Abstract: Communities of external stakeholders increasingly influence value creation and value capture. Existing research has focused more on how firms capture value from user communities and less on how they create value through community building. It has also overlooked the non-pecuniary mechanisms that support community building. Through an inductive multi-case study, I explore entrepreneurial firm strategies—particularly those related to non-pecuniary interactions—that support the creation and growth of customer communities, a particular type of community. Findings suggest that firms approach the challenge of balancing growth of the community against its quality through three processes: community organizer training, community education, and social processes of inclusion. This study’s findings provide evidence of the important yet neglected role of non-pecuniary mechanisms that support the creation of customer communities.

Abstract: How do contracts promote development and recurrence of coordination problems in multiparty collaborations? Through inductive research and sociometric techniques, we conducted a longitudinal study of coordination problems (N = 197) in seven building projects. Our findings show how the interconnection between contracts and the dynamics of interorganizational relationships fosters contractual voids – contingencies of cross-understandings, shared norms and ties – that host a range of coordination problems. We articulate our findings into a process model of contractual voids dynamics, which highlights whether organizations overcome rather than continue coordination problems. Our study assists managers of multiparty collaborations to address a key dilemma: coordination is aided by contracts, but contracts also develop coordination problems through unforeseen contractual voids

Abstract: In this proposal, we present the findings from a longitudinal case study of the demise of Nortel, a telecommunication giant that filled for bankruptcy in 2009. Using a configuration lens, our work builds on the integrative approach to failure. We identify a novel phenomenon, which has not yet been theorized: the genesis of a ‘black cloud’ - the loss of customer confidence that can impede an organization’s ability to implement successful complex turnaround strategies. Our findings suggest that adapting to the environment and achieving resilience might not suffice in accomplishing successful turnarounds. Furthermore, we unpack a process where the dynamics of the black cloud contribute to our understanding of a path dependent trajectory to failure.

Abstract: Economic institutions largely determine the extent market actor pursue economic or political activities in a given country. We explain the role institutional knowledge costs have in affecting the economic institutional change process. We define institutional knowledge costs as the cost of developing and maintaining the knowledge to understand, utilize, and comply with formal institutions. Our key theoretical contribution is explaining how including institutional knowledge costs in the economic institutional change process makes political activities more attractive over time.

Abstract: Theorizing about the process of industry convergence (IC) is underdeveloped. We examine the co-evolution among the industries’ ecosystem, managerial attention, firm action (alliances and acquisitions) and ‘extent of industry convergence’ through a case study of convergence between the telecom equipment and computer networking industries based on qualitative and quantitative data. We find that once IC is initiated, the ecosystem co-evolves with firm action involving a sequence of increasing levels of resource commitment and risk until the ecosystem no longer supports further convergence. Our contribution is a generalized process framework of IC that explicates three co-evolutionary cycles; the industry convergence cycle, the shaping-opportunity cycle and the convergence capability development cycle and a set of propositions that link three levels of analysis: inter-industry, intra-industry and intra-firm.