second has been both a conceptual and empirical concern with the pro-active socialization techniques employed by newcomers. The present article takes an interactionist perspective by presenting a model and propositions of how organization socialization tactics impact on and interact with newcomer pro-active socialization tactics to influence socialization outcomes.     

EFFECTIVE PERFORMANCE MANAGEMENT

The synergistic effect of holistically addressing all of the variables highlighted by this article will result in organizations consistently reaching their intended destination. Skipping steps creates the illusion of speed, but rarely results in progress. While effective performance management is incredibly difficult, it is also critical to an organization's survival and prosperity. Systematically addressing these critical success factors will ensure consistency and success:

• 1 The starting point—A clear, objective understanding of current reality, as it is .
• 2 The destination—A clear point of view on where you want the organization to be, taking the current realities into account.
• 3 The path—A growth plan that will take you from the current reality to the intended destination.
• 4 Variation—A culture and system that expects variation, distinguishes between noise and signal, ignores the noise, and acts on the signals.
• 5 Agile Course Correction—A strong foundation that increases the number of course correction opportunities dramatically.
• 6 Alignment—Ensuring that everyone works towards the same destination.

The article uses a flight analogy to explain each of these critical variables.     

The impact of cultural orientation on perceived fairness over demand-based pricing

Revenue management practices are now being implemented by hotel firms on a global scale. This requires a finer understanding of how different cultures will relate to perceived unfairness that stems from the inequities inherent in demand-based pricing. In this context, individualism and collectivism as cultural constructs have been used extensively in cross-cultural research. These constructs are manifested with vertical and horizontal orientations that distinguish social patterns based on the acceptance of a hierarchy or conversely the preference over equality. The purpose of this study was to examine the relationships between vertical and horizontal orientations of individualism and collectivism with perceived price fairness over demand-based pricing. Findings indicate that vertical individualism has a significantly positive relationship with perceived price fairness. This can be attributed to the inherent acceptance of inequality in this cultural dimension combined with the emphasis of the individual over the collective unit. Marketing implications for lodging managers are discussed.     

A Stakeholder Perspective for Analyzing Marketing Relationships

This paper proposes a framework that enables the application of stakeholder theory to the analysis of marketing relationships. By distinguishing between different types of stakeholder relationships, stretching from the positive to the negative side of relationships (i.e. the ladder of stakeholder loyalty), and describing the various relational factors (i.e. relationship orientation, trust, communication, learning, power, reciprocity and commitment) that shape a specific relationship, the proposed framework enables marketers to analyze their firm's diverse relationships. The paper provides a meaningful starting point for developing strategies to change the type of relationship with a specific stakeholder.     

Organizational knowledge networks and local search: The role of intra‐organizational inventor networks

Research summary : While firms tend to build on their own knowledge, we distinguish between depth and breadth of local search to investigate the drivers of these behaviors. Given that inventors in a firm carry out the knowledge creation activities, we strive to identify inventors responsible for these behaviors by employing the notion of an intra‐firm inventor network. A longitudinal examination of 14,575 inventors from four large semiconductor firms using patent data supports our hypotheses that the reach of inventors in the intra‐firm network and their span of structural holes have independent and interactive effects on these two types of local search behaviors. These findings have implications for research on exploitation and exploration, organizational knowledge, knowledge networks, and micro‐foundations. Managerial summary : Large amounts of knowledge may reside within firm boundaries, and managers are interested in understanding who may leverage this knowledge to generate novel ideas. We focus on collaborations among knowledge workers to address this question. Using the collaborations among all knowledge workers in a firm, we show that those who have higher reach to all others and those who form bridges to connect unconnected groups of workers tend to leverage not only more organizational knowledge, but also knowledge that is more dispersed in the organization. Managers could use these insights to shape the use of organizational knowledge by firm inventors, and also to make decisions about granting or withholding access to internal knowledge platforms for knowledge workers. Copyright © 2016 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Integrating distributed work: comparing task design,communication, and tacit coordination mechanisms

We investigate coordination strategies in integrating distributed work. In the context of Business Process Offshoring (BPO), we analyze survey data from 126 offshored processes to understand both the sources of difficulty in integrating distributed work as well as how organizations overcome these difficulties. We find that interdependence between offshored and onshore processes can lower offshored process performance, and investing in coordination mechanisms can ameliorate the performance impact of interdependence. In particular, we outline a distinctive set of coordination mechanisms that rely on tacit coordination—and theoretically articulate and empirically show that tacit coordination mechanisms are distinct from the well‐known duo of coordination strategies: building communication channels or modularizing processes to minimize the need for communication. We discuss implications for the study of coordination in organizations. Copyright © 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.     

Tailored randomized block MCMC methods with application to DSGE models

In this paper we develop new Markov chain Monte Carlo schemes for the estimation of Bayesian models. One key feature of our method, which we call the tailored randomized block Metropolis–Hastings (TaRB-MH) method, is the random clustering of the parameters at every iteration into an arbitrary number of blocks. Then each block is sequentially updated through an M–H step. Another feature is that the proposal density for each block is tailored to the location and curvature of the target density based on the output of simulated annealing, following  and  and Chib and Ergashev (in press). We also provide an extended version of our method for sampling multi-modal distributions in which at a pre-specified mode jumping iteration, a single-block proposal is generated from one of the modal regions using a mixture proposal density, and this proposal is then accepted according to an M–H probability of move. At the non-mode jumping iterations, the draws are obtained by applying the TaRB-MH algorithm. We also discuss how the approaches of Chib (1995) and Chib and Jeliazkov (2001) can be adapted to these sampling schemes for estimating the model marginal likelihood. The methods are illustrated in several problems. In the DSGE model of Smets and Wouters (2007), for example, which involves a 36-dimensional posterior distribution, we show that the autocorrelations of the sampled draws from the TaRB-MH algorithm decay to zero within 30–40 lags for most parameters. In contrast, the sampled draws from the random-walk M–H method, the algorithm that has been used to date in the context of DSGE models, exhibit significant autocorrelations even at lags 2500 and beyond. Additionally, the RW-MH does not explore the same high density regions of the posterior distribution as the TaRB-MH algorithm. Another example concerns the model of An and Schorfheide (2007) where the posterior distribution is multi-modal. While the RW-MH algorithm is unable to jump from the low modal region to the high modal region, and vice-versa, we show that the extended TaRB-MH method explores the posterior distribution globally in an efficient manner.