Center for Organizational Research (COR)

COR Workshop

Formal Models, Simulation and Theory Development:
A Workshop on Agent-Based Modeling

Dirk Martignoni
Visiting Scholar
School of Social Ecology
UCI

November 21, 12:00 – 1:30PM
Social Ecology I, Room 306

About the Workshop

In this workshop we will discuss how simulation models, particularly agent-based models, are used in management and organization research. The aim of this workshop is to help students not familiar with agent-based modeling to gain a basic understanding of the strengths and limitations of this method. James March’s (1991) paper and model of organizational learning will serve as an illustrative example.

Download March (1991) Paper

About the Speaker

Dirk Martignoni is a PhD student in Management at the University of St Gallen, Switzerland, and is currently a visiting scholar in UCI’s School of Social Ecology.  He received an MBA from the University of St. Gallen. His research interests focus on the processes of individual and organizational learning under conditions of uncertainty.

COR Panel

Phil Bromiley
Dean’s Professor in Strategic Management
Paul Merage School of Business
UCI

Judy Olson
Donald Bren Professor of Information and Computer Sciences
Donald Bren School of Information and Computer Sciences
UCI

About the Panel

Do you ever wonder how accomplished, senior scholars become so accomplished? How they come to see a topic as worth studying? How they start projects, manage them, sustain their energy, and carry them through to completion? This panel will feature two senior scholars offering their practical advice for making your research a success.

About the Panelists

Philip Bromiley is a Dean’s Professor in Strategic Management at the Merage School of University of California, Irvine. Previously he held the Curtis L. Carlson Chair in Strategic Management and chaired the Department of Strategic Management & Organization at the University of Minnesota. He has published widely on organizational decision-making and strategic risk-taking. He served on the editorial boards of Academic of Management Journal, Organization Science, Strategic Organization, and the Journal of Management and as associate editor for Management Science. He currently serves on the board of Strategic Management Journal and Journal of Strategy and Management. His current research examines strategic decision-making, the microstructure of competition, the behavioral foundations of strategic management research, and corporate risk-taking. His most recent book, Behavioral Foundations for Strategic Management (Blackwell, 2004) argues for a behavioral basis for scholarly theory in strategic management.

Download Bromiley Presentation

Judith Olson is the Donald Bren Professor of Information and Computer Sciences, with appointments also in the Paul Merage Business School and the School of Social Ecology at the University of California at Irvine. She was just recently the Richard W. Pew Professor of Human-Computer Interaction at the University of Michigan. She was a professor in the School of Information, the Business School, and the Psychology Department. She got her Ph.D. in Psychology at the University of Michigan then held a postdoctoral fellowship at Stanford University before returning to Michigan as a faculty member. Except for three years at Bell Labs and a year at Rank Xerox Cambridge, UK, and now at UC Irvine, she had been at Michigan her entire professorial life. Her research focuses on the technology and social practices necessary for successful distance work, encompassing both laboratory field study methods along with agent based modeling. She has served on a number of editorial boards and panels for both the National Research Council and the National Science Foundation. In 2001, she was one of the first seven inductees into the CHI Academy. In 2006 she and her husband Gary were awarded the 2006 CHI Lifetime Achievement Award.

Download Olson Presentation

Colloquium

Tilting at Windmills? The Environmental Movement and the Emergency

of the U.S. wind Energy Sector

June 6, 3:00 – 4:30 PM
SB 122

Wesley Sine
Professor of Management and Organizations
Johnson School
Cornell University

Biography

Wesley Sine’s research focuses on the emergence of new economic sectors. He explores issues related to institutional change, industry and technology evolution, technology entrepreneurship, and new venture structure and strategy. He has examined a diverse set of economic sectors ranging from the electric power industry to the emergence of the Internet.   Sine has published, provisionally accepted, or papers forthcoming in the following journals: Administrative Science Quarterly, Academy of Management Journal, Management Science, Organization Science, Strategic Management Journal, and Research Policy. Teaching interests include entrepreneurship, commercializing university technology, new venture growth, the management of technology and innovation, and organizational change.

Abstract

Research in entrepreneurship has said little about the impact of large-scale social movements on entrepreneurial processes. Similarly, social movement scholars have paid little attention to how large-scale social movements external to any one industry can influence the creation of new market opportunities. We theorize that through the construction and propagation of cognitive frameworks, norms, values, and regulatory structures, and by offering preexisting social structure, social movement organizations influence whether entrepreneurs attempt to start ventures in emerging sectors. These activities also moderate the effect of material-resource environmental factors on entrepreneurship. We explore these claims in the context of the emergent U.S. wind energy sector, 1978-1992. We find that greater numbers of environmental movement organization members increased nascent entrepreneurial activity in a state and that this effect was mediated by favorable state regulatory policy. Greater membership numbers also enhanced the effects of important natural resources, market conditions, and skilled human capital on entrepreneurial activity. Taken together, these results have important implications for the study of social movements, entrepreneurship, and institutional theory.