Allocating Corporate Resources: The Need for New Theory

Abstract

This symposium focuses on a central question of corporate strategy research: how to allocate corporate resources in multi-business firms? Spurred by early qualitative theory, a surge of empirical research has yielded mixed findings, after which work on the topic declined. We suggest that early theory was underspecified, and that there is a pressing need for more theory building in corporate strategy research. To address this need, looking to the field of organization theory may offer a way forward. That field has seen a renewal of theory development, as scholars have embraced formal modeling – both analytical approaches as well as simulation models of organizations as complex adaptive systems – to study questions and phenomena that are hard to tackle empirically. By bringing together a set of preeminent scholars at the intersection of corporate strategy and organization theory, this symposium seeks to take stock of the current state of research on corporate resource allocation, and to outline a possible future. By identifying and discussing promising research opportunities, the symposium is particularly geared toward Ph.D. students and younger scholars.