A common justification for organizational change is that the circumstances in which the organization finds itself have changed, thereby eroding the value of utilizing existing knowledge. On the surface, the claim that organizations should adapt by generating new knowledge seems obvious and...

Research in the strategy literature that highlights the role of imitation has tended to focus primarily on its detrimental effects on the performance of imitated firms. Developing the notion of vicarious experimentation, we examine how innovators can learn from being imitated. Specifically, we...

Entrants are often viewed as suffering from a “liability of newness” – at founding they rarely possess the knowledge and capabilities necessary to compete and survive. They can overcome such liabilities by learning vicariously from the knowledge of incumbent firms. But how do entrants...

A central idea in the behavioral theory of the firm is that when an organization’s performance falls below aspirations, a search is triggered. While this aspiration-based model has dominated the empirical literature, it is only one of two Carnegie School accounts of how firms use performance...

Organizational decision-making that leverages the collective wisdom and knowledge of multiple individuals is ubiquitous in management practice, occurring in settings such as top management teams, corporate boards, and the teams and groups that pervade modern organizations. Decision-making...