How do companies' managers develop their capabilities by leveraging lessons learned from prior experiences? What sources of knowledge do they rely on to make sense of the events the firm experienced? How firms learn from their experience has been the topic of a vast...
Management Insights
“WHERE DID THAT COME FROM?!” UNDERSTANDING NON-STRATEGIC INSTITUTIONAL CHANGE
Motivation History offers numerous examples of change that seems to appear out of nowhere, often going unnoticed until it has a surprising and significant impact. Unfortunately, this impact can sometimes be devastating, as in the case of NASA’s tragic Challenger...
Fathers welcome, fathering not so much
In 2018, before the advent of Covid-19, James Bond (aka Daniel Craig), was photographed on a New York street holding his baby daughter close to his body in a baby carrier or ‘papoose’. Although ‘Agent Bond’ was plainly off duty, sleep deprived and sporting...
How participation in strategy making undermines participation – Three take-aways on widening participation in strategy making
Increasingly, organizations open up their strategy processes to include employees that have previously been excluded from strategy making. Crowds, communities but also frontline employees are invited to participate in strategy making to gain new insights and to...
Do you like the taste of fine dining? Behind those doors, it’s a different world…
In The Lord of the Flies, William Golding tells a story about a group of boys stranded on a tropical island. It is not a story about collaboration, comradeship and survival in the face of adversity. Instead, Golding’s novel is about the boys’ decent into lawlessness...
Why female representation reduces the vocal masculinity bias in board decision-making
Recent research suggests that deep masculine voices may benefit men in leadership positions. However, how this phenomenon plays out at the top of the organization is largely unexplored. In our research, published in the Journal of Management Studies, we find that CEO...
The business case for Corporate Social Responsibility – Is it dead? And can we do research into more meaningful directions?
Corporate Social Responsibility (CSR) research has over the past 15 years been transformed from an “embryonic concept” (McWilliam, Siegel & Wright, 2006, p. 15) into a mainstream topic of interest by management and organization scholars, and it is firmly embedded...
Post-Acquisition Integration: Speak Softly and Carry a Big Stick?
Over the past few decades, mergers and acquisitions (M&As) have become increasingly important for organizations competing in a global marketplace and they are considered as one of firms’ key strategic decisions. Yet, most M&As fail and often greatly. In our...
Your Social Class in Childhood Can Influence Your Chances of Being Seen as a Leader
As companies increasingly rely on flatter and leaner structures, emerging as an informal leader on a team is often a gateway for ascending the corporate ladder. Given these wide-ranging effects, we examined how social class affects a critical process in today's...
Why Adopting Local Practices Doesn’t Always Help MNEs Overcome their Liability of Foreignness
Facing a Liability of Foreignness: Is Blending in Enough? Many foreign MNEs abroad face a disadvantage – a liability of foreignness (LOF) – vis-à-vis their local equivalents. This often comes from the additional challenges of transferring and adapting what works well...