by The Virtual Design Team (VDT) extends and operationalizes Galbraith’s (1973) information-processing view of organizations. VDT simulates the micro-level information processing, communication and coordination behavior of participants in a project organization and predicts several measures of participant and project-level performance. VDT-1 (Cohen, 1991) and VDT-2 (Christiansen, 1993) modeled project organizations containing actors with perfectly congruent goals engaged in complex but routine engineering design work within static organization structures. VDT-3 extends the VDT-2 work process representation to include measures of activity flexibility, complexity, uncertainty, and interdependence strength. It explicitly models the effects of goal incongruency between agents on their information processing and communication behavior while executing more flexible tasks. These extensions allow VDT to model more flexible organizations executing less routine work processes. VDT thus bridges rigorously between cognitive and social psychological micro-organization theory and sociological and economic macro-organization theory for project teams. VDT-3 has been used to model and simulate the design of two major subsystems of a complex satellite launch vehicle. This case study provides initial evidence that the micro-contingency theory embodied in VDT-3 can be used to predict organizational breakdowns, and to evaluate alternative organizational changes to mitigate

We draw upon strategic management theory, organizational behavior theory, organization theory, and entrepreneurship models to form an integrated model of venture growth including 17 concepts from 5 micro/macro research domains. The model was tested with responses from 307 companies from the architectural woodworking industry. CEO’s specific competencies and motivation, and competitive strategies, were direct predictors of venture growth. CEO’s traits and general competencies, and the environment had significant indirect effects. 3 This research explores the causes of venture growth. Past entrepreneurship research has often studied individual differences (Begley & Boyd, 1987), strategic management concepts (McDougall, Robinson, & DeNisi, 1992), and organization theory concepts (Aldrich & Wiedenmayer, 1993) as isolated causes of venture performance. More recent studies propose that individual, organizational, and environmental dimensions combine to provide a more comprehensive prediction of venture development and growth than any one dimension in

Filling a gap in the interlocks literature which has been largely centered on the West, we present preliminary data on the pattern of interlocking directorates among the top 200 largest corporations in pre-1997 Hong Kong. Then we identify four separate groups of firms in Hong Kong, and suggest propositions based on the resource dependence perspective on the critical relationships among their interlocking directorates, firm strategies, and performance. These propositions have the potential to form the building block of an emerging research agenda that will shed light on the role of interlocking directorates in an increasingly important part of the world. 1.

The behavioral theory of the firm rests on empirical observation of economic behavior in organizations, and was motivated by the 'disconnect ' between that observation and prevailing economic theory. We believe that there is a comparable tension between reality and theory with regard to the persistent, systematic relationships between organizations. Observation belies the traditional view that organizations are distinct and autonomous units of action. Instead, it appears that they are very often embedded in organizational groups comprised of close, robust and multidimensional ties that blur hierarchical boundaries (Granovetter 1994; Gulati & Gargiulo 1999; Powell & Smith-Doerr 1994). These groups, which we call interfirms, demand analysis. Why do they exist at all? What processes cause them to take the forms that they do? Under what circumstances are they more or less useful for their constituents? In this chapter we offer answers to these questions. Our approach to explaining interfirms builds on earlier arguments regarding the existence, structure and behavior of firms. First, we explain the existence of interfirms as a response to the transaction costs that emerge under conditions of bounded rationality. This argument locates the interfirm within broader justifications for institutions, which build on Coase’s ([1937] 1988) transaction cost explanation for the firm. Next, we offer an evolutionary process model of the emergence of one type of interfirm, the network organization – a production

Abstract. Given the paucity of corporate governance research on Third World multinational enterprises (MNEs), we provide an exploratory description of the patterns of interlocking directorates as corporate governance in Thailand-based MNEs in this study. Specifically, we raise a key question: Do the interlocks network attributes and individual board directors of MNEs differ systematically from those of non-MNEs? Drawing upon resource dependence theory, we hypothesize that, compared with non-MNEs, MNEs in Thailand (1) have more densely connected interlocks, (2) occupy more central locations in the interlocks network, (3) have more ethnic Chinese directors, and (4) appoint more military directors. Data from the top 200 listed firms in Thailand support three of the four hypotheses, and suggest a number of implications and future research directions. 1.

As firms increasingly adopt inter-organization computer networks (IONS) to improve coordination, researchers must be concerned about the long term impact of IONS on organizational relationships. This paper reports on an exploratory study of the use of IONS in design and manufacturing activities in the semiconductor industry. We identify the potential interactions between firms that can be facilitated by IONS, and focus on the implications for customer and producer interdependence. Our analysis suggests that the long term impacts of IONS are not technologically determined, and that their use ought to be regarded differently than those of other media.

Levinthal, Jim March, and Joel Podolny. We appreciate financial support from the

An important and intriguing aspect of e-entrepreneurship is the formation of new ventures in the domain of open source software (OSS). Previous research on these ventures has primarily looked at the design of business models, yet has neglected other key questions relating to the management of these firms, despite clear indications that some existing insights on venture management cannot be applied to new ventures in OSS. The purpose of this paper is to explore how three key challenges of venture management -- the liabilities of newness and smallness of start-ups and market entry barriers -- affect new ventures in OSS. Based on empirical data from personal interviews and a large scale survey we find that many of the liabilities that are typically discussed in the entrepreneurship literature are much less of a challenge for new ventures in OSS. Our findings have interesting implications for the emerging theory on e-entrepreneurship, and for entrepreneurs considering to exploit business opportunities in OSS, and more generally business opportunities based on open innovations.

ERP implementations have the potential of significantly complementing the use of business-to-business e-commerce technologies. We consider the sources of this complement by drawing on transaction cost economics, the resource-based view of the firm and the theory of swift even flow. Analysis of 115 firms shows that perceived transactional efficiencies are greater for B2B e-commerce technologies in the presence of ERP, and are in fact magnified when ERP implementation specifically precedes B2B e-commerce initiatives. These findings imply a distinct system adoption strategy for firms pursuing e-commerce opportunities.

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