Contributions published at International Management (Thomas Keil)

How do organizations respond to negative feedback regarding their innovation activities? In this chapter, the authors reconcile contradictory predictions stemming from behavioral learning and from the escalation of commitment (EoC) perspectives regarding persistence under negative performance feedback. The authors core argument suggests that the seemingly contradictory psychological processes indicated by these two perspectives occur simultaneously in decision makers but that the design of organizational roles and reward systems affects their prevalence in decision-making tasks. Specifically, the authors argue that for decision makers responsible for an individual project, responses given to negative performance feedback regarding a project are dominated by self-justification and loss-avoidance mechanisms predicted by the EoC literature, while for decision makers responsible for a portfolio of projects, responses to negative performance regarding a project are dominated by an under-sampling of poorly performing alternatives that behavioral learning theory predicts. In addition to assigning decision-making authority to different organizational roles, organizational designers shape the strength of these mechanisms through the design of reward systems and specifically by setting more or less ambiguous goals, aspiration levels, time horizons of incentives provided, and levels of failure tolerance.

Behavioral theory of the firm explanations for organizational risk-taking have largely considered the direct effect of performance feedback. However, the consequences of performance feedback on how organizations address risky opportunities have remained unexplored. To address this gap, I first discuss the effect of the two attributes characterizing risky opportunities magnitude of potential gains/losses and probability of success/failure), and then propose that these effects are conditional on two dimensions of performance feedback (performance level and deadline proximity). In particular, I show that organizational risk-taking becomes more sensitive to the magnitude of potential gains/losses attribute as performance distances from the aspiration level (both below and above the aspiration level), and less so to the probability of success/failure attribute as performance improves above the aspiration level; I further show that as the deadline to meet the goal approaches, organizational risk-taking becomes less sensitive to the two attributes characterizing the risky opportunity and more so to the current level of performance. In a nutshell, my results show that the attributes characterizing risky opportunities affect organizational risk-taking, and that these effects are conditional on performance level and deadline proximity. I test my hypotheses analyzing 26,514 fourth-downs decisions from the National Football League between seasons 2009-16.

Problemistic search theory, with its roots in the Carnegie School tradition, describes a behaviorally plausible process by which firms learn from performance feedback. A firm’s recognition of performance below aspirations leads to search for a solution to the problem, resulting in change intended to restore performance to the aspired level. The concept of problemistic search has diffused broadly in the management literature—it is a central theoretical concept in a broad variety of organizational theories and an important explanation of a wide variety of organizational behaviors and outcomes. We review the literature and argue that the development of the theory has not kept pace with the breadth of the unfolding literature. We identify six critical issues with extant research that can be traced back to a continued (over)reliance on the initial conceptualization of problemistic search. To address these issues and to revitalize research, we propose a research agenda premised on a more central role for cognition in the theory and the need for greater emphasis on a process perspective of problemistic search.

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Problemistic search theory, with its roots in the Carnegie School tradition, describes a behaviorally plausible process by which firms learn from performance feedback. A firm’s recognition of performance below aspirations leads to search for a solution to the problem, resulting in change intended to restore performance to the aspired level. The concept of problemistic search has diffused broadly in the management literature - it is a central theoretical concept in a broad variety of organizational theories, and an important explanation of a wide variety of organizational behaviors and outcomes. We review the literature and argue that the development of the theory has not kept pace with the breadth of the unfolding literature. We identify six critical issues with extant research that can be traced back to a continued (over) reliance on the initial conceptualization of problemistic search. To address these issues and to revitalize research, we propose a research agenda premised on a more central role for cognition in the theory and the need for greater emphasis on a process perspective of problemistic search.

We extend the theory of information economics to the literature on R&D alliance formation and advance research by examining the role of scientist mobility in facilitating partner selection for R&D collaborations. Specifically, we examine the role of scientist mobility in reducing information asymmetries between R&D firms, and we develop hypotheses on how R&D firms select alliance partners within high-tech industries. We suggest that the information intermediated by mobility of scientists between two potential partners privately and directly reduces information asymmetries between them, thereby helping firms access opportunities for collaboration. We demonstrate that scientist mobility will have a more pronounced effect on the likelihood that firms enter into an R&D partnership when firms lack direct knowledge about each other’s technological and other resources.

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We investigate how CEO entrepreneurial orientation affects firm value creation and how this relationship is moderated by three sources of CEO entrenchment. We conducted a longitudinal analysis of S&P 500 firms between 1999 and 2007, and, in line with our predictions, we found that CEO entrepreneurial orientation enhances firm value creation and that this positive effect is reduced when CEOs are entrenched (1) due to corporate governance provisions that protect them from the majority will of shareholders, (2) due to substantial ownership that provides them too much decision–making power, and (3) because their family has substantial holdings in the corporation.

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Resource mobilization is the process through which actors in society access resources necessary to pursue their goals. Resources in this definition can be understood as a source of supply or support that an actor can draw upon to accomplish its objectives. Mobilization refers to the process by which an actor secures access and control over the resources needed for action. This entry provides a brief overview of the resource mobilization literature and points to the central role of the concept in political science, sociology, and more recently, organization theory.

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Standards are central to many information technology (IT) applications, and the development processes for these standards play a key role in the evolution of information systems (IS). We model the development of IT standards by technology suppliers as a coevolutionary technological search process under supply-side network effects, and we examine how the characteristics of the standards development process influence its outcomes. In line with common intuition and prior research, we find that perfect coordination among suppliers generally facilitates convergence on the best available standard. However, for complex IT standards, we make a novel contribution and find that this “best available” standard may be inferior to alternative, undiscovered solutions because coordination may lead to an overly narrow search. Consistent with prior research, we also find that either highly influential organizations or highly influential alliances and consortia can coordinate standard selection in order to prevent network effects from generating lock-in to an inferior option and to help set the best of the known alternatives as the standard. However, in contrast to the previous literature, we find that when coordination is imperfect and controlled by a moderately influential organization or consortium, it may lead to a technological lock-in dynamic in which suppliers adhere to an inferior solution and are subsequently unable to reverse this commitment, even when a technologically superior alternative emerges later in the search process. Further, we reveal the following paradox involving intellectual property rights (IPR) and related imitation costs: Although imitation costs can lead to the emergence of multiple standards, thereby reducing social welfare in the short term, this effect may have long-term benefits by broadening the search for future generations of a standard.