The capitalist and socialist societies of the 20 th century assigned firms different roles within their economic systems. Enterprises transforming from socialist to market economies thus face fundamental organizational restructuring. Many former state-owned firms in the transition economies of Central and Eastern Europe have failed at this task. These firms have pursued primarily defensive downsizing, rather than strategic restructuring, as a result of both internal and external constraints on restructuring strategies. Building on the organizational learning and resource-based theories, we analyze strategies available to management in privatized, former state-owned enterprises in transition economies to restructure their organization. Both internal forces promoting or inhibiting the restructuring process, and external constraints arising in the transition context are examined. A model and testable propositions are developed that explain post-privatization performance. Implications of our research point to the ways in which firms should manage and develop their resource base to transform to competitive enterprises.

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Prior research suggests that Top Management Team (TMT) diversity increases strategic innovation. We extended this argument to the case of entering new geographic areas. In addition to exploring the cognitive implications of TMT diversity, as done in prior research, we explored when diversity may lead to the formation of subgroups within TMTs hampering communication and the propensity to enter new geographic areas. We also examined how these positive cognitive and negative social implications change over time as TMT members interact over the years. The hypotheses were tested using ordinal probit analysis and data on 2,159 expansions of twenty-five companies over a period of more than three decades. 1 Companies are increasingly competing on a global scale. Foreign direct investments grew from $1.8 trillion in 1990 to $9.7 trillion in 2004 (United Nations, 2005). Hence, there is an increasing need for top management teams (TMTs) to identify expansion opportunities beyond familiar domains into countries or regions, such as South East Asia, Central and

SOM theme A: Intra-firm coordination and change

TSER Contract SOE1-CT97-1072Executive Summary This report deals with the role of educational background in diffusion of management knowledge. The role of educational background as a carrier of management knowledge has been one of the main issues in the Creation of European Management Practice project (the CEMP project). This report addresses two issues on this matter: educational background as a provider of management knowledge and educational background as a legitimating factor in managerial qualification systems. The first issue is based on a study of the relationship between 551 Norwegian managers ’ educational background and their management competence. The results from the study of business education and engineering education as providers of management knowledge reveal that there are no strong relationship between type of educational background and managerial meta-competence. This suggests that the diffusion of management knowledge from so-called management education is quite meager at least regarding direct influence on managers ’ competence reservoir. The second issue conceptualizes previous research in the field. Based on these

The paper explores a theoretical, systems-oriented model for understanding sustainable corporate performance.

This study addresses deficiencies in the corporate governance and intellectual capital literature by examining the association between the level of gender and ethnic diversity on the boards of directors of South African publicly listed firms and their degree of intellectual capital performance. A total of eighty-four South African publicly listed firms were included in this study. Empirical results indicated a positive association between the percentage of female and non-white directors on the boards of directors of South African publicly listed status and a firm’s intellectual capital performance. Additional analysis showed the designation of female directors as an insider had a negative effect of intellectual capital performance. Designation of female and non-white directors as outsiders had a positive influence on a firm’s intellectual capital performance. Finally, there was no association between the percentage of non-white inside directors on the boards of South African publicly listed firms and intellectual capital performance. Based on the results of this study, it is concluded South African publicly listed firms may be able to enhance their intellectual capital performance by utilizing a well balanced and structured board of directors in terms of gender and ethnic representation. Finally, for a conceptual perspective, the results of this study support the application of resource-dependence theory as a relevant theoretical framework to examine and explain factors influencing intellectual capital performance. 1

This paper examines team learning behavior; a set of complementary actions that teams engage in to improve their outcomes. We theorize about the impetus that is subsistent within a number of designfactors, both internal and external to the team. Regarding a team’s composition, we investigate the potentially concurrent effects of demographic heterogeneity and subgroup salience. Models using data on 156 teams in five pharmaceutical firms showed that demographic heterogeneity was significant if resulting subgroup salience was controlled for; both very homogeneous and very heterogeneous teams were more inclined to engage in learning behavior. The existence of demographic subgroups in teams may also trigger learning behavior – provided that these subgroups are not too distinct. With regard to organizational context, the results indicate that active external leader encouragement, team empowerment, and the availability of a knowledge management system stimulate learning behavior, but mostly so if all are present concurrently. 2 Over the last few decades, we have witnessed an increasing emphasis in organizations on issues such as flexibility, innovation, and learning. In response, organizations have adopted flat, decentralized structures in which teams are expected to play an important role coping with the uncertainty in the

NON-CEO EXECUTIVE PAY We develop a theory wherein the pay of non-CEO executives can be explained by micro-level opportunity structures-- the intersection of executives ' particular functional positions, CEO background, human capital, and the strategic resource allocation decisions made by the focal firm. Specifically, our framework suggests that executives will be paid more when they occupy positions made visible and important by the actions and resource allocation decisions arising from a firm's strategy, or have a functional background similar to that of the CEO. Moreover, we further suggest that executives ' human capital will benefit them most, in terms of pay, when their position helps the firm manage such strategic resource allocations. Support for this multilevel framework is provided using a unique, longitudinal data set that combines survey and archival data on the four highest echelons of senior executives in large U.S. firms. 2 Executive compensation is an integral component of corporate governance. Indeed, "few such topics on strategic leadership generate the same degree of controversy " (Finkelstein & Hambrick, 1996: 263). The tremendous attention paid to compensation often can be attributed to

We would like to thank the anonymous AIB2002 and AOM2002 reviewers, Mary Zellmer-Bruhn, and Tatiana Kostova for their feedback regarding earlier versions of this paper. * Authors are listed in alphabetic order, as each author contributed equally to this paper. 1 Cultural Diversity, Information Pooling, and Group Effectiveness: A Networks Approach In this paper, we seek to open the “black box ” of diversity research as well as further research on cross-cultural groups by using a network approach to examine processes in multicultural groups. Specifically, we suggest that cultural diversity and orientation affect the communication network, which impacts information pooling and information impact in groups, which ultimately affects group performance and satisfaction. We also suggest that trust influences a number of these relationships.