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Studies have documented the distinctive advantage of innovation ecosystems in integrating and recombining heterogeneous knowledge resources across firms' boundaries. However, hierarchical governance in the form of vertical integration is still preferred in many industries for organizing innovation, and the current literature touches little on the relative performance of different organizational structures (integrated firms vs innovation ecosystem) and the factors that lead firms to choose one over the other. The authors conjecture that structure of technological interdependence is one of such important factors. Using a computational experiment, the authors compare the innovation performance of ecosystems with integrated firms under different interdependency structures.

Using the NKC model, the authors incorporate non-generic complementarities and modularity into the technological interdependence between different components. The authors compare four different types of technological interdependence (modular, hierarchical, nearly modular, and random).

The results show that integrated firms with centralized search demonstrate stable and consistent performance that is robust to the structure of technological interdependencies, but an ecosystem significantly outperforms integrated firms with centralized or decentralized when the products exhibit modular or nearly-modular structures.

This study sheds light on why an ecosystem often exhibits modular structures while vertical integration is prevalent in industries with complex technological interdependence. In addition, it shows the evolutionary nature of ecosystems and indicates how the cooperation and competition between actors shape the interdependence structure of ecosystems.

The purpose of this paper is to establish a decision‐making governance framework for transferring a product/service from one EU host market to another.

Prior research concerning the relation between marketing decision governance (centralised versus decentralised) and standardisation strategy/performance tends to focus on the home‐host scenario. This study has utilised the experience of 70 firms operating in the cross‐market scenario in the EU region – i.e. transferring a product/service from one EU host market to another – in order to establish its decision‐making governance framework. The respondents were operating in both the manufacturing and service sectors.

It was found that firms with large size and a high level of business experience, operating in a similar cross‐market environment, or in a country pair that has a difference in market potential, are more likely to pursue a decentralised governance. Firms operating in a highly different market environment and in host markets with a high variation in market potential are likely to adopt an adaptation strategy. Marketing decision governance is not suggested to be related to standardisation strategy. Decentralised governance is found to be related to profitability, while adaptation was associated with market share. Market share is related to profitability.

The research findings suggest that firms can utilise their decision‐making and standardisation strategy separately to achieve their performance objectives when operating across the EU region. The outcomes established in the study have provided a new guidance on the research concerning structure, strategy and performance.

This study extends and refines the current knowledge on emerging supply chain designs (SCDs) for industrial additive manufacturing (AM) and manufacturing firms' rationales in selecting them.

Following an exploratory research design, a multiple-case study is conducted in the context of industrial AM. It focuses on two key dimensions of SCD, the geographic dispersion and governance structure. Four cohesive AM SCD configurations are characterized and form the basis for exploring the rationales for the SCD decision of manufacturing firms.

The findings indicate that manufacturing firms' SCD for industrial AM depends on the trade-off between economies of scale in a centralized setting and the market potential from customer proximity realized by decentral AM. Furthermore, the control of suppliers and the reevaluation of manufacturing firms' core competencies guide the governance choice. Many of the identified rationales currently drive manufacturing firms toward in-house AM at a centralized location or distributed AM in a secure, firm-owned network.

The arguments for the AM SCD choices are illustrated. They provide guidance for managers of manufacturing firms when implementing industrial AM.

The study reveals and enhances the understanding of why the extant academic expectation of decentralized and outsourced AM is not sufficiently reflected in current industry practice. Thereby, the study provides a basis for elaborative decision-support research on AM SCDs.

Discusses analysis of the organizational structures utilized to conduct international purchasing activities which was undertaken at 24 multinational corporations. The majority of the corporations studied had decentral‐ ized purchasing organizations and all had corporate purchasing staffs. Four basic approaches were found: (1) totally decentralized; (2) co‐ordinated; (3) totally centralized; and (4) separate international purchasing group. Within this overall framework there were several forms of staff assistance for helping operating units effectively to accomplish their international purchasing goals. This assistance included foreign buying offices, trading companies, and international staff specialists. There was also a common philosophy which indicated the necessity of worldwide sourcing.

Seeks to isolate those intra‐organizational factors affecting the information technology (IT) structure of the firm. Analyses this phenomenon from two management perspectives: the agency and governance perspective on the one hand, and the management characteristics perspective on the other. Using a sample of 72 large organizations, empirical results indicate that information technology structure (centralized versus decentralized) is strongly related to management equity ownership, to concentration of stock holding and to the age of the CEO. For example, an organization where top executives and managers own a relatively high percentage of the company′s stock, possesses a more centralized information technology structure than an organization with a relatively lower percentage of management ownership. This means that user departments in the latter have more control over their IT functions than users in the former. On the other hand, companies with a high level of stock concentration have a more decentralized IT structure. The research also revealed a statistically significant relationship between a company′s equity‐to‐debt ratio and the age of the CEO on the one hand, and the level of IT centralization on the other.

Examines ‐ in a study involving 92 large publicly‐held organizations ‐ the relationships between information technology (IT) structure, control and industry turbulence. Notes that despite the fact that some have called centralized systems electronic dinosaurs, many companies are turning to this traditional approach because it does offer one thing that decentralized systems generally lack, namely, control. Cites results indicating that information technology structure (centralized versus decentralized) is strongly related to management equity ownership, concentration of stock holdings, and the level of turbulence which firms face. Notes, for example, that an organization where top executives and managers own a relatively high percentage of the company’s stock possesses a more centralized IT structure than an organization with a relatively lower percentage of management ownership. Points out that this means that user departments in the latter have more control over their IT functions than do users in the former, but that, on the other hand, companies with high levels of stock concentration have more decentralized IT structures. In addition, concludes that the research revealed a statistically positive significant relationship between the level of turbulence firms face and the degree of IT centralization.

The purpose of this study is to provide new insights into the link between market orientation (MO) and strategic performance by disaggregating the MO construct. With a focus on responsiveness, a crucial element of MO, this research explores antecedents as well as outcomes in the strategic business units (SBUs) of MNCs. The decision-making structure of the firm was modeled as a moderator of the link between responsiveness and performance.

Survey data from upper level managers employed by 126 MNC SBUs representing 23 industries were collected.

The key findings indicate that: responsiveness mediates the link between intelligence generation and strategic performance; responsiveness also mediates the link between resource flexibility and strategic performance; and the link between responsiveness and strategic performance is moderated by the SBU's decision-making structure (i.e. centralization).

This study contributes to the conceptual precision of the composite construct MO, and also illustrates an avenue to increase strategic performance. Managerially, it provides managers with prescriptive suggestions for leveraging the value of the elements of MO with respect to the firm's decision-making structure.

Presents the results of a recent survey of logistics executives concerning their perceptions regarding integrated logistics. Focuses discussion on an assessment of the current level of implementation of the integrated logistics concept among US firms and provides support for a relationship between integration and logistical performance improvements. Reveals that the results have significant managerial implications as more organizations place emphasis on supply chain management, and that internal and external integration are necessary to facilitate channel‐wide linkages and enhance channel efficiency.

Agile project management methods gain increasing attention of practitioners while they often remain neglected by scholarly research. Specifically, there is little known about how performance factors of agile firms differ from those of traditional firms. Scholars argue that these factors often relate to a firm’s human resource management (HRM). This study aims to analyze and compare the HRM architectures in agile and traditional project-based organizations that lead to high firm performance.

The authors apply fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis on data of 154 project-based organizations of diverse professional service industries in Russia.

This study’s findings suggest that HRM architectures of high-performance agile firms imply a broad use of ability-, motivation- and opportunity-enhancing practices and a high degree of HRM process centralization, while traditional firms adopt more diverse HRM architectures.

Based on this study’s results, the authors stress the importance of ensuring a good fit between a company’s project management approach and HRM architecture. The revealed configurations may also provide guidance for practitioners on designing effective HRM architectures in project-based organizations.

This paper proposes a methodology for governing expatriate assignments in the context of corporate‐level objectives.

The approach taken is to envisage expatriate managerial assignments within the theoretical framework of agency theory and the knowledge‐based view of the firm. The paper begins with the view that knowledge acquisition and integration is a primary goal for most expatriate assignments. The relationship between expatriate managers and multinational corporation (MNC) headquarters from an agency perspective are considered and the notion of a “knowledge contract” as a means of governing that relationship is discussed. Four corporate‐level international strategies available to MNCs (global, international, transnational, and multidomestic) are then examined and the extent of agency problems under each strategy is discussed.

The paper makes specific predictions about the type of knowledge contract that is most likely to address agency problems for each corporate strategy.

This research extends agency theory by introducing the knowledge contract as a means of managing agency concerns. This offers a broader range of contract alternatives, moving researchers beyond traditional agency theoretic prescriptions. The research also contributes to the literature on expatriate management by integrating assignment success with research on corporate‐level international strategy. Few authors have recognized organizational strategy as an important unit of study in international human resource management. Doing so, however, has yielded a unique set of contingency relationships that would otherwise be obscured.