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Articles 1 - 21 of 21
Full-Text Articles in Business
The Ambivalent Effect Of Complexity On Firm Performance: A Study In The Global Service Provider Industry, Marcus M. Larsen, Stephan Manning, Torben Pedersen
The Ambivalent Effect Of Complexity On Firm Performance: A Study In The Global Service Provider Industry, Marcus M. Larsen, Stephan Manning, Torben Pedersen
Management and Marketing Faculty Publication Series
Prior literature is ambivalent about whether organizational complexity has positive or negative effects on firm performance. Using rich data on global service providers, we explore this ambivalence by disentangling performance consequences of different types of organizational complexity. We show that complexity arising from the coordination of different services and operations negatively influences profit margins through increased coordination costs, whereas complexity coming from the sophistication of particular services may positively influence margins through informational advantages. We also investigate the moderating effects of process commoditization and client-specific investments. Our findings point to critical performance dilemmas facing global service providers in a highly …
Gender Inclusion Activities In Entrepreneurship Ecosystems: The Case Of St. Louis, Mo And Boston, Ma, Banu Ozkazanc-Pan, Karren Knowlton, Susan Clark Muntean
Gender Inclusion Activities In Entrepreneurship Ecosystems: The Case Of St. Louis, Mo And Boston, Ma, Banu Ozkazanc-Pan, Karren Knowlton, Susan Clark Muntean
Management and Marketing Faculty Publication Series
Women-owned businesses have an economic impact of nearly $3 trillion in the U.S. Despite the tremendous opportunity for economic growth they present, women entrepreneurs lag behind their male counterparts in terms of number of start-ups and scaling of businesses. To understand how and why this may be taking shape, we focus on the role of entrepreneur support organizations (ESOs) or those organizations that act as intermediaries between the resources of a local ecosystem and entrepreneurs. All organizations that have as their proverbial mission to serve, support or partner with entrepreneurs can be categorized as ESOs. Given their role as decision …
Africa Business Research As A Laboratory For Theory-Building: Extreme Conditions, New Phenomena And Alternative Paradigms Of Social Relationships, Helena Barnard, Alvaro Cuervo-Cazurra, Stephan Manning
Africa Business Research As A Laboratory For Theory-Building: Extreme Conditions, New Phenomena And Alternative Paradigms Of Social Relationships, Helena Barnard, Alvaro Cuervo-Cazurra, Stephan Manning
Management and Marketing Faculty Publication Series
Africa is an increasingly important business context, yet we still know very little about it. We review the challenges and opportunities that firms in Africa face and propose that these can serve as the basis for extending current theories and models of the firm. We do so by challenging some of the implicit assumptions and stereotypes on firms in Africa and proposing three avenues for extending theories. One is taking the extreme conditions of some Africa countries and using them as a laboratory for modifying current theories and models of the firm, as we illustrate in the case of institutional …
The Rise Of Project Network Organizations: Building Core Teams And Flexible Partner Pools For Interorganizational Projects, Stephan Manning
The Rise Of Project Network Organizations: Building Core Teams And Flexible Partner Pools For Interorganizational Projects, Stephan Manning
Management and Marketing Faculty Publication Series
This study shifts attention from project-based firms (PBFs) to project network organizations (PNOs) as increasingly important interorganizational contexts of project collaboration. As a result of organizational specialization, PNOs have emerged as generic organizational forms combining the coordination capacity of PBFs with the resource richness of networks. PNOs connect legally independent, yet often operationally interdependent individuals and organizations in strategically coordinated sets of core project teams and flexible partner pools that sustain beyond singular projects. Based on an empirical review of PNOs in film, event organizing, construction, complex product and system development, research, open innovation and international development, core features, antecedents …
The Strategic Potential Of Community-Based Hybrid Models: The Case Of Global Business Services In Africa, Stephan Manning, Chacko G. Kannothra, Nichole K. Wissman-Weber
The Strategic Potential Of Community-Based Hybrid Models: The Case Of Global Business Services In Africa, Stephan Manning, Chacko G. Kannothra, Nichole K. Wissman-Weber
Management and Marketing Faculty Publication Series
As a latecomer economy, Africa faces persistent difficulties with catching up in global markets. This study examines the strategic potential of community-based hybrid models, which balance market profitability with social impact in local communities. Focusing on the global business services industry in Kenya and South Africa, and the practice of ‘impact sourcing’ – hiring and training of disadvantaged staff servicing business clients – we find that while regular providers struggle to compete with global peers, hybrid model adopters manage to access underutilized labor pools through community organizations, and target less competitive niche client markets. We further identify key industry, institutional …
How Hybrids Manage Growth And Social-Business Tensions In Global Supply Chains: The Case Of Impact Sourcing, Chacko G. Kannothra, Stephan Manning, Nardia Haigh
How Hybrids Manage Growth And Social-Business Tensions In Global Supply Chains: The Case Of Impact Sourcing, Chacko G. Kannothra, Stephan Manning, Nardia Haigh
Management and Marketing Faculty Publication Series
This study contributes to the growing interest in how hybrid organizations manage paradoxical social—business tensions. Our empirical case is ‘impact sourcing’ – hybrids in global supply chains that hire staff from disadvantaged communities to provide services to business clients. We identify two major growth orientations - ‘community-focused’ and ‘client-focused’ growth - their inherent tensions and ways that hybrids manage them. The former favors slow growth and manages tensions through highly-integrated client and community relations; the latter promotes faster growth and manages client and community relations separately. Both growth orientations address social-business tensions in particular ways, but also create latent constraints …
Convincing The Crowd: Entrepreneurial Storytelling In Crowdfunding Campaigns, Stephan Manning, Thomas A. Bejarano
Convincing The Crowd: Entrepreneurial Storytelling In Crowdfunding Campaigns, Stephan Manning, Thomas A. Bejarano
Management and Marketing Faculty Publication Series
This study examines the structure of entrepreneurial stories in pursuit of mobilizing resources from crowds. Based on a comparative analysis of Kickstarter crowdfunding campaigns, we examine in particular how, across different project types, project histories and potential futures are framed and interlinked in narratives to appeal to funders. We find that projects are narrated in different styles – as ‘ongoing journeys’ or ‘results-in-progress’ – to convey project value. The former style narrates projects as longer-term endeavors powered by creative initial ideas and a bold vision, inviting audiences to ‘join the journey’; the latter narrates projects more narrowly as a progression …
A Modular Governance Architecture In-The-Making: How Transnational Standard-Setters Govern Sustainability Transitions, Stephan Manning, Juliane Reinecke
A Modular Governance Architecture In-The-Making: How Transnational Standard-Setters Govern Sustainability Transitions, Stephan Manning, Juliane Reinecke
Management and Marketing Faculty Publication Series
Sustainability transitions have been studied as complex multi-level processes, but we still know relatively little about how they can be effectively governed, especially in transnational domains. Governance of transitions is often constrained by the equivocality of sustainability goals, the idiosyncrasy of niche experiments and the multiplicity of governance actors and interests. We study the role of transnational standard-setters in mitigating these challenges and governing sustainability transitions within a transnational sector. Our case is the global coffee sector where ‘sustainability standards’ are increasingly being adopted. We find that the emergence of a ‘modular governance architecture’ has helped diverse and heterogeneous actors …
The Formation Of Cross-Sector Development Partnerships: How Bridging Agents Shape Project Agendas And Longer-Term Alliances, Stephan Manning, Daniel Roessler
The Formation Of Cross-Sector Development Partnerships: How Bridging Agents Shape Project Agendas And Longer-Term Alliances, Stephan Manning, Daniel Roessler
Management and Marketing Faculty Publication Series
Cross-sector development partnerships (CSDPs) are project-based collaborative arrangements between business, government, and civil society organizations in support of international development goals such as sustainability, health education, and economic development. Focusing on public private partnerships in development cooperation, we examine different constellations of bridging agents and their effects in the formation of single CSDP projects and longer-term alliances. We conceptualize bridging agency as a collective process involving both internal partner representatives and external intermediaries in initiating and/or supporting roles. We find that the involvement of external intermediaries eases the formation of single projects and longer-term alliances. However, when projects are initiated …
Mitigate, Tolerate Or Relocate? Offshoring Challenges, Strategic Imperatives And Resource Constraints, Stephan Manning
Mitigate, Tolerate Or Relocate? Offshoring Challenges, Strategic Imperatives And Resource Constraints, Stephan Manning
Management and Marketing Faculty Publication Series
This paper examines key firm-level factors influencing initial strategic responses to offshoring implementation challenges. Comparative case findings indicate that firms are likely to try to mitigate challenges if they perceive to have control over their cause; if strategic objectives are diverse; and if firms have abundant resources available. By comparison, firms tolerate challenges if cost is a strategic imperative, or if resource endowments are limited. Firms relocate operations temporarily or permanently in particular if challenges are externally caused, whereby temporary relocation requires investments into flexible global infrastructures. Findings reveal critical contingencies of capability development and learning in offshoring and beyond.
Emerging Capability Or Continuous Challenge? Relocating Knowledge Work And Managing Process Interfaces, Stephan Manning, Thomas Hutzschenreuter, Alexander Strathmann
Emerging Capability Or Continuous Challenge? Relocating Knowledge Work And Managing Process Interfaces, Stephan Manning, Thomas Hutzschenreuter, Alexander Strathmann
Management and Marketing Faculty Publication Series
This study examines interface management as a dynamic organizational capability supporting an increasing global distribution of knowledge work, based on an in-depth case of an automotive supplier. We show how local responses to experiences of task and interface ambiguity following the relocation of R&D processes may lead to a shift of organizational attention from ex-ante process design to continuous process and interface management. Findings suggest that flexible interface manager positions and partnership structures across locations facilitate local experimentation with effective transfer and handling of ambiguous and partially tacit tasks. This enhances the firm’s capacity to distribute an increasing variety of …
New Silicon Valleys Or A New Species? Commoditization Of Knowledge Work And The Rise Of Knowledge Services Clusters, Stephan Manning
New Silicon Valleys Or A New Species? Commoditization Of Knowledge Work And The Rise Of Knowledge Services Clusters, Stephan Manning
Management and Marketing Faculty Publication Series
This paper explores knowledge services clusters (KSCs) as a distinct and increasingly important form of geographic cluster, in particular in emerging economies: KSCs are defined as geographic concentrations of lower-cost skills serving global demand for increasingly commoditized knowledge services. Based on prior research on clusters and services offshoring, and data from the Offshoring Research Network (ORN), major properties and contingencies of KSC growth are discussed and compared with both high-tech clusters and low-cost manufacturing clusters. Special emphasis is put on the ambivalent effect of commoditization of knowledge work on KSC growth: It is proposed that KSCs attract most projects if …
National Contexts Matter: The Co-Evolution Of Sustainability Standards In Global Value Chains, Stephan Manning, Frank Boons, Oliver Von Hagen, Juliane Reinecke
National Contexts Matter: The Co-Evolution Of Sustainability Standards In Global Value Chains, Stephan Manning, Frank Boons, Oliver Von Hagen, Juliane Reinecke
Management and Marketing Faculty Publication Series
In this paper, we investigate the role of key industry and other stakeholders and their embeddedness in particular national contexts in driving the proliferation and co-evolution of sustainability standards, based on the case of the global coffee industry. We find that institutional conditions and market opportunity structures in consuming countries have been important sources of standards variation, for example in the cases of Fairtrade, UTZ Certified and the Common Code for the Coffee Community (4C). In turn, supplier structures in producing countries as well as their linkages with traders and buyers targeting particular consuming countries have been key mechanisms of …
Securing Access To Lower-Cost Talent Globally: The Dynamics Of Active Embedding And Field Structuration, Stephan Manning, Joerg Sydow, Arnold Windeler
Securing Access To Lower-Cost Talent Globally: The Dynamics Of Active Embedding And Field Structuration, Stephan Manning, Joerg Sydow, Arnold Windeler
Management and Marketing Faculty Publication Series
This article examines how multinational corporations (MNCs) shape institutional conditions in emerging economies to secure access to high-skilled, yet lower-cost science and engineering talent. Based on two in-depth case studies of engineering offshoring projects of German automotive suppliers in Romania and China we analyze how MNCs engage in ‘active embedding’ by aligning local institutional conditions with global offshoring strategies and operational needs. MNCs thereby contribute to the structuration of field relations and practices of sourcing knowledge-intensive work from globally dispersed locations.Our findings stress the importance of institutional processes across geographic boundaries that regulate and get shaped by MNC activities.
The Emergence Of A Standards Market: Multiplicity Of Sustainability Standards In The Global Coffee Industry, Juliane Reinecke, Stephan Manning, Oliver Von Hagen
The Emergence Of A Standards Market: Multiplicity Of Sustainability Standards In The Global Coffee Industry, Juliane Reinecke, Stephan Manning, Oliver Von Hagen
Management and Marketing Faculty Publication Series
The growing number of voluntary standards for governing transnational arenas is presenting standards organizations with a problem. While claiming that they are pursuing shared, overarching objectives, at the same time, they are promoting their own respective standards that are increasingly similar. By developing the notion of ‘standards markets,’ this paper examines this tension and studies how different social movement and industry-driven standards organizations compete as well as collaborate over governance in transnational arenas. Based on an in-depth case study of sustainability standards in the global coffee industry, we find that the ongoing co-existence of multiple standards is being promoted by …
The Politics Of Carbon Disclosure As Climate Governance, Janelle Knox-Hayes, David Levy
The Politics Of Carbon Disclosure As Climate Governance, Janelle Knox-Hayes, David Levy
Management and Marketing Faculty Publication Series
The rapid growth in carbon disclosure in recent years represents a major success in the struggle to build awareness and action on climate change. The growth of carbon disclosure is the result of three core drivers: regulatory compliance, pressure from non-governmental organizations (NGOs) and managerial information systems intended to facilitate participation in carbon markets, reduce energy costs and manage reputational risks. In this essay, we argue that the strategies pursued by ‘institutional entrepreneurs’ have played a key role in the successful institutionalization of carbon disclosure by bringing together companies, NGOs and government agencies. The Carbon Disclosure Project (CDP), in particular, …
The Stability Of Offshore Outsourcing Relationships: The Role Of Relation Specificity And Client Control, Stephan Manning, Arie Y. Lewin, Marc Schuerch
The Stability Of Offshore Outsourcing Relationships: The Role Of Relation Specificity And Client Control, Stephan Manning, Arie Y. Lewin, Marc Schuerch
Management and Marketing Faculty Publication Series
Offshore outsourcing of administrative and technical services has become a mainstream business practice. Increasing commoditization of business services and growing client experience with outsourcing have created a range of competitive service delivery options for client firms. Yet, data from the Offshoring Research Network (ORN) suggests that, despite increasing market options and growing client quality and cost efficiency expectations, clients typically renew provider contracts and develop longer-term relationships with providers. Based on ORN data, this paper explores drivers of this phenomenon. The findings suggest that providers promote contract renewal by making client specific investments in software, IT infrastructure and training, and …
The Contested Politics Of Corporate Governance: The Case Of The Global Reporting Initiative, David Levy, Halina Szejnwald Brown, Martin De Jong
The Contested Politics Of Corporate Governance: The Case Of The Global Reporting Initiative, David Levy, Halina Szejnwald Brown, Martin De Jong
Management and Marketing Faculty Publication Series
The Global Reporting Initiative (GRI) has successfully become institutionalized as the preeminent global framework for voluntary corporate environmental and social reporting. Its success can be attributed to the “institutional entrepreneurs” who analyzed the reporting field and deployed discursive, material, and organizational strategies to change it. GRI has, however, fallen short of the aspirations of its founders to use disclosure to empower nongovernmental organizations (NGOs). The authors argue that its trajectory reflects the power relations between members of the field, their strategic choices and compromises, their ability to mobilize alliances and resources, and constraints imposed by the broader institutions of financial …
Political Contestation In Global Production Networks, David Levy
Political Contestation In Global Production Networks, David Levy
Management and Marketing Faculty Publication Series
This paper develops a critical framework on international management and production that draws from the literatures on global commodity chains and global production networks (GPNs), from institutional entrepreneurship, as well as from neo-Gramscian theory in international political economy. The framework views GPNs as integrated economic, political, and discursive systems, in which market and political power are intertwined. The framework highlights the contingent stability of GPNs as well as the potential for actors to engage politically in contestation and collaboration over system governance and the distribution of benefits. The framework offers a multidimensional and multi-level approach to understanding power relations, ideology, …
North American Business Strategies Towards Climate Change, Charles Jones, David Levy
North American Business Strategies Towards Climate Change, Charles Jones, David Levy
Management and Marketing Faculty Publication Series
Business has become a key part of the fabric of global environmental governance, considered here as the network which orders and regulates economic activity and its impacts. We argue that businesses generally are willing to undertake limited measures consistent with a fragmented and weak policy regime. Further, the actions of businesses act to create, shape and preserve that compromised regime. We examine three types of indicators of business responses in North America: ratings by external organizations, commitments regarding emissions, and joint political action. We find business response to be highly ambiguous, with energetic efforts yielding few results.
The Institutional Entrepreneur As Modern Prince: The Strategic Face Of Power In Contested Fields, David Levy, Maureen A. Scully
The Institutional Entrepreneur As Modern Prince: The Strategic Face Of Power In Contested Fields, David Levy, Maureen A. Scully
Management and Marketing Faculty Publication Series
This paper develops a theoretical framework that situates institutional entrepreneurship by drawing from Gramsci’s concept of hegemony to understand the contingent stabilization of organizational fields, and by employing his discussion of the Modern Prince as the collective agent who organizes and strategizes counter-hegemonic challenges. Our framework makes three contributions. First, we characterize the interlaced material, discursive, and organizational dimensions of field structure. Second, we argue that strategy must be examined more rigorously as the mode of action by which institutional entrepreneurs engage with field structures. Third, we argue that institutional entrepreneurship, in challenging the position of incumbent actors and stable …