Ennen and Richter on Complementarity

17 January 2010 at 12:12 pm Nicolai Foss Leave a comment

| Nicolai Foss |

The notion of complementarity unites a number of the key concerns of this blog: It has been central in Austrian capital theory since Menger, it is key both in (sociological) organization theory (e.g., here) and in organizational economics (e.g., here), and it is of considerable relevance to the explanation of (sustained) performance difference (e.g., here). (In organizational economics and strategic management, complementarity is usually given the specific interpretation of “Edgeworth complementarity“). Complementarity has also helped to link some of these areas (e.g., here and here).

In a paper, “The Whole is More Than the Sum of Its Parts, Or Is It? A Review of the Empirical Literature on Complementarities in Organizations,” in the most recent issue of the Journal of Management, Edgar Ennen and Ansgar Richter of the European Business perform what is probably the first stocktaking of the complementarity literature. It is very well done and in many ways an eye-opener. Of particular interest is their separation of the literature in those that take an “interaction approach,” focusing on specific interaction effects among specific (typically few) elements (e.g., of organization structure) and those that take a “systems approach” and consider the performance outcomes of entire sets of multiple elements. (My own work with Keld Laursen on complementarity falls in the latter category). Here is the abstract:

The concept of complementarity denotes the beneficial interplay of the elements of a system where the presence of one element increases the value of others. However, the conceptual work on complementarities to date has not progressed sufficiently to constitute a theory that would offer specific predictions regarding the nature of the elements that form complementary relationships or the conditions for their emergence. To advance our understanding of complementarities, the authors provide a synoptic review of the empirical studies on this concept in leading journals in management, economics, and related disciplines over the period 1988-2008. The authors find that whether a study provides evidence of complementarities in organizations is at least partially driven by its investigative approach. On the basis of the findings, the authors argue that complementarities are most likely to materialize among multiple, heterogeneous factors in complex systems. Therefore, the absence of complementary relationships between a limited set of individual factors may not negate the possibility of complementarities, but rather point to the need for including further systems-specific factors in the analysis. The authors conclude by providing directions for future theoretical and empirical research and outlining managerial implications of the work.