Most Cited Research in Management Science

Professor Alexander Settles

• AJZEN, I (1991) THE THEORY OF PLANNED BEHAVIOR, ORGANIZATIONAL BEHAVIOR AND HUMAN DECISION PROCESSES, 1991, 50, 2, 179-211.

• What is the theory of planned behavior?

• What are the attributes that influence behavior?– General attitudes– Social groupings

• Intention x control interaction

• Attitude toward the behavior

• Subjective norm

• Perceived behavioral control and behavior

Expectancy-value model of attitudes

• According to this model, attitudes develop reasonably from the beliefs people hold about the object of the attitude.

• We form beliefs about an object by associating it with certain attributes

• Each belief links the behavior to a certain outcome

• Personal or Moral Norms• Affect versus Evaluation

Belief – Attitude Relationship

• the strength of each salient belief (b) is combined in a multiplicative fashion with the subjective evaluation (e) of the beliefs attribute, and the resulting products are summed over the n salient beliefs.

• A person’s attitude (A) is directly proportional (a) to this summative belief index.

Normative Beliefs

• The strength of each normative belief (n) is multiplied by the person’s motivation to comply (m) with the referent in question, and the subjective norm (SN) is directly proportional to the sum of the resulting products across the n salient referents

Perception of behavioral control

• Each control belief (c) is multiplied by the perceived power (p) of the particular control factor to facilitate or inhibit performance of the behavior, and the resulting products are summed across the n salient control beliefs to produce the perception of behavioral control (PBC).

Article #2

• BARNEY, J (1991) FIRM RESOURCES AND SUSTAINED COMPETITIVE ADVANTAGE, JOURNAL OF MANAGEMENT, 17, 1, 99-120.

Firm Resources

• Value

• Rareness

• Imitability

• Substitutability

Definitions

• Firm Resources

• Competitive Advantage – a value creating strategy not simultaneously being implemented by any current or potential competitors

• Sustained competitive advantage – when other firms are unable to duplicate the benefits of the firm’s strategy

Models to describe the environment

• Resource homogeneity, mobility and sustained competitive advantage

• Resource homogeneity, mobility and First-mover Advantages

• Resource homogeneity, mobility and entry/mobility barriers

• Resource heterogeneity and immobility

Model

• COHEN, WM and LEVINTHAL, DA (1990) ABSORPTIVE-CAPACITY - A NEW PERSPECTIVE ON LEARNING AND INNOVATION, ADMINISTRATIVE SCIENCE QUARTERLY, 35,1, 128-152.

Research Question

• Proposition: the ability of a firm to recognize the value of new, external information, assimilate it, and apply it to commercial ends is critical to its innovative capabilities

• Hypothesis: Firm’s absorptive capacity is largely a function of the firm's level of prior related knowledge

Research Model

• Create a model of firm investment in research and development (R&D), in which R&D contributes to a firm's absorptive capacity, and test predictions relating a firm's investment in R&D to the knowledge underlying technical change within an industry

• Path Dependence and Absorptive Capacity – prior knowledge permits the assimilation and exploitation of new knowledge

• Absorptive Capacity and R&D Investment - R&D generates new knowledge and contributes to the firm's absorptive capacity

Methods

• Data and Measures – cross-sectional survey data on technology opportunity and appropriability conditions

• R&D intensity – dependent variable – R&D/business unit sales and transfers

• Sample size 1,719 business units representing 318 firms in 151 lines of business

• Estimation methods, OLS, generalized least squares - adjust for heteroscedasticity, and Tobit, which was used when observations for which R&D expenditures were zero were included

• WERNERFELT, B. (1984) A RESOURCE-BASED VIEW OF THE FIRM, STRATEGIC MANAGEMENT JOURNAL, 5, 2, 171-180.

Theory

• The traditional concept of strategy (Andrews, 1971) is phrased in terms of the resource position (strengths and weaknesses) of the firm

• Most of formal economic tools operate on the product-market side.

Resource Perspective

(a) On which of the firm's current resources should diversification be based?

(b) Which resources should be developed through diversification?

(c) In what sequence and into what markets should diversification take place?

(d) What types of firms will it be desirable for this particular firm to acquire?

Propositions

1. Looking at firms in terms of their resources leads to different immediate insights than the traditional product perspective. In particular, diversified firms are seen in a new light.

2. One can identify types of resources which can lead to high profits. In analogy to entry barriers, these are associated with what we will call resource position barriers.

3. Strategy for a bigger firm involves striking a balance between the exploitation of existing resources and the development of new ones. In analogy to the growth-share matrix, this can be visualized in what we will call a resource-product matrix.

4. An acquisition can be seen as a purchase of a bundle of resources in a highly imperfect market. By basing the purchase on a rare resource, one can ceteris paribus maximize this imperfection and one's chances of buying cheap and getting good returns.

Resources

• First mover advantages-resource position barriers

• Attractive resources – Machine capacity – Customer loyalty – Production experience – Technological leads

• Mergers and acquisitions

Methods

• Model development

• Deductive method of logic

• Supported through optimization theory

Demand Curves