Micro-foundational Perspective Research Articles

How do engineering suppliers create project value for buyers? A micro-foundational perspective

PurposeValue creation in engineering projects has received considerable research attention. However, buyers’ expectations regarding project value do not always translate into the actions of project team members (actors). Drawing upon resource orchestration theory to explore the micro-foundations of project value creation (PVC), we investigate how suppliers organize project team members to create project value that meets buyers’ expectations.Design/methodology/approachWe adopted two instructive engineering projects as comparative cases to analyze patterns in actor interactions in PVC.FindingsThe results reveal “social interaction-based value creation” and “structural interaction-based value creation,” which explain the PVC process from the collective-level buyer’s expectations and supplier’s value orientation, to individual-level actor interactions (mobilizing, connecting, and networking), knowledge orchestration activities (structuring, bundling, and leveraging), and finally the value creation process (identifying, configuring, and generating) in project teams to generate collective-level project benefits and values.Originality/valueWe propose a macro-approach to micro-foundations, with a focus on the buyer-expected PVC process on the supplier side. Furthermore, we explain how suppliers organize individual actions and orchestrate the individual knowledge through two patterns of individual-level actor interactions for collective-level PVC.

Exploring the supply chain ambidexterity: a multilevel micro-foundational perspective

PurposeThis study aims to introduce a multilevel micro-foundational perspective on supply chain (SC) ambidexterity, grounded in organizational learning and adaptation research. It investigates the interplay of contextual factors, strategic orientation and a bundle of supply chain management practices to foster ambidextrous performance.Design/methodology/approachLeveraging a blend of perceptual and objective data and measures, this study explores the intricacies of macro and micro factors at multiple levels, offering empirical support for the research framework. The interrelationships among these factors are scrutinized through three analytical approaches: selection, interaction and system forms of interdependence analysis.FindingsFirst, the authors offer empirical support for their conceptual model, illustrating that ambidexterity behavior and outcomes in the SC emanate from intricate interactions between macro and micro factors across various levels. Second, the authors present robust empirical evidence endorsing a system/gestalt form of interdependence analysis in capturing SC ambidexterity and performance. This analytical approach effectively captures the complementarity and contradictory interdependence among the opposing poles of efficiency and responsiveness.Originality/valueThe organizational and SC activity configuration faces numerous paradoxical tensions, such as profitability versus sustainability. This study offers valuable insights into establishing an ambidextrous system capable of navigating and addressing these paradoxical situations.

Pivot, persist or perish? Knowledge problems and the extraordinarily tight boundary conditions of entrepreneurs as scientists

The characterization of entrepreneurs as scientists (EaS) has become increasingly popular among management scholars because it fits neatly with existing theories of entrepreneurial action grounded in the assumption that entrepreneurs form and test beliefs in an intendedly rational fashion, under conditions of uncertainty, while continually seeking to obtain and process new information. Recent scholarship breathes new life into the EaS paradigm by proposing a framework that builds upon pragmatism in developing a microfoundational perspective concerning causally inferential action and rationality-based heuristics. Yet, the drift towards EaS is not without controversy. Business venturing is rarely analyzable through the lens of natural laws and orderly structures. Moreover, uncertainty is not the only knowledge problem (KP) that entrepreneurs confront. As such, EaS may be ineffective in bringing resolution to these other challenging KPs – ambiguity, complexity, and equivocality – especially when entrepreneurs are entertaining decisions to pivot or persist. In this sense, our work underscores the importance of EaS while also asserting the need for clear boundary conditions.

Explaining the non-adoption of blockchain technology in global value chains: a micro-foundational perspective

The business potential of blockchain technology in global value chains (GVCs) includes the creation of permanent records of information, to facilitate specifications regulation, to mitigate risk using smart contracts and through full, transparent transaction traceability at reduced costs. Blockchain as a general-purpose technology (GPT) thus has the potential to increase the effectiveness and efficiency of value creation for firm specific advantages owned and/or controlled by multinational enterprises (MNE), yet adoption of blockchain is uneven. This study adopts a micro-foundational lens to explain the non-adoption of blockchain technology in multinational enterprises’ (MNE) global value chains (GVC), emphasizing the influence of the technology, organization and environment (TOE) influences on the technology acceptance (TAM) for blockchain, due to the impact on managers’ perception of blockchain's usefulness and ease of use. The empirical results are based on a multiple-case study research design, that collected interview data from supply chain managers in small, medium, and large-sized manufacturing MNEs that participate in global value chains that differ in their governance patterns. The results identified fifteen different drivers of the non-adoption of blockchain technology across the technological, organizational and external environments of the MNE. The results of the study allow a parsimonious model of blockchain technology non-adoption that is aligned with the digital technology adoption literature using a TOE–TAM approach.

Building a knowledge sharing climate amid shadows of sabotage: a microfoundational perspective into job satisfaction and knowledge sabotage

PurposeDrawing on the microfoundations theory and rational choice sociology, this study aims to investigate knowledge-sharing microfoundations through knowledge sabotage behaviours in the workplace. As such, it aims to shed light on the adverse impact of knowledge sabotage on a knowledge-sharing climate.Design/methodology/approachAs a quantitative deductive study, it is based on information collected from 329 employees of European companies by self-administered online surveys. Data validity and reliability has been assessed through a confirmatory factor analysis, and data analysis was carried out by using a covariance-based structural equation modelling technique.FindingsThe findings from the empirical investigation supported the baseline hypotheses of the multilevel conceptual model, which is the positive relationship between organizational trust and environmental knowledge sharing. Then, recurring to a microfoundational exploration, this study supports the mediating indirect effect of job satisfaction and knowledge sabotage in affecting knowledge sharing as a social outcome.Research limitations/implicationsThis study concurs to broaden knowledge-sharing awareness among scholars and practitioners, by focusing on knowledge sabotage as its most pernicious counterproductive behaviour. Furthermore, this research provides valuable guidance for the future development of research based on multilevel investigations.Originality/valueThis study builds on the need to explore the numerous factors that affect knowledge sharing in economic organizations, specifically focusing on knowledge sabotage. Adapting Coleman’s bathtub, the authors advance the first multilevel conceptual model used to unveil the knowledge-sharing microfoundations from the perspective of a counterproductive knowledge behaviour.

Managing Generational Tensions Toward Digital Transformation: A Microfoundational Perspective

Managing Generational Tensions Toward Digital Transformation: A Microfoundational Perspective

Knowledge‐brokering activities as enactors of innovative constructive deviance in open R&D projects

Despite the two sides of deviant behaviors and the fact that knowledge brokers are sometimes presented in a negative light due to their unique position, this article unveils from an innovation perspective how these two intricate individual‐level concepts bring positive outcomes in complex environments. While previous work has highlighted the positive impact of constructive workplace deviance on organizations and their members, research on the antecedents of such deviance is scarce. We use knowledge brokers as an unexplored and pertinent means of enacting innovative constructive deviance. Indeed, knowledge brokering supports innovation by connecting, recombining, and transferring disconnected pools of ideas. A case study of a high‐tech company was conducted. We focused on three B2C and B2B co‐creation projects as one of the main open innovation strategies. The results suggest that knowledge‐brokering activities with customers or partner firms enact innovative constructive deviance in different ways and accelerate creativity and innovation within the organization. This paper contributes to the debate on deviant behaviors and brokering activities within the open innovation paradigm. We enrich the microfoundational perspective of the open innovation literature, shed light on the determinants of innovative constructive deviance, and provide empirical evidence of the relationship between brokering activities and deviant behavior. On a managerial level, the findings suggest that knowledge‐brokering activities among multiple stakeholders foster innovative behaviors within co‐creation projects.

Corporate Purpose and Strategy: A Microfoundational Perspective

Corporate Purpose and Strategy: A Microfoundational Perspective

What Takes the Wind out of Their Sails? A Micro-Foundational Perspective of Challenges for Building Dynamic Capabilities Towards Digital Business Model Innovation

While dynamic capabilities (DCs) are recognized as an important enabler of digital transformation, research lacks knowledge about the underlying challenges and adequate responses of building these capabilities. More specifically, this study aims to shed light into successful digital business model innovation (BMI) by adopting a micro-foundational approach that covers both challenges and successful measures on this path for incumbent industrial firms. Therefore, six case studies building on qualitative empirical research are analyzed that either focus on Internet of Things (IoT)-driven platform BMI or software as a service (SaaS) BMI. The results offer a variety of insights regarding challenges and respective responses. These findings are attributed to DCs and its subdimensions of sensing, seizing and transforming, further revealing the interplay of various factors for specific contexts. Additionally, the study reveals that many challenges and thus required responses are the result of individuals, processes, and structures.

Transnational digital entrepreneurship and enterprise effectiveness: A micro-foundational perspective

Transnational digital entrepreneurship (TDE), the establishment of digital enterprises by combining home- and host-country value creation to serve domestic and foreign customers, is increasing. In order to understand the role of entrepreneurs in transnational digital enterprise effectiveness, we investigate how the competencies of transnational digital entrepreneurs influence social interactions among stakeholders that contribute to enterprise effectiveness. We apply the micro-foundations perspective of management and entrepreneurship and semi-structured interview data from transnational entrepreneurs from six countries—Finland, Sweden, Norway, New Zealand, Australia, and the USA—and their partners in Pakistan. We find that entrepreneurs’ digital knowledge, skills, and abilities—versatile cognitive capabilities, digital managerial capabilities, and multicultural capabilities—affect social interactions through four socio-structural mechanisms—structural support, trust-building, knowledge sharing, and resource configuration—that enhance enterprise effectiveness. We discuss the theoretical and practical implications for transnational entrepreneurship, policymakers, and migrant entrepreneurs.

Addressing the Societal Challenges in Organizations: The Conceptualization of Mindfulness Capability for Social Justice

Social inequalities are partly caused by habitual organizational practices. In this vein, to overcome those, organizations now need to develop new organizational capabilities aimed at enhancing their attention towards societal issues. In our study, we apply the theory of mindfulness to explain how it may help organizations overcome habitual organizing that fuels social inequalities. Guided by the microfoundational perspective of organizational capability, we conceptualize individual characteristics, processes, and structures that collectively form mindfulness capability for social justice. We perceive it as an organizational capability that reflects the extent to which an organization possesses a collective social justice awareness, i.e., awareness of the impact on social justice in society through its organizational practices. We argue that, when adopted by organizations, mindfulness, by increasing the awareness of the organizational impact on society, helps notice, examine, and question the correctness of taken-for-granted organizational practices. From our perspective, this new capability will lead to changes in organizational practices that fuel social inequalities. Our study contributes to the literature on sustainable organizational development and mindfulness research in organizations. Managerial implications and future research directions are also discussed.

Leadership's long arm: The positive influence of digital leadership on managing technology-driven change over a strengthened service innovation capacity.

In this qualitative study, we examine digital leadership (DL) capabilities and their positive influence on the management of technology-driven change by leveraging service innovations. The context of digital transformation (DT) has triggered a new leadership paradigm, among others referred to as digital leadership (DL). However, despite its practical relevance, leadership research has yet paid little attention to conceptualise DL as an approach to digitally transform organisations. Drawing on mid- and top-level mangers' experiences with service innovation projects, and based on Grounded Theory, we develop a taxonomy of DL-related capabilities and a conceptual framework which exemplifies their influences on dynamic service innovation capabilities (DSICs). DSICs build on the dynamic capabilities view (DCV) and represent the "organisational muscle" to repeatedly deliver service innovations indicating an effective management of technology-driven change. Taxonomy results show that aggregated dimensions in terms of a digital leader's personal, social, and organisational capital serve as underpinnings (DL-related capabilities) to drive strategic change in DT contexts. The conceptual framework further reveals that especially the personal and organisational capital of a digital leader owns several strong and moderate influences on DSICs which demonstrates DL's "long arm" on the management of technology-driven change. Our findings contribute to leadership research by advancing the conceptualisation of DL and by adding a novel micro-foundational perspective towards the DCV discourse. As organisations struggle to realise the full benefits of DT initiatives, our results also provide a valuable contribution for practitioners by supporting them to strategically prepare for the human-related challenges of DT.

Developing Sustainable Business Models: A Microfoundational Perspective

Sustainable business models (SBMs) integrate economic with social and/or environmental value creation. Many relevant aspects of organizing for sustainable business model innovation (SBMI) have yet to be accounted for to understand how firms can add a new SBM to their already existing portfolio of business models. Specifically, how the development of a new SBM is influenced by managers’ cognitions, capabilities, behaviors, and interactions, and how the SBMI process can be supported by organizational processes and structures is less well understood. Taking a microfoundational approach, we identify the capabilities at the managerial and organizational level that enable established firms to add a new SBM to their business model portfolio. In a longitudinal study, we explore how Telenor, a multinational telecommunications company headquartered in Norway, introduced a new SBM targeted at providing digital health services in Bangladesh. We offer a framework that highlights key microfoundational elements supporting each of the phases in the SBMI process.

Digital transformation of organization using AI-CRM: From microfoundational perspective with leadership support

Business firms are increasingly innovating their traditional business model to a technology-enabled digitalized model for their sustainability in the competitive market. Firms have already felt the necessity to embark on a digital transformation journey to sustain themselves. However, specific capabilities at the microfoundation level are needed for successfully exploiting this paradigm shift towards digital transformation. In the digital transformation journey, specific digital skills and capabilities at the microfoundational level are essential to achieve success. The psychological foundations of the employees should be aligned in favor of digitalization to successfully gain competitive advantage. Not many studies are available to understand individual capabilities and skills at the microfoundational level. In this background, the aim of this study is to investigate the role of individual capability at the microfoundational level, including the leadership role along with technology capability like an AI-enabled CRM system, towards digitalization. With the help of RBV theory and status quo bias theory, a theoretical model has been developed which was later validated using SEM technique with data of 341 respondents from different industries. The study finds that there is a significant influence of individuals’ skills and capabilities to embrace the digital transformation journey.

Brokers in Action: How Shaping Others’ Relationships Influences One’s Own Network Position

Social network research has traditionally highlighted the advantages of brokerage positions in social networks. More recently, an emerging microfoundational perspective has shifted the focus from structures to brokering behaviors to explain how individuals activate network structures and develop structural opportunities. To address the focal question of how individuals “do” brokerage, the present study examines how different approaches to shape relationships between other actors become reflected in one’s own network position and social network activation. Specifically, addressing the diverging perspectives in brokerage theory, we examine whether and how individuals’ competitive (tertius gaudens) and collaborative (tertius iungens) brokering behaviors influence network positions. Across three studies—a two-wave panel study, a network survey, and an experimental study—our results reveal a pattern that emphasizes the value of collaborative activities in brokerage processes. Our findings also demonstrate how one’s network context might regulate the functioning of these processes. We discuss the implications of our results for organizational social network research.

Top management team heterogeneity and economic performance: a micro-foundations perspective of academic business venturing

PurposeThis research focuses on the relationship between Top Management Team heterogeneity (TMT) and University Spin-Offs (USOs) economic performance according to a micro-foundational perspective. The purpose consists in exploring whether a high academic representation in TMTs may improve USOs’ performance and how their competencies and backgrounds affect USOs’ economic success.Design/methodology/approachThe authors employed data from the Italian platform Netval to identify the entire population of USOs in southern Italy. They selected both pure and hybrid spin-offs that had at least one academic member on the TMT. Applying these conditions to our sample selection, the authors came to a population of 136 firms. They applied a hierarchical regression analysis to test the hypotheses.FindingsOur main findings reveal that the USOs’ economic performance improves with more academicians in the TMT and even in the same scientific field. Our data also shows that CEO duality has a negative impact on economic performance.Originality/valueThis work takes for the first time a micro-foundational perspective to analyze individual-level factors that affect USOs’ performance. The authors tried to bridge a research gap in the USO literature, shedding light on the relationship between TMT composition and new venture performance, considering some significant interactions between team members. Our expected findings also contribute to the general literature on entrepreneurial teams in new ventures and suggest a means to reconcile some inconsistent literature results on TMT heterogeneity and USO performance.

Micro-foundations of strategic decision-making in family business organisations: A cognitive neuroscience perspective

Emotion significantly affects strategic decision-making by entrepreneurs in family business organisations. This paper proposes a cognitive framework of strategic decision-making that emphasises the importance of emotion, based on a micro-foundational perspective: that is, an integrated hierarchy of cognitive processes underlying entrepreneurs' strategic decision-making and the interactions with external affective events. Previous studies that used traditional behavioural methodologies are reviewed with reference to the proposed cognitive framework to highlight importance of understanding effect of emotion-cognition interactions on entrepreneurs’ strategic decision-making process. New techniques using biological, physiological, and neuroscientific tools are then introduced as complementary methods for this line of research. Finally, future research directions are discussed with a focus on implicit cognitive processing, complex emotions, and cognitive interventions.

A recipe for USO success? Unravelling the micro-foundations of dynamic capability building to overcome critical junctures

• USOs face dynamic and iterative junctures each posing challenges which need to be overcome. • Micro-foundational dynamic capabilities can help explain USO survival and success. • Absorptive, adaptive and innovative capabilities can help USO sustainability. • USOs need to develop, deploy and integrate combinations of micro-foundational capabilities. University Spin-Offs (USOs) are important contributors to regional innovation, productivity and job creation; however, their failure rates remain very high. While studies have explored the factors affecting USO formation and success, scholars have highlighted the need for further research into the processes through which USOs can effectively reach sustainable returns by navigating several critical junctures. We posit that a micro-foundational perspective can contribute new knowledge on how USOs develop higher-order dynamic capabilities, which are essential to overcoming key challenges and leveraging opportunities. This paper explores how USOs develop the micro-foundational dynamic capabilities of adaptive, absorptive and innovative capabilities to successfully overcome formation's critical junctures and reach long-term sustainability. The findings identify how USOs develop, deploy and integrate various combinations of micro-foundational capabilities to navigate each critical juncture and reach thresholds of sustainability. In particular, as firm development progressed and critical junctures increased in complexity, USOs needed to deploy all three capabilities simultaneously and in an integrated manner. We identify the limitations of existing linear models of USO development and contribute to theory development through the development of a new, dynamic model that illustrates how USOs build micro-foundational dynamic capabilities cumulatively and iteratively to overcome critical junctures.

Microfoundations of Entrepreneurial Leadership: The Case of Elite Women Entrepreneurs

We examine the microfoundations of entrepreneurial leadership to theorize how women entrepreneurs in socio-economically challenged contexts grow new ventures to scale. Using inductive multiple case study, we identify three individual attributes: psychological orientation, knowledge accumulation, and social identity; and four adaption responses: challenging stereotypes, engaging family men as stakeholders, activating elite networks, and showcasing opportunity potential to demonstrate how elite women entrepreneurs navigate enabling and constraining environments that shape entrepreneurial outcomes. We contribute to entrepreneurial leadership literature by expanding on a microfoundational perspective and provide a dynamic, processual and contextualized explanation for successful leadership.

The dark side of B2B relationships in GVCs – Micro-foundational influences and strategic governance tools

Global value chains (GVCs) consist of “a large number of parts that interact in a non-simple way” (Simon, 1962: 468), and their governance is fraught with human behavioral challenges. Multinational enterprise (MNE) decision makers are cognizant of the complexity and challenges, and lead firms in GVCs attempt to address them with appropriate governance. Were that not the case, we would see more dark side outcomes of B2B relationships in GVCs. We use the New Internalization Theory (NIT) to explain and predict the governance choices made by lead MNEs and their GVC partners. Specifically, we take a micro-foundational perspective that builds upon the concepts of bounded rationality and bounded reliability. We point to three broad, non-mutually exclusive categories of governance tools – formal safeguards, relational tools, and entrepreneurship-oriented mechanisms – that can prevent, or at least mitigate, dark side outcomes. We illustrate with data from nine case studies of international GVCs.