To reduce information technology (IT) development costs, more firms have begun to outsource IT-related activities by partnering with IT vendors. As knowledge is a valuable asset in IT development, knowledge sharing between vendors and business clients becomes critical. However, the motivation behind IT vendors' willingness to share knowledge with client firms is not sufficiently understood. To shed light on the nature of knowledge sharing within vendor–client partnerships, we examine the influence of performance feedback and managerial mindset on vendors' motivation to share knowledge with their clients. We adopt a multi-method approach involving both a scenario-based field experiment with 164 vendor managers (Study 1) and a field survey of 112 vendor managers involved in IT development (Study 2). We find that when vendors' performance exceeds their aspiration levels, they are motivated to share knowledge with clients. Such motivational effects are more pronounced for vendor managers exhibiting abstract mindsets. Our study is of significant value to researchers and practitioners, affording both groups a keener, deeper, and more robust appreciation for how knowledge sharing in vendor–client partnerships can be managed more effectively.

We examine how the complementarity of control formalization and control flexibility influences organizational performance across contexts of varying competitive turbulence. We build contingency arguments anchored in the efficiency logic of control theory and investigate both the restrictive and facilitative views of control formalization. Our empirical evidence is based on a survey of top executives from 536 organizations across the United States, Australia, China, and Israel. We find that control formalization and control flexibility are complementary in environments of low competitive turbulence. With increasing turbulence, the complementarity diminishes and shifts toward substitutive effects.JEL Classification: L2

We investigate the efficacy of organizational control interactions in contexts with varying levels of external environmental uncertainty. Specifically, we examine the contingent effect of external environmental uncertainty on the interactions of behavior and outcome control, behavior and clan control, and outcome and clan control on organizational performance. The empirical evidence draws from two temporally sequenced surveys of top executives in 203 firms. We theorize and find that these control combinations are complementary when the level of environmental uncertainty is low, and that this complementarity diminishes as environmental uncertainty increases. Further, in highly uncertain external environments, our findings reveal that higher performance is achieved through a high level of one organizational control type and a low level of the other, indicating a shift toward substitutive effects. Consequently, this study informs the complement-substitute debate in organizational control theory by explicitly investigating external environmental uncertainty as a contextual contingency.

This book examines the management of multiple goals in organizations especially in today's increasingly turbulent business environment

This paper examines the enactment of formal controls in information system development (ISD). Specifically, we investigate process guidance and goal importance as enactments of behavior control and outcome control, respectively. We hypothesize the direct and interaction performance relationships of these control enactments, arguing process guidance exhibits a curvilinear (inverted U-shape) and goal importance exhibits a positive linear relationship with performance. Our finding of a U-shaped interaction relationship indicates that when goal importance is high, higher performance is achieved by either low or high process guidance. Our work bolsters the growing idea that control enactment is a salient consideration in ISD.

A great number of papers published on resource-based theory (RBT) have shaped its popularity and usefulness as a strategic approach. This study contributes to the literature by reviewing and evaluating the development of RBT research. Using a bibliometric analysis, we analyzed 2771 primary focal articles published between 1991 and 2020 and 103,796 secondary references. Our research reveals the status of RBT research by identifying the influential publications, authors, countries, institutions, and journals in this field. Based on the bibliometric analysis results, we suggest the future agenda of RBT research. Complementing previous qualitative literature reviews and quantitative meta-analyses, our study provides a systematic and dynamic understanding of RBT research.

Purpose This paper aims to investigate the effects of goal orientation on understanding the dynamics of stocks and flows (SF). Design/methodology/approach The authors use the well-established department store task as the experimental task to evaluate people's understanding of SF and implement a survey to assess different goal orientation levels. Ordinary least square is used to test the effects of goal orientations on the SF performance. Findings The findings suggest that learning goal orientation is positively associated with SF performance. However, prove and avoid performance goal orientation are unrelated to SF performance. Originality/value The study has important theoretical and practical contributions. From a theoretical perspective, the authors examine the impact of goal orientation in dynamic decision-making to advance the knowledge on the role of goal orientation. Practically, the research demonstrates that learning-goal-oriented people perform better in stock and flow tasks, suggesting that goal orientation is an important trait for recruiting organizational members whose work involves SF decision-making tasks.

Substantial evidence suggests that managerial mental models play an important role in firm performance. Yet managerial mental models are not static but dynamic. This research investigates the creation and evolution of mental models over time and how this dynamic process influences strategic choice and firm performance. We adopt the causal loop diagramming method, with in-depth case analysis over a period of 12 years, as the primary investigatory approach. Our research contributes to knowledge by identifying the shared mental model of the top management team, represented in the causal loop diagrams, for each stage of the company's development. Our findings suggest that the dynamics of managerial mental models explains the changes in firm performance over time.

We investigate the role of legitimacy in setting organizational goals as a way to address the potential “dark,” unethical side of organizational goal setting. Coupling qualitative and quantitative research methods to better understand legitimacy in goal setting, we first induce novel hypotheses based on observed practice and then provide survey evidence to test the performance implications. Study 1 reports findings based on interviews with twenty-two company executives. We identify attention to goal credibility, prioritization of stakeholders directly involved in the goal’s attainment when setting goals, and communication openness regarding goals, as well as their combination, as being important to organizational performance outcomes. Study 2 determines whether these three practices and their interaction predict performance using a survey conducted with 522 companies across four countries. Among other findings, we contribute to the organizational goal setting literature by showing that higher organizational performance is associated with the amount of priority given to the key actors (typically employees) directly involved with the goal’s attainment. We also find a positive interaction between attention to goal credibility, key actor (employee) importance, and communication openness on financial performance and non-financial goal attainment. Our work takes an initial step toward understanding how organizations can better shape the legitimacy of organizational goals for improved organizational performance and reduced unethical behavior.

We aim to advance the learning goal literature by examining the contingent effect of a reflection intervention on the relationship between learning goals and performance in a complex decision-making task. Data were obtained from a laboratory experiment with a microworld simulation as the experimental task. Participants were randomly allocated to one of the four conditions in a 2 × 2 (reflection intervention: yes vs. no; learning goals: easier vs. more challenging) between-subjects design (N = 140). Our findings suggest that both learning goals and reflection interventions are effective learning mechanisms in complex tasks. Reflection interventions strengthen the positive performance effect of learning goals. Specifically, the combination of a reflection intervention and more challenging learning goals leads to the highest performance. In the current dynamic business environment, effectively solving complex decision-making tasks is an enduring challenge. By integrating the reflection literature with goal-setting theory, we provide evidence of the joint effect of a reflection intervention and learning goals on subsequent task performance. Our findings help scholars and practitioners to design effective learning interventions to solve complex decision-making tasks. Our study is the first to investigate the joint effect of a reflection intervention (particularly, coached feedback reflection) and learning goals on task performance. Additionally, we are among the first to examine the combined use of learning goals and performance goals in a complex decision-making task.

We investigate the antecedents of organizational performance by considering the influence of goals and governance. We build our arguments following an attention-based perspective using the mechanism of attention-motivation-action. Specifically, we hypothesize a linear relationship regarding goal importance and a curvilinear relationship regarding the degree of formalization of operational-level governance. Most importantly, we hypothesize goal importance and operational-level governance formalization exhibit joint effects. We test our model on 348 Information Technology project managers and system developers in a large multi-unit government organization. We find that goal importance and governance formalization are substitutes in the condition of low to moderate governance formalization, and are complements in the condition of moderate to high governance formalization. Our provocative findings contribute to the organizational goals and operational governance literatures.

We investigate how operational governance formalization and flexibility affect organizational performance, both directly and jointly. We build our arguments using learning mechanisms. Based on 434 observations from project managers in a large multi-department government organization, we hypothesize a positive-increasing U-shaped learning curve effect regarding governance formalization and a positive effect regarding governance flexibility. Most importantly, we hypothesize that governance formalization and flexibility exhibit joint effects. We find that governance flexibility increases performance when formalization is low and decreases performance when formalization is high. Our finding that flexibility can be counter-productive to performance is novel. Overall, this paper contributes to the operational governance literature by clarifying how learning mechanisms explain the joint effects of governance formalization and flexibility.