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Efficacy Of R&D Work In Offshore Captive Centers: An Empirical Study Of Task Characteristics, Coordination Mechanisms, And Performance, Deepa Mani, Kannan Srikanth, Anandhi Bharadwaj
Efficacy Of R&D Work In Offshore Captive Centers: An Empirical Study Of Task Characteristics, Coordination Mechanisms, And Performance, Deepa Mani, Kannan Srikanth, Anandhi Bharadwaj
Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business
Seizing the latest technological advances in distributed work, an increasing number of firms have set up offshore captive centers (CCs) in emerging economies to carry out sophisticated R&D work. We analyse survey data from 132 R&D CCs established by foreign multinational companies in India to understand how firms execute distributed innovative work. Specifically, we examine the performance outcomes of projects using different technology-enabled coordination strategies to manage their interdependencies across multiple locations. We find that modularization of work across locations is largely ineffective when the underlying tasks are less routinized, less analyzable, and less familiar to the CC. Coordination based …
Coordinated Exploration: Organizing Joint Search By Multiple Specialists To Overcome Mutual Confusion And Joint Myopia, Thorbjørn Knudsen, Kannan Srikanth
Coordinated Exploration: Organizing Joint Search By Multiple Specialists To Overcome Mutual Confusion And Joint Myopia, Thorbjørn Knudsen, Kannan Srikanth
Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business
In this paper, we use an agent-based simulation model to investigate how coordinated exploration by multiple specialists, as in new product development, is different from individual search. We find that coordinated exploration is subject to two pathologies not present in unitary search: mutual confusion and joint myopia. In joint search, feedback to one agent’s actions is confounded by the actions of the other agent. Search therefore leads to increasing mutual confusion because agents are unable to learn from feedback to correct their faulty mental models of the search space. Incorrect beliefs held by one agent lead to mistakes, and because …
Firm As A Coordination System: Evidence From Offshore Software Services, Kannan Srikanth, Phanish Puranam
Firm As A Coordination System: Evidence From Offshore Software Services, Kannan Srikanth, Phanish Puranam
Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business
To examine what, if any, are the differences in how activities are coordinated within versus between firms, we conducted interviews with 32 project managers regarding 60 projects in the offshore software services industry. Uniquely, our projects were sampled along two dimensions: (1) colocation versus spatial distribution and (2) delivery by groups of individuals from a single firm versus from multiple firms. Our evidence suggests that in colocated projects, the same broad categories of coordination mechanisms are used both within and between firms. However, there is a qualitative difference in how geographically (i.e., spatially) distributed projects are coordinated within versus between …