We examine how the learning, along several dimensions (environment, task, process, skills, goals), that takes place in strategic alliances between firms mediates between the initial conditions and the outcomes of these alliances. Through a longitudinal case study of two projects in one alliance, replicated and extended in another four projects in two alliances, a framework was developed to analyze the evolution of cooperation in strategic alliances. Successful alliance projects were highly evolutionary and went through a sequence of interactive cycles of learning, reevaluation and readjustment. Failing projects, conversely, were highly inertial, with little learning, or divergent learning between cognitive understanding and behavioral adjustment, or frustrated expectations. Although strategic alliances may be a special case of organizational learning, we believe analyzing the evolution of strategic alliances helps transcend too simple depictions of inertia and adaptation, in particular by suggesting that initial conditions may lead to a stable ‘imprinting’ of fixed processes that make alliances highly inertial or to generative and evolutionary processes that make them highly adaptive, depending on how they are set.

This research examines the role played by the ‘causally ambiguous’ nature of knowledge in the process of knowledge transfer between strategic alliance partners. Based on a cross-sectional sample of 147 multinationals and a structural equation methodology, this study empirically investigates the simultaneous effects of knowledge ambiguity and its antecedents—tacitness, asset specificity, prior experience, complexity, partner protectiveness, cultural distance, and organizational distance—on technological knowledge transfer. In contrast to past research that generally assumed a direct relation between these explanatory variables and transfer outcomes, this study’s findings highlight the critical role played by knowledge ambiguity as a full mediator of tacitness, prior experience, complexity, cultural distance, and organizational distance on knowledge transfer. These significant effects are further found to be moderated by the firm’s level of collaborative know-how, its learning capacity, and the duration of the alliance. Copyright © 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

This research examines the role played by the ‘causally ambiguous’ nature of knowledge in the process of knowledge transfer between strategic alliance partners. Based on a cross-sectional sample of 147 multinationals and a structural equation methodology, this study empirically investigates the simultaneous effects of knowledge ambiguity and its antecedents—tacitness, asset specificity, prior experience, complexity, partner protectiveness, cultural distance, and organizational distance—on technological knowledge transfer. In contrast to past research that generally assumed a direct relation between these explanatory variables and transfer outcomes, this study’s findings highlight the critical role played by knowledge ambiguity as a full mediator of tacitness, prior experience, complexity, cultural distance, and organizational distance on knowledge transfer. These significant effects are further found to be moderated by the firm’s level of collaborative know-how, its learning capacity, and the duration of the alliance. Copyright © 1999 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

We are entering a new competitive age in which the basis of competition is being fundamentally altered through the introduction of advanced information technologies and public communication infrastructures, such as the Internet. In these environments, the nature and locus of competition will radically alter, as information becomes an increasingly important resource. This paper develops ideas around the strategic characteristics of information—information separability and information specificity. Moreover, it attempts to redefine the nature of industry structure in such a competitive environment by examining what constitutes the real boundaries of competition, industry concentration, related diversification, and innovation for firms competing in the Information Age. © 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

A decade of observed large differences in productivity driven competitive advantage cannot be explained by traditional productivity notions or conventional strategic analysis. We conclude on both empirical and theoretical grounds that most traditional sources of productivity have encountered diminishing marginal returns. Large competitive differences appear to arise from a new productivity source, nonlinear systems dynamics in business organizations. This has both theoretical and practical consequences for managing toward competitive advantage and requires a new approach to management, control, and organization.

Top management consensus on corporate objectives and on the competitive weapons employed to attain them was studied in 12 non‐diversified public corporations. It was found that while agreement on both is associated positively with economic performance, agreement on means is significantly more important—in fact, agreement on goals without agreement on means correlates with poor performance. This suggests that strategy makers should concentrate on reaching consensus concerning means rather than ends (corporate goals) when formulating strategies for single‐mission enterprises.

[Research Summary: Here, I document the governing copyright law and process of digitizing print records with specific application to the Jaques Cattell directories of U.S. R&D. This novel dataset covers 2,805 companies with 8,525 facilities, including location, reporting line within the organization, numbers of professional staff and technicians, and R&D fields over the years 1975–1998. The dataset includes a match to the Compustat identifier, gvkey. As an illustration, I use the new dataset to investigate the effect of organization structure on innovation. By contrast with previous research based on smaller samples, I find no significant relation between organization structure and innovation. Managerial Summary: Here, I document the governing copyright law and process of digitizing print records with specific application to the Jaques Cattell directories of U.S. R&D. This novel dataset covers 2,805 companies with 8,525 facilities, including location, reporting line within the organization, numbers of professional staff and technicians, and R&D fields over the years 1975–1998. The dataset is matched to Compustat. It can be used to study novel issues including (a) the effect of complementary manufacturing and marketing assets on how a company exploits its technological capabilities; (b) the relation between the centralization of the R&D organization and productivity of innovation; (c) how clusters influence the location of R&D facilities; and (iv) how state law affects the geography of R&D.]

I use an organizational learning perspective to examine how the nature, performance and timing of a firm's acquisition experience helps it to learn how to select the right acquisition. I predict the performance of 214 acquisitions made by 120 firms in 6 industries between 1990 and 1995. Results show that a firm's focal acquisition performance positively relates to prior acquisitions that are a) not highly similar or dissimilar to the focal acquisition, b) associated with small losses and c) not too temporally close to or distant from the focal acquisition. Taken together, these results identify the broad conditions in which firms generate adaptive and timely inferences from acquisition experience. Copyright © 2002 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

[Research summary: We investigate the effects of monitoring by boards of directors and institutional shareholders on merger and acquisition (M&A) performance extremeness using a sample of M&A deals from 1997 to 2006. Both governance research and legal reforms generally have espoused a “raise all boats” view of monitoring. We instead investigate whether monitoring may serve as a double-edged sword that limits CEO discretion to undertake both value-destroying M&A deals and value-creating ones. Our findings indicate that the relationship between monitoring and M&A performance is more complex than previously believed. Rather than “raising all boats” in a shift towards better M&A outcomes, monitoring instead is associated with lower M&A losses, but also with lower M&A gains. Managerial summary:Mergers and acquisitions (M&As) are a quintessential corporate activity. There were $3.8 trillion worth of M&A deals in 2015, despite scholars and practitioners reporting that M&As often perform poorly. We question the widespread belief that more vigilant monitoring by boards of directors and large shareholders will raise M&A performance, overall. Put differently, does monitoring constrain CEOs’ discretion to pursue bad deals, while simultaneously encouraging them to pursue good ones? We find that monitoring limits both large M&A losses and large M&A gains. Contrary to widely held beliefs, our results indicate that constraining executives’ ability to pursue value-destroying M&A deals does not simultaneously encourage or enable CEOs to pursue value-creating deals.]