Author Archive
More on Facebook
| Nicolai Foss |
We bloggers face strong competition from Facebook, as recognized in earlier O&M posts. FB integrates numerous functionalities, including blogging features, and allows narcissism to run amok in a more interactive fashion than blogging allows for. Irresistible. Therefore, smart bloggers embrace FB. As of today, O&M also has a category called “Facebook.”
Facebook is, of course, also an attractive hunting ground for all those ICT-obsesssed network sociologists or computer scientists-turned-sociologists (e.g., here and here) out there, as well as for personality psychologists. Concerning the latter, in the latest issue of Personality and Social Psychology Bulletin, Laura Buffardi and W. Keith Campbell report on “Narcissism and Social Networking Web Sites.” The authors conclude, among other things, that narcissists have more friends (rather, acquaintances), more personal info and more glamorous pics of themselves on FB than non-narcissists. (Now, check this profile).
Perhaps not a surprising finding, but still good to now (particularly for job applicants, given that employers now routinely check FB profiles). And surely it won’t take long before we see the first applications in network studies of the “narcissism index” as an antecedent of this or that (“Narcissism as an Antecedent of Knowledge Sharing in Networks”). Heck, they come up with a new measure every morning anyway. (more…)
The Coleman Bathtub
| Nicolai Foss |
The so-called “Coleman Bathtub” (or “boat”) is one of the most useful expository vehicles for thinking about multi-level issues in social science research. The diagram portrays macro-micro-macro relations as a sort of rhombic figure with causal relations going down from macro (e.g., institutions) to the conditions of individual actions which then give rise to individual actions that in turn aggregate up to macro outcomes. (Check the 1st chapter in James Coleman’s tome, Foundations of Social Theory).
Although the diagram is exceedingly simple, there are substantial potential issues with it, e.g., are the relations depicted in the diagram really causal relations (can macro-entities cause individual actions? Also, I am tempted to adopt the position that ontologically there really aren’t levels, just interacting social actors). Nevertheless, different levels of analysis abound in social science science research, and the Coleman bathtub is often a great eye opener, particularly for students. And I have frequently used it myself in recent research.
I just had my paper with Peter Abell (Professor of Mathematical Sociology, LSE) and Teppo Felin (you know, the orgtheory.net founder), “Building micro-foundations for the routines, capabilities, and performance links,” published in Managerial and Decision Economics. Another plug: with Dana Minbaeva, a HRM specialist in “my” research center, I have written “Governing Knowledge: The Strategic Human Resource Management Dimension.” You can find it here.
Klein Blue
| Nicolai Foss |
Behold, below, Klein Blue — Yves Klein’s famous 1959 painting.
Here is how the Tate Collection describes it:
In 1947, Klein began making monochrome paintings, which he associated with freedom from ideas of representation or personal expression. A decade later, he developed his trademark, patented colour, International Klein Blue (IKB). This colour, he believed, had a quality close to pure space, and he associated it with immaterial values beyond what can be seen or touched. He described it as ‘a Blue in itself, disengaged from all functional justification’.
In contrast to the Klein Bottle, it is two-dimensional. I will leave it to the reader to draw the parallels to Peter (but offer “disengaged from all functional justification” as a clue).
Motivation in Knowledge-Sharing Networks
| Nicolai Foss |
Knowledge-sharing networks have become a huge research subject in various fields in management. Much of this work builds from applications of the work of Mark Granovetter or Ronald Burt. It probably represent the most potent sociological impact on management research over the last decade. Even strategic management — which has traditionally been strongly influenced, even dominated, by economics — has been influenced by this research. Prominent work has been done by Hansen (e.g., here and here), Tsai (e.g., here), and Reagans and McEvily (here) (and here is an excellent related paper by Obstfeld).
Most of this work treats motivation in a somewhat indirect manner, if at all. Implicitly, individuals that are placed in similar network positions are taken to give or receive knowledge to the same extent. This need not be the case, however, as individuals need to be motivated to seize opportunities, and motivation can differ across networks and employees. However, most studies of knowledge sharing in networks abstract from the role played by motivation. This may be partly justified to the extent that a network position translates directly into motivation. However, this should be treated as an empirical issue rather than as a starting point for analysis. (more…)
Should We Regulate Branding Gurus?
| Nicolai Foss |
Ronald Coase famously argued that if one buys into utilitarian arguments for regulating “the market for goods,” it is hard to present a strong case against regulating the “market for ideas” (here).
I was reminded of Coase’s paper when I received an invitation to an “executive event” from the executive education branch of my School. The event is a presentation by “one of the world’s leading authorities on brand strategy and marketing,” Dr. Erich Joachimsthaler (here he is on Google Scholar), who will present the main messages in a new book co-authored with famous branding guru, David Aaker, Brand Leadership (I cannot locate it on Amazon, so it must be very fresh from the press). Here are some of the things that you can apparently learn from this book:
- Find new growth opportunities in plain sight that are ripe for the picking
- Optimize your existing portfolio to generate sustainable growth without relying on new products
- Innovate beyond product by creating new business models or consumer experiences
- Increase marketing spend effectiveness by directing your dollars to the most relevant aspects of consumers’ daily lives.
The first bullet is particularly lovely. Do you have to be a Chicago finance scholar to deny that there are “new growth opportunities” that are “in plain sight” and “ripe for the picking”? I doubt it. The general question is, how much over the top can you go in terms of advertising your products on the markets for ideas — and should regulators care? While I don’t think there is a general case for regulating these markets, there may exist a Pigovian case for subsidizing books such as this one.
Spawning: The Small-Firm Effect
| Nicolai Foss |
Entrepreneurs are usually dissatisfied employees from large companies who find their ideas crushed under the weight of the corporate hierarchy, right? No so, say Dan Elfenbein, Barton Hamilton and Todd Zenger in a recent (well, March 2008) paper, “The Entrepreneurial Spawning of Scientists and Engineers: Stars, Slugs, and the Small Firm Effect.” In fact, they point out, “roughly two-thirds of all entrepreneurial ventures started between 1995 and 2001 by scientists and engineers in the US, were founded by individuals employed immediately prior in firms of less than 100 employees” (p. 1). Interestingly, they also find that new ventures founded by employees coming from small firms perform better than ventures founded by employees from large firms. These small firms effects, the authors argue, are not just driven by sorting effects, but also because employees in small firms tend to acquire more entrepreneurial skills. An excellent contribution to the generally interesting spawning literature. Highly recommended. (more…)
CBS Microfoundations Conference: Knowledge and HRM
| Nicolai Foss |
As O&M readers may know I am the Director of Copenhagen Business School’s Center for Strategic Management and Globalization. As the name indicates we do SIM (strategic and international management), but with a twist: We are specifically interested in the governance dimensions of knowledge processes (knowledge sharing, integration, creation, etc.), and we are specifically interested in micro-foundations for the firm-level concepts that we routinely apply in strategic management and IB (see here for a more detailed characterization). These two themes come together in a conference organized next week (18-19 September) by Dr. Dana Minbaeva, “HRM, Knowledge Processes, and Organizational Performance: In Search of Micro-Foundations.” The papers are online, and many of them should be of potential interest to readers of O&M. I particularly recommend the paper by Joshua Tomsik, Todd Zenger and Teppo Felin (of orgtheory.net fame), “The Knowledge Economy: Emerging Organizational Forms, Micro-Foundations, and Key Human Resource Heuristics.”
| Nicolai Foss |
As you may have noticed — and as Peter points out in daily emails — my blogging activity has been rather light of late. Part of this is caused by being a department head, a task that has a notorious (and entirely correct) reputation for letting your brain rot. And part of it has been caused by the completion of some major projects.
I have , however, done the Facebook thing. FB seems to be overcoming its teenage bias, attracting more mature and normal people, such as academics. (Check the group Unlike 99.99% of the Facebook population, I was born in the 1960s). Indeed, I have noticed a very strong FB herd behavior among academics this last month, no doubt prompted by the summer vacation. Quite a number of people of interest to readers of O&M are now on FB (e.g., professors Jackson Nickerson, Nicholas Argyres, Russ Coff, and many others, including O&M’s own Peter Klein), and there are fan groups devoted to Herbert Simon, Michael Porter, Friedrich Hayek, Murray Rothbard, Ludwig Mises, etc. started by students and academics on FB.
I have also noted that fewer of academic friends and acquaintances are using Skype. I conjecture that overall blogging activity — not to mention research and writing activity — has also diminished. Possible conclusion? Blogging is becoming passé and the immediate future belongs to Facebook. Who wants article-like treatments of esoteric subjects, when they can have one-liners about going to the gym, reading, etc.?
More seriously, there are in fact blogging features on FB for those who have more to say to the world than “NN has gone kite surfing.” Indeed, FB combines the features of the homepage with the blog — and introduces even greater possibilities of ego massage than these two (e.g., it is terribly easy to upload pics).
Bridging O&M and orgtheory.net?
| Nicolai Foss |
The chaps over at orgtheory.net routinely refer to O&M as their “evil twin.” We have so far resisted this characterization (more the “twin” than the “evil” part, to be sure), but perhaps they’ve got a point. After all, O&M is heavily tainted by Austrian economics; orgtheory.net seems to subscribe to important tenets in the emerging “economic sociology”; and, as Gertraude Mikl-Horke points out in a recent paper, “Austrian Economics and Economic Sociology: Past Relations and Future Possibilities for a Socio-Economic Perspective,” AE and econ soc are closely related in a number of respects: there is a strong thematic overlap and the treatment of some key constructs (uncertainty, interpretation, dynamics . . . ) is strikingly similar. OK, admittedly, her key source for AE insights is NYU/George Mason Austrianism (think O’Driscoll and Rizzo) and more Misesian Austrians may balk at the links Mikl-Horke establishs, but at any rate this is an interesting Aufforderung zum Tanz. (more…)
Langlois and Lien Join the O&M Team — and Foss Is Back
| Nicolai Foss |
Since its inception in April 2006 Peter and I have been running this operation as a two-man show (with the help of some terrific guest bloggers). Peter has been the main man for the past several months, because of the time-consuming bureaucratic nightmares that I have been immersed in. The rumours that have been spreading about my virtual death are, however, exaggerated, and I will make a comeback attempt here at O&M.
Furthermore, while Peter and I enjoy writing about our own idiosyncratic interests, we think the time is right to broaden O&M’s scope by adding some permanent bloggers to the team. So, we’re pleased to announce that our longtime friends, collaborators, and former guest bloggers Dick Langlois and Lasse Lien have agreed to come on board.
Langlois is professor of economics at the University of Connecticut and adjunct professor of strategy and business history at the Copenhagen Business School. He writes on the theory of the firm, organizational boundaries, technology, the economics of institutions, the history of economic thought, and economic methodology.
Lien is associate professor of strategy and management at the Norwegian School of Economics and Business Administration (NHH). He works in corporate strategy with an emphasis on diversification, mergers and acquisitions, and strategic positioning.
Welcome, guys!
MDE Special Issue: Frontiers of Strategic Management Research
| Nicolai Foss |
Managerial and Decision Economics has become a favorite journal of mine. It has a strong econ orientation, to be sure, but the journal stresses econ that is relevant, readable, and right. In other words, there is lots of applied microeconomics, transaction cost economics, etc. Moreover, over the last few years MDE — presumably as a result of Margie Peteraf’s tenure as co-editor — has become very much of an econ-based strategic management journal, not like the Journal of Economics and Management Strategy, to be sure, but more economics-oriented than the Strategic Management Journal.
The most recent issue(s — issue 2 and 3 are bundled into one special issue) features a string of excellent papers under the heading “Frontiers of Strategic Management Research,” edited by Peteraf and Catherine Maritan. Several of the papers should be of interest to the O&M readership. For example, Kyle Mayer (with Janet Bercovitz) continues to work with his information technology service contracts dataset, this time looking at the influence of inertia on what contract clauses that are included in these kind of contracts. Maritan and Robert Florence engage in a nice modelling exercise, modelling strategic factor markets in a way that seems quite different from earlier attempts (e.g., by Rich Makadok). Michael Jacobides builds an interesting argument, linking foreign direct investment to the investing firm’s embeddedness in value chains in the home country and value chain conditions in the host country. And, of course, there is the usual handful of alliance articles. A great special issue. Highly recommended.
Langlois Paper on the Theory of the Firm and Austrian Economics
| Nicolai Foss |
Former O&M guest blogger Dick Langlois is IMHO one of the most original thinkers in the field of economic organization. He is also one of the best writers in management and in economics. So I try to keep track of his writings and usually succeed. However, this paper, “The Austrian Theory of the Firm: Retrospect and Prospect,” written for a conference at the George Mason Law School last May, had escaped my attention until today.
Dick develops a number of related arguments. One is that Hayek (of the 1945 essay, “The Use of Knowledge in Society”) developed richer insights in economic organization than Coase. Moreover, by pointing out the importance of dispersed knowledge, the coordination problem this raises, and the importance of “change” for “economic problems,” Hayek anticipated the capabilities theory of the firm. In a parallel argument, Dick links his own work on the capabilities theory of the firm to Austrian capital theory (see also here and here). He ends by speculating on the future of Austrian arguments in the theory of the firm, noting various manifestations, particularly in strategic management, of these arguments (he notes that “Some work in this literature is close in spirit to my own, in some cases extremely close (Jacobides and Winter 2005)” — one agrees). Definitely worth a read!
The Industry Analysis/Positioning Dominance Myth
| Nicolai Foss |
Until the advent in the mid-1980s of the resource-based view in the writings of Barney, Wernerfelt, Rumelt, etc. industry analysis and positioning ruled the roost in the strategic management, right? Many expositions of the brief history of strategic management make this claim (and I have done so myself on many occasions). There is a certain dramatic quality to the story, á la from external to internal analysis, a swinging pendulum, etc., a story of controversy between opposed positions (“Porter vs. Barney”), etc.
However, the idea of the dominance of industry analysis/positioning/market power is a complete myth says Phil Bromiley (here and in a chapter with Lee Fleming in this book). Bromiley seeks to demonstrate this by simply checking the contents of strategic management’s leading journal, the Strategic Management Journal. As he concludes, “Even a casual perusal of the tables of content of the Strategic Management Journal demonstrates that industry analysis never formed more than a small fraction of strategic management scholarship” (p. 86, in The Behavioral Foundations of Strategic Management.
However, while Bromiley certainly has a point, industry analysis may well have been dominant in teaching. And the fact remains that Porter’s 1980 tome, Competitive Strategy, is among the most cited references in strategic management.
Jeffrey Pfeffer in the Lion’s Den
| Nicolai Foss |
Management theory heavy-weight and über-econ-basher Jeffrey Pfeffer (cf. these posts) makes an appeareance in the Fall 2007 issue of . . . the Journal of Economic Perspectives — admittedly a rather “open” journal, but still one of the house journals of the American Economic Association. (more…)
Hayekian Knowledge Arguments: An Epistemic Fallacy?
| Nicolai Foss |
A small handful of papers have become highly influential in economics as well as in management and organization research. One such paper is Friedrich Hayek’s 1945 essay, “The Use of Knowledge in Society,” a paper that emerged in the context of the debate on the viability and efficiency of planned resource allocation on the societal level (i.e., socialism) that raged among academic economists in (particularly) the inter-war period. Hayek famously argued that planning confronts inherent knowledge-based constraints, and these constraints are certainly binding at a scale of activity that makes comprehensive overall management/planning of economy-wide resource allocation deeply inefficient. Many modern management thinkers have echoed this argument, arguing that “traditional” authority relations are increasingly challenged by the (increasingly) dispersed nature of knowledge.
However, at least when applied to authority in firms the Hayekian knowledge argument arguably misconstrues the nature of managerial authority, because it is based on an epistemic fallacy. (more…)
Jay Barney to Become Honorary Doctor at CBS
| Nicolai Foss |
At a ceremony on April 4., a honorary doctorate will be bestowed upon Professor Jay B Barney by the Copenhagen Business School. Jay will be in excellent company; earlier honorary doctors at CBS include Oliver Williamson and James March. (more…)
Reviewing Your Friends
| Nicolai Foss |
Sometime ago I received a request from the Academy of Management Review to review a paper that I immediately recognized, having read it in an earlier version. I informed the editor that I couldn’t do the review because I knew the identity of the authors. About a month later I met one of the authors. I told her that I had been asked to review one of her papers, but had declined, to which she replied: “You should have done the review! We would’ve liked to have that paper in the AMR.” I confess to being somewhat baffled by all the implicit assumptions in this reply (i.e., the paper was actually of good quality, I would have recommended it, etc.), but also by its flagrant disrespect for the principle or ideal of anonymity in reviewing. (more…)
More on Property Rights and Strategic Management
| Nicolai Foss |
The economics of property rights in the tradition of Ronald Coase, Armen Alchian, Harold Demsetz, Steven Cheung, Winston Bush, Eirik Furubotn, Yoram Barzel, John Umbeck, Dean Lueck and Doug Allen is a very minor voice in the conversation of strategic management scholars. Although the EPR is basically generalized micro-economics (mostly done verbally), it does employ terminology and develops insights that lie outside the domain of economics knowledge of most strategy scholars. (more…)
BYU-Utah Winter Strategy Conference
| Nicolai Foss |
The BYU-University of Utah Winter Strategy Conference 2008 ended a couple of hours ago here in Sundance. Before I embark upon my 23-hrs trip home, I offer some fresh impressions.
As usual I was struck by the difference in the overall quality level relative to comparable arrangements in Europe. I submit that it would not be possible to make a similar conference in Europe (with only Euro scholars participating). The research that was presented was top-notch, the presentation skills that were exercised were impressive (Brian Silverman should seek alternative employment as a stand-up comedian), and the organization was just perfect. Add to this the magnificent surroundings of Sundance and the result is essentially conference perfection. The only possible critique that might be raised is that there was a significant, and in IMHO excessive, diversity in terms of the subjects, research methods, etc.
In terms of the presentations some of the highlights were these: (more…)
The SMG in EMR
| Nicolai Foss |
The latest issue of the European Management Review features an article (here, scroll down to “Project Report”), “Knowledge Governance in a Dynamic Global Context: the Center for Strategic Management and Globalization at the Copenhagen Business School,” which details the history of said Center (SMG). I happen to be the Director of the SMG. The article tells a rosy story of a talented cohort of CBS PhD students whose careers followed convergent paths, eventually leading to the establishment of the SMG, and raves about the ambitions and current accomplishments of the members of the Center. Oh, did I mention that I am the author of the article?
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