Charles Williams

Executive Links and Strategic Change

Charles Williams — Wed, 14 Dec 2011 22:19:10 PST

A link to a presentation of the paper, executive links and strategic change.

Research Overview

Charles Williams — Sun, 11 Dec 2011 14:02:25 PST

This is a link to a research overview I presented at Bocconi in Fall 2011. It covers published work, current working papers, and some ideas of where I'm thinking about going. It's an online prezi document you can run from the website.

Renewal through Rookies: The Growth Effect of Industry and Firm Experience among Top Management Recruits

Charles Williams et al. — Tue, 08 Nov 2011 01:41:25 PST

This study examines the impact of new top management talent on the growth of the recipient firm. Specifically, we maintain that the growth a firm can achieve through sourcing new executives is subject to the availability and the relevance of managerial capabilities to the recipient firm, which vary with the origins of new executives (i.e. hierarchical, organizational, and industrial origins), and the knowledge gaps the recipient firm faces, caused by the evolving industrial and organizational environments. An empirical test on U.S. cellular phone service providers from 1983 to 1998 shows that (1) rookie executive recruits are more valuable to firm growth than seasoned executive recruits, (2) rookie executives from competitors and other industries are more valuable to firm growth than internally promoted rookie executives, (3) the impact of new executives from other industries on firm growth reduces as the industry ages, and (4) seasoned executives from competitors are more valuable to the recipient firm’s growth when the existing TMT members are less experienced in the team and the industry; in contrast, seasoned executives from other industries are more valuable to the recipient firm’s when existing TMT members are more experienced in the team and the industry.

Structural Knowledge: How executive experience with structural composition affects intrafirm mobility and unit reconfiguration

Charles Williams et al. — Fri, 17 Jun 2011 10:34:42 PDT

This paper explores how knowledge embodied in executives is tied to the organizational context in which it develops. Drawing on the knowledge based view of the firm and human capital theory, we predict that executives will tend to move between units with similar ‘structural composition’ – histories of origin through acquisition or internal development and subsequent recombination with other units. In addition, we argue that executives will be conduits of organizational change and stasis. We predict that units receiving more transferred executives, more executives with experience at other recombined units, and more executives from internally developed units will have a greater likelihood of being recombined, while units receiving executives from previously acquired units will tend to remain unchanged. We study the hypothesized relationships in a 20-year panel of 48 multidivisional firms from the US medical sector. In this sample, executives predominantly move between units with closely related structural composition, consistent with our first set of hypotheses. We find much less evidence that executives are conduits of organizational change, however. Movement of executives in general, and of those with previous experience at recombined units in particular, is not associated with future recombination. Movement of executives from internally developed units is associated with future recombination, suggesting that executives from the internally developed core play a very different role than those from the peripheral acquired units.

Growing Pains: Pre-Entry Experience and the Challenge of Transition to Incumbency

Charles Williams et al. — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 13:29:47 PST

We examine how entrepreneurial entry by diversifying and de novo firms in new industries leads to different levels of performance. We propose that the two types of firms differ in their dynamic capabilities, which enable them to overcome growth impediments and transition to incumbency in the industry. Diversifying firms have already adapted firm knowledge and people to enter the targeted industry, making them better equipped to tackle the challenges of impediments to growth, which arise at larger sizes, older tenure levels in industry, and due to technological discontinuities. Meanwhile, de novo firms, ostensibly tailor-made for the targeted industry, are more likely to stumble over these growth challenges, and will eventually lag behind their competitors with pre-entry experience. We find support for our hypotheses using a near census of firms in the US wireless telecommunications industry over the 1983-2004 period.

Executive Links and Strategic Change: Is Unit-Spanning by Executives Associated with Market Entry and Exit?

Charles Williams et al. — Tue, 10 Nov 2009 13:26:18 PST

Firms frequently create executive links by sharing people between units to transfer and combine knowledge. These links, however, potentially strengthen social ties and cognitive filters that reduce the possibility of strategic change. Our analysis of medical firms finds that executive links between units, especially between business units and the corporate unit, are associated with reduced market entry and exit. This finding runs counter to the prevalent view that sharing of individuals is an effective way to spread and combine diverse knowledge such that it initiates change. It suggests that the cognitive and social commitments from shared executives may undermine the knowledge diffusion and transformation expected to arise from these links.

Transfer in context: replication and adaptation in knowledge transfer relationships

Charles Williams — Wed, 18 Jun 2008 07:50:29 PDT

This paper explores the role of replication and adaptation in knowledge transfer relationships. I develop a model of knowledge transfer in which firms replicate because knowledge is ambiguous and adapt because knowledge depends on context. In the model, firms replicate more when knowledge is discrete and adapt more when they understand the interactions between different areas of knowledge. Replication and adaptation lead to successful knowledge transfer, which leads to improved performance of the receiving unit. The predictions are tested using a survey of cross-border knowledge transfer relationships among firms in the telecommunications industry. The results are largely consistent with the model and point to potential areas for future research, such as the drivers of replication, the depreciation rate of knowledge, and the role of understanding in organizational knowledge.

Focusing firm evolution: The impact of information infrastructure on market entry by U.S. telecommunications firms, 1984-1998

Charles Williams et al. — Wed, 18 Jun 2008 07:47:53 PDT

Organization structure acts as a lens on the environment, gathering information and shaping its ﬂow through a ﬁrm to inform managers’ choices. This shaping of information ﬂow happens through an organization’s operating units, which selectively process information from the environment, and through the links between them, which pass information between units. We explore the relationship between this “information infras- tructure” and ﬁrm strategy using structure and service information from the eight largest telephone service providers in the United States from 1984 to 1998. We ﬁnd that ﬁrms with more units that scan areas of oppor- tunity are more likely to enter a market, while ﬁrms with more units that scan nonfocal areas are less likely to enter the market. We also ﬁnd that personnel links between units and the corporate level of the ﬁrm often con- strain entry to new markets by dampening a unit’s appetite for risk. Personnel links between operating units, on the other hand, can make a ﬁrm more likely to enter new markets, particularly when the cooperating units combine different sets of information. Thus, a ﬁrm’s information infrastructure plays a dual role in shaping ﬁrm evolution, leading toward some paths and away from others.