Strategic Alliance Poker: Demonstrating the Importance of Complementary Resources and Trust in Strategic Alliance Management

Strategic Alliance Poker (SAP) provides instructors with an opportunity to integrate the resource based view with their discussion of strategic alliances in undergraduate Strategic Management courses. Specifically, SAP provides Strategic Management instructors with an experiential exercise that can be used to illustrate the value creation potential of complementary resources and the role of trust in fostering resource sharing in strategic alliances. A discussion of the theoretical background, implementation, implications, and results of SAP is provided in this paper.     

动态战略适应视角下的学部制改革成效分析范式

动态战略适应视角是从大学战略管理中提出来,学部制改革作为大学内部治理结构中重要的战略选择,涉及高校内人、财、物多方面整合。基于动态战略适应理论的分析框架,即大学战略与大学所处的内外部环境、所拥有的资源以及大学内部组织之间的适应状态,提出学部制改革成效分析范式,即学部制改革的环境适应、资源适应及组织适应。     

The Most Integrated Hour in America: Reframing the Organizational Discourses of Church Purpose

Religious organizations have increasingly drawn the attention of communication scholars. This interest is due in part to the significant role these organizations have in building social capital – particularly in regard to improving racial/ethnic relations. This potential has remained largely unrealized, however, since the Civil Rights Movement over 50 years ago. Consequently, this study seeks to understand how church pastors frame the ambiguous discourse of organizational purpose. Building on an earlier research phase that included 42 pastoral interviews, this study adds to our understanding of framing practices via three dialectical tensions: integration-segregation, belief-practice, and vertical-horizontal. The analysis also reveals how these dialectics were framed through improbability, double bind, alternation, selection, connection, and transcendence, as well as their impact upon ethnic relationships. Theoretic and practical implications are provided.     

Dynamic Rhetorics of Race: California's Racial Privacy Initiative and the Shifting Grounds of Racial Politics

In October 2003, Californians voted in the high-profile gubernatorial recall election and on what is referred to as the “Racial Privacy Initiative.” The Initiative sought to prohibit the gathering of racial data in education and state employment. Unlike recent such initiatives addressing California's racial laws, this one was unsuccessful: 62 percent of voters said no. This essay examines the discourse surrounding the initiative over its three-year history and traces the rhetorical dynamics that led to its defeat. The analysis details the implications of this moment for hegemonic processes in general and as they relate to the specifics of race.     

Framing Effects of News Coverage of the Embryonic Stem Cell Controversy: Issue Involvement as an Effects Moderator

This study examines reactions to ethical and strategic framing in the news coverage of the embryonic stem cell research controversy, depending on the level of issue involvement. In order to test hypotheses regarding the effects of strategic vs. ethical frames and the moderating role played by issue involvement, an online experiment was conducted. Results indicated that these two frames interacted with issue involvement and generated different reactions among participants.     

The Rise of the Small: The Effects of Industry Consolidation on Small Legal Publishers

Summary

The legal publishing industry has experienced waves of acquisition and consolidation, with almost all of the established players becoming affiliated with either Thomson or Reed Elsevier. A widespread assumption is that this consolidation is driving out the smaller participants in the market, especially in conjunction with the expansion of free Web sites for primary source material. It is presumed that the entrepreneurs who have smaller, profit-based companies are becoming less interested in the market due to financial pressures, increased difficulty of capturing market share, and threat of acquisition (friendly or hostile).

In order to confirm or refute this assumption, the author reviews the industry consolidations, describes the delineation of representative small legal publishers, and analyzes their responses to questions about how the recent industry changes have affected their strategies, markets and product lines. The resulting picture is of an environment much different than that painted by current media pundits. Contrary to the presumption of a disappearing landscape of small players, there is a positive perception of “ripe opportunity” pushing companies into this marketplace-companies armed with new technology tools and strong convictions that they can reach customers ready and willing to do old business in new ways. The small publishers seem to be weathering the climactic industry changes, and have expectations of growth and expansion.     

Patient and Partner Strategies for Talking about Lifestyle Change Following a Cardiac Event

Heart patients are frequently advised to make lifestyle changes and communication with a romantic partner can help or hinder adoption of heart healthy behaviors. However, talking about lifestyle change can have both positive and negative meanings and this can create dilemmas for couples. We engaged in an interpretive analysis of interviews with 25 patients and 16 partners to identify the ways they managed the meanings of lifestyle change talk. Their communicative strategies included rationing talk, saying it nicely and framing it cooperatively. Each strategy had advantages and disadvantages as well as optimal conditions. We also identified interpretive lenses that shaped the meaning of talk, including legitimacy, patience, emphasizing the positive, moderation, benefits for both people, and perceived compliance. Finally, environmental resources (such as household patterns and communication with the social network) contextualized the meaning of talk. We proposed a model of the interrelated influence of communication, interpretation, and environment on the meanings of talking about lifestyle change.     

An empirical investigation of knowledge management and innovative performance: The case of alliances

This paper examines firm-level performance implications of strategic alliances by employing knowledge management practices as intermediaries. Unlike previous research which focuses on partner firm factors, this study investigates how alliance characteristics (i.e., alliance scope and governance) affect interfirm knowledge sharing and creation, and how these two practices and their interaction in turn affect innovative performance. These questions are examined in a sample of 127 German partnering firms. Results show that joint ventures as opposed to contractual alliances are more effective and influential in facilitating knowledge sharing and creation. In contrast, the scope of alliance activities, while positively associated with knowledge sharing, has no direct relationship with knowledge creation. In addition to these results, the study also finds that knowledge sharing, knowledge creation and their interaction significantly contribute to partner firms’ innovative performance.     

Intellectual capital or signal? The effects of scientists on alliance formation in knowledge-intensive industries

Hiring employees with advanced education, training, and experience has been a prevalent human resource practice in dynamic science-based industries, and a growing body of literature has demonstrated the importance of scientists in such fields. Little research has attempted to distinguish the functional from the symbolic roles of scientists, however. We develop an integrative theoretical framework to separate the productive and legitimating effects of scientists on strategic alliance formation of firms. Results from a longitudinal analysis of more than 300 U.S. biotechnology firms between 1988 and 1999 suggest a positive relationship between ratio of scientists and R&D alliance partners as well as a positive relationship with finance alliance partners. Scientists influence partner attraction more strongly for firms that are less-well-connected, and they become less prominent in fostering finance ties as the industry practice of partnership becomes more institutionalized. We conclude that scientists serve more than just a research function in knowledge-intensive industries. Implications for building interorganizational networks and managing human resources in such industries are discussed.     

Innovation strategy and performance during economic transition: Evidences in Beijing, China

This paper evaluates the relevance of innovation strategy to various categories of Chinese firms and investigates its relationship with innovation performance during the economic transition of the 1990s. Data from 1244 Chinese firms in Beijing are used to ascertain the relative importance of different innovation objectives, along with the innovation strategies adopted by manufacturing firms. Results show that innovation activities were confined to the domestic sphere and mainly directed at quality improvement. Chinese manufacturing firms which obtained support from the government through the high-tech firm accreditation system generally perform better. They had already started moving away from a reliance on imported technology and equipment, and using indigenous R&D efforts to innovate for the coming market economy.