Management and Strategy - HKU Business School

30 September

Scaling Up Networks: Building New Relationships Within Embedded Networks In Growing Firms

SPEAKER

Prof. Jian Bai Li (Jamber)
Assistant Professor
National University of Singapore Business School

ABSTRACT

Embedded networks in young, growth-oriented firms engender solidarity amongst their original members during the firms’ early years, but they also increase the difficulty of building cooperative relationships with organizational newcomers during scaling. Extant research has under-examined how this difficulty may be overcome. We address this gap via an inductive, multiple-case study. Counterintuitively, we found that closely involving a newcomer in the original members’ interactions and activities derailed cooperation. This is due to the inability of the newcomer to form the same kind of relationships that the original members shared amongst themselves. Given this inability to attain relational equivalence, the newcomer’s close involvement in the original members’ interactions and activities came to be perceived by them as intrusive—even when a third party was present to help broker cooperation. We also found that separating the newcomer from the original members, i.e., reducing the newcomer’s involvement in their interactions and activities, aided relationship-building, since it enabled the newcomer and the original members to develop cooperation at a distance that both sides were comfortable with—without necessitating that the newcomer attain relational equivalence vis-à-vis the original members. Overall, we contribute the insight that, for building new relationships during scaling, separation enables cooperation.

26 September

Intrafirm Services Trade and the Management of Intangible Assets by MNCs

SPEAKER

Prof. Heather Berry
Dean’s Professor of Strategy and International Business
McDonough School of Business
Georgetown University

ABSTRACT

This seminar examines the intrafirm services trade of multinational corporations (MNCs) for their intangible assets, separating intellectual property (IP) and professional services, and analyzing transfers to subsidiaries in different types of tax haven countries (including so-called traditional (ie, Caribbean Island) and modern (ie, the Netherlands or Ireland) tax haven countries). After merging two confidential datasets from the Bureau of Economic Analysis (BEA) on the population of US MNCs, we explore how transfers of the intangible assets of US MNCs shifted after the US Tax Cuts and Jobs Act (TCJA). Difference in difference results show that parent IP imports (parent payments to their foreign subsidiaries for the use of IP) declined significantly from traditional tax havens while there was no similar decline in parent IP imports from modern tax haven countries. At the same time, parent professional service exports increased significantly to subsidiaries in both traditional and modern tax havens. These results suggest that although US MNCs moved their IP out of traditional island tax havens back to the US in the face of decreasing tax differentials, IP flows with subsidiaries in modern tax havens were unaffected by the tax change, likely reflecting the broader set of business activities MNCs perform in these locations. The results further show that MNCs with higher intra-firm product flows were more likely to have increased professional services flows with their subsidiaries in both traditional and modern tax havens.

20 September

Responding to Advances in AI: The Impact of AlphaFold on the Organization of Academic Labs

SPEAKER

Mr. Gabriel Cavalli
Ph.D. Candidate
Rotman School of Management
University of Toronto

ABSTRACT

This study investigates how principal investigators (PIs), acting as managers of their academic laboratories, adapt their organizations in response to an advance in AI that improves solutions to a scientific problem that they previously had committed to address. It hypothesizes that generalist PIs reduce lab size and balance organizational expertise toward generalism, while specialist PIs expand lab size and hire more computer science specialists. These hypotheses are tested within the setting of academic labs participating in the CASP competition, where Google DeepMind’s AI-based entry, AlphaFold, achieved unprecedented success in modeling the “protein-folding” problem in 2018. The findings support the hypotheses and emphasize the crucial role of managerial judgment, informed by expertise, in shaping responses to AI-driven innovations and integrating human and artificial intelligences within organizations.

20 September

Mitigating Disruption: Hiring for Social Skills and Post-Acquisition Performance

SPEAKER

Mr. Piyush Gulati
Ph.D. Candidate in Strategy
INSEAD

ABSTRACT

Managing post-acquisition operating performance can be challenging because synergy extraction entails changes and must be balanced with disruption to the organizational units involved. While prior literature has focused on organization-level factors (such as knowledge similarity and team design), in this paper I shift the focus to individual-level factors–specifically the social skills of employees–that help in achieving this balance. I argue that increased hiring for social skills, such as communication, negotiation, and teamwork, after an acquisition helps manage disruptions by enabling improved inter-unit collaboration between the acquirer and target units. To test the argument, I use a stacked differences-in-differences design to analyze data from approximately 5.3k acquisitions (SDC), 26 million job listings to measure social skills hiring (Lightcast), 22k senior manager profiles (Boardex), and 2,739 US public firms (Compustat), tracked quarterly in the period 2010-2020. I find that a 25 percent increase in average social skills at the acquiring firm is correlated with a 3.1 percentage point mitigation of post-acquisition operating performance drop. For deals with a large increase in distinct organizational units or delayed target integration, both of which imply a higher need for inter-unit collaboration, increased social skills are correlated with higher mitigation of 5.1-11.5 points–providing support for the proposed mechanism. Through these findings, I contribute to research on post-acquisition integration, offering insights into the structure-human capital dynamics in enabling organizational collaboration.

11 September

Creative Collaboration With Artificial Intelligence Negatively Impacts Creator Reputation

SPEAKER

Dr. Jack McGuire
Postdoctoral Research Associate
D’Amore-McKim School of Business
Northeastern University

ABSTRACT

As creators increasingly make use of AI systems to aid with the production of creative work, it is important to understand whether such works and the creators involved are judged differently for doing so. Across three experiments and one multi-wave field survey, we found that while no reliable differences were revealed for evaluations of creative work produced by human-AI dyads (vs. human-human dyads), the creators involved were systematically judged more negatively. Creators that collaborate with AI (vs. another human) were perceived to invest less effort into their work (Study 1). Due to lower perceptions of invested effort, creators were viewed to be less competent and warm, and were, in turn, trusted less and emerged less as leaders (Studies 2-4). Interestingly, we found that evaluators who possess high (vs. low) AI literacy (e.g., AI developers) judge creators that collaborate with AI less negatively (Studies 3 and 4). Widespread support for our predictions was found across diverse creative contexts (e.g., chair design, startup pitches, visual advertisements) and population samples (laypeople, managers, investors, and AI developers).

11 September

The Boundaries of Remote Work: How Autonomy Creates Divergent Consequences of Working from Home

SPEAKER

Prof. Wei Jee Ong
Assistant Professor
Department of Management & Organisation
National University of Singapore

ABSTRACT

Remote work has flourished in the post-pandemic world, revealing both benefits and drawbacks for employees. Where extant theory has delineated numerous positive consequences of remote work, its negative effects are less well understood despite emerging recognition that remote work can also disrupt the work-home boundary. Integrating boundary theory with theories of work autonomy, I develop a theoretical model accounting for both effects, suggesting that the jobs in which remote working is more accessible are also the jobs in which it is less satisfying. Specifically, I propose that autonomy moderates the effects of remote working frequency on job satisfaction. Across one large-scale longitudinal study (Study 1) and one preregistered experiment (Study 2), I find that in higher-autonomy jobs, individuals experience reduced satisfaction the more they work remotely. In contrast, in lower-autonomy jobs, individuals experience more satisfaction the more they work remotely. Study 2 further establishes that changes in decision making loads involving boundary management mediate these effects. Results ironically suggest that the job conditions that facilitate remote work also make it less satisfying, pointing to important implications for boundary theory and job design for remote work.

11 September

Volunteering, Social Capital, and Strategic Human Capital

SPEAKER

Mr. Lambert (Zixin) Li
Ph.D. Candidate in Organizational Behavior
Stanford University

ABSTRACT

When and why does volunteering affect employee productivity and well-being? I conducted an intervention tournament in which 1,092 primary care doctors in 21 Chinese rural hospitals were randomly assigned to eight different types of volunteering programs. I used a factorial design to test the competing theoretical mechanisms, based on three factors of whether the activities related to regular work (health promotion vs. environmental sustainability), whether doctors attended alone or with co-workers, and whether doctors had direct contact with community members. We measured the treatment effect on quality of care using a gold-standard audit study in which 32 standardized patients presented one of 8 common conditions (lower back pain, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, coronary artery disease, or diabetes mellitus × simple or complex scenarios) and scored doctors’ diagnosis and treatment behaviors. We traced changes in administrative records of turnover and the validated measures of burnout as secondary outcomes. We found that volunteering largely improved productivity, decreased 6-month turnover, and reduced burnout. Moreover, the effect of volunteering depended more on social interactions than on the types of activities. Specifically, volunteering with co-workers improved productivity, which was mediated by received informational support; volunteering that built community ties reduced burnout and turnover, which was mediated by received emotional and appraisal support, respectively. By contrast, the effects were similar regardless of whether the volunteer activity was health promotion or environmental sustainability. Taken together, volunteering creates strategic human capital by building social capital, beyond the apparent mechanisms of prosocial motivation and skill development.

05 September

Caught Between Algorithms and Peers: Consequences of Algorithm-Assisted Evaluation on Human Learning and Performance in Software Development

SPEAKER

Mr. Jong Sig (Sik) Chung
Ph.D. Candidate
McCombs School of Business
The University of Texas at Austin

ABSTRACT

Human-algorithm augmentation is becoming increasingly common in organizations, where algorithmic assistance during mundane tasks frees up humans to perform other high-level tasks. While augmentation literature generally predicts a synergistic integration between humans and algorithms, this perspective often overlooks potential negative spillover effects of algorithmic assistance on human performance. Focusing on the autonomy of algorithms that operate without human involvement, this study argues that it may stifle interactions among humans, an essential source of human learning. Specifically, I examine the introduction of autonomous algorithms to assist humans in evaluating each other’s contributions in knowledge-intensive projects, a process traditionally conducted through human interaction and discussion. As manual evaluation is resource-intensive, many projects have adopted algorithms to assist human’s evaluation. Using a stacked cohort generalized Difference-in-Differences design and data about software development projects on GitHub, the study finds that although the adoption of Continuous Integration (CI) bot within a project—algorithms that assist evaluation—reduce the burden of developer’s evaluation within the project, it also decreases interaction among developers during evaluation. This leads to a decline in developer’s performance in two essential tasks: monitoring fatal bugs and searching for new features within the project. Plus, it increases total un-resolved fatal problems within the project, possibly due to reduced developer’s performance. Lastly, I find that the benefits and pitfalls of the bot adoption magnify when the project receives contributions from diverse knowledge domains. These findings challenge prevailing assumptions about human-algorithm augmentation, highlighting the need for a balanced approach to integrating algorithmic assistance.

13 June

Unpacking the Gender Gap in Technology Entrepreneurship: A Set-analytic Approach

SPEAKER

Prof. Peer C. Fiss
Professor of Management & Organization
Marshall School of Business
University of Southern California

ABSTRACT

The gender gap in technology entrepreneurship has been extensively documented, and a number of recent studies have sought the impact of individual factors such as education or professional experience. However, education and professional experience are highly related, and potentially offer compounding advantages or disadvantages to entrepreneurs. In this paper, we use a set analytic approach which allows us to understand the combination of factors that successful founders commonly exhibit. We find that men have more pathways to entrepreneurship, and that these pathways are less complex (more flexible) which in turn enables a greater share of individuals to become founders. Reducing the gender gap in entrepreneurship requires finding opportunities for women from a greater share of business and educational backgrounds to become founders.

11 June

When (Not) To Follow SOEs In Foreign Direct Investments: Evidence From Chinese Non-SOEs’ FDI Location Choices

SPEAKER

Prof. Yan Anthea Zhang
Fayez Sarofim Vanguard Professor of Management
Jesse H. Jones Graduate School of Business
Rice University

ABSTRACT

Prior literature has documented that firms imitate others in entering new foreign markets. We advance this line of research by examining imitation between state-owned enterprises (SEOs) and non-SEOs. We argue that SEOs receive support from their home country government in foreign markets, which may be spilled over to non-SOEs from the same home country, and as a result, non-SOEs tend to follow SOEs in their foreign market location choices. We further argue that this relationship will be stronger in host countries have high political risk since non-SEOs have stronger need for home country government’s support in politically risker host countries. Moreover, we argue this positive interaction effect will become weaker when the host and home countries have weaker diplomatic ties since the home country government’s support is less useful, if not harmful, in the host countries. With data on Chinese non-SOEs’ foreign direct investment (FDI) location choices in 2001-2013, we find strong empirical evidence to support these propositions. Our study can contribute to the literatures on FDI location choices, inter-firm imitation, SOEs, and the interplay between firms and government.