Center for Organizational Research (COR)

October 2007

COR

Seminar

Heather Haveman

Department of Sociology

Haas School of Business

UC Berkeley

Antislavery in America: The Press, The Pulpit, and The Rise of Antislavery Societies

October 19, 12:00 – 1:30 PM
Social Science Plaza B, Room 4206

[Details]

Colloquium

Paul Merage School of Business

Science and Art of Innovation Series

Christina Gibson

Paul Merage School of Business

UCI

When Complex Change is Status Quo: Exploring the Concept of

Collaboration External Adjustment in Film Making

October 25, 12:00 – 1:30 PM

MPAA 120

November 2007

COR
Symposium

Gary Alan Fine
John Evans Professor of Sociology
Jean Gimbel Lane Professor of the Humanities
Northwestern University

Kimberly D. Elsbach
Professor of Management
Co-director of the Center for Women and Leadership
UC Davis

Susan A. Mohrman
Senior Research Scientist
Marshall School of Business
University of Southern California

Conducting High Quality Field Research In (And With) Organizations

November 16
Panel Presentation: 12:00 – 1:30 PM
Social Ecology I, Room 306

Discussion: 2:00 – 3:30 PM
Social Ecology I, Room 300

Discussant
Michael Montoya

Departments of Anthropology and Chicano/Latino Studies
UCI

[Details]

Colloquium

Paul Merage School of Business

Science and Art of Innovation Series

Andy Hargadon

Graduate School of Management

UC Davis

November 29, 12:00 – 1:30 PM

SB 117

 

December 2007

COR
Faculty Workshop

Simon Cole
Department of Criminology, Law and Society
UCI

Does STS Have a Special Sauce, or Is It Just Gravy?
Cautionary Notes on Cautionary Notes about STS Interventions in Law

Discussants

Evan Schofer
Department of Sociology
UCI

Carroll Seron
Department of Criminology, Law and Society
UCI

December 7, 12:00 – 1:30 PM
Social Ecology I, Room 306

[Details]

January 2008

Colloquium

Paul Merage School of Business

Science and Art of Innovation Series

Howard Aldrich

Department of Sociology

University of North Carolina

Small Worlds, Infinite Possibilities? How Social Networks

Affect Entrepreneurial Team Formation and Search

January 24, 12:00 – 1:30 PM

SB 223

February 2008

Paul Merage School of Business

Strategy Series

Jay Kim

Marshall School of Business

University of Southern California

The Effects of Strategic and Locational Complementarity on Acquisition Performance:

Evidence from the U.S. Commercial Banking Industry, 1989-2001

February 1, 10:30 AM – 12:00 PM

SB223

COR

Seminar

Jennifer Howard-Grenville

Lundquist College of Business
University of Oregon

Identity Processes in Institutional Entrepreneurship:

Emergence, Contestation and Enactment of a New Role

February 15, 12:00 – 1:30 PM
Social Ecology I, Room 306

[Details]

Colloquium

Paul Merage School of Business

Science and Art of Innovation Series

Gerald Tellis

Marshall School of Business

University of Southern California

Innovation of Firms Across Nations:  New Metrics and Findings

February 21, 12:00 – 1:30 PM

SB 223

Colloquium

Paul Merage School of Business

Strategy Series

Co-Sponsored by COR

James March

James Steele Parker Professor of International Management, Emeritus

Stanford University

The Search for a Theory of Novelty

February 22, 2:00 – 3:30 PM

SB 117

[Details]

COR

Seminar

Paul Carlile

School of Management

Boston University

Addressing the Challenge of Novelty in Distributed Innovation:
Stretching from Open Source Software to Toyota Production and Design

February 29, 12:00 – 1:30 PM

Social Ecology I, Room 306

[Details]

March 2008

Colloquium

Paul Merage School of Business

Strategy Series

Norman Bowie

Carlson School of Management

University of Minnesota

Transaction Cost Economics and Business Ethics

March 7, 3:00 – 4:30 PM

SB 223

COR

Faculty Workshop

Yan Gong

Paul Merage School of Business

UCI

Responses to Organizational Surprises in Startups:
The Impact of Improvisation and Memory on Response Outcomes

March 14, 12:00 – 1:30 PM

Social Ecology I, Room 306

[Details]

Colloquium

Paul Merage School of Business

Science and Art of Innovation Series

Michael L.Tushman

Kennedy School of Business

Harvard University

Innovation Streams, Executive Leadership, and Ambidextrous Designs

March 21, 12:00 – 1:30 PM

SB 117

April 2008

Colloquium

Paul Merage School of Business

Strategy Series

Dovev Lavie

McCombs School of Business

University of Texas – Austin

Alliance Portfolio Internationalization and Firm Performance

Time changed to:

April 29, 3:00 – 4:30 PM

SB 112

[Details]

May 2008

COR

Seminar

Co-Sponsored with the Department of Sociology

Diane Vaughan

School of International and Public Affairs

Columbia University

Theorizing: Interpretive Work in Qualitative Analysis

May 15, 12:30 – 2:00 PM

SSPA 2112

[Details]

COR

Symposium

Diane Vaughan

School of International and Public Affairs

Columbia University

Michael Kenney

School of Public Affairs

Pennsylvania State University – Harrisburg

Michel Anteby

Harvard Business School

Harvard University

Demystifying the Dark Side of Organizations

May 16

Panel Presentation: 12:00 – 1:30 PM

Social Science Plaza A, Room 2112

Discussion: 2:00 – 3:30 PM

Social Science Plaza B, Room 4206

Discussant

Calvin Morrill

UCI

Moderator

Martha Feldman

UCI

[Details]

June 2008

End of the Year Event!

Featuring Poster Presentations by Previous COR Graduate Student Fellows

and Faculty Small Grant Recipients

June 6, 12:00-1:30 PM

Social Ecology I, Room 306

[Details]

Colloquium

Paul Merage School of Business

Strategy Series

Wesley Sine

Johnson School

Cornell University

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

[Details]

Symposium

Demystifying the Dark Side of Organizations

May 16
Panel Presentation: 12:00 – 1:30 PM
Social Science Plaza A, Room 2112

Discussion: 2:00 – 3:30 PM
Social Science Plaza B, Room 4206

Diane Vaughan
Professor of International and Public Affairs, and Sociology
School of International and Public Affairs
Department of Sociology
Columbia University

Michael Kenney
Professor of Public Policy and Political Science
School of Public Affairs
Pennsylvania State University – Harrisburg

Michel Anteby
Professor of Business Administration
Harvard Business School
Harvard University

Discussant
Calvin Morrill
Department of Sociology
UCI

Moderator
Martha Feldman
Department of Policy, Planning and Design
UCI

Abstract

Organizations provide us with many benefits, but they are not all goodness and light.  Indeed, organizations are also responsible for or involved in various forms of deviance, ranging from accidents and mistakes to illicit and criminal behavior.  How we understand this “dark” side of organizations is the topic for our symposium.  Our three panelists have all conducted extensive field research on various aspects of organizational deviance.   They present their various approaches to and understandings of the “dark side” illustrated by examples from their research and discuss the challenges and tradeoffs that are involved in studying the dark side.  The symposium will be followed by an opportunity for in-depth discussion among the panelists and interested faculty and students.

About the Panelists

Diane Vaughanis Professor of Sociology and International and Public Affairs at Columbia University.  Her work combines organization theory with the deviance literature to examine how things go wrong in organizations. Using analogical comparison of cases of failures in organizations that vary in size, complexity, and function, she has found common patterns. For example, in misconduct between two organizations, deteriorating intimate relationships, and NASA’s two space shuttle accidents, the outcomes were preceded by long incubation periods typified by early warning signs that were either misinterpreted or ignored. Her current work examines the negative case: ethnography and interviews in four air traffic control facilities escapes the problems of retrospective analysis, examining how people make decisions when they are trained to identify anomalies early and correct them so that small mistakes do not turn into big ones with harmful outcomes. She is also interested in how the experience of mistakes in research leads to productive new directions and interpretations.

Download Vaughan (1999: The dark side of organizations

Download Vaughan (2003): History as cause

Download Vaughan (2004): Theorizing disaster

Michael Kenney is assistant professor of political science and public policy at Pennsylvania State University, Harrisburg.  Dr. Kenney received his Ph.D. in political science from the University of Florida in 2002.  Since
then he has held research fellowships with the Center for International Security and Cooperation at Stanford University and the Center for International Studies at the University of Southern California.  He recently
published a book-length study on drug trafficking and terrorism called From Pablo to Osama: Trafficking and Terrorist Networks, Government Bureaucracies, and Competitive Adaptation.  His published work has also
appeared in Survival, Global Crime, the International Journal of Intelligence and Counterintelligence, Transnational Organized Crime, and the Wall Street Journal.  Dr. Kenney is currently conducting research on Islamic extremism in Spain and the United Kingdom funded by the National Institute of Justice.  He has also conducted research in Colombia and Israel.  At Penn State Harrisburg, Dr. Kenney teaches courses on international relations, U.S. foreign policy, terrorism and crime, drug control policy, and Latin
American politics.

Download Kenney (2007): The architecture of drug trafficking

Michel Anteby is an Assistant Professor in the Organizational Behavior Area at the Harvard Business School.  His research focuses on how individuals derive meaning at work and how moral orders get created.  A main locus of study has been organizational gray zones at work and their implications on participants’ identities. The project analyzed craftsmen in an aeronautics plant and the illegal behaviors they engaged in to maintain their sense of worth. Findings have been published in Ethnography, Organization Science, and Sociologie du Travail.  A book, titled Moral Gray Zones, is also due in August at Princeton University Press.  More recently, he started looking at the morality of markets, in particular the U.S. demand and supply of cadavers for medical research and education (see article with Mikell Hyman in Social Science & Medicine).  Michel earned a joint Ph.D. in management from New York University and in sociology from the Ecole des Hautes Etudes en Sciences Sociales (EHESS).  He also holds a master’s in economics from the Sorbonne, and a master’s of public administration from Harvard.

Download Anteby (2008): Identity incentives as an engaging form of control

Download Anteby (2008): Entrepreneurial ventures and whole-body donations

Colloquium

Alliance Portfolio Internationalization and Firm Performance

       

April 29, 3:00 – 4:30PM
School of Business, Room 112

Dovev Lavie

Technion – Israel Institute of Technology and

McCombs School of Business

University of Texas at Austin

Abstract

Alliance research has traditionally focused on structural and relational aspects of the networks in which firms are situated, paying less attention to the inherent characteristics of their partners. This study introduces the notion of alliance portfolio internationalization (API), which refers to the degree of foreignness of partners in a firm’s collection of immediate alliance relationships. We develop a framework to explain how API impacts firm performance. We suggest that as a firm’s API increases, financial performance is expected to initially decline, then improve, and finally decline again. This sigmoid relationship between API and financial performance is ascribed to evolving learning effects that shape the net benefits of API. When the firm’s alliance portfolio, on average, consists of proximate foreign partners, the firm may fail to recognize latent national differences, but at moderate levels of API, its absorptive capacity and specialized collaborative routines support the exchange of valuable network resources. Nevertheless, high levels of API undermine firm performance because of the failure of collaborative routines and mounting liabilities of cross-national differences. We test the framework using data on the alliance portfolios of U.S.-based software firms during the period from 1990 to 2001. The results provide support for the sigmoid relationship as well as for our predictions that firms which have gained experience with foreign partners and maintained wholly owned subsidiaries in their partners’ countries of origin can overcome some of the liabilities of API and better leverage its benefits.

[Download Research Paper]

Faculty Workshop

Responses to Organizational Surprises in Startups:
The Impact of Improvisation and Memory on Response Outcomes

March 14 , 12:00 – 1:30 PM
Social Ecology I, Room 306

Yan Gong
Professor of Strategy
Paul Merage School of Business
University of California – Irvine

Discussants

Christine Beckman
Paul Merage School of Business
UCI

Calvin Morrill
Department of Sociology
UCI

Biography

Yan Gong joined the Merage Faculty at UCI in the Fall of 2007. His research focuses on capabilities, routines and unexpected events in entrepreneurial firms. His current research explores dynamic paths of how new firms develop routines and capabilities, and how they respond to surprise events in entrepreneurial processes.   His research has appeared in the Handbook of Organizational Routines and Frontiers of Entrepreneurship Research.

Abstract

This paper offers a conditional framework of improvisation, in a context of organizational responses to surprise events. We propose that two key factors related to organizational knowledge use will shape whether a specific response to a surprise will have value to the organization.  First, we argue that intermediate levels of improvisation during responses create conflicts on knowledge deployment that reduce the chances of an effective response. In contrast, both lower and higher levels of improvisation will have a relatively more positive impact on organizational outcomes. Second, the organization’s direct and indirect memory represents a reservoir of potential activities and interpretive schemes, which in turn enhances the chances that its surprise response will have a valued outcome. Finally, we propose that the value of improvisational response is enhanced by the presence of high levels of organizational memory. We test these ideas using a sample of 141 surprise events identified from 1,725 pages of interview transcripts, over 1,000 pages of informant self-rating reports, and rater assessments of these materials. Our study contributes to theories of improvisation, organizational learning, and emerging theories of organizational surprise.

Download Discussion Paper