Marcus Matthias Keupp

We study the effect of formal organizational architecture on the extent to which a focal subsidiary creates competence that is "useful" to other units of a multinational corporation (MNC). Elements of formal organizational architecture represent levers by which parent firm and subsidiary managers can realize their intentions. Building on motivation theory, we argue that an appropriate organizational architecture stimulates a subsidiary's motivation to create internationally "useful" competence so that its extent of competence creation will increase. We develop and empirically test hypotheses for three specific organizational elements, viz.: a home-base augmenting mission, interfaces with other MNC units, and the subsidiary's strategic and operational autonomy. Unique survey data from 287 subsidiaries provide intimate insights into the internal structure of MNCs and strongly support our account. We close by discussing the implications of our study for the academic literature, management practice, and future research.

Although enterprise systems (ES) are ubiquitous, many firms report less than stellar payoffs from these costly investments, with underutilization often attributed to failures in the implementation process. Unfortunately, research has not provided sufficient insights into these failures, in part because it has focused on actual usage, as opposed to proficient usage, as the benchmark for successful implementation. Moreover, research has not generally examined how the adoption process unfolds over time, thus overlooking potential underlying mechanisms that may help explain how adopters achieve proficiency. To begin addressing these shortcomings, we study how adopters' pre-adoption expectations, enacted over time, can influence their post-adoption proficiency, by shaping how and why they spend time using the system during the adoption period. We analyzed time-lagged survey data from 153 financial analysts, required to adopt new ES-based software, at a multinational bank. We found that adopters who hold pre-adoption expectations reflecting greater internal and external motives to adopt the system as well as systematically integrate it into their work routines are more apt to use the system in ways that enhance their cumulative knowledge of it, and subsequently develop higher levels of proficiency post-adoption. Moreover, greater organizational support enhanced the impact of adopters' expectations on proficiency, except when their actual use is low in which case organizational support had an adverse effect.

Despite the significant role of radical innovation as a driver of firm growth and performance, the consequences of resource constraints for radical innovation outcomes remain unknown. Our paper addresses this gap. We combine arguments from entrepreneurship theory and the theory of recombinative innovation to construct an overarching theoretical framework that argues why resource constraints can promote, rather than impede, radical innovation. We then build hypotheses on two specific resource constraints, knowledge and financial, and test these by a lagged-variable random-effects Tobit model with longitudinal data from an exceptionally large and detailed innovation survey. Controlling for absorptive capacity, firm age, and firm growth, we find full support for the hypothesis that knowledge constraints spur radical innovation and partial support for the hypothesis that financial constraints spur radical innovation. We discuss the theoretical significance of these findings and point to managerial implications and paths for future research.

Foreign firms patent in emerging economies with weak appropriability regimes at an increasing rate. This phenomenon constitutes a paradox since in such a setting foreign firms should have weak incentives to patent. In an attempt to resolve this paradox, we conducted an inductive analysis of 11 foreign firms that patent in such a setting, using the case of China as our empirical context. We identify four archetypes of foreign firms and three key antecedents the interaction of which determines which archetype a firm can be subsumed under. Our study complements the developed-economy focus of the extant appropriation literature by adding an international perspective. We extend previous econometric studies by identifying salient factors on the firm level that determine the extent to which a foreign firm patents in emerging economies with a weak appropriability regimes, highlighting that the extent of a firm's motivation to maintain its freedom to operate can supersede imitability concerns. We also comment on the practical implications of these contributions for managers of foreign firms. Highlighting a structural conflict of interest between foreign firms from developed economies and the development goals of an emerging economy, we point to the generalizability of our results to a wide range of other emerging economies worldwide.

Strategic management scholars have long emphasized the importance of innovation for a firm's competitive advantage and performance. However, the current state of knowledge about the strategic management of innovation is characterized by conflicting theoretical predictions, persisting knowledge gaps and theoretical inconsistencies. Adopting a ‘systematic' approach to reviewing the literature, this paper combines different quantitative methods - co-word analysis, cluster analysis and frequency analysis - to review 342 articles on the strategic management of innovation published in seven journals from 1992 to 2010. On the basis of these analyses, suggestions are developed for future research which could help to promote future theory development and provide relevant material for policy decisions that managers and executives have to make when they manage innovation.

Whereas extant literature has explored the question of why foreign R&D is present in China, we still know almost nothing about how these R&D operations are managed. This applies specifically to the management of Chinese R&D staff who conventionally are not known for their respect of foreign firms' intellectual property rights (IPR). However, foreign R&D units in China are likely to have developed management techniques to deal with such problems. In this paper, we engage in qualitative and quantitative exploration of how foreign R&D units in China manage their Chinese R&D staff. For exploration we develop a conceptual framework on the basis of agency theory and the theory of trusted relationships. Our findings show that those R&D units that have developed adequate measures to manage their Chinese R&D staff have succeeded in making Chinese employees loyal to the R&D unit. These results have important implications for both practitioners and future empirical research.

Many emerging economies are characterised by weak appropriability systems and absent legal systems to punish imitators. This places foreign firms' intellectual property rights at risk, because existing appropriation methods, such as patents or secrecy, cannot function effectively. This concern especially applies to China, the empirical context of this article. Such adverse conditions force managers to devise new strategies to safeguard their firms' intellectual property rights. Yet no evidence describes whether strategies exist, which forms they take, how they have evolved or how they get implemented. This article addresses this knowledge gap and explores strategies that managers have developed to achieve de facto protection, despite China's weak appropriability system. The analysis systematically explores 13 cases of foreign firms with wholly owned subsidiaries in China. The findings confirm that de facto strategies exist, describe how they work and detail how they were achieved. The findings suggest implications for both managers and academics.

Foreign firms trying to protect their intellectual property rights (IPRs) in emerging economies are suffering real pressures because these economies usually offer little or no enforcement of IPR. Foreign firms therefore have to resort to approaches unlike those they use in developed countries. This paper explores what managers of foreign firms in China have already tried in their efforts to achieve effective IPR protection - specifically, they have crafted de facto strategies that can protect IPR without using China's legal system or engaging in lawsuits against imitators. These strategies work, and this paper explains how and why, thus offering a potential template for IPR protection in other economies with weak appropriability systems.