Detalles del recurso
Alexandria - University of St.Gallen (Switzerland)
Descripción: In this paper we argue that the fitness of a strategic initiative relative to the firm's internal selection environment hinges on distinct characteristics that enhance survival in the strategic and structural contexts. We test this proposition using data on 962 strategic initiatives originating from ten research and development centers over seven years within a global electronics firm. Our findings suggest that initiative survival in the strategic context is positively influenced by characteristics that enhance interpersonal exchanges and tacit knowledge transfer between an initiative and the headquarters evaluation team. These include geographical proximity to corporate headquarters and the success record of the initiative’s champion. In the structural context, initiative survival is negatively influenced by characteristics that increase uncertainty among members of the headquarters evaluation team about the success of the initiative. These include indicators of implementation complexity and the degree of exploration inherent in an initiative’s goals. Moreover, fitness characteristics interact across the structural and strategic contexts such that the past success of the champion weakens the negative influences of implementation complexity and exploratory goals on initiative survival. For theory, the results demonstrate the relevance of fitness characteristics as predictors of initiative survival and highlight the positive influence of more tacit, personal characteristics in conditioning the negative effects of more explicit uncertainties in initiative survival.
Autor(es): Marcus Matthias Keupp - Steven Floyd - Oliver Gassmann -