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Organizational renewal can be broadly described as a process that entails a significant change in managers' mental models and strategic direction of an organization, facilitating value creation within an organization during times of organizational crisis, and thus, reversing declining performance. Organizational renewal is often characterized by varying degrees of crisis. Drawing from the literature on organizational renewal and CEO succession, this paper identifies various CEO retention and replacement options that correspond to different degrees of crisis severity. Subsequently, for each crisis situation, strategic actions that contribute to organizational renewal are proposed. Additionally, given that employees are key to implementing any kind of strategic change, this paper discusses the role of strategic human resource management (SHRM) in aligning human resource management with an organization's strategies and tactics thereby allowing employees to embrace necessary changes, understand the new objectives of the organization and shift their behaviors to meet the new demands. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article provides a framework of knowledge-in-practice that captures tacitness as a dimension of knowledge rather than a unique type of knowledge, leading to a multidimensional perspective on knowledge-in-practice with implications for management research and practice. The authors show how inattention to construct clarity issues associated with tacit knowledge has resulted in confusion and controversy in the literature. Four types of knowledge-in-practice are described, namely baseline mastery, accumulated data-based expertise, accumulated experiential expertise and artistic insight. The differing impacts of work practices that vary in tacitness and learnability are also considered.

This paper seeks to examine how opportunities can be effectively exploited through the entrepreneurial process. Based on knowledge management perspectives we propose an extension of the current entrepreneurial process model to encompass the influence of knowledge integration factors. We propose that components of absorptive capacity (namely recognition of value, potential absorptive capacity, and realized absorptive capacity) influence the entrepreneurial process at various stages of opportunity development to ultimately enhance opportunity exploitation. In addition, we underscore the importance of a temporal aspect by emphasizing that the different components of ACAP influence the transformation of opportunities within the entrepreneurial process at different times, and in order to successfully navigate the entrepreneurial process, the ACAP components need to be aligned with 'strategic windows of opportunity'. Through an integration of knowledge management, we seek to provide a more comprehensive understanding of how ACAP impacts the innovation process of an entrepreneurial venture and expand the current conceptualization of the entrepreneurial process. In addition, our framework also develops feedback loops in order to highlight the recursive, iterative nature of the entrepreneurial process. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

MNCs constantly search for ways to enhance their knowledge base given that access to superior knowledge can enable them to maintain a competitive advantage in the global marketplace. MNCs have a unique advantage given that they can set up subsidiaries within their global network and give them specific mandates to either engage in competence creation or competence exploitation (augmentation). In this paper, we delve deeper into this phenomenon and develop a conceptual framework that leverages the institutional distance perspective to explain how exploration and exploitation is managed within multinational corporations (MNCs). We propose that the institutional distance between home and host country influences how an MNC makes strategic choices to manage exploration (competence-creating mandates) and exploitation (competence-exploiting mandates) within their subsidiaries. Furthermore, using relational contextual factors we theorize how MNC-subsidiary relations can impact the effectiveness of these mandates. Our framework suggests that MNCs can pursue seemingly incompatible types of learning by carefully managing the learning orientation of its home country (headquarters) with the learning orientation of its subsidiaries. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Research demonstrates that ambidexterity is often very important for achieving and sustaining firm performance. In this paper, we delve deeper into what influences ambidexterity and consequently firm performance. We suggest that learning from failure affects a firm's ability to achieve organizational ambidexterity (that is, balance between exploration and exploitation activities), and further, given the important role of firm leadership in making strategic decisions, we examine how behavioral integration among members of the top management team affects the relationship between learning from failure and ambidexterity. Subsequently, we examine the important relationship between ambidexterity and firm performance by focusing on the moderating effects of two types of knowledge stock - market and technological. We test our conceptual framework using a sample of 235 firms. Our results indicate that learning from failure positively influences ambidexterity while top management behavioral integration weakens this relationship. Further, we find that market knowledge stock strengthens the ambidexterity-performance relationship, while technological knowledge stock weakens that relationship. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Due to rapid globalization of industries, international diversification has become a very important albeit complex strategic decision for organizations. Firms have realized that in order to compete in the global marketplace and to sustain their competitive advantages, they have to engage in internationalization, and learn to manage in a more complex international environment. This study contributes to the extant literature on international diversification by developing and testing an integrated framework examining the influence of top management heterogeneity, as well as, firm-level strategic orientations (market orientation and entrepreneurial orientation) on international diversification. The framework also revisits and tests the international diversity-firm performance relation. Using data gathered from 234 managers from industries where international diversification is prevalent, the study demonstrates that both market orientation and entrepreneurial orientation bolster international diversification. Although top management team heterogeneity does not appear to exert a direct influence on international diversification, it demonstrates positive effects on both market orientation and entrepreneurial orientation. For organizations interested in international diversification, the results point toward ensuring a top management team with diversity in skills and experiences as well as simultaneously fostering market and entrepreneurial orientations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although research on early internationalizing firms (EIFs) or born global firms was novel a decade ago, there is now increased interest in this topic given that there is an abundance of such firms in many countries. However, there are still several unresolved questions with respect to the evolution of such firms, and their motivations to internationalize early. In this study, we focus on performance of EIFs, as this has been one of the main dependent variables in examining why some EIFs succeed in the international arena while others fail. In order to enhance our understanding of EIF performance and its determinants, we have conducted a systematic review of the empirical literature between 1995 and 2012. The objectives of this study are to: (i) systematically analyze EIF literature to identify how performance has been empirically examined, (ii) methodically identify and synthesize the determinants of performance with respect to EIFs' specific resources, capabilities, strategies and external factors, and (iii) make suggestions for future research. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Emerging markets are increasingly becoming important contributors to the global economy and account for a significant share of global foreign development investment outflows. Emerging market multinational corporations (EMNCs), however, are often resource constrained and compete in markets plagued with uncertainty compared to multinational corporations from developed economies. To understand how EMNCs create competitive advantage despite such disadvantages, we suggest that EMNCs configure the potential and realized components of absorptive capacity depending on the unique mix of external institutional factors and local density. Four specific strategies are proposed that illustrate how EMNCs configure absorptive capacity given unique emerging market environmental influences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Conflict within the top management team (TMT) is shown to affect firm outcomes. The conflict, however, in and of itself, neither creates nor destroys firm outcomes; rather, these outcomes are influenced through the effect of conflict on various firm-level factors. To understand how firm-level value is created (or hindered), we investigate how one type of firm-level capability, absorptive capacity, is affected when there is conflict within the TMT. We suggest that conflict has both a positive and negative influence on absorptive capacity, and the type of conflict (i.e., cognitive or affective) is determinant of the influence. Further, boundary conditions are explored by examining how the relationships are affected by two types of strategic orientations: entrepreneurial and market. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

An extensive body of research on organizational change and development has significantly enhanced our understanding of these phenomena and the drivers and inhibitors of them. Traditional approaches to change have been dominated by looking at the change as an event and not overly focused on the situation or context in which the change initiates or the outcomes occur. We focus on change at a practice level and use a knowledge lens to describe how knowledge-in-practice can act as an important contextual consideration in understanding organizational change and development and evolution in practices. As the knowledge based economy continues to evolve an understanding of how change and development is initiated, influenced, and impacted by knowledge is imperative. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Ambidexterity is seen as an important organizational mechanism through which two contradictory types of learning -- exploration and exploitation -- can be simultaneously pursued and balanced. These two types of learning are needed to ensure both current and future organizational viability. Given the tensions that exist between exploration and exploitation, research has focused on how organizations can attain ambidexterity. In this paper we suggest that a firm's strategic orientation, specifically entrepreneurial orientation and market orientation, could be important antecedents to ambidexterity since these perspectives provide firm-wide guiding principles that shape behaviors and actions. Further, we study the influence of a firm's knowledge stock on these relations, as well as the relation between ambidexterity and firm performance. Results indicate that both strategic orientations enhance an organization's ability to be ambidextrous, and that some types of knowledge stocks facilitate while other types of knowledge stocks hinder the influence of strategic orientation on ambidexterity as well as the subsequent influence of ambidexterity on firm performance. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Although "isomorphism" has been one of the key tenets of theory, its applicability to the MNC setting has been challenged recently. The challenges are based on the assumption that there is limited institutional isomorphism in MNCs, and MNCs do not gain legitimacy through isomorphism (Kostova at al. 2008). The overarching objective of this study is to answer the research question "Do foreign subsidiaries become isomorphic to local practices due to constraints imposed upon them by institutional pressures?" Utilizing regulatory change as a quasi-experimental condition, this study examined the differences in the adoption behavior of foreign firms and West German firms to determine if foreign firms are indeed under institutional pressure to become isomorphic to West German firms, or if institutional pressure for foreign firms is primarily limited to regulatory pressure. Consistent with current challenges to applicability of isomorphism in the MNC settings, this study found that foreign subsidiaries do not become isomorphic to local practices and that institutional pressure for foreign subsidiaries is primarily limited to regulatory pressure. This research finding shows that foreign firms do have institutional freedom to choose which practices to adopt and do not become isomorphic to local practices because of institutional pressures for legitimacy. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Cost of Doing Business Abroad (CDBA) is an important construct in International Business. The variety of causes leading to the CDBA has been the subject of many scholars' examinations. Extending CDBA to an institutional level, we develop a new perspective on the CDBA by incorporating institutional misalignment between the home and the host country as a cause of CDBA. Using the theoretical lens of Varieties of Capitalism (VoC), we explain how and why institutional misalignment can create additional costs for MNEs operating in foreign countries. Specifically, we discuss how the differences between institutional configurations of the home and the host country create institutional misalignment. Furthermore, we explain why institutional misalignment is inevitable as MNEs cross national borders and how it incurs economic as well as social cost that MNEs may not be aware of. By doing so, we extend the CDBA research to a national level of analysis and show that a set of firms from a nation can lose its national comparative institutional advantage as they cross national borders. Finally, we assert that the larger the institutional distance between the two countries, the greater the institutional misalignment is. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]