Strategy

- October 2021
- Case
CrisisReady: Private Data for Public Good

By: Tarun Khanna and James Barnett

In October 2021, CRISISREADY.io considers how and if it should scale operations.
- October 2021
- Case
CrisisReady: Private Data for Public Good

By: Tarun Khanna and James Barnett

In October 2021, CRISISREADY.io considers how and if it should scale operations.
- 2021
- Working Paper
Dynamic Silos: Increased Modularity in Intra-organizational Communication Networks during the Covid-19 Pandemic

By: Tiona Zuzul, Emily Cox Pahnke, Jonathan Larson, Patrick Bourke, Nicholas Caurvina, Neha Parikh Shah, Youngser Park, Joshua Vogelstein, Christopher White and Carey E. Priebe
- 2021
- Working Paper
Dynamic Silos: Increased Modularity in Intra-organizational Communication Networks during the Covid-19 Pandemic

By: Tiona Zuzul, Emily Cox Pahnke, Jonathan Larson, Patrick Bourke, Nicholas Caurvina, Neha Parikh Shah, Youngser Park, Joshua Vogelstein, Christopher White and Carey E. Priebe
- October 2021
- Article
Board Design and Governance Failures at Peer Firms

By: Shelby Gai, J. Yo-Jud Cheng and Andy Wu

Our study introduces board committees as a crucial determinant of board actions. We examine how directors who structurally link different board committees—referred to as multi-committee directors (MCDs)—explain why some board actions are merely symbolic while others are more substantive. As a baseline, we argue that boards in general respond to financial restatements at peer firms by symbolically appointing new directors who are relatively inexperienced and unlikely to have a substantive impact. In contrast, boards with audit–nomination MCDs are more likely to take the substantive action of appointing new directors with the prior experience necessary to reduce the risk of their own future financial restatement. We combine qualitative interviews and a causal identification strategy using an original dataset covering Russell 3000 firms from 2001 to 2014.
- October 2021
- Article
Board Design and Governance Failures at Peer Firms

By: Shelby Gai, J. Yo-Jud Cheng and Andy Wu

Our study introduces board committees as a crucial determinant of board actions. We examine how directors who structurally link different board committees—referred to as multi-committee directors (MCDs)—explain why some board actions are merely symbolic while others are more substantive. As a baseline, we argue that boards in general respond to...

About the Unit

The Strategy unit studies firms as competitors in an economic landscape. Key issues include: the development and effectiveness of firm strategy at both a business and corporate level; the analysis of the competitive environment; and the sustainability of strategy over time.

Our research, course development, and teaching draws on multiple disciplines, including economics, sociology, and political science, and focuses on both domestic and global competition. The objective of the work is to generate findings and develop concepts that will help managers improve their strategic decisions while advancing the state of knowledge in the academic study of strategy and related disciplines.

Recent Publications

CrisisReady: Private Data for Public Good

By: Tarun Khanna and James Barnett

October 2021 |
Case |
Faculty Research

In October 2021, CRISISREADY.io considers how and if it should scale operations.

Keywords: Decision Making; Ethics; Globalization; Governance; Government and Politics; Intellectual Property; Science; Technology

Citation

Educators

Dynamic Silos: Increased Modularity in Intra-organizational Communication Networks during the Covid-19 Pandemic

By: Tiona Zuzul, Emily Cox Pahnke, Jonathan Larson, Patrick Bourke, Nicholas Caurvina, Neha Parikh Shah, Youngser Park, Joshua Vogelstein, Christopher White and Carey E. Priebe

2021 |
Working Paper |
Faculty Research

Citation

Board Design and Governance Failures at Peer Firms

By: Shelby Gai, J. Yo-Jud Cheng and Andy Wu

October 2021 |
Article |
Strategic Management Journal

Our study introduces board committees as a crucial determinant of board actions. We examine how directors who structurally link different board committees—referred to as multi-committee directors (MCDs)—explain why some board actions are merely symbolic while others are more substantive. As a baseline, we argue that boards in general respond to financial restatements at peer firms by symbolically appointing new directors who are relatively inexperienced and unlikely to have a substantive impact. In contrast, boards with audit–nomination MCDs are more likely to take the substantive action of appointing new directors with the prior experience necessary to reduce the risk of their own future financial restatement. We combine qualitative interviews and a causal identification strategy using an original dataset covering Russell 3000 firms from 2001 to 2014.

Keywords: Board Committees; Board Monitoring; New Director Nomination; Peer Financial Restatements; Governing and Advisory Boards; Corporate Governance; Performance Effectiveness

Citation

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Judgment Aggregation in Creative Production: Evidence from the Movie Industry

By: Hong Luo, Jeffrey T. Macher and Michael Wahlen

October 2021 |
Article |
Management Science

We study a novel, low-cost approach to aggregating judgment from a large number of industry experts on ideas that they encounter in their normal course of business. Our context is the movie industry, in which customer appeal is difficult to predict and investment costs are high. The Black List, an annual publication, ranks unproduced scripts based on anonymous nominations from film executives. This approach entails an inherent trade-off: low participation costs enable high response rates; but nominations lack standard criteria, and which voters see which ideas is unobservable and influenced by various factors. Despite these challenges, we find that such aggregation is predictive: listed scripts are substantially more likely to be released than observably similar but unlisted scripts, and, conditional on release and investment levels, listed scripts generate higher box office revenues. We also find that this method mitigates entry barriers for less-experienced writers as: (i) their scripts are more likely to be listed than those by experienced writers and to rank higher if listed; (ii) within scripts by less-experienced writers, being listed is associated with a higher release rate. Yet, the gap in release probabilities relative to experienced writers remains large, even for top-ranked scripts. These results can be explained by the premise that scripts from less-experienced writers are more visible among eligible voters than scripts from experienced writers. This highlights idea visibility as an important determinant of votes and surfaces the trade-offs, as well as potential limitations, associated with such methods.

Keywords: Judgment Aggregation; Quality Uncertainty; Creative Industry; Project Evaluation And Selection; Creativity; Film Entertainment; Judgments; Motion Pictures and Video Industry

Citation

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How Does Working from Home during COVID-19 Affect What Managers Do? Evidence from Time-Use Studies

By: Thomaz Teodorovicz, Raffaella Sadun, Andrew L. Kun and Orit Shaer

2021 |
Working Paper |
Faculty Research

We assess how the sudden and widespread shift to working from home (WFH) during the pandemic impacted how managers allocate time throughout their working day. We analyze the results from an online time-use survey with data on 1,192 knowledge workers (out of which 973 are managers) in two waves, a pre-pandemic wave collected in August/2019 (615 participants, out of which 506 are managers) and a post-pandemic wave collected in August/2020 (577 participants, out of which 464 are managers). Our findings indicate that the forced transition to WFH created by the COVID pandemic was associated with a drastic reduction in commuting time for managers, but also an increase in time spent in work rather than on personal activities. This included reallocating time gained from commuting into more time spent in meetings, possibly to recoup some of the extemporaneous interactions that typically happen in the office. This change is particularly pronounced for managers employed in larger organizations. We use the results from the time-use studies to discuss implications for the development of new technologies.

Keywords: Time-use; Working-from-home; COVID; COVID-19; Managers; Knowledge Workers

Citation

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The Demand for Executive Skills

By: Stephen Hansen, Raffaella Sadun, Tejas Ramdas and Joseph B. Fuller

2021 |
Working Paper |
Faculty Research

We use a unique corpus of job descriptions for C-suite positions to document skills requirements in top managerial occupations across a large sample of firms. A novel algorithm maps the text of each executive search into six separate skill clusters reflecting cognitive, interpersonal, and operational dimensions. The data show an increasing relevance of social skills in top managerial occupations, and a greater emphasis on social skills in larger and more information intensive organizations. The results suggest the need for training, search, and governance mechanisms able to facilitate the match between firms and top executives along multiple and imperfectly observable skills.

Citation

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Saving for a Dry Day: Coal, Dams, and the Energy Transition

By: Michele Fioretti and Jorge Tamayo

2021 |
Working Paper |
Faculty Research

Renewable generation creates a tradeoff between current and future energy production as generators produce energy by releasing previously stored resources. Studying the Colombian market, we find that diversified firms strategically substitute fossil fuels for hydropower before droughts. This substitution mitigates the surge in market prices due to the lower hydropower capacity available during dry periods. Diversification can increase prices, instead, if it results from mergers steepening a firm’s residual demand. Thus, integrating production technologies within firms can smooth the clean-energy transition by offsetting higher prices during scarcity periods if the unaffected technologies help store renewables more than exercise market power.

Keywords: Energy Generation; Renewable Energy; Production; Green Technology Industry; Energy Industry; Colombia

Citation

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The Luck of the Draw: The Causal Effect of Physicians on Birth Outcomes

By: Arlen Guarin, Christian Posso, Estefania Saravia and Jorge Tamayo

2021 |
Working Paper |
Faculty Research

We estimate the effect of physicians on health outcomes by exploiting a Colombian government program that randomly assigns newly graduated physicians to hospitals across the country. Using administrative data from the program, vital statistics records, and individual records from the mandatory field-specific college graduation exams, we show that more-skilled physicians improve health at birth of infants whose mothers received care in those hospitals during their pregnancy. We show that the mechanisms underlying the results are the time physicians spend with the patient and their success in targeting care toward the most vulnerable patients.

Keywords: Health Care and Treatment; Health Industry; Colombia

Citation

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