 |
|
How ambidexterity plays out in situ: Unpacking switches between exploration and exploitation
|
Author: Christina Bidmon, Aarhus School of Business and Social Sciences
Author: Siri Nordland Boe-Lillegraven, Amsterdam Business School, U. of Amsterdam
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Despite the fact that individual ambidexterity has been identified as an important precursor to achieving organizational ambidexterity, research remains in need of elaboration when it comes to how switches between explorative and exploitative activities are achieved in practice. Based on observational data from a series of facilitated workshops, we study how organizational members cope with the exploration exploitation dilemma in specific situations and over time. We offer an in-depth account of how tensions between exploration and exploitation surface in situ and how they can be resolved and derive a processual model of the core mechanisms at play. Our findings advance micro-foundational explanations of how actors cope with switching between exploitative and explorative activities and contribute towards translating ambidexterity into a concrete managerial strategy.
|
|
|
|
Paper is No Longer Available Online: Please contact the author(s).
|
|
|
|
|
Antecedents and Outcomes of Technology Licensing
|
Author: Solon Moreira, IESE Business School
Author: Thomas M. Klueter, IESE Business School
Author: Stefano Tasselli, Rotterdam School of Management, Erasmus U.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Licensing contracts represent a key mechanism for firms to acquire external knowledge and technologies. Yet, despite the strategic importance that licensing has, we know surprisingly little about what shapes firms’ decisions to license external technologies and of how licensing shapes firms´ ability to innovate. In this paper we model licensing as a process, in which the decision to license-in a new technology and the possibility to learn and benefit from it are two distinct but inter-dependent activities. We suggest that competitors’ R&D moves are an important antecedent to licensing-in decisions as licensing allows firms a speedy, specific and competitive response to R&D actions emerging from competitors. Licensing, in principle, also, increases a firm’s potential to learn and recombine external pockets of knowledge thus increasing a firm’s capacity to innovate. However, we also reveal that when deployed under increasing competitive R&D pressures, firm´s capacity to learn and benefit from the licensed knowledge will be limited. Finally, we suggest that financial resources at the discretion of the licensee may be an important catalyst unlocking benefits of licensing, even if aforementioned impediments for learning and recombining of in-licensed knowledge are present. We test our hypotheses using a longitudinal design tracking the licensing and innovation behavior of firms operating in the global bio-pharmaceutical industry.
|
|
|
|
Paper is No Longer Available Online: Please contact the author(s).
|
|
|
|
|
Combinative Capabilities, Internal Global Sourcing and Technology Diversification in MNCs
|
Author: Heather Berry, George Washington U.
|
|
|
|
|
|
Carolyn Dexter Award Nominee
|
|
Although MNCs are in the best theoretical position to tap into and combine diverse technology that exists across their operations, extant research offers very little to help us understand technology diversification within MNCs. This paper explores how increased manufacturing capabilities and specialization in foreign operations contributes to technological diversification in MNCs that can lead to innovations that combine new technology domains from the local host country market with existing MNC technology domains. A unique dataset that combines comprehensive data on the worldwide operations of US MNCs from the Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) with data on the worldwide patents of these firms from the Derwent Worldwide Patent Index (DWPI), confirms that those foreign operations that provide more inputs and final products to parent and third country operations are significantly more likely to generate innovations that combine new technology domains with existing MNC technology domains. Overall, this paper explores how internal global sourcing activities can allow foreign operations to achieve a balance across a strong parent influence and local host country knowledge, which not only increases the technology diversity for the MNC, but also enhances the prominence, visibility and combinative capabilities of the foreign operation.
|
|
|
|
Paper is No Longer Available Online: Please contact the author(s).
|
|
|
|
|
|
Toward a Holistic and Dynamic Framework of Paradox Management:Product Innovation High-Tech Firms
|
Author: Bo Zou, Harbin Institute of Technology
Author: Zheng Zhao, U. of Kansas
Author: Xudong Ni, Zhejiang Sci-Tech U.
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
|
Paradox management is critical to a firm’s competitiveness in product innovation, which is characterized by high-level complexity, dynamism, uncertainty, and resource scarcity. Despite a surge of research on organizational paradoxes in recent years, there is still a lack of a holistic and dynamic framework of paradox management in the context of product innovation. Through a qualitative study of 72 managers in 17 high-tech firms in China, we explicate a holistic and dynamic model of paradox management with specific stages and mechanisms. We find that in the first stage of the dynamic process of paradox management, initiated by contextual triggers, the decision makers frame the nature of paradox from latent to salient based upon the microfoundations of personal capabilities and values. In the second stage, they enact distinctive approaches to paradox management according to their framing of the paradoxical tension. Importantly, we find that when the tension in a paradox is within the scope of decision makers’ microfoundations, decision- makers tend to enact the approach of regular balancing; yet if the paradoxical tension exceeds the scope of their microfoundations, they often enact the approach of transformative balancing by relaxing the core constraints underlying paradoxical tensions toward innovative outcomes. Finally, we unpack the inherent links between specific approaches to paradox management and specific dimensions and types of dynamic capability.
|
|
|
|
Paper is No Longer Available Online: Please contact the author(s).
|
|
|
|
|