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]