Management and Strategy - HKU Business School

13 October

Transplant Rejection? Dark Side of Acquisition on Product Quality Failure

SPEAKER

Dr. Jongsoo (Jays) Kim
Assistant Professor of Strategic Management
Department of Management, School of Business
Hong Kong Baptist University

ABSTRACT

While acquisitions that seek technology can be an effective way for acquiring firms to achieve new technology and breakthrough innovations, extant research on strategic management and technology management and innovation has overlooked how the acquired technology or products can be a hazard due to the acquisition. Are there any negative impacts of acquisitions that are done to obtain new innovative products from the external market? Do acquiring firms have a thorough understanding of the technological features of the new products they acquire? In this paper, we applied a multi-level approach (i.e., at firm- and product-level) regarding acquisitions and product recalls in the U.S. medical device industry. We found evidence that firms that engage in more acquisition activity experience more product recall incidents, but that quality failure is more prevalent when their acquisitions are less related to their core technology domain. Moreover, our data showed that product quality failures are deeply related to asymmetric information and coordination processes. Furthermore, we confirmed that acquired products are more likely to result in more serious recalls.

11 October

The Value of Competitor Information: Evidence from a Field Experiment

SPEAKER

Dr. Hyunjin Kim
Assistant Professor of Strategy
INSEAD Business School

ABSTRACT

To what extent are firms knowledgeable of available information on key competitor decisions, and how does competitor information change their own strategic choices? These questions are fundamental to understanding how firms compete and make strategic decisions, yet systematic evidence on them remains limited. I designed a field experiment across 3,218 firms in the personal care industry, where firms randomly assigned to treatment received easily accessible information on competitor prices. At baseline, nearly half of treatment firms were unable to specify competitor prices. However, once treatment firms received competitor information, they were more likely to change their prices, aligning their decisions with competitors rather than differentiating from them. These changes were driven by firms that were more misaligned in their price and quality decisions, and treatment firms subsequently observed higher measures of performance. If competitor information was both easily accessible and decision-relevant, why did firms not use this information on their own? Results from a follow-up experiment suggest that their lack of knowledge may have been driven by managerial inattention. These findings highlight the role that attention may play over information access in improving firm decisions, and suggest that the growing availability of competitor data across many markets may lead firms to become increasingly similar.

08 October

Age and Work Engagement: Testing Countervailing Theoretical Mechanisms and the Moderating Roles of Age-related HR Practices

SPEAKER

Ms. Yiduo Shao
Ph. D. Candidate in Business Administration
University of Florida

ABSTRACT

The aging population across the globe is driving substantial changes in workforce demographics. Accordingly, engaging the aging workforce becomes an important mission for organizations. However, empirical findings regarding the age-work engagement relationship remain elusive and theoretical explanations have been equivocal and disjointed, suggesting both age-related advantages and challenges in staying engaged at work. Additionally, it remains unclear how organizations may implement age-related HR practices to leverage the age-related advantages while mitigating the challenges. Guided by lifespan development theories and the workplace aging literature, I take a two-study, multi-method approach to address these research questions in my dissertation. In Study 1 (a meta-analytic study), I examine multiple theory-based countervailing mechanisms (i.e., occupational future time perspective; the use of selection, optimization, and compensation [SOC] strategies; physical health; and age discrimination experience) that simultaneously link age to work engagement. In Study 2 (a field investigation), I propose and test a multilevel research model to probe how these mechanisms are shaped by age-specific HR practices (i.e., older worker-specific HR practices) and age-neutral HR practices (i.e., age-inclusive HR practices). Taken together, my dissertation will further scholarly understanding of the complex and multifaceted nature of aging processes at work and provide implications for organizations to design age-wise HR practices in managing the aging workforce.

05 October

Entrepreneurial Learning and Strategic Foresight

SPEAKER

Dr. Andy Wu
Assistant Professor of Business Administration
Harvard Business School

ABSTRACT

We study how learning by experience across projects affects an entrepreneur’s strategic foresight. In a quantitative study of 314 entrepreneurs across 722 crowdfunded projects supplemented with a program of qualitative interviews, we counterintuitively find that entrepreneurs make less accurate predictions as they gain experience executing projects: they miss their predicted timeline to bring a product to market by nearly six additional weeks on each successive project. Although learning should improve prediction accuracy in principle, we argue that entrepreneurs also learn of opportunities to augment each successive product, which drastically expands the interdependencies beyond what an entrepreneur can anticipate. We find that entrepreneurs encounter more unforeseen interdependencies in their subsequent projects, and they sacrifice on-time delivery to address these interdependencies.

29 September

Times of uncertainty: employment uncertainty’s psychological and behavioral impacts on furloughed workers and the moderating effects by work orientations

SPEAKER

Mr. Jack H. Zhang
Ph. D. Candidate in Organizational Behavior
Washington University in St. Louis

ABSTRACT

In my dissertation, I study employment uncertainty (inability to predict the future of the employment relationship)’s psychological and behavioral impacts on furloughed workers along with factors that could affect the strengths of these impacts. Through a qualitative study with 28 employees who were furloughed in 2020, I found that employment uncertainty could bring higher intensities of negative emotions and lower occupational commitment. The occupational commitment could then positively associate with hedging behaviors (preparing for a permanent job loss) and negatively associate with “live like working” behaviors (living one’s life during furlough as if one is still working). Moreover, work orientations might moderate these impacts, with a job orientation (seeing one’s work as a way to make money) strengthening uncertainty’s impacts, whereas a calling orientation (seeing one’s work as personal enjoyment and socially meaningful experience) weakening uncertainty’s impacts. Results of a quantitative survey study with 141 furloughed workers generally supported the hypotheses from the emergent theory. These results reveal the particular harm that employment uncertainty can do to furloughed workers and how employees’ perceived meaning of their work may affect their coping with uncertainty.

24 September

Are We Measuring Human Capital Resources Correctly? The Validity of Extant Human Capital Measures

SPEAKER

Dr. Liwen Zhang
Assistant professor of Management
School of Management and Governance
University of New South Wales

ABSTRACT

Human capital resources (HCRs) are thought to be one of the most important resources for organizations. However, surprisingly little attention has been devoted to the degree to which extant HCR measures capture the construct. This two-study paper aims to better understand the measurement and effects of HCRs. In Study 1, we use recent theoretical frameworks (e.g., Ployhart & Moliterno, 2011) to conduct a content analysis of HCR measures (k = 126). Results revealed that only 29% of measures actually focused on HCRs. Most measures focused on other constructs, such as variables that theoretically are antecedents of HCRs (e.g., education, high-performance work practices) or other types of resources (e.g., physical resources), rather than on HCRs. Further, of the measures that did focus on HCRs, most assessed only a portion of the construct domain (e.g., collective knowledge but not collective skills). In Study 2, we tested whether direct measures of HCRs have a stronger relationship with collective performance than proxy measures that prior research has frequently used to assess HCRs (e.g., education, work experience). A meta-analysis of 93 independent samples and 22,065 units/firms suggested a positive and moderate relationship between HCRs and collective performance (ρ = .29). Further, HCRs have a stronger relation with collective outcomes than constructs such as collective education (ρ = .08) and work experience (ρ = .15). Overall, these findings suggest that researchers often are using contaminated or deficient measures of HCRs and that doing so underestimates the potential value of this key resource to organizations.

17 September

Employee Perception of Being Envied by the Supervisor: Two Pathways for Navigating the Relationship

SPEAKER

Mr. Haoying (Howie) Xu
Ph. D. Candidate in Organizational Behavior/Human Resource Management
Department of Managerial Studies
University of Illinois at Chicago

ABSTRACT

This research develops a theoretical model that explains how and when perception of being envied by the supervisor is associated with the focal employee’s approach and avoidanceoriented interpersonal behaviors toward the supervisor, and in extension, elucidates the downstream relational consequences of the divergent interpersonal behaviors. Drawing on cognitive-motivational-relational theory of emotion, this research explores two discrete emotions—relationship hope and relationship anxiety—as key mechanisms in translating perception of being envied by the supervisor into organizational citizenship behavior toward the supervisor (OCB-S; a form of approach-oriented interpersonal behavior) and interaction avoidance behavior toward the supervisor (IAB-S; a form of avoidance-oriented interpersonal behavior), respectively. Integrating cognitive-motivational-relational theory of emotion with approach-inhibition theory of power, this research suggests that the positive indirect effect of perception of being envied by the supervisor on OCB-S via relationship hope is stronger when the employee’s sense of power with respect to the supervisor is higher, whereas the positive indirect effect of perception of being envied by the supervisor on IAB-S via relationship anxiety is stronger when the employee’s sense of power with respect to the supervisor is lower. In turn,the impact of these two forms of interpersonal behaviors on the supervisor’s perception of leader-member exchange (LMX) is examined. The research model will be tested with a vignette experimental study and a two-source, three-phase time lagged field study.

16 September

Staffing Flexibility and Unit-level Outcomes

SPEAKER

Ms. Hyesook Chung
Ph.D. Candidate in Human Resource Studies
Cornell University

ABSTRACT

The use of variable work schedules – altering the numbers and timing of employees’ work hours from week to week – is one of the widely used HR practices to increase staffing flexibility. However, little research has examined whether and how the use of variable work schedules influences unit-level financial performance. Despite the common assumption that the use of variable work schedules can help firms achieve higher performance (by allowing for timely response to demand fluctuations), especially during a crisis such as COVID-19, this study demonstrates otherwise. I propose that greater use of variable schedules can lead to higher employee turnover at the unit level and the effect is stronger during the pandemic. I also argue that managerial reliance on variable work schedules can decrease not only the level of unit performance but also its recovery during the pandemic via employee turnover. Using data from 1,678 units of a quick service restaurant chain in the US across periods spanning different phases of the COVID-19 pandemic, I find support for these predictions. The findings suggest that scholars and practitioners should reconsider the general assumption that organizations are better able to adapt to uncertain environments through staffing flexibility.

15 September

Cooperatives as Entrants and Incumbents’ Technology Upgrades

SPEAKER

Ms. Hyoju Jeong
Ph.D. Candidate in Business Administration
Carlson School of Management
University of Minnesota

ABSTRACT

This study investigates how the ownership structure of entrants affects incumbents’ reaction to entry. Consumer cooperatives internalize consumer surplus and community externalities; thus, they are incentivized to maximize them, leading to high-quality service provision, greater consumer trust and loyalty. Moreover, formed to serve consumers/members and often to countervail existing market power, cooperatives are unlikely to have a mutual understanding with incumbents. Therefore, I argue that cooperative entry may be a bigger threat than investor-owned firm entry, forcing incumbents to react more competitively to cooperative entry than to investor-owned firm entry. I test and find support for these arguments in the US broadband industry from 2014 to 2018, showing that incumbents are more likely to upgrade their internet deployment technology to high-tech when facing cooperative entry than when facing investor-owned firm entry. Such an effect is stronger in markets with only one or two high-quality internet provider(s) and stronger for big national incumbents than for small local incumbents.

15 September

When Do Firms Trade Patents?

SPEAKER

Mr. Jung H. Kwon
Ph.D. Candidate in International Management Studies
Jindal School of Management
University of Texas at Dallas

ABSTRACT

Drawing on the Coase theorem, we consider a firm’s decision to transfer patent ownership to another firm in the markets for innovation. We deem that the proximity of a patent’s technology structure to that of a firm’s patent portfolio will generally result in greater marginal productivity of the patent, leading to enhanced prospects for the firm’s economic return. We thus predict that firms are more likely to trade patents when the technology structure of a patent is closer to the technology stock of a potential buyer compared with that of its original assignee. However, such a relationship will be weaker when a potential buyer and the original assignee have greater product-market overlap or when the assignee has superior technological capability. We test these predictions by employing a dyad-level analysis of transactional decisions during the 1987−2016 period on 40,110 U.S. patents assigned to 57 major biopharmaceutical firms. Our study provides novel insights on factors that facilitate or inhibit patent trade in the markets for innovation.