Posts filed under ‘Management Theory’
Motivation Workshop at CBS
| Nicolai Foss |
Today the unit that I direct at Copenhagen Business School, The Center for Strategic Management and Globalization, arranged a well-attended “Workshop on the Motivational Foundations of Knowledge Sharing.” The workshop was part of a major research project that we run at the Center, the FOKS project (i.e., Foundations of Knowledge Sharing: Behaviors and Governance). It was organized by my very able PhD student, Mia Reinholt.
We were lucky to have two of the most profound thinkers on motivation in psychology and economics giving keynote speeches, namely Edward Deci and Bruno Frey. (more…)
What’s So Great About Tacit Knowledge?
| Peter Klein |
The knowledge management and capabilities literatures are in love — in love with tacit knowledge. Managing tacit knowledge, leveraging tacit knowledge, growing tacit knowledge — these are seen as the keys to achieving sustained competitive advantage. Economists, too, have gotten into the act, asking how incentive plans and the allocation of decision rights affects employees’ use of dispersed, specific knowledge. And, of course, F. A. Hayek’s analysis of socialism is built on the notion that centralized systems without markets and prices cannot make effective use of tacit knowledge.
But is tacit knowledge always “better” — more correct — than explicit knowledge? The knowledge management and capabilities literatures seem to take this for granted. And yet, a growing body of evidence on behavioral anomalies suggests that cognitive biases and heuristics can render individual judgments unreliable.
This came to my mind when reading Alex Tabarrok’s recent comments on the surprisingly primitive practice of medicine (here and here). (more…)
The Costs of Family Succession in Firms
| Peter Klein |
Interesting new paper shows that keeping senior management positions within the family reduces firm performance:
Inside the Family Firm: The Role of Families in Succession Decisions and Performance, by Morten Bennedsen, Kasper M. Nielsen, Francisco Pérez-González, Daniel Wolfenzon
This paper uses a unique dataset from Denmark to investigate the impact of family characteristics in corporate decision making and the consequences of these decisions on firm performance. We focus on the decision to appoint either a family or external chief executive officer (CEO). The paper uses variation in CEO succession decisions that result from the gender of a departing CEO’s firstborn child. This is a plausible instrumental variable (IV), as male first-child firms are more likely to pass on control to a family CEO than are female first-child firms, but the gender of the first child is unlikely to affect firms’ outcomes. We find that family successions have a large negative causal impact on firm performance: operating profitability on assets falls by at least four percentage points around CEO transitions. . . . Overall, our empirical results demonstrate that professional, non-family CEOs provide extremely valuable services to the organizations they head.
The instrumental-variables technique reminds me of another paper on the value of top management that exploits a different source of exogenous variation in succession patterns: death. (more…)
Pomo Periscope I: “Economics and Narrative Form”
| Nicolai Foss |
Here at O&M we try to keep a keen eye on pomo tendencies in economics and management (e.g., here, here and here). Indeed, we do this with such frequency that we, as of this post, will have a regularly occurring feature — The Pomo Periscope.
We kick off by letting the Periscope zoom in on a “Call for Papers on Proposed Panel on Economics and Narrative Form, Society for the Study of Narrative Literature, Georgetown, 03/07.” Here is the full call: (more…)
Interview with James March
| Peter Klein |
The October 2006 Harvard Business Review features an interview with James March, one of the most important organizational theorists of the twentieth century. Here’s an online version (possibly behind a subscription firewall). Here’s a summary from the Jackson Library Blog (which I’m finding more and more useful all the time):
The article is called ‘Ideas as Art’ (pp. 82-89). In the introductory part, the author quotes the University of Chicago professor John Padgett who once wrote: “Jim March is to organization theory what Miles Davis is to jazz.” In the interview, March elaborates on the distinction he makes between the practical managerial needs and concerns and scholarly approach to new ideas. He values ideas which contain “some form of elegance or grace or surprise — all the things that beauty gives you” and not being relevant to the immediate needs of an organization manager in a short run. He also explains the essence of his rather famous and colorfully named theories: “garbage can theory”, “technology of foolishness”, and “hot-stove effect”. The interview reveals not only a great and original scholar but also the multifaceted personality of Jim March, a man with appreciation for literature, a poet himself and an author of several books of poetry. In his own words: “What might make a difference to us, I think, is whether in our tiny roles, in our brief time, we inhabit life gently and add more beauty than ugliness.”
Aside from being a brilliant and original thinker, March is also one of the funniest people I have ever met, a brilliant after-dinner speaker who has as many Wisconsin jokes as Garrison Keillor has Minnesota jokes.
Here’s a longer interview from 2000 by Mie Augier and Kristian Kreiner.
Bill Starbuck’s New Book
| Nicolai Foss |
Omar at orgtheory.net dismisses critical discussions of the institutions of publishing social science research as “jeremiads” (see here), that is, “moralistic texts that denounce a society for its wickedness” (Wikipedia), typically written — but by no means always — by old, grumpy men. In contrast, Omar has great faith in the efficiency of these institutions (see the exchanges between my co-blogger and Omar here).
Although Bill Starbuck isn’t young any more, and there no doubt is a certain jeremiad-like quality to his misgivings about research practice in the social sciences, I submit that even Omar stands to benefit from reading Starbuck’s new opus, The Production of Knowledge: The Challenge of Social Science Research. Clearly, Omar has considerable experience with the institutions of publishing, and Bill Starbuck has only been the editor of Administrative Science Quarterly, but there may still be a thing or two to learn. Here is the book’s blurb: (more…)
Does Transaction Cost Economics Need Opportunism?
| Peter Klein |
During a recent discussion of transaction cost economics a commentator asked: “I am always puzzled by why we need opportunism when we have individuals pursuing their self-interests as a postulate.” Opportunism, of course, is Oliver Williamson’s concept of “self-interest seeking with guile.” In a world of opportunism individuals cannot be assumed to keep their promises, to fulfil their obligations, and to respect the interests of their trading partners unless “safeguards” are in place. The task of economic organization, in Williamson’s terms, is to “organize transactions so as to economize on bounded rationality while simultaneously safeguarding them against the hazards of opportunism.”
But is opportunism just another word for self-interest? Neither Klein, Crawford, and Alchian (1978) nor Grossman and Hart (1986) nor Baker, Gibbons, and Murphy (2002) nor other contemporary treatments of the economic theory of the firm invoke the concept of opportunism. Instead, they rely simply on the economists’ usual notion of self-interested, maximizing behavior. What, then, is the point of introducing opportunism? (more…)
Reflexivity Bleg
| Nicolai Foss |
While we can all agree that ideas matter, how much do they matter? Is much, and perhaps most, of social reality essentially bootstrap phenomena in which the Thomas Theorem (i.e., the “the situations that men define as true, become true for them”) holds true? Do the social sciences bootstrap much of social reality in the sense that social science decisively affects the agents that social scientists study? Or, are there constants, stable mechanisms, etc. that exist and work regardless of what social scientists believe about them (as, I suppose, many economists would hold)?
The idea that theorizing affects the objects of theorizing — that is, the notion of “reflexivity” — has been an important one in sociology for a long time (Thomas wrote about it in the 1920s; Merton in the 1940s). It has become a Leitmotiv in the sociology of knowledge. It has also been a recurring theme in economics (in connection with predictions and the modeling of expectations; e.g., the debate surrounding the Lucas critique), and it has been treated by philosophers as well (e.g. Popper). However, this literature has not discussed the extent to which reflexivity (in the above sense) obtains.
The issue is obviously very difficult to get a hold on. However, I also believe it is a crucial one, particularly in management where we have recently witnessed people essentially arguing that economics-as-applied to management is (nothing but?) a self-fulfilling prophecy (i.e., this paper). So, do any of our readers know of literature that can help to frame and answer the questions with which this bleg began?
Bob Sutton Responds
A response, of sorts, to my post on Evidence-Based Management by EBM co-founder Bob Sutton:
Perhaps the term is doesn’t do much for you, but evidence-based decisions and implementations are the exception rather than the rule. It may sounds obvious, but few managers are masters of the obvious. It may sound like common sense, but common sense is in fact uncommon. I travel back and forth between the academic and management worlds, and evidence-based practice is rare — faith-based management is a lot more common and so are management decisions based on dangerous and powerful cognitive biases. Indeed, if you look at some of the work that Kahneman won the Nobel Prize for, you will see that humans in fact have trouble spotting and responding to accurate patterns. Look at the bad merger decisions that are made over and over again. Look at the belief in creating big gaps between the best and worst paid employees despite a huge pile of data showing that the opposite is true. Sorry if it seems trite, but like evidence-based medicine, it sounds trite until it is your money — or your life — that is on the line. People also laugh when I tell them that only about 15 to 20% of medical decisions are based on evidence — until they think of what it means for them and those they love.
I submit that, if the term bewilders and you believe that “What other kind of management is there?” it is a sign that you have no idea how most managers do their work, nor do you understand how most human beings make decisions. Start by reading Max Bazerman’s book on managerial decision-making.
This deserves a full-length rejoinder, but for now a few brief remarks will have to suffice. (more…)
Ghoshal on Economics — Cont’d
| Nicolai Foss |
Frequent readers of this blog will know that we have often posted on the bashing of economics that is going on in the management field (e.g., here and here). The bashing has been cumulating lately. A recent high point of management econ-bashing is the conferment of the AoM Prize for best paper in Academy of Management Review to Ferraro, Pfeffer, and Sutton’s adaptation of extreme and unqualified sociology of knowledge arguments in their “Economics Language and Assumptions: How Theories Can Become Self-Fulfilling.” (more…)
Bounded Rationality and Paternalism Redux
| Peter Klein |
John Cassidy’s New Yorker article on neuroeconomics, and his (and Colin Camerer’s) use of behavioral anomalies to justify paternalistic social policy, has provoked many strong responses. The latest is “Neuro Wine in Old Bottles” by Will Wilkinson, which concludes:
New findings in brain science will certainly help us to improve the technologies of Reason. But our freedom is perhaps the most important of those technologies. So before we get carried away with exciting brain-based arguments for paternalism and regulation, we should remember that it’s not rational, in any sense of the word, to burn the ladder you’re climbing.
NB: Robert Fogel says that economists, too, suffer from cognitive bias — they are too pessimistic. Understandable, given that the economist’s usual role is to correct for foolish optimism, or what Sowell calls the “unconstrained vision.” (Thanks to Bryan Caplan and Russ Roberts for the links.)
MBA Students and Math
| Peter Klein |
My friend and former colleague Dwight Lee, along with Richard McKenzie, has produced a new textbook, Microeconomics for MBAs: The Economic Way of Thinking for Managers (Cambridge University Press, 2006). Lee and McKenzie have written more books than I’ve read (or colored) and, like all their books, Microeconomics for Managers is a delight — lively and engaging while also systematic, learned, and useful. I’ve been using Brickley, Smith, and Zimmerman’s Managerial Economics and Organizational Architecture for several years and have been quite satisfied, but am considering switching to McKenzie and Lee.
I noticed this plug in the dust-jacket blurb: “This is the first textbook in microeconomics written exclusively for MBA students. McKenzie/Lee minimizes attention to mathematics and maximizes attention to intuitive economic thinking.” I’ve taught undergraduates, MBAs, and PhD students, and haven’t noticed MBA students being more troubled by math than anyone else. Clearly many managerial economics texts, at any level, overemphasize technique over intuition and application. But many MBAs — especially those with an engineering background, which seems to be an increasing number — may actually prefer more math to less. Just a thought.
27 September 2006 at 11:17 am Peter G. Klein Leave a comment
Call for Papers — Special Issue of Human Resource Management
| Nicolai Foss |
With my CBS colleague Dr. Dana Minbaeva and Professor Scott Snell from the School of Industrial and Labor Relations, Cornell University, I will be editing a special issue of the HRM field’s flagship journal, Human Resource Management (!), published by the UMichigan Business School. Here is the Call for Papers.
The subject of this special issue is “Human Resource Management and Knowledge Processes.” The aim is to build theory and conduct empirical work relating to how human resource management practices influence the sharing, building and integration of knowledge in firms. How “people” (and the organizational framework they interact in, including HRM practices) may contribute to the creation of competitive advantage is an increasingly important issue in strategic management. It is also a subject that transaction cost scholars should potentially be able to contribute significantly to. We hope to receive contributions from not only “traditional” HRM scholars but also from strategic management and other scholars with an interest in these issues.
To stimulate interest in the special issue, my Center organized a two-day workshop last week. The program and most of the papers are here.
Evidence That Demands A Verdict
| Peter Klein |
The first time I heard the term evidence-based management I was bewildered. What other kind of management is there? Faith-based management? A priori, praxeological, apodicticly certain management? The concept seems empty and trite, akin to “faith-based religion” or “water-based boating.”
Imagine my surprise to discover that evidence-based management (EBM) is an established approach, or school of thought, in management theory. Its major proponents, Stanford’s Jeffrey Pfeffer and Robert Sutton, write that EBM “means finding the best evidence that you can, facing those facts, and acting on those facts — rather than doing what everyone else does, what you have always done, or what you thought was true.” Hard to disagree with that. But can this be said to constitute a theory? A conceptual approach? A movement?
Evidence-based management is certainly a catchy phrase, generating a Harvard University Press book and articles in such journals as the Academy of Management Review and Harvard Business Review. Nice work if you can get it!
Economics and Sociology: Gains from Trade?
| Peter Klein |
Indiana University’s Fabio Rojas, who blogs at orgtheory.net, has an interesting paper, “Economics and Sociology: What are the Gains of Trade?,” forthcoming in Geoff Hodgson’s Journal of Institutional Economics. A review and critique of contemporary economic sociology, the paper points out that “research findings and theoretical developments [in economic sociology] are rarely reconciled or integrated with economic research.” Moreover, the critics tend to deal with a stylized, and rather stale, caricature of neoclassical economics, rather than the best work in modern organizational economics, Austrian or evolutionary economics, or the newer strand of behavioral research (a point made repeatedly on these pages). A good read.
14 September 2006 at 12:30 am Peter G. Klein Leave a comment
Mises’s Bureaucracy
| David Gordon |
Mises’s Bureaucracy (1944) is seldom cited, at least by comparison with Human Action and Socialism; but it presents some of his key insights better than anywhere else. Mises contrasts profit-and-loss management with bureaucratic management.
A businessman can always tell how well a section of his enterprise is doing by looking at the profit-and-loss accounts. If a section shows a loss, this fact doesn’t by itself enable him to locate the problem; but at least he is aware that something needs to be done.
Government bureaucracies, by contrast, do not produce goods or services for profit. Lacking the tool of profit-and-loss accounts, they instead must operate according to fixed rules. The well-known failings of bureaucracies, according to Mises, do not primarily stem from deficiencies of character in the government personnel. Rather, resort to fixed rules makes bureaucracies much less flexible than profit-seeking businesses. (Mises’s views on bureaucracy were influenced by his friend Max Weber.)
Mises does not think that attempts to introduce business methods into government can succeed, and he deplores the bad effects of government regulations on private enterprise. These regulations interfere with profit-and-loss accounting.
Bureaucracy is available at the Mises Institute website.
“Coase and Simon Got It Right, Alchian and Demsetz Got It Wrong”
| Peter Klein |
A reader asks: “In a response to a prominent economist who asked ‘what have we learned about . . . organizations,’ you provided a list that began with ‘Organizations can have market-like features, but are inherently different from markets. I.e., authority is real — Coase and Simon got it right, Alchian and Demsetz got it wrong.’ What are the major papers that led to this conclusion?”
I have in mind the Alchian-Demsetz notion that the firm is a legal fiction, a convenient label for a nexus of contracts. (Recall the famous passage in their 1972 paper about “firing the grocer.”) Classic formulations of the opposite view — that the firm does, in fact, have some power of fiat — come from the two Olivers, Williamson and Hart. (more…)
The Treatment of Frequency in Transaction Cost Economics
| Peter Klein |
Every schoolboy knows that transactions are characterized by asset specificity, uncertainty, and frequency. (Every schoolboy schooled in transaction cost economics that is.) Yet, while asset specificity and uncertainty have been treated exhaustively in the literature, frequency has become the red-headed stepchild of the transaction cost triple.
As I read the TCE literature, frequency shows up in at least three distinct forms, not all of them compatible. (more…)
Measuring Organizational Form
| Peter Klein |
A reader, inspired by our discussion on organizational form, asks for references to empirical papers relating organizational form to performance. My suggestions:
1. The literature from the 1970s and 1980s on the “M-form hypothesis.” The classification scheme is described in Williamson and Bhargava, “Assessing and Classifying the Internal Control Apparatus of the Modern Corporation,” in Keith Cowling, ed., Market Structure and Corporate Behavior (London: Gray Mills, 1972). Empirical papers (you’ll have to Google them) include Armour and Teece (1978), Steer and Cable (1978), Teece (1981), Thompson (1981), Harris (1983), Cable and Dirrheimer (1983), Cable and Yasuki (1984), and Hill (1985). I’m currently working on a paper revisiting these data using some updated techniques.
2. The “diversification discount” literature in empirical corporate finance. This literature is about organizational form to the extent that organizational form is correlated with the number of industry segments, the distribution of activities across industries, or some measure of relatedness. (Among the many papers in this literature, the best known are Lang and Stulz, 1994; Berger and Ofek, 1995; Campa and Kedia, 2003, Chevalier, 2004). A few papers try to infer organizational form from past activities, such as prior acquisitions (Hubbard and Palia, 1999; Klein, 2001).
3. More direct measures include segment or subsidiary counts within a single industry (Klein and Saidenberg, 2005, Sanzhar, 2006), the ratio of administrative staff to total employees (Zhang, 2005), the number of positions reporting directly to the CEO (Rajan and Wulf, 2003), and the average number of management levels between the CEO and division managers (Rajan and Wulf, 2003).
This will all be discussed in more detail in the magnum opus.
The Corporation versus Tom Cruise
| Peter Klein |
Hollywood studios are standing up to eccentric, pampered stars like Tom Cruise and Lindsay Lohan. At last, says Professor Bainbridge, corporate studios are acting like corporations. “Once again, the public corporation and its norm of shareholder wealth maximization prove to be a force for good.” (Prof. B. is not a fan of stakeholder theory, if you didn’t know.)
On the other hand, if the dependent variable is individual film revenues, rather than film studio market value, the presence (and presumably behavior) of particular stars seems to have little impact on performance. So says Art DeVany (via Marginal Revolution).
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