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Full-Text Articles in Business
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 …
Coordination In Distributed Organizations, Kannan Srikanth
Coordination In Distributed Organizations, Kannan Srikanth
Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business
Innovative work performed in a distributed fashion does not easily lend to itself either of two classic coordination strategies - anticipatory planning or ongoing rich communication. We study how innovative work that is distributed across space and time is coordinated in global software service organizations. Our findings indicate that neither coordination by plan nor coordination by feedback play a dominant role in the coordination of distributed software services delivery. Instead, we find that the firms we studied coordinate action distributed work by relying on common ground. Common ground leads to coordinated action across locations by two means: the anticipation effect …
What They Know Vs. What They Do: How Acquirers Leverage Technology Acquisitions, Phanish Puranam, Kannan Srikanth
What They Know Vs. What They Do: How Acquirers Leverage Technology Acquisitions, Phanish Puranam, Kannan Srikanth
Research Collection Lee Kong Chian School Of Business
Existing research suggests that in acquisitions of small technology-based firms by large established firms post-merger integration both enables and hinders acquirers' efforts to leverage the technology of acquired firms. This apparent paradox can be resolved once we account for the qualitatively distinct ways in which acquirers leverage technology acquisitions. Integration helps acquirers use the acquired firm's existing knowledge as an input to their own innovation processes (leveraging what they know), but hinders their reliance on the acquired firm as an independent source of ongoing innovation (leveraging what they do). We also show that experienced acquirers are better able to mitigate …