Distributed product development projects encompass product and process development activities that span organizational and country boundaries. The increasing trend toward globalizing projects requires firms to coordinate development efforts made by team members from various functions within the firm, speaking multiple languages, and working in various time zones. We analyze qualitative data from 70 distributed product development projects that span 14 countries and involve cross-functional team members speaking 10 different languages. We find that commonly discussed integration strategies such as modular product designs and colocating team members by themselves are insufficient to coordinate project work. Rather, our field interviews suggest that firms invest in design information systems (DIS) with specific features to facilitate product design and empower their project managers to integrate the development efforts. Specifically, our interviews suggest that firms often modify the organization by "unifying" the engineering and purchasing functions into a single supply chain integrator function to increase the scope of responsibilities for these managers. We then test our hypotheses on the benefits of these strategies on project outcomes by using survey data from 55 distributed product development projects in 20 firms. Results indicate that the use of DIS is associated with higher quality and relationship performance when there are differences between focal and supplier firm personnel languages. Unifying engineering and purchasing functions into a supply chain integrator is associated with improved response time in the presence of time zone differences. We also find that a unifying strategy is associated with lower cost in the presence of language differences, but is also associated with a worsening of response time. These results provide guidance to product designers in organizations that must coordinate complex work across time zone barriers and languages. The results also provide guidance to researchers, by showing that different integration mechanisms may have differential effects across various coordination barriers and across multiple dimensions of project performance. We conclude by linking these results to integration mechanisms previously discussed in the coordination literature.

In this symposium, four Deans will reflect on the future of business education, and the implications for the field of management. The questions that they may consider include: 1. How can we better educate MBAs to create value in the 21st century? What kinds of jobs are we training for? 2. What are the most fruitful areas for research in business schools? 3. How can business schools differentiate to create value as pressure on MBA education increases? The four panelists will first present their views and then field questions from participants.

The Academy of Management’s vision statement says that we aim “to inspire and enable a better world through our scholarship and teaching about management and organizations.” But, as noted in the 2013 AoM call for submissions, what kind of economic system would this “better world” be built upon? There are few places where such a question is more pressing than in university business schools, the institutions charged with generating new knowledge about business and training future business leaders. This symposium will consist of a panel discussion among leading business school deans who will address questions related to the role of business in society, and what business schools are, and should be, doing to promote a better world. The panelists are Alison Davis Blake, Dean of the Stephen M. Ross School of Business at the University of Michigan; Per Holten-Anderson, President and Rektor of the Copenhagen Business School; and Roger Martin, Dean of the Joseph L. Rotman School of Management at the University of Toronto.

Research on interorganizational relationships has established that organizations gain essential information and resources via their network ties. Less studied, however, are the costs and benefits of different types of network ties. This dissertation explores the effects of direct and indirect network ties on the survival of startups. Drawing on research on interorganizational relationships and organizational learning, I argue that direct and indirect ties have different effects on survival. Specifically, while network ties create access to resources, information, legitimacy, and reputation, they also come with maintenance and information processing costs. As the number of direct ties increases they become redundant and contribute diminishing benefits at the margin. At the same time, direct ties involve substantial costs, which will overwhelm the marginal benefits of additional direct ties eventually, leading to unfavorable outcomes. Therefore, the number of direct ties follows a U-shaped relationship with startup failure likelihood. Similarly, as the number of indirect ties increases, redundancy leads to diminishing marginal benefits. In this case, however, the costs of maintaining extra ties are negligible. As a result, having more indirect ties is expected to be associated with lower failure likelihood. Furthermore, agglomeration provides alternative sources of resources and information, and may dampen network effects. I focused on direct ties among U.S.-based business-to-business Internet startups and their venture capitalists (VCs) and two-step indirect ties between Internet startups from 1988 to 2001. I found that direct ties reduced the likelihood of startup failure, as did indirect ties. However, when indirect ties are accounted for, the effects of direct ties disappear, suggesting the mediating role of indirect ties. Having more direct ties benefited startups because they provided connections to more indirect ties. Ultimately, it was the number of indirect ties, and not the number of direct ties, that mattered. In addition, agglomeration introduced intense competition that led to higher startup failure likelihood but did not moderate network effects.

The antecedents and consequences of pay dispersion are studied using theory that focuses on the social comparisons that occur among members of the CEO's top team. Results from a sample of large public firms indicate that when members of this elite group were similar on a variety of dimensions, and thus likely to compare their pay, the board allowed less dispersion. In addition, pay dispersion was negatively related to company performance, particularly when it exceeded what could be justified by characteristics of the industry, firm, or team. But the strength of that relationship depended on how uniformly members of the team would benefit from subsequent performance gains. Specifically, the negative effect was particularly strong in firms where major differences in compensation-that is, some executives were given significantly more stock options-combined with a volatile stock price to provide only a few team members with the opportunity to realize very large financial gains in the future. The study demonstrates that the social-psychological factors that affect comparisons among members of the CEO's top team impact the board's pay setting process, which in turn affects pay dispersion, and ultimately firm performance. Copyright (C) 2010 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

The 1980s and 1990s at Stanford University were a uniquely productive era for research on organizations and labor markets. I describe three important, interconnected themes that characterize the research on organizations and labor markets that emerged from Stanford during this era: the central role of the firm in a multi-level system that determines labor market outcomes, the role of institutions in both creating and constraining labor market outcomes, and the dynamic, often unexpected, consequences of labor market outcomes. I describe the genesis and development of each theme and conclude by discussing what lessons can be learned from this era about creating an innovative and productive research culture.

530/ASQ, September 2010 In Chasing Stars , Boris Groysberg attempts to answer a critical question about labor markets: are employees’ talents and skills portable across fi rms so that employee performance will remain constant after a change of employers? In answering this question, Groysberg focuses exclusively on “star” knowledge workers who are highly sought after by managers attempting to boost their own fi rms’ performance. Thus this book provides an evidence-based examination of the underpinnings of a common managerial myth described by Pfeffer and Sutton (2006): star systems are associated with strong fi rm performance. The book does not directly explore the effect on fi rm performance of hiring stars. But it does examine an essential assumption that must be true if hiring stars has a positive effect on fi rm performance, namely, that the performance of star employees will remain unchanged after they change employers.

While much has been written about the effects of outsourcing on the location of jobs and on the wages of workers, the effects of outsourcing on the experience of work and on the design of work and organizations have received limited research attention. A full understanding of the consequences of outsourcing requires examining the effects of outsourcing on the nature of both work and the organizations that define and delimit work. In this review, we define outsourcing and describe the key dimensions of outsourcing arrangements that are likely to affect the nature of work. We then review existing research on the effects of outsourcing on individuals’ attitudes and behaviors, work group dynamics, job design, and organizational structure and culture. We conclude with a discussion of the critical research issues that must be addressed to fully understand the effects of outsourcing on the nature of work.

The authors investigate how nonstandard work arrangements shape work attitudes and behaviors. They find that attitudes and behaviors vary across different types of nonstandard work arrangements. As expected, retention part-time workers have more positive and agency temporary workers more negative attitudes toward their work arrangements than do standard workers. But contrary to conventional wisdom about temporary work arrangements, agency temporary workers who have opportunities to transition to standard employment arrangements have more positive attitudes toward supervisors and coworkers and are better performers than their peers in standard work arrangements. Part-time arrangements designed to retain valued workers do not produce increased commitment or other attitudinal benefits consistent with retention. The authors discuss the implications of the findings for the study of nonstandard work and the management of nonstandard workers.

The outsourcing of complex activities has become a common organizational practice. Yet very little research has focused on the implications of how these activities are divided up among outsourcing partners. Drawing on structural contingency theory, we argue that: (1) because activities within stages of complex projects are highly interdependent, outsourcing structures where owner firms do not maintain high levels of dominance over the activities that are performed will pose control and coordination challenges, leading to poor project performance; (2) the adverse effects of poorly structured outsourcing arrangements will spill over to subsequent project stages when activities are interdependent across project stages; and (3) dividing activities among large numbers of contractors or distributing work evenly among contractors exacerbates coordination and control problems further contributing to poor project performance. Our empirical analysis of 323 capital facility construction projects supports our predictions. Overall, these results provide strong evidence that some outsourcing structures are more costly than others and that because of the nature of complex projects the detrimental effects of poorly structured outsourcing are often not completely observable at the time activities are completed. We discuss the implications of our findings for capital construction and for outsourcing more generally.

Many firms have moved from outsourcing only manufacturing and staff support activities (e.g., janitorial services) to outsourcing more complex and central activities such as product and process development. Outsourcing these more complex, nuanced, and time-sensitive activities increases the difficulties of coordinating with suppliers. We examine the frequency with which firms use various interorganizational integration mechanisms and project coordination tools to coordinate outsourced product development. We further examine the impact of these mechanisms and tools on project performance. We report descriptive and some preliminary regression statistics from the first three years of a four-year multi-firm, multi-industry research project. These preliminary results suggest that nearly all firms employ personnel dedicated to managing the outsourcing relationship. However, firms also use other integration modalities concomitantly. Specifically, firms initially rely on ad hoc face-to-face communication rather than co-location to manage the interface with outsourcing partners. However, over time, firms move to co-location to manage relationships with non-domestic suppliers. Surprisingly, firms make relatively little use of either sophisticated information technology or modular product designs. We find that the effects of a single integration mechanism or tool can vary dramatically across different outcomes. For example, co-locating employees appears to improve product quality but are associated with poor schedule peformance. Given the frequency with which firms employ dedicated individuals to manage the interface, we also present some preliminary evidence on the skills and training of these individuals; this evidence suggests that (1) they have received little formal training in key skills and that firms rely solely on experiential learning to train these individuals and (2) for the training they have received, whether they received it from their university training or from company-sponsored initiatives may have differential effects on project outcomes.

We test the proposition that the mobility of top managers in advertisers and advertising agencies weakens client-agency relationships. Social embeddedness theory suggests that if client-agency relationships are embedded in top managers¿ social relations then the exit of top managers should increase the likelihood of their dissolution. However, previous research on advertising agencies has failed to find empirical support for this prediction, casting doubt on social embeddedness arguments. We investigate executive mobility and market tie dissolutions in samples of advertisers and advertising agencies and find support for social embeddedness but not always in the ways predicted by previous research. For advertisers, the dissolution of market ties depends not on the exit of executives but by how executive vacancies are filled. For advertisers, the exit of incumbents and internal succession weaken market ties, but these effects depend on the size and strategy of advertising agencies. We discuss the implications of these findings for social embeddedness theory and research on market ties and executive mobility.

We examined how proportions of individuals in standard and nonstandard work arrangements affected work group members' relationships with supervisors, social relations with coworkers, willingness to assist others, and intentions to leave their organization. Supporting Blalock's theory of majority-minority group relations, higher proportions of nonstandard workers were associated with less favorable attitudes toward supervisors and peers, increased turnover intentions, and decreased work-related helping behaviors. The consequences of heterogeneity in employment arrangements were contingent on (1) workers' locations in their firm's mobility system, (2) type of nonstandard arrangements, and (3) the amount and type of contact between standard and nonstandard workers.

The age and experience profile of project engineering professionals employed by both owners and contractors has recently become a concern due to downsizing, retirements, and lack of hiring during the 1990s. Data were gathered from U.S. Census panels and from 27 owner firms and 23 contractor firms within the Construction Industry Institute to investigate the extent of this issue. In particular, the study examined changes in industry staffing levels, projected industry staffing levels, the current age and experience profile of project engineering staffs. current and projected hiring practices, and retention levels. The results of the data analyses indicate that, while substantial downsizing occurred among project engineering professionals during the early 1990s, the era of downsizing appears to be at an end. However. the high proportion of engineering professionals nearing retirement suggests that the transfer of knowledge from more to less experienced employees is an area of critical importance for both owners and contractors. Data showing demographic breakdowns using these analyses will be given, conclusions drawn, and policy implications outlined.

We examined how a blended workforce (one with “standard” and “nonstandard” workers in the same jobs) affected exit, “voice,” and loyalty among standard employees. We found that workforce blending worsened relations between managers and employees, decreased standard employees' loyalty, and increased their interest both in leaving their organizations and in exercising voice through unionization. However, these effects were contingent on whether the nonstandard workers were temporary or contract and on the salary and responsibilities of the standard employees.