In its search for the answer to the question of firm performance differences, the strategy field has provided two types of answers - differences in firms' current competitive position (Porter, 1996) or differences in position at some prior time point (Selznick, 1957), where the latter sort of...

Strategists have tended to explain sustained performance differences across firms in terms of two types of interactions among choices: cross-sectional interactions and longitudinal ones. We explore the interplay between these two sorts of forces first in a qualitative manner drawing on case of...

The problem of designing, coordinating, and managing complex systems has been central to the management and organizations literature. Recent writings have tended to offer modularity as, at least, a partial solution to this design problem. Two unifying themes characterize the extant literature on...

The resource-based perspective on firm diversification, subsequent to Penrose (1959), has focused primarily on the fungibility of resources across domains. We make a clear analytical distinction between scale-free capabilities and those that are subject to opportunity costs and must be allocated...

A fundamental premise of the strategy field is the existence of persistent firm level differences in resources and capabilities. This property of heterogeneity should express itself in a variety of empirical “signatures”, such as firm performance and arguably systematic and persistent...

The multi-authority form is a type of organization where subordinates report to multiple superiors and superiors share authority over their subordinates. While those forms are quite common among modern organizations, research on such forms offers conflicting findings. These conflicting findings,...

In a modern economy, much of the allocation of financial and non-financial resources are mediated by organizations. This essay points to three general features of this mediating role of organizations in the resource allocation process. One line of argument relates to the distinct opportunities...

In this paper we present a general model of organizational problem-solving in which organizations engage into an activity of cognition (understanding the world in which they operate) and an activity of action (implementing those policies which cognition indicates as targets which better fit the...