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Scholars and practitioners have long argued that females exhibit a distinctive and particularly effective managerial style. Yet, less than a third of the largest U.S. corporations have a single female senior executive, raising the question of whether women are in fact effective as senior managers, and, if so, under what circumstances. We address this issue by studying the relationship between female participation in senior management and firm performance as measured by Tobin’s Q. We find a positive association between firm performance and female participation below the CEO level, even when controlling for unobservable firm heterogeneity, but no positive effects from having a female CEO. We then show that the positive results for female participation are entirely driven by firms pursuing an “innovation intensive ” strategy, where creativity and collaboration may be especially important. Our findings thus provide evidence for a “female management style ” that enhances firm performance by facilitating teamwork and innovation but is rendered less effective by the leadership attributes of the CEO position. Given these results, the fact that not all firms have women in senior positions also suggests that an ability to identify, attract, and develop female managerial talent may be a source of competitive advantage.

Origines du capital social et avantages concurrentiels des firmes familiales

This paper deals with value creation in industrial networks. The argument put forward is that value is realised in the exchange between two business actors. However, the antecedents of the value must be search for both beyond the focal exchange of resources, as well as below the same. Therefore we argue that the industrial networks contains two layers. The first is exchange layer and the second is the resource layer. Furthermore, the authors claim that the exchange layer is embedded in the resource layer. In order to find potential value and realise the value of an exchanged resource, a firm must recognise and manage the embeddedness. The arguments are supported by a case from the pulp and paper industry, where a specific paper grade is exchanged between two major European firms within this field.

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The strategic management paradigm explains organizational performance through the alignment between environment, strategy, and reference points. We extend this paradigm by incorporating the role of interorganizational networks on firm performance, thus integrating strategic management and corporate social capital theory. This results in four normative propositions that describe the conditions under which particular interfirm network structures assist or impede firm performance. (also downloadable) in electronic version:

Large organizations are thought to have advantages that make them particularly potent rivals. We argue that the ability of large organizations to ameliorate competitive constraints insulates them from an important source of organizational development, and protects them from being de-selected if unfit. Consequently, we predict that although large organizations are likely to do well in technology contests, they also are likely to become weak competitors over time compared to small organizations. We specify this prediction in an explicit model of “Red Queen ” competition, in which exposure to competition makes organizations both more viable and stronger competitors. We find support for our ideas in empirical estimates of the model obtained using data on hard disk drive manufacturers: Large organizations led the technology race in this market, yet these same organizations failed to develop into stronger competitors through Red Queen competition compared to their small counterparts. We also find evidence that all organizations in this market generated increasingly global competition, regardless of the competitiveness of their home markets. In these ways, our model elucidates important