Search

In this study we will open the black box of problemistic search by documenting a variety of narrow and broad search strategies individual decisionmakers undertake in a process of a firm's goal attainment. Several commentators have argued that the notions of narrow vs broad search are underspecified and dependent on the ambiguity of the goal and the of environment. This study joins these studies that argue that ambiguities between outcomes, aspirations and decisions will affect the search strategies. In this study we will focus on the question whether ambiguity in goals and outcomes leads to diversity in directions of search strategies. We will explore our contributions with a purpose-built virtual reality (VR) experiment, a research method that opens the possibility to study individual internal sub-processes of problemistic search under conditions which are difficult to control in a non-experimental setting and allows us the development of the data collection for individual problemistic search. Our study responds to the call for research in decision-making in behavioral organizational theory, culminating in a research agenda that further develops VR research for organizations. We will conclude that this study contributes to the behavioral theories of organizations by enriching our understanding of search processes. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Our research examines how transactions can best be governed by blockchain. We extend transaction cost economics from the analysis of markets, hybrids, and hierarchies to include a discriminating alignment of different types of blockchain governance. We model and visualize the comparative efficiency of public, consortium, and private blockchains. Public blockchains economize on mundane transaction costs, consortium blockchains on transaction costs driven by lawful opportunism, and private blockchains on transaction costs driven by blatant opportunism. We illustrate our model in the empirical context of the use of blockchain in fashion supply chains with the purpose of mitigating hazards from unsustainable practices and counterfeits. Our paper responds to recent calls for more research on blockchains as governance structures. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A key challenge for firms in sustainable business ecosystems (SBEs) is to create and capture environmental, social, and economic value. Whilst these firms create sustainable value, they operate within contexts of sustainability transitions that are often replete with uncertainty. We conduct a longitudinal study on the ecosystem strategies of utility-scale solar developers and how they adapt their strategies to respond to uncertainty. Our findings show that successful solar firms, those that capture economic value and survive while creating environmental and social value, adopt a bottleneck strategy, which solves solar energy's variability bottleneck, mitigates technological uncertainty, and grows the SBE. Other successful firms use a component strategy by creating ecosystem links with upstream complementors to purchase solar technology, with downstream complementors to sell solar energy, and thereby avoid exposure to and mitigate technological, competitive, and market uncertainty. They continuously reallocate ecosystem resources and create ecosystem links with development banks and communities to cope with regulatory and political uncertainty and deliver social value. Successful firms develop more solar plants and avoid more carbon emissions to deliver environmental value. Unsuccessful firms, those that fail to capture economic value and go bankrupt, adopt a system strategy by taking upstream and downstream ecosystem positions in which they are negatively impacted by competitive, technological, and regulatory uncertainty. Our findings contribute to literature on SBEs by showing how firms cope with uncertainty in sustainability transitions by adapting their ecosystem strategies for greater sustainable value. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The literature on decision-making by boundedly rational organizations has largely focused on examining triggers and outcomes but has black boxed the middle process of search for solutions to problems. In this study we will unpack the "middle step" of problemistic search using a virtual reality (VR) experiment. Specifically, we will refer to this middle step as managerial search strategies. By building on belief- and aspiration-based models, we demonstrate that improved insights into the specific internal sub-processes of problemistic search help to identify different managerial search strategies. We also examine the adaptation of managerial search strategies in terms of their efficacy and efficiency in ambiguous environments. We test our propositions on managerial search strategies and their adaptation in a purpose-built virtual environment. Depending on the extent of ambiguity, we find that decision-makers adopt three types of strategies: vary-one-thing-at-a-time, vary-all-things-in-opposite-directions, switching-to-other-corners-solutions. When ambiguity increases, decision-makers achieve higher levels of efficacy and efficiency with a search strategy of switching-to-other-corners-solutions. Our study responds to the call for research in decision-making in behavioral organizational theory, culminating in a research agenda that further develops VR research for organizations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In this article we address the question how firms differentially select their signaling activity to obtain environmental legitimacy. We will do so by analyzing types of signals, and by distinguishing between firms aiming for environmental regulative legitimacy by signaling compliance to environmental policy and regulations ('can do'), and firms aiming for environmental normative legitimacy by signaling adherence to environmental norms and values ('should do'). The unit of analysis in our study is the environmental inter-firm alliance that has a dual concern for economic value and environmental value. We analyze data on 389 environmental alliances taken from the SDC Platinum database for the period 2013-2017, and combine this with data on signals in 650 press releases on alliance announcements. Our findings show that firms differentially select their signaling activity depending on the alliances' structures and processes. In terms of the structures, we find that joint ventures are more often associated with signaling for regulative legitimacy when compared to contractual alliances. In terms of the processes, we find that environmental exploitation alliances are more likely to signal for regulative legitimacy, while environmental exploration alliances are more likely to signal for normative legitimacy. These findings are explained by the relative importance attached by alliance structures and processes to economic or environmental value in the value spectrum of environmental alliances. Our article combines signaling theory, legitimacy theory and theory on alliances, and makes a contribution at the intersection of these research streams. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Environmental alliances have increasingly become the corporate response to sustainability demands in society. Firms exploit and explore environmental technologies in environmental alliances to pursue improvements in environmental, business and innovation performance. In comparison with the coherent literature on strategic alliances, the research on inter-firm environmental alliances and their performance remains dispersed. The purpose of this paper is to address the question of what drives the performance of environmental alliances. Based on a systematic literature review and an appraisal of appropriate theoretical perspectives, the paper identifies both established and novel performance drivers. This paper shows that new instantiations of familiar drivers exist in environmental alliances, but to fully understand the specificities of environmental alliances, theoretical extensions are required to account for environmental and knowledge externalities (i.e. the positive external effects due to investments in environmental sustainability and eco-innovation). These extensions rely on an integration of the management literature on alliances with insights on externalities from environmental economics and innovation economics. The results show that environmental alliances enable firms to capture public value in two stages: by creating knowledge and environmental externalities (i.e. 'double' externalities) and by internalizing environmental externalities. Environmental alliances create double externalities by developing new rules, standards and legitimacy for eco-innovations, and they internalize environmental externalities by reusing waste of partners, sharing sustainable practices and reducing sustainability risk. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Successfully managing paradoxical tensions related to inter-organisational value creation and value capture is crucial, as more and more organisations rely on external knowledge as a source of competitive advantage. However, extant literature provides no framework for resolving such tensions. The purpose of this review is to make a re-evaluation of the value creation - value capture literature by engaging a paradox theory lens (Smith and Lewis, 2011), thereby identifying factors that render tensions salient and factors that lead to virtuous or vicious cycles. We contribute by: 1) re-assessing existing literature and applying paradox theory to the well-known hazard of value creation and capture; 2) highlighting factors that amplify paradoxical tensions related to this hazard; and 3) outlining factors that solve the paradox by embracing its contradictory poles and factors that hinder paradox resolution by emphasizing either value creation or appropriation. Our review also uncovers a new category of factors that may stimulate either virtuous or vicious cycles, depending on the extent to which they are enforced. This finding expands the value creation-capture paradox resolution, and brings to light new dynamics in the paradox framework of dynamic equilibrium. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]