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2012



PhD Fellow Søren Bering - 12:00-13:00, February 17th 2012

Brown Bag seminar 12:00-13:00
Room K2.75
The PhD project of Søren aims to provide “Effective Corporate Strategies in Vertically integrated Companies” When companies expand, one of the first ways has been to integrate part of the supply chain or to integrate part of the distribution channel. This is known as vertical integration (VI). Theory provides conflicting views of when VI is viable and actually delivers shareholder value. Furthermore theory suggests that VI can increase corporate control and hence deliver shareholder value in the form of increased profits or reduced volatility of its profits. But, under market uncertainty operational and strategic risks are transferred directly from its customers to the company.

If VI also leads to reduced corporate flexibility and reaction to markets changes this should destroy shareholder value. Despite these constrains many companies still choose to expand its activities beyond its original competencies and founding ideas and vision. 
This essential raises the question of how to create strategies for Vertical Integration which also takes into account the dynamics of today’s globalized world where changes in a complex environment occurs with higher frequency and impact. The theoretical foundation of the project will be corporate strategy, strategic risk management, corporate financing and from a management perspective - organizational architecture, business unit management, control and incentives.
 
Søren Bering has had several leadership roles within the private sector. Today he is ”Head of Commercial Services” at MAN Truck and Bus Center Scandinavia. He has previously worked as Sales Director at MAN Truck and Bus in Denmark, and as Sales and Marketing Director at DHL Express A/S Denmark. Søren has a FT MBA from Copenhagen Business School

Associated Lecturer Dr. Jörg Claussen - February 24th 2012

Brown Bag seminar 12:00-13:00
Room K2.75
Jörg Claussen's research interests include questions of organization design as well as of applied industrial organization. His main research question in the field of organization design is in how far environmental turbulence affects the relative performance of markets versus hierarchies. This question is tackled both with a formal modeling approach and with a large-scale dataset from the US video game market. Looking even deeper into organizations, his research also investigates how far an individual's connectedness from prior team collaboration leads to knowledge spillovers in new projects.

Market Leadership Through Technology – Backward Compatibility in the U.S. Handheld Video Game Industry, by Jörg Claussen, Tobias Kretschmer and Thomas Spengler.
Abstract
The introduction of a new product generation forces incumbents in network industries to rebuild their installed base to maintain an advantage over potential entrants. We study if backward compatibility moderates this process of rebuilding an installed base. Using a structural model of the U.S. market for handheld game consoles, we show that backward compatibility lets incumbents transfer network effects from the old generation to the new to some extent but that it also reduces supply of new software. We examine the tradeoff between technological progress and backward compatibility and find that backward compatibility matters less if there is a large technological leap between two generations. We subsequently use our results to assess the role of backward compatibility as a strategy to sustain market leadership.

Assistant Professor Stacey Fitzsimmons - February 27th 2012

Joint research seminar with IKL 12:00-13:30
Room K2.75
Stacey Fitzsimmons is Assistant Professor of Management at the Haworth College of Business, Western Michigan University. She specializes in cross-cultural management research, with a particular interest in understanding how bicultural and multicultural individuals contribute to global business. She received her doctorate in International Business from the Beedie School of Business at Simon Fraser University, in Vancouver, BC, Canada.

Stacey

Organizations are experiencing a rise in a new demographic of employees – bicultural and multicultural individuals. These are individuals who have internalized two or more cultures, such as German-Danes, Chinese-Canadians or Arab-Americans. Despite promising findings about the skills multicultural employees bring to their positions, they remain an untapped resource in most companies, because managers first need to understand how they can contribute to organizations. The framework developed in this paper draws on cognitive and motivational mechanisms from social identity theory to explain how multicultural employees organize their multiple cultural identities into patterns, and in turn, how those patterns influence benefits and challenges for themselves, and for their organizations.

Assistant Professor Steffen Korsgaard and Associate Professor Henrik Berglund - March 15th 2012

Brown Bag seminar 12:00 - 13:00
Room K2.75 
Beyond Discovery and Creation: Opportunities in Entrepreneurship Research
Recent years has seen the emergence of numerous diverging views on the nature of opportunities. Reviews have conceptualized the debate as a dichotomous confrontation between two views: discovery and creation. This dichotomous framing has been helpful in bringing out a number of decisive questions and challenges for entrepreneurship research, yet also suffers from serious drawbacks, as it overlooks alternative views and exaggerates the internal homogeneity of the discovery and creation views. Also, the two views as presented in reviews do not readily lend themselves to empirical research. In this seminar we will discuss the limits and potential of the opportunity concept in entrepreneurship research, drawing on recent critiques of the discovery view, new developments at the intersection of Austrian economics and entrepreneurship research.
Steffen Korsgaard is Assistant Professor at the Department of Business Administration, Aarhus University. His research interests include entrepreneurial processes, opportunities and the spatial dynamics of entrepreneurial activities. His work has been published in Entrepreneurship and Regional Development and International Small Business Journal. Current research projects focus on entrepreneurship in rural areas and entrepreneurship education.
 

 
Henrik Berglund is Associate Professor at the Center for Business Innovation, Department of Technology Management and Economics, Chalmers University of Technology, Sweden. His research interests include Austrian economics and entrepreneurship studies and methods for customer centric business innovation. His work has been published in the Journal of Managerial Psychology and Journal of Small Business and Enterprise Development. Current research projects focus on the lean start up model and business model innovations. 


Professor Gerard Hodgkinson - March 16th 2012

Research seminar 14:00 - 15:30
Room Ks48
Strategic cognition and dynamic capabilities:
Building on advances in the social neurosciences
 
Gerard P. Hodgkinson is Professor at the Marketing and Strategic Management group at Warwick Business School, and a leading scholar on the analysis of cognitive processes in strategic decision making. Among others, his work has focused on the development and validation of methodological techniques for eliciting and representing strategic knowledge, such as cognitive mapping procedures.

In this seminar, Hodgkinson will present an overview of his recent work on strategic cognition and dynamic capabilities, emphasizing the shift that is taking place in the light of recent advances in the social neurosciences. Hodgkinson’s research has appeared in a number of the world's leading scholarly applied psychology and management journals, such as the Strategic Management Journal, the Journal of Management Studies and the British Journal of Management. He serves on the editorial boards of the Academy of Management Review, Journal of Organizational Behavior and Organization Science, and is a member of the Executive Committee of the Academy of Management’s Managerial and Organizational Cognition Division (MOC).
This seminar will be followed by a small reception.

PhD Fellow Jose Balarezo - March 23th 2012

Brown Bag seminar 12:00-13:00
Room K2.75
Jose Balarezo, CFA, holds a Master's degree in  Applied Economics and Finance from Copenhagen Business School (CBS) and has recently started his industrial PhD research in cooperation with Novozymes and CBS.
Prior to his PhD research, Jose spent more than 10 years working for banks and corporations in South America, United States and Denmark in areas such as risk management, strategy, capital allocation and corporate finance. 
Jose's prior working experience and current position in Novozymes - one of the leading Biotechnology companies in the world - give him an inside track in understanding how companies
make strategic decisions and what could work in practice when proposing a viable framework for optimal capital allocation for strategic projects in highly uncertain environments.

Jose Balarezo

 
Scenario planning as supporting method to enhance optimal portfolio allocation of strategic investments under high levels of uncertainty
In his first seminar, Jose will present his research project and the main questions that he will try to answer with his PhD research. 
Companies face highly dynamic and uncertain environments, this is especially true for companies working in technology-intensive industries such as Novozymes. How a company spend its limited resources in a portfolio of strategic investments is paramount for its future competitive position and survival. The strategic decision making becomes even more complex if we consider the time lag needed for many of the investments to pay off. In this sense, once an investment decision has been made, the ability to change direction is limited.  In this complex and uncertain context, traditional forecasting techniques that are based on historical trends and extreme simplification of reality are bound to fail.
It has been argued that scenario planning is a viable technique to aid decision makers. Yet, despite the relatively rich literature and anecdotic evidence for successful implementation in some companies, no consensus has been reached into how to apply scenarios methodology, and most importantly, how to implement scenarios within a overarching framework to systematically aid top management with complex investment decisions under high levels of uncertainty.

Associate Professor Timothy B. Folta - March 30th 2012

Research seminar 14:00 - 15:30
Room K2.75
Timothy B. Folta is the Brock Family Chair of Strategic Management at Purdue University. His research and teaching efforts examine both entrepreneurship and the strategic management of interactions across functional and product boundaries within a firm. His work analyzes, first, how uncertainty constrains behavior, and second, how managers and entrepreneurs use organizational design and scope decisions to cope with uncertainty.

His scholarly work has appeared in journals such as Administrative Science Quarterly, Industrial and Corporate Change, Journal of Business Venturing, Management Science, and Strategic Management Journal.
Market Inducements and Resource Redeployability
Our paper elaborates the effects that inducements for redeployment, differences in potential returns in markets where resources might be applied and where they are applied, have on firm value. We emphasize that the value results from a dynamic interplay of inducements and another determinant of resource redeployability, switching costs. This view extends the existing theory postulating that redeployment of firm resources to the most related alternative markets generates value. We use a dynamic valuation model to explicate how value derives from the interplay of the two determinants of resource redeployability. We formally evaluate separate and joint effects of the two determinants. This explication enables us to demonstrate how they interact with each other and substitute for each other in determining value. In this sense, we illuminate value in firms that has been previously undiagnosed. In addition to providing theoretical insight, our results have important empirical and managerial implications.

Professor Helen de Cieri - 13th April 2012

Brown Bag seminar 12:00 - 13:00
Room K2.75
Helen De Cieri (PhD) is a Professor at the Department of Management at Monash University, Australia. From 2004-2011 she was the Director of the Australian Centre for Research in Employment and Work at Monash University. She has presented on university and executive programs in Australia, China, Malaysia, and the US. Helen's current research partnerships include global companies, government departments, and non-profit organizations. Helen has researched, consulted, and published on a wide range of topics related to strategic and global human resource management (HRM).

Her current research projects include: global mobility management and the Asian region and the relationships between HRM, employee wellbeing, and organizational performance. In addition to her university activities, Helen is a member of the Advisory Council for The 100% Project
www.the100percentproject.com.au , a non-profit organization in Australia that provides leadership on the advancement of women in management.
Global Mobility: Managing Risks and Challenges 
Events over the past decade, such as terrorism, the global financial crisis, and large-scale ecological disasters have increased the need for managers in global companies to develop strategies for managing the risks associated with global mobility management (the management of employees across national borders). Based on research conducted with companies operating in the dynamic Asian region, Professor Helen De Cieri will first discuss the challenges faced by global companies managing across a range of risky environments, dealing with the local workforce as well as developing expatriate managers. She will then report on research conducted in cooperation with expatriate managers and present their views on working in Asia. Finally, Helen De Cieri will discuss ways in which 'best practice' global mobility management can enhance opportunities and build resilience for companies and their valued employees.
 

Assistant Professor Xavier Castaner - 20th April 2012

Brown Bag seminar 12:00 - 13:00
Room K2.75
Xavier Castañer holds a PhD from the University of Minnesota and is currently an Assistant Professor at the University of Lausanne, Switzerland. He also held faculty positions at ESADE and HEC Paris. At SMS Xavier Castaner served as elected Rep- at- Large of the Corporate Strategy & Governance IG (2007-2009); during this period he organized several sessions on alliances and acquisitions and participated as invited faculty in the Doctoral Workshop. In recent years, he has served as session chair, in the program and award committees for the annual conference and the recent Special Conference in Finland. 

He has published articles in leading journals such as the Strategic Management Journal, as well as several book chapters. His research and teaching revolves around corporate governance, strategy and development, investigating the determinants and consequences of corporate scope as well as of the choice of development modes, and the implementation success factors of acquisitions. He reviews for many journals, both North-American and European-based.
The contingent and direct effects of make-or-ally choices on project performance: A study of collaborative and autonomous governance for product innovation in the worldwide aircraft industry 1942-2000
We examine the performance impact of make-or-ally decisions. Based on an enlargeddiscriminating alignment approach, which adds the resource requirements of activities to thetraditional framework, and combining it with the alliance literature, we argue that, relative toautonomous governance, collaborative governance has not only a contingent effect on projectperformance but also unconditional advantages and disadvantages. We test our predictions on291 new aircraft projects undertaken either via horizontal collaboration or autonomously.When firms choose the mode that best fits the production and exchange conditions of theproject, unit sales are highest while time-to-market is shortest. Nevertheless, collaborativeprojects systematically exhibit greater unit sales and longer time-to-market than single-firmprojects. We contribute to the literature on alliances and the performance of governancemodedecisions.

Professor Rodolphe Durand - April 27th 2012

Research seminar 12:00 - 13:00
Room Ks71
Rodolphe Durand graduated from HEC Paris (M.Sc and Ph.D.) and La Sorbonne (MPhil). He is the GDF-Suez professor of Strategy at HEC Paris where he chairs the Strategy department, and is in charge of the MBA and Ph.D. specialization.
His primary research interests concern the social and institutional sources of competitive advantage and organizational performance, in particular in settings where conformity pressures are strong.

His works have been published in journals including American Journal of Sociology, Academy of Management Review, and Strategic Management Journal. Rodolphe received national and international awards including the "R. Scott Award" (American Sociological Association, 2005), the "HEC Foundation Best paper of the year (2006 and 2009), and the "Euram/Imagination Lab award for innovative scholarship" (2010). He initiated the "Society and Organizations" research center at HEC (www.societyandorganizations.org). Rodolphe is also a prolific author of books, including Guide du Management Stratégique (Dunod, 2003), Organizational Evolution and Strategic Management (Sage, 2006), Strategor (co-editor, Dunod, 2009) and L'Organisation Pirate (Bord de l'Eau, 2010, coauthored with JP Vergne).

Marcus Møller Larsen - 21st May 2012

Pre-defence seminar 13.00-15.00
Room K143
As part of the PhD education, Marcus will give his PhD pre-defense to the project "The Organizational Design of Offshoring" on Monday, May 21, 2012. The project explores different aspects of the organizational design of relocating firm activities to foreign locations, such as complexity, 'hidden costs', coordination, organizational  reconfiguration, decision-making, and knowledge. The project consists of four papers. These are:
  1. "Uncovering the hidden costs of offshoring: The interplay of complexity, organizational design and experience"
  2. "Organizational reconfiguration and strategic response: The case of offshoring"
  3. "The attractiveness of a reactive strategy to offshoring: A simulation study"
  4. "Strategic decision-making in offshoring: The moderating role of coordination"
 

 
 
 
 


Last updated by Pia Elmegård 14/05/2012