Organizations learn and adapt their aspiration levels based on reference points (prior aspiration, prior performance, and prior performance of reference groups). The relative attention that organizations allocate to these reference points impacts organizational search and strategic decisions....

Behavioral Theory highlights the crucial role of social comparisons in attention allocation in adaptive aspirations. Yet, both the specification of social reference points and the dynamics of attention allocation have received little scholarly examination. We address performance feedback from...

Our paper explores how multiple performances (financial and innovative) and related aspiration levels explain changes in the partnering patterns of 144 pharmaceutical firms during the period 1990 to 2003. Our results confirm the central idea that firms exhibit different risk profiles and related...

Goals or aspirations and their relationships to risk taking and performance are important issues in both psychology and strategic management. The concept of adaptive aspirations, as discussed in Cyert and March's Behavioral Theory of the Firm, has long been a topic of interest in both fields....