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This study analyzes the trade‐off between strategic flexibility and commitment for cases of simultaneous and related strategic investments under high levels of uncertainty. It develops a model that, using a Cournot game and real option theory, demonstrates that (1) a correlated strategic investment adds value to a portfolio of ongoing strategic investments in a decreasing marginal fashion, and (2) the new investment delays the development of the other investments. Managers who fail to recognize these properties may make strategic commitments that destroy value, even in the presence of options with individual positive values. An important feature of the model is that competitive advantages may flow from market power or from the capability of managing the portfolio.

Firms frequently need to update their capabilities in changing environments but face significant barriers to accomplish this goal due to the stickiness of their routines, local search constraints, bounded rationality, uncertain imitability, and causal ambiguity. Under high levels of uncertainty, dynamic capabilities are often externally oriented, involving acquisitions and alliances. However, nonunique but competitive predictions about the behavior of these capabilities arise from the evolutionary theory. We test these competitive hypotheses analyzing portfolios of acquisitions and alliances made by pharmaceutical firms in search of portfolios of biotech capabilities. The analysis of portfolios enables us to better identify “common practices” in the pharmaceutical industry than using a transactional‐level focus. We develop implications for the evolutionary theory and for managerial practice.

This study analyses the determinants of the value of a portfolio of real options and explores implications for strategic management. It focuses the analysis on four elements: the number of real options in the portfolio, constraints on the number of options that can be exercised, the volatility of underlying assets, and the correlation between underlying assets. These elements are articulated around a trade-off between growth options and switching options and are applied to different strategic situations of technological, market, and macroeconomic uncertainty.

The purpose of this paper is to revise Burgelman’s idea (1991, 1994) that induced strategic processes is necessarily variation-reducing. In doing so, the authors explore whether major change in a firm’s administrative system can be managed in an evolutionary fashion via induced variation-increasing mechanisms. In particular, the authors focus on a multi-business multinational firm in which different administrative systems were experimented simultaneously as a way to determine which of these systems provided the most conducive context for innovation and capability development.

The authors adopted an inductive perspective and developed a single case research project aimed at documenting the process of experimentation and subsequent selection and adoption of a new administrative system by a large multi-business multinational firm.

The paper’s main contribution is the concept of “induced variation”, understood as intra-organizational variation-increasing mechanisms deliberately created at the top level of the organization to trigger an intra-organizational evolutionary process of management innovation. This finding extends and modifies Burgelman’s discussion of induced and autonomous strategic behavior by showing that induced processes need not necessarily be variation-reducing, but may actually be variation-increasing. Additionally, the authors explain how an evolutionary process aimed at learning about the relative merits of alternative administrative systems through in vivo “reflection in action” (Schön, 1983) unfolds in a complex global organization.

While the work provides several insights on the development of an evolutionary process leading to management innovation, its inductive nature limits its external validity and requires the development of further work for such purpose.

The authors explore the roles of regional organizations in creating new corporate capabilities for the MNC.

The authors show how management capabilities developed in the Latin American context were rolled out to other locations.

The authors' findings confirm that major drastic reorganization initiatives can actually be approached using an evolutionary approach.

There is little doubt that organizational identity – that which is central, distinctive, and enduring about an organization – mediates in adaptive processes. Exactly how this mediation takes place, and whether it is favorable or unfavorable to adaptation, must still be fully established. The purpose of this paper is to add to the literature on identity and adaptation by exploring the relationship between these two constructs in family firms operating in an emerging economy. Based on measures of strength of identity, the authors examine how identity affects the adaptive processes of issue identification, strategic impulse definition, and implementation, where the authors look at pace of adjustment.

Longitudinal and comparative case studies were conducted of polar types presenting two pairs of organizations in two separate industries. These organizations faced the challenge of founder succession and a radical shift in macroeconomic conditions over a period of three decades. Through these four cases the authors hope to provide clear pattern recognition of strength of identity and adaptation – and of the relationship between these two constructs – in the face of severe internal and external shocks. The approach seems adequate in the larger context of inductive theory development and particularly suitable to the exploration of theoretical constructs, as it allows the researcher to unravel the underlying dynamics of path dependencies and/or evolutionary processes.

It is found that strong‐identity organizations are able to foresee relevant changes in their industries, define adequate strategic responses, and implement them in an evolutionary (i.e. smooth) manner. Conversely, loose‐identity organizations misread industry trends, incur strategic paralysis, and must eventually enforce revolutionary (i.e. violent) changes in order to ensure survival.

The paper addresses a critical issue for the advancement of organizational theory: the relationship between organizational identity and adaptation in emerging economies. In addition, it has important practical implications for managers doing business in turbulent environments. It makes a sound theoretical contribution and has important managerial implications.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the influence of team member diversity and internal social capital on project performance within the context of business plan competitions (BPCs).

The paper uses survey data on 95 nascent entrepreneurial teams enrolled in an open‐to‐the‐public BPCs. It assumes that higher levels of functional diversity as well as higher levels of internal social capital enhance the performance of nascent entrepreneurial teams in the crafting of their business plans (BPs).

Under this particular context, where the needs for information processing and decision‐making requirements are so high, teams having higher levels of functional diversity attained better performance. Inversely, teams with higher levels of internal social capital did not show a significant advantage in the development of the BP.

Limitations are associated with the exclusion of external social capital measures and not considering demographic faultlines, which might have some impact on the results. Besides, this paper has the limitation of basing its analysis upon teams within a BP contest. Theoretical implications stress that under contexts maximizing the difference between potential upside gains and downside losses, team diversity is expected to play a larger role for BP effectiveness and success than team members' internal social capital.

Recognizing team prevalence and the impact of social dynamics amongst team members within entrepreneurial settings.

The paper contributes with the impact of social dynamic processes on nascent entrepreneurial teams.

The purpose of this paper is to explore location effects on firm performance in emerging economies simultaneously accounting for permanent and transitory country, industry, country-industry and firm-specific effects.

The authors utilize a novel methodological approach: an autoregressive, cross-classified, mixed-effect linear regression model that allows them to simultaneously estimate a permanent (long-run) component, a transitory (short-run) component and the speed of decay of the transitory (autoregressive) component.

The authors find that the firm-specific effect is most important in explaining permanent and transitory differences. The country–industry interaction is the second most important effect, confirming that industries are not completely global and are still subject to country conditions. Broader views of the country–business context and industry conditions taken independently would be incomplete unless the country–industry interactions are considered. In other words, country matters because industry matters and vice versa. Country effects are also significant, but only transitory emphasizing the dynamic nature of emerging economies and the shortcomings that may result from considering the country business context static. Finally, the authors find that the chances of achieving sustainability of abnormal returns in emerging economies are dynamic and have significantly increased recently.

To the authors' knowledge, this is the first to simultaneously estimate country, industry, country–industry and firm effects on the permanent and transitory components of abnormal returns in a sample of emerging economies. The study generates important evidence regarding the sources of sustainable differentiation for firms competing in emerging economies. Finally, the authors find that chances of achieving sustainability of abnormal returns in emerging economies are dynamic and have significantly increased recently.

This study examines the moderating role of leadership behaviours on the relationship between Industry 4.0 (I4.0) maturity and operational performance in manufacturers.

For that, 189 leaders from manufacturing organisations located in India and Brazil that are undergoing I4.0 implementation were surveyed. The collected data was analysed using multivariate data techniques, which allowed to verify the validity of our research hypotheses. This study was grounded on the concepts from the socio-technical systems (STS) theory.

The findings indicated that task-oriented leadership behaviours positively moderate the relationship between technologies for digitalisation and operational performance. A similar effect was found for the interaction between change-oriented leadership behaviours and strategy for digitalisation. In turn, the moderating effects of relations-oriented and change-oriented leadership behaviours were negative when considering the I4.0 maturity dimensions of employee and culture for digitalisation and technology for digitalisation, respectively.

This study offers arguments to better understand the role of leaders' behaviours in the digitalisation of organisations. Changing behaviours is usually a long-term and time-consuming activity. The identification of the leadership behaviours that are more likely to support digitalisation allows companies to anticipate potential issues and prioritise efforts to assertively develop leaders.