Conflict inside and outside: Social comparisons and attention shifts in multidivisional firms

Strategic Management Journal

Volumn 38, Issue 7, 2017, Pages 1435-1454

  Hu, Songcui ^a   He, Zi Lin ^b   Blettner, Daniela P ^c   Bettis, Richard A ^d  

^a UNIVERSITY OF ARIZONA   (United States)

^b TILBURG UNIVERSITY   (Netherlands)

^c SIMON FRASER UNIVERSITY   (Canada)

^d UNIVERSITY OF NORTH CAROLINA   (United States)

Author keywords

adaptive aspirations; attention allocation; multidivisional firms; political coalition; social comparison

Indexed keywords

BEHAVIORAL RESEARCH; COMMERCE; COPYRIGHTS;

ADAPTIVE ASPIRATIONS; ATTENTION ALLOCATION; MULTIDIVISIONAL FIRMS; POLITICAL COALITION; SOCIAL COMPARISON;

MANAGERS;

EID: 85019726821     PISSN: 01432095     EISSN: 10970266     Source Type: Journal    
DOI: 10.1002/smj.2556     Document Type: Article

References (65)

1. Ansoff I. 1965. Corporate Strategy: An Analytic Approach to Business Policy for Growth and Expansion. McGraw-Hill: New York.
2. Arrfelt M, Wiseman RM, Hult GTM. 2013. Looking backward instead of forward: aspiration-driven influences on the efficiency of the capital allocation process. Academy of Management Journal 56(4): 1081–1103.
3. Arrfelt M, Wiseman RM, McNamara G, Hult GTM. 2015. Examining a key corporate role: the influence of capital allocation competency on business unit performance. Strategic Management Journal 36(7): 1017–1034.
4. Audia PG, Brion S. 2007. Reluctant to change: self-enhancing responses to diverging performance measures. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes 102(2): 255–269.
5. Audia PG, Greve HR. 2006. Less likely to fail: low performance, firm size, and factory expansion in the shipbuilding industry. Management Science 52(1): 83.
6. Barr PS, Stimpert JL, Huff AS. 1992. Cognitive change, strategic action, and organizational renewal. Strategic Management Journal 13(S1): 15–36.
7. Baum JAC, Dahlin KB. 2007. Aspiration performance and railroads' patterns of learning from train wrecks and crashes. Organization Science 18(3): 368–385.
8. Baum J, Lant T. 2003. Hits and misses: managers' (mis)categorization of competitors in the Manhattan hotel industry. In Joel A.C. Baum, Olav Serenson (ed.) Geography and Strategy (Advances in Strategic Management, Volume 20) Emerald Group Publishing Limited: 119–156.
9. Baum JAC, Rowley TJ, Shipilov AV, Chuang YT. 2005. Dancing with strangers: aspiration performance and the search for underwriting syndicate partners. Administrative Science Quarterly 50(4): 536–575.
10. Blettner DP, He Z-L, Hu S, Bettis RA. 2015. Adaptive aspirations and performance heterogeneity: attention allocation among multiple reference points. Strategic Management Journal 36(7): 987–1005.
11. Certo ST, Semadeni M. 2006. Strategy research and panel data: evidence and implications. Journal of Management 32(3): 449–471.
12. Chandler AD. 1962. Strategy and Structure. MIT Press: Cambridge, MA.
13. Chuang Y, Baum J. 2003. It's all in the name: failure-induced learning by multiunit chains. Administrative Science Quarterly 48(1): 33–59.
14. Collins R. 1996. For better or worse: the impact of upward social comparison on self-evaluations. Psychological Bulletin 119: 51–89.
15. Collins D, Montgomery C. 1997. Corporate Strategy: A Resource Based Approach. Boston, MA: McGraw-Hill/Irwin.
16. Cyert RM, March JG. 1963. A Behavioral Theory of the Firm. Prentice-Hall: Englewood Cliffs, NJ.
17. Cyert RM, March JG. 1992. A Behavioral Theory of the Firm. Blackwell: Oxford, UK.
18. Denrell J, March JG. 2001. Adaptation as information restriction: the hot stove effect. Organization Science 12(5): 523–538.
19. DiMaggio PJ, Powell WW. 1983. The iron cage revisited: institutional isomorphism and collective rationality in organizational fields. American Sociological Review 48(2): 147–160.
20. Durand R, Paolella L. 2013. Category stretching: reorienting research on categories in strategy, entrepreneurship, and organization theory. Journal of Management 50(6): 1100–1123.
21. Ethiraj SK, Levinthal D. 2009. Hoping for A to Z while rewarding only A: complex organizations and multiple goals. Organization Science 20(1): 4–21.
22. Gaba V, Joseph J. 2013. Corporate structure and performance feedback: aspirations and adaptation in M-form firms. Organization Science 24(4): 1102–1119.
23. Gavetti G, Greve H, Levinthal D, Ocasio W. 2012. The behavioral theory of the firm: assessment and prospects. Academy of Management Annals 6(1): 1–40.
24. Granatstein L. 2001. Breaking par. Mediaweek (11): 37–38.
25. Greene W. 2002. Econometric Analysis. (5th edn). Prentice Hall Press: Upper Saddle River, NJ.
26. Greve HR. 1998. Performance, aspirations, and risky organizational change. Administrative Science Quarterly 43(1): 58–86.
27. Greve HR. 2002. Sticky aspirations: organizational time perspective and competitiveness. Organization Science 13(1): 1–17.
28. Greve HR. 2003a. A behavioral theory of R&D expenditures and innovations: evidence from shipbuilding. Academy of Management Journal 46(6): 685–702.
29. Greve HR. 2003b. Investment and the behavioral theory of the firm: evidence from shipbuilding. Industrial and Corporate Change 12(5): 1051–1076.
30. Greve HR. 2003c. Organizational Learning from Performance Feedback: A Behavioral Perspective on Innovation and Change. Cambridge University Press: Cambridge, England.
31. Greve HR. 2008. A behavioral theory of firm growth: sequential attention to size and performance goals. Academy of Management Journal 51(3): 476–494.
32. Hu S, Blettner D, Bettis RA. 2011. Adaptive aspirations: performance consequences of risk preferences at extremes and alternative reference groups. Strategic Management Journal 32(13): 1426–1436.
33. Jensen M. 2001. Value maximisation, stakeholder theory, and the corporate objective function. European Financial Management 7(3): 297–317.
34. Jordan A, Audia PG. 2012. Self-enhancement and learning from performance feedback. Academy of Management Review 37(2): 211–231.
35. Joseph J, Gaba V. 2015. The fog of feedback: ambiguity and firm responses to multiple aspiration levels. Strategic Management Journal 36(13): 1960–1978.
36. Kacperczyk A, Beckman CM, Moliterno TP. 2015. Disentangling risk and change: internal and external social comparison in the mutual fund industry. Administrative Science Quarterly 60(2): 228–262.
37. Labianca G, Fairbank JF, Andrevski G, Parzen M. 2009. Striving toward the future: aspiration--performance discrepancies and planned organizational change. Strategic Organization 7(4): 433–466.
38. Lant TK. 1992. Aspiration level adaptation: an empirical exploration. Management Science 38(5): 623–644.
39. Lechner C, Floyd S. 2012. Group influence activities and the performance of strategic initiatives. Strategic Management Journal 33(5): 478–495.
40. Levinthal D, March JG. 1981. A model of adaptive organizational search. Journal of Economic Behavior and Organization 2(4): 307–333.
41. Levitt B, March JG. 1988. Organizational learning. Annual Review of Sociology 14: 319–340.
42. March J. 1962. The business firm as a political coalition. Journal of Politics, 24(4): 662–678.
43. March J. 1988. Decisions and Organizations. Blackwell: Oxford, UK.
44. March JG, Simon HA. 1958. Organizations. Wiley Organizations: Oxford, England.
45. Massini S, Lewin A, Greve H. 2005. Innovators and imitators: organizational reference groups and adoption of organizational routines. Research Policy 34(10): 1550–1569.
46. McNamara G, Deephouse DL, Luce RA. 2003. Competitive positioning within and across a strategic group structure: the performance of core, secondary, and solitary firms. Strategic Management Journal 24(2): 161–181.
47. Mezias SJ, Chen YR, Murphy PR. 2002. Aspiration-level adaptation in an American financial services organization: a field study. Management Science 48(10): 1285–1300.
48. Milgrom P, Roberts J. 1988. An economic approach to influence activities in organizations. American Journal of Sociology 94(Suppl.): S154–S179.
49. Miller KD, Chen WR. 2004. Variable organizational risk preferences: tests of the March-Shapira model. Academy of Management Journal 47(1): 105–115.
50. Milliken FJ, Lant TK. 1991. The impact of an organization's recent performance history on strategic persistence and change. In Advances in Strategic Management, Shrivastava P, Huff A, Dutton J (eds). JAI Press: Greenwich, CT; 129–156.
51. Miner AS, Haunschild PR. 1995. Population level learning. Research in Organizational Behavior 17: 115.
52. Moliterno T, Beck N, Beckman CM. 2014. Knowing your place: social performance feedback in good times and bad times. Organization Science, 25(6): 1684–1702.
53. Ocasio W. 1997. Towards an attention-based view of the firm. Strategic Management Journal 18(S1): 187–206.
54. Ocasio W. 2011. Attention to attention. Organization Science 22(5): 1286–1296.
55. Pfeffer J. 1992. Managing with Power: Politics and Influence in Organizations. Harvard Business School Press: Boston, MA.
56. Porter M. 1980. Competitive strategy: techniques for analyzing industries and competitors.
57. Salancik GR, Meindl JR. 1984. Corporate attributions as strategic illusions of management control. Administrative Science Quarterly 29(2): 238–254.
58. Sedikides C, Strube MJ. 1997. Self-evaluation: to thine own self be good, to thine own self be sure, to thine own self be true, and to thine own self be better. Advances in Experimental Social Psychology 29: 209–269.
59. Short JC, Palmer TB. 2003. Organizational performance referents: An empirical examination of their content and influences. Organizational Behavior and Human Decision Processes 90(2): 209–224.
60. Siggelkow N, Rivkin JW. 2005. Speed and search: designing organizations for turbulence and complexity. Organization Science 16(2): 101–122.
61. Sine WD, Haveman HA, Tolbert PS. 2005. Risky business? Entrepreneurship in the new independent-power sector. Administrative Science Quarterly 50(2): 200–232.
62. Sterman JD. 2000. Business Dynamics: Systems Thinking and Modeling for a Complex World. New York: Irwin McGraw_Hill.
63. Vissa B, Greve H, Chen WR. 2010. Business group affiliation and firm search behavior in India: responsiveness and focus of attention. Organization Science, 21(3): 696–712.
64. Washburn M, Bromiley P. 2012. Comparing aspiration models: the role of selective attention. Journal of Management Studies 49(5): 896–917.
65. Williamson O. 1975. Markets and Hierarchies, Analysis and Antitrust Implications: A Study in the Economics of Internal Organization. Free Press: New York.