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Over the past several decades, social network remains the most prevalent and prominent in the strategy and organization theory literature. However, despite the considerable research attention scholars devoted to exploring the implications and mechanisms of social ties and networks in management and organizational contexts, the following question has largely

Over the past several decades, social network remains the most prevalent and prominent in the strategy and organization theory literature. However, despite the considerable research attention scholars devoted to exploring the implications and mechanisms of social ties and networks in management and organizational contexts, the following question has largely remained understudied: To what extent can top managers' personal ties and networks actually contribute to their firms? This thesis will strive to explore this research question by theoretically highlighting three logically consequent managerial decisions: (1) "When"--when will top managers choose to use their personal ties and networks in their firms; (2) "How"--will top managers use their managerial ties and networks to serve the best interest of their firms or to satisfy their self-interests; and (3) "So what" --how would the decision of using managerial ties and networks to benefit their firms influence other decisions of the firms. Using both primary data and archival information from Chinese firms, I will empirically test the step-wise framework. I expect this thesis to contribute to both strategic leadership and social network research and management practices.
ContributorsJiang, Han (Author) / Cannella, Albert A. (Thesis advisor) / Hoetker, Glenn (Committee member) / Mesquita, Luiz F. (Committee member) / Devers, Cynthia E. (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2014
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This thesis consists of three projects employing complexity economics methods to explore firm dynamics. The first is the Firm Ecosystem Model, which addresses the institutional conditions of capital access and entrenched competitive advantage. Larger firms will be more competitive than smaller firms due to efficiencies of scale, but the persistence

This thesis consists of three projects employing complexity economics methods to explore firm dynamics. The first is the Firm Ecosystem Model, which addresses the institutional conditions of capital access and entrenched competitive advantage. Larger firms will be more competitive than smaller firms due to efficiencies of scale, but the persistence of larger firms is also supported institutionally through mechanisms such as tax policy, capital access mechanisms and industry-favorable legislation. At the same time, evidence suggests that small firms innovate more than larger firms, and an aggressive firm-as-value perspective incentivizes early investment in new firms in an attempt to capture that value. The Ecological Firm Model explores the effects of the differences in innovation and investment patterns and persistence rates between large and small firms.

The second project is the Structural Inertia Model, which is intended to build theory around why larger firms may be less successful in capturing new marketshare than smaller firms, as well as to advance fitness landscape methods. The model explores the possibility that firms with larger scopes may be less effective in mitigating the costs of cooperation because conditions may arise that cause intrafirm conflicts. The model is implemented on structured fitness landscapes derived using the maximal order of interaction (NM) formulation and described using local optima networks (LONs), thus integrating these novel techniques.

Finally, firm dynamics can serve as a proxy for the ease at which people can voluntarily enter into the legal cooperative agreements that constitute firms. The third project, the Emergent Firm model, is an exploration of how this dynamic of voluntary association may be affected by differing capital institutions, and explores the macroeconomic implications of the economies that emerge out of the various resulting firm populations.
ContributorsApplegate, Joffa Michele (Author) / Janssen, Marcus A (Thesis advisor) / Hoetker, Glenn (Committee member) / Johnston, Erik W., 1977- (Committee member) / Shutter, Shade (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2018
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Agglomeration research has investigated a key research question, i.e., why do firms in a specific industry co-locate geographically? In the agglomeration literature, it has been assumed that each firm has one business establishment in a cluster such that firms always co-locate with competitors. However, it is often observed that firms

Agglomeration research has investigated a key research question, i.e., why do firms in a specific industry co-locate geographically? In the agglomeration literature, it has been assumed that each firm has one business establishment in a cluster such that firms always co-locate with competitors. However, it is often observed that firms operate several business establishments in a cluster, so they co-locate not only with competitors (i.e., inter-firm agglomeration) but also with their own business establishments (i.e., intra-firm agglomeration). While inter-firm agglomeration is a counterpart to the traditional concept of agglomeration, intra-firm agglomeration is a new concept in agglomeration research. The separation between intra-firm and inter-firm agglomeration raises two research questions – 1) how does intra-firm agglomeration differ from inter-firm agglomeration? and 2) do firms decide their locations for intra-firm vs. inter-firm agglomeration differently? These questions actually extend the key question in agglomeration research into a new setting in which firms have several business establishments in a cluster. I proposed that firms can extract more benefits but neutralize more threats from agglomeration through intra-firm agglomeration than through inter-firm agglomeration. I further developed research hypotheses to test this argument in a research context in which multi-unit firms decide their new establishments’ distances to competitors and their other establishments at the same time. The hypotheses received empirical support in an empirical setting in which 10 large multi-unit hotel firms established new hotels in 20 U.S. cities, and several supplementary analyses show that these results are robust.
ContributorsWoo, Hyun-Soo (Author) / Cannella, Albert (Thesis advisor) / Hoetker, Glenn (Committee member) / Mesquita, Luiz (Committee member) / Arizona State University (Publisher)
Created2016