The back end of my sabbatical in Europe is getting busier: I just spent the last two days in St. Gallen to attend a Special Conference of the Strategic Management Society on the topic “Rethinking Corporate Headquarters: Innovative Approaches for Managing the Multi-Divisional Firm.” I also served as a panel member for the doctoral/junior faculty workshop organized by Matthias Brauer & Tina Ambos.

New Article provisionally accepted in Organization Science:

Reconnection choices: Selecting the most valuable (vs. most preferred) dormant ties

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

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

Recent research has shown that reconnecting long-lost, dormant ties can yield tremendous value, often more than active ties. Yet two key research questions remain unanswered: which of a person’s many dormant ties provide the most value, and which are advice seekers most inclined to choose as reconnection targets? In the current study, we asked executives to seek advice on an important work project from two dormant ties (their first, most preferred choice plus one selected randomly from their next nine most preferred choices) and to respond to surveys before and after their reconnections. This two-stage design allowed us to make causal inferences about the executives’ advice-seeking preferences and the value of reconnecting certain types of dormant ties. Our results show that the most valuable reconnections are to people who provide novelty (by not having spent much time together in the past and being higher status) as well as engagement (by being trustworthy and willing to help). Our executive participants, however, preferred neither novelty nor engagement. Rather, the prospect of reconnecting can make people feel anxious. To avoid this discomfort, executives preferred contacts with whom they had spent a lot of time together in the past, thereby actually reducing novelty. Thus, our findings identify critical biases in executives’ reconnection preferences as well as insights into how to make more effective reconnections. Our discussion presents broader implications of these findings for advice seeking and social networks.

Keywords: Knowledge transfer, interpersonal ties, social exchange

This week, I also visited Tilburg University to present our paper “Prior experience, bargaining power, and exclusivity in technology licensing agreements” (co-authored with Ted Khoury & Erin Pleggenkuhle-Miles).

My gratitude to Nufer Ates for kindly hosting me during my visit and to all faculty members and doctoral students for their insightful feedback on our study!

Just came back from a visit to Rotterdam, where I presented our new working paper on “Antecedents and outcomes of peer control: A multi-level analysis” (co-authored with Markus & Karin Kreutzer) at the Rotterdam School of Management at Erasmus University.

Thanks to my host, Murat Tarakci, for making this happen and to all the brown bag participants for their great feedback on our study!

Today, I gave an invited research talk on our paper “Prior experience, bargaining power, and exclusivity in technology licensing agreements” (with Ted Khoury and Erin Pleggenkuhle-Miles) to the Faculty of Business and Economics (HEC) at the University of Lausanne in Switzerland.

I had a great time in this beautiful part of Switzerland and also received some very insightful feedback on our paper.

Thanks to Xavier Castañer for his kind invitation and to Déborah Philippe who kindly hosted me during my visit!

New Article Forthcoming in Group & Organization Management:

Relational enhancement: How the relational dimension of social capital unlocks the value of network-bridging ties

Daniel Z. Levin*, Jorge Walter**, Melissa M. Appleyard***, & Rob Cross****

* Rutgers University, ** The George Washington University, *** Portland State University, **** University of Virginia

We propose and test a novel approach to the dilemma that the very network-bridging structure most likely to provide access to novel knowledge may be ill-suited for the cooperation needed to successfully transfer that knowledge. We theorize that the relational dimension of social capital (e.g., tie strength) can act as a substitute for the structural benefits of network closure, and so a network-bridging tie yields more value when it is also strong. We further investigate if it is emotional closeness, interaction frequency, or trust that underlies this “relational enhancement” effect; our results identify the key mechanism as trust.

Keywords: Knowledge transfer, social capital, structural holes, tie strength, trust

Thanks to the members of the Strategy Process Interest Group (IG) of the Strategic Management Society (SMS) for electing me as one of three new Representatives-at-Large!

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

This year’s Strategic Management Society’s Annual International Conference took place in Madrid, Spain, and we presented our paper

• “Formal and informal controls as complements or substitutes? The role of the task environment” with Markus Kreutzer (University of St. Gallen),

which was also nominated for the Strategic Management Society Best Conference Paper Price Award, the Strategic Management Society Best Conference Paper for Practice Implications Award, and was a Finalist for the Strategic Management Society Best Conference Paper of the Strategy Process Interest Group. For more information, check the SMS Website.

This year’s Academy of Management Annual Meeting took place from August 1-5 in Philadelphia, PA. Under the conference theme “The Power of Words,” my colleagues and I presented our paper (which was also included in the BPS Best Paper Proceedings):

• “Formal and informal controls as complements or substitutes? The role of the task environment,” with Markus Kreutzer (University of St. Gallen) & Laura Cardinal (University of Houston).

Moreover, I received the Outstanding Reviewer Award for the Business Policy and Strategy Division of the Academy of Management.

For more information, check the AOM Website.

New Article Forthcoming in the Strategic Management Journal:

Organizational control as antidote to politics in the pursuit of strategic initiatives

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

* University of St. Gallen, ** The George Washington University, *** University of Houston

In contrast to the contingency approach advanced by most prior work, we suggest a complementary perspective on organizational control and its relationship with performance. We argue that the simultaneous use of behavior and outcome control capitalizes on their respective advantages, and is therefore more effective than a sole reliance on either control. Moreover, with organizational control seeking alignment between individual and organizational goals, the benefits of such a complementary approach may be more pronounced in a context characterized by high levels of organizational politics, or the pursuit of individual at the expense of organizational goals. Our analysis of strategic initiatives pursued by 184 European corporations provides support for both a complementary approach to organizational control and a contingency effect of organizational politics.

Keywords: Control theory, organizational control, organizational politics, strategic initiatives, strategy process

For a copy of this article, please see here.

New Article Forthcoming in Personnel Psychology:

Deeds that help and words that hurt: Helping and gossip as moderators of the relationship between leader-member exchange and advice network centrality

Berrin Erdogan*, Talya Bauer*, & Jorge Walter**

* Portland State University, ** The George Washington University

We examine the relationship between leader-member exchange (LMX) quality and advice network centrality using multi-source data from a sample of 250 retail employees and their respective managers in Turkey to test our hypothesized model of value and costs of being sought out for advice. Drawing upon the tenets of Network Generation Theory (Nebus, 2006), we predict that the tendency of focal actors to help others and their own tendency to gossip would be behavioral moderators of the relationship between LMX quality and their advice network centrality. Consistent with Network Generation Theory, our results reveal that LMX quality is positively related to centrality only for those actors with a high tendency to help coworkers and a low tendency to gossip about coworkers, suggesting that behaviors indicating helpfulness and discretion are necessary for high LMX members to maintain a central position in their work group’s advice network. Implications and future research directions are discussed.

Keywords: Leader-member exchange (LMX), advice network centrality, helping behaviors, gossip

For a copy of this article, see here.

I thankfully accepted the invitation by Prof. Mike Wright to join the new editorial board of the Journal of Management (JOM).

Judging from my experience on the previous JOM board, I look forward to working with the new editorial team.

This year’s Strategic Management Society’s Annual International Conference took place in Atlanta, GA, and my colleagues and I presented our paper

• “Experience, negotiation leverage, and their effects on exclusivity in technology licensing agreements” with Ted Khoury (Portland State University) & Erin Pleggenkuhle-Miles (University of Nebraska at Omaha),

which was also nominated for the Strategic Management Society Best Conference Paper Price. For more information, check the SMS Website.

New Article Forthcoming in the Journal of Management:

Learning activities, exploration, and the performance of strategic initiatives

Jorge Walter*, Christoph Lechner**, Franz W. Kellermanns***

* The George Washington University, ** University of St. Gallen, *** University of North Carolina at Charlotte

This study examines the contingent effect of the degree of exploration characterizing strategic initiatives on the relationship between group-level organizational learning activities (i.e., searching, processing, codifying, and practicing) and the performance of strategic initiatives. Results from a sample of 96 strategic initiatives conducted by three large European insurance corporations provide broad, albeit not unanimous, support for our prediction that the four learning activities are more beneficial when the degree of exploration is high. Moreover, for initiatives with lower degrees of exploration, we found no significant association of searching, processing, codifying, or practicing with initiative performance. These findings suggest that effective organizational learning depends not only on investments in learning activities, but also on the alignment between these investments and the degree of exploration inherent in the learning task.

Keywords: Strategic initiatives; group-level organizational learning; degree of exploration

For a copy of this article, please see here.

This year’s Academy of Management Annual Meeting took place from August 8-13 in Lake Buena Vista, FL. Under the conference theme
“Capitalism in Question,” my colleagues and I presented in the following sessions:

• “Organizational control as an antidote to politics in the pursuit of strategic initiative performance?” with Markus Kreutzer (University of St. Gallen) & Laura Cardinal (University of Houston) and
• “Entrepreneurship Division Early Career Development Consortium.” Professional Development Workshop organized by Donna DeCarolis (Rutgers University) & Kim Eddleston (Northeastern University).

For more information, check the AOM Website.

Happy to see that our research on Dormant Ties (see posts from March 29, 2011, and August 4, 2010, for details) keeps getting attention from some of the most innovative thinkers in business…

See a recent interview of Adam Grant (Wharton) in Daniel Pink’s blog for details.

Today, I had the opportunity to serve as a subject matter expert on the topic "Weak ties and innovation" at the Industrial Research Institute’s Diamond Jubilee Meeting here in Washington, DC. It was a great experience interacting with this audience of high-caliber R&D managers from a wide variety of industry and government, and I hope to continue this dialogue, perhaps in the form of a joint research project, in the future.

Thanks to Natalie Schoch (Kellogg Company), Leonard Huskey (US Army Research Laboratory), and Robert McNamee (Temple University) for their generous invitation!

For more information, check the IRI Website.

Just received notice that one of our submissions to this year’s SMS Conference has received a nomination for the SMS Best Conference Paper Award:

Experience, negotiation leverage, and their effects on exclusivity in technology licensing agreements

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

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

Technology licensing represents a complex area of interfirm contracting due to the highly idiosyncratic nature of these transactions. Focusing on the most valuable, yet often contentious, contractual feature in technology licensing transactions—exclusivity—we examine the differential influence of licensors’ prior experience with out-licensing versus in-licensing technologies. Our study builds on foundational transaction-cost research and develops a theoretical framework explaining whether or not licensors are likely to realize non-exclusive deal outcomes as a function of accumulated licensing experience, and when partner- or market-specific conditions dampen or accentuate the effects of such experience. Leveraging a 26-year sample of 2,664 bioscience-licensing transactions and a novel theoretical framework that accounts for the conditions of negotiation leverage within these unique transactions, we examine how exclusivity provisions vary across technology licenses.

Keywords: Technology licensing; licensing experience; exclusivity; transaction costs; partner prominence; strategic alliances; bioscience industry

For a copy of this article, please contact me directly.

New Article Forthcoming in the Journal of Small Business Management:

The resource-based view in entrepreneurship: A content-analytical comparison of researchers’ and entrepreneurs’ views

Franz W. Kellermanns*, Jorge Walter**, T. Russel Crook*, Benedict Kemmerer***, & V. K. Narayanan****

* University of Tennessee, ** The George Washington University, *** Strategic Marketing, Consumer Products Division (CPM-SM), BSH Bosch und Siemens Hausgeräte GmbH, **** Drexel University

The resource-based view (RBV) is one of the most influential perspectives in the organizational sciences. Although entrepreneurship researchers are increasingly leveraging the RBV’s tenets, it emerged in strategic management. Despite some important similarities between entrepreneurship and strategic management, there are also important differences, raising questions as to whether and to what extent the RBV needs to be adapted for the entrepreneurship field. As a first step towards answering these questions, this study focuses on resources as the fundamental building block of the RBV and presents a content-analytical comparison of researchers’ and practicing entrepreneurs’ resource conceptualizations to derive similarities and differences between established theory and entrepreneurial practice. We find that although the two conceptualizations exhibit some overlap, there are also important differences in the emphasis on different dimensions of resources and ownership requirements, as well as in the understanding of how those resources shape outcomes. These results suggest important contextual conditions when applying the RBV’s tenets within the field of entrepreneurship.

Keywords: Strategic consensus, strategic alignment, organizational performance

For a copy of this article, please see here or contact me directly.

New Article Forthcoming in Strategic Organization:

Strategic alignment: A missing link in the relationship between strategic consensus and organizational performance

Jorge Walter*, Franz W. Kellermanns**, Steven W. Floyd***, John F. Veiga****, & Curtis Matherne*****

* The George Washington University, ** University of Tennessee, **** University of Massachusetts–Amherst, **** University of Connecticut, ***** University of Louisiana Lafayette

Despite the increasing sophistication of the literature on strategic consensus and the compelling arguments linking it to organizational performance, empirical research has produced mixed findings. To address this conundrum, we examine the contingent role of strategic alignment—i.e., to what extent decision makers place importance on strategic priorities that are responsive to, or fit, the demands of the external environment faced by the organization—as a salient missing link. Our findings from a sample of 349 university faculty members in 63 academic departments suggest that the consensus-performance relationship is stronger for lower levels of strategic alignment, whereas at higher levels of alignment, consensus appears to have little effect. Our discussion traces implications of these findings for existing theory and future research.

Keywords: Strategic consensus, strategic alignment, organizational performance

For a copy of this article, please see here or contact me directly.

New Article Forthcoming in the Academy of Management Journal:

Corporate Control and the Speed of SBU-Level Decision Making

Maximilian Kownatzki*, Jorge Walter**, Steven W. Floyd***, & Christoph Lechner****

* Oliver Wyman, ** The George Washington University, *** University of Massachusetts–Amherst, **** University of St. Gallen

Decision speed has long been recognized as a critical determinant of firm performance, particularly in dynamic environments. Extending prior studies, which have largely focused on firm-level decision speed in small- and medium-sized organizations, this study explores how control mechanisms set by corporate headquarters in multi-business firms influence decision speed at the strategic business unit (SBU) level. Using a multi-method approach, we first inductively derive six types of corporate control, before deductively examining their effects on SBU-level decision speed in five international multi-business organizations. Our results suggest that three corporate control types enhance decision speed (goal setting, extrinsic incentives, and decision process control), two have no effect (negative incentives and conflict resolution), and one has a negative effect (strategy imposition). By integrating results from our qualitative and quantitative analyses, we are also able to identify transparency/alignment, outcome orientation, participation, trust, and timely feedback as the key mechanisms accounting for these effects.

Keywords: Strategic decision processes; decision speed; multi-business organizations; SBUs; corporate control; executives’ mental models; multi-method field study

For a copy of this article, please see here or contact me.

Just returned from Prague and this year’s Strategic Management Society’s Annual International Conference, where I presented the paper:

• “Levin, D. Z., Walter, J., Appleyard, M. M., & Cross, R. (2012). Relational enhancement: How to unlock the value of network bridges.”

For more information, check the SMS Website.

New Article Forthcoming in R&D Management:

The influence of firm and industry characteristics on returns from technology licensing deals: Evidence from the U.S. computer and pharmaceutical sectors

Jorge Walter*

* The George Washington University

This study examines the relationships between firm and industry characteristics and firms’ abnormal stock-market returns accompanying the announcement of technology licensing deals. In particular, I examine the fit between firms’ licensing activities, their resource endowments, and their industry context, and develop hypotheses on its impact on abnormal stock-market returns after licensing deals. Analysing eleven years of inward and outward licensing transactions in the U.S. computer and pharmaceutical industries between 1990 and 2000, I find support for my argument that while firms profit from both inward and outward licensing, the magnitude of such profits is determined by licensing firms’ resource endowments, and that these determinants have a different impact in different industry contexts. Understanding these relationships helps explain when firms should use licensing to exploit their proprietary technologies and make better predictions about the impact of licensing transactions on firm performance.

Keywords: Technology licensing, abnormal stock-market returns, industry comparison.

For a copy of this article, see here or contact me.