The Deep Historical Roots of Organization and Strategy: Traumatic Shocks, Culture, and Institutions (with Lamar Pierce and Jason A. Snyder), Organization Science, 2017

We argue that organizations have deep roots in traumatic societal shocks that long preceded their founding. Drawing on literatures from strategic management and the social sciences, we explain how traumatic shocks such as conflict, disease, and natural disaster can alter the institutional and cultural paths that determine future business environments. Historical shocks can help clarify the origin of cultural and institutional differences and help provide causal inference about why these differences are correlated with organizational structure and strategy. We explain specific cultural and institutional mechanisms through which historical traumatic shocks persist as well as specific organizational factors influenced by these mechanisms. We also provide guidance on key approaches for empirically linking traumatic shocks with modern firms as well as common identification problems in these methods. Our approach clarifies a path for clarifying theory on how culture and institutions shape firms, and how management scholars might anticipate the evolution of market development following emerging traumatic shocks.

Working Papers

Informational Costs of Integration - Working Paper (Best Conference phd paper at the 2017 strategic management society annual conference)

The knowledge based view of the firm has largely ignored the effect of vertical integration on the knowledge flow originating from competitors. This paper addresses that gap by proposing a theoretical model showing that disintegrated markets offer moderate incentives for direct competitors to share information with common suppliers. Vertical integration increases the incentives for information sharing within the integrated firm, but it decreases incentives for competitors to share information. Empirical analysis of patent citation data supports the model findings.

A New Direction or Lack of Direction? The Story of Innovation with Outsider CEOs (with Trey Cummings) – Data Analysis

Previous research has shown that outside CEOs display lower R&D productivity. The literature, however, is not clear on what mechanisms contribute to the decrease in R&D productivity under outside CEOs. This paper analyzes the amount of control outside managers exert over innovation direction. Preliminary results show that outsider CEOs change the firm’s innovative direction more than insiders, although the impact is not uniform across firms. R&D intensive firms do not experience changes in innovation direction linked to an external CEO hire. We interpret this as meaning that external CEOs have difficulties to change the direction of innovation in those firms.

How the Environment Affects Managerial Influence: The Case for Competition – Working Paper

The paper analyzes the impact of baseball managers on team's performance. It shows evidence that tighter environmental constrains and fiercer competition enhance the importance of who is in command.