Our article “Relational enhancement: How the relational dimension of social capital unlocks the value of network-bridging ties” co-authored with Daniel Levin (Rutgers University), Melissa Appleyard (Portland State University), & Rob Cross (University of Virginia) has been recognized as a 2016 Outstanding Group & Organization Management (GOM) Paper and nominated for a “Best GOM Paper” Award by the GOM Editorial Team.

According to the editor, our paper “exemplifies high quality research that is both informative and engaging and hence makes important contributions to the study and practice of management.”

New article forthcoming in Journal of Management:

Experiential Learning, Bargaining Power, and
Exclusivity in Technology Licensing

Theodore A. Khoury*, Erin G. Pleggenkuhle-Miles**, Jorge Walter***

* Portland State University, **University of Nebraska Omaha, ***The George Washington University

Licensing has become the central form of interfirm technology transfer and commercialization in the market for inventions. However, despite the large representation and growth of this business model, the resolution of key contractual provisions is still regarded as idiosyncratic, and little is known about how experience with prior relationships or bargaining power position affects contract outcomes. In an attempt to further understand how these transactions unfold, we present and test a
theoretical framework disentangling experience benefits and transaction costs associated with licensors’ prior involvement in out- versus in-licensing deals and how they affect the important, yet contentious, contractual provision of nonexclusivity. Drawing on transaction cost, experiential learning, and bargaining power theories, we develop new insights explaining when licensors are likely to realize nonexclusive contracts as a function of their prior licensing deals, and when bargaining power moderates the relationships between prior deals and nonexclusivity. Leveraging a
27-year sample of bioscience licensing transactions, this study reveals the dynamic tension between the benefits and transaction costs arising from prior interfirm collaborations, and how a firm’s history of collaborations, alongside its bargaining power position, influences contractual outcomes.

Keywords: transaction costs; bargaining power; technology licensing; interfirm alliances; experiential learning; nonexclusivity; bioscience industry; perspective-taking

Thanks to the members of the Strategy Process Interest Group (IG) of the Strategic Management Society (SMS) for electing me as the incoming Associate Program Chair! This is a three-year rotation leading to Program Chair (in 2018) and IG Chair (in 2019). I look forward to working in this capacity with Nacho & Dries and the other SMS Officers.

For more information on the Strategy Process IG, click here.

I gladly accepted an invitation by the editor of the Journal of Management Studies, Prof. Dries Faems, to join the editorial board of the journal.

Please check JMS‘s website for more information.

The 36th Annual Conference of the Strategic Management Society took place on September 17-20 in Berlin, Germany. My coauthors Markus Kreutzer, Karin Kreutzer, and I presented our paper: “Antecedents and outcomes of peer control: A multi–level analysis.”

This year’s Academy of Management Annual Meeting took place from August 5-9 in Anaheim, CA, where we presented our paper:

• “Before they were ties: Predicting the value of brand–new connections,” co-authored with Daniel Levin (Rutgers University) & J. Keith Murnighan (Northwestern University),

which was also included in the MOC Best Paper Proceedings.

I further received the Above and Beyond the Call of Duty (ABCD) Award of the Organization and Management Theory Division.

For more information, check the AOM Website.

New article conditionally accepted in Strategy Science:

Formal and informal controls as complements or substitutes? The role of the task environment

Markus Kreutzer*, Laura B. Cardinal**, Jorge Walter***, & Christoph Lechner****

* European Business School, **University of South Carolina, ***The George Washington University, **** University of St. Gallen

The traditional view of control in organizations largely implies an “either-or” substitution logic, as opposed to the complementarity logic implied in the more recent view of control. This study examines whether formal and informal controls complement or substitute each other in their influence on performance outcomes, and whether such an interaction differs for more or less exploratory tasks. Our findings from an analysis of 184 strategic initiative teams in a cross-industry multi-country sample of firms support the complementary view. More specifically, we find support for our hypotheses that the combined use of formal and informal control has a positive impact on the performance of initiative teams, and that this complementary effect is more pronounced when the degree of exploration is lower. Accordingly, our study contributes to the organizational control literature both theoretically—by providing an explicit theoretical rationale for the complementary view—and empirically—by virtue of providing an empirical test of the interactive effects of formal and informal control.

Keywords: Control theory, informal organizational control, complementarity, strategic initiative teams, degree of exploration

Just attended the Strategic Management Society Meeting in Rome to plan the upcoming conference in Berlin as an Executive Discoveries Series Coordinator. Thanks to Niko Pelka from SMS for this great opportunity to be involved in putting together the program for an SMS Annual International Conference!

A new research project I’m involved in will be included in the Best Paper Proceedings of the Academy of Management Meeting, this time for the 2016 Meeting in Anaheim, CA:

Before they were ties: Predicting the value of brand-new connections

Daniel Z. Levin*, Jorge Walter**, & J. Keith Murnighan***

* Rutgers University, ** The George Washington University, *** Northwestern University

The vast majority of research on the value of social or professional relationships has focused on ties that already exist. We ask if it is possible to predict in advance—before people ever meet—which brand-new ties will yield more value in the form of useful work-related knowledge. We examine this question using three perspectives: the resource (actor) perspective, the relational (tie) perspective, and the network (structure) perspective. To test our predictions, we asked 150 executives to reach out for work-related advice from someone they had never met, and to complete a survey of their thoughts and judgments of the other person both before and after making a connection. Controlling for the effects of homophily, we find support for all three perspectives after a connection has been made, i.e., once there is already an existing tie. However, before tie formation—our focus in this paper—we find evidence only for the network perspective, in the form of either bonding or bridging. Our results suggest that the lack of reliable information about strangers—especially their likely relational or resource qualities—makes it difficult to predict which ties will turn out to be more valuable, but that an existing network structure remains a reliable predictor of value, even for brand-new ties.

Keywords: Social networks, social capital, new ties, tie formation, knowledge transfer, advice seeking

Happy to share that our new article on reconnecting dormant ties has just appeared in MIT Sloan Management Review.

While our previous research has found that rekindling dormant professional relationships can offer tremendous career benefits to executives, our new study shows that some reconnections are more beneficial than others — and that executives often don’t select the best reconnection choices.

In particular, reconnecting with long-lost or dormant contacts can be very valuable — both professionally and personally. But choosing from among hundreds of former contacts can be challenging. We find that executives, when left to their own devices, don’t take full advantage of their opportunities to reconnect. And when they do reconnect, they tend to focus on comfort and not on re-connections that might offer the best advice.

To get the most out of reconnecting, however, you have to seek out former contacts who are likely to engage with you and to provide you with novelty. To achieve more novelty, this may mean going outside your usual comfort zone and reaching out to higher-status people or to people you didn’t know very well to begin with. But these are exactly the kinds of reconnections that can best point you in a new direction, tell you something you don’t already know, and help you make the most of dormant connections in your network.

Read the full article here.