Browsing by Author "Dewald, Jim"

Now showing 1 - 5 of 5
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    A Comprehensive Review of Strategic Entrepreneurship Research: Integration and Implications for Organizational Studies
    (2014-09-23) Abousalem, Nadine; Dewald, Jim; Petricevic, Olga
    While the origins of strategic entrepreneurship (SE) can be clearly traced and defined, the current conceptualizations of the construct and its boundaries are far less clear. There is still much confusion about SE, and many potential gaps exist in the field. It becomes less clear whether SE is a subfield within the entrepreneurship discipline, a subset of strategic management or of corporate entrepreneurship, or an entirely separate domain that simultaneously or sequentially straddles entrepreneurship and strategy. The primary contributions of this research are the definition of strategic entrepreneurship’s boundaries and the identification of the five critical dimensions of strategic entrepreneurship: 1. The balance between exploration (i.e. opportunity-seeking behaviors) and exploitation (i.e. advantage-seeking behaviors), where the former emerges from entrepreneurship and the latter emerges from strategy; 2. Value creation; 3. Balancing short-term success with a long-term perspective; 4. The continuous nature of strategically entrepreneurial activity; 5. Innovation
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    Antecedents and Consequences of MBA Program Rankings
    (2024-09-13) Heggerud, Catherine Louise; Osiyevskyy, Oleksiy; Dewald, Jim; Jones, Vernon; Kleffner, Anne; Watson, Lisa
    The impact of MBA program rankings on business schools has been profound and multifaceted, influencing the strategic actions of deans and shaping the perceptions of various stakeholders. This thesis investigates the antecedents and consequences of these rankings through a comprehensive analysis comprising a case study and an empirical study. The case study delves into how Canadian business school deans make sense of and respond to rankings, as the rankings have been institutionalized within the business school ecosystem, revealing the paradoxes they navigate in their strategic decision-making processes. Employing sensemaking and sensegiving frameworks, the study highlights how rankings have become entrenched, creating tensions between deans' identities as academics and administrators. The empirical study examines the drivers of full-time MBA program rankings using a corporate reputational model. By analyzing publicly available data, the study identifies factors such as in-region competition and product differentiation that are positively connected to a program’s ranking. This dual approach not only uncovers the internal and external pressures faced by business schools but also provides actionable insights for deans aiming to enhance their programs’ standings. The findings contribute to the broader understanding of how rankings affect higher education institutions and offer practical implications for strategic management in business schools. This research underscores the complexity of navigating rankings and highlights the need for continuous adaptation and balanced strategic actions to maintain and improve MBA program rankings. This research extends our understanding of rankings as a reputational construct, opens avenues for longitudinal or cross-program studies, and has the potential to shape higher education administrative practice.
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    Comparative Analysis of Employee Sensemaking across business units in a large organization: Implications for Organisational Sensegiving
    (2024-04-09) Soomar, Zaheera; Dewald, Jim; Hinings, Bob; Turner, Nick
    The aim of this study is twofold: a) to compare employee sensemaking across corporate and operational business units within a large organization; and b) to examine the sensegiving role of the organization. The research is situated in the context of the transition to remote work prompted by the COVID-19 pandemic. It seeks to investigate how employees in different business units, specifically corporate and operational, have navigated the shift to remote work amidst the pandemic and the associated nuances and considerations. Previous studies on remote work have predominantly focused on scenarios where only a fraction of the workforce operated remotely or with flexible arrangements, typically on an infrequent or part-time basis. The evolution of research on sensemaking has progressed from a solely retrospective process to one that incorporates prospective elements, as well as recognizing the organization's role as a sensegiver. However, there exists a dearth of literature exploring how the sensemaking process varies across distinct business units within an organization, how organizations effectively manage this variance, and what considerations are imperative as they undertake the role of sensegiver. Given the significance of identity within the sensemaking process (Weick et al., 2005), it is essential to explore the potential disparities in how employees across various functional roles within a business engage in sensemaking, as well as the considerations organizations must bear in mind as they fulfill the role of sensegiver. The context of the pandemic presents an unprecedented opportunity to examine sensemaking due to its magnitude, intricacy, and volatile nature. This research endeavors to contribute to the existing literature on remote work, sensemaking, sensegiving within organizational settings, and managerial practices pertinent to sensegiving in the workplace.
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    Exploring the Context Dependence of Firms’ Innovation Activities
    (2017) MahdaviMazdeh, Hossein; Dewald, Jim; Falkenberg, Loren; Hawkins, Richard; Saunders, Chad
    How do firms adjust their innovation activities to their situational and contextual setting? The extant literature does not provide a clear answer to this question as the context moves away from high-tech industries and R&D based innovations. This theoretical gap is reflected in the managerial practice in form of hardship in managing innovation in “low-tech” industries and underestimating the non-R&D opportunities of innovation across industries. This dissertation intends to contribute to filling this gap through addressing the following research questions: 1) What is the role of industry characteristics in determining the firm's decision regarding innovation both in an active decision making environment and in reaction to performance shortfall problems? And 2) what are the firm-specific factors that contribute to a firm's innovativeness and approach to innovation specially as measured by non-R&D proxies? I use three different datasets and methods each building part of the puzzle to provide a clear picture. In the first essay, I investigate the industry and firm characteristics that lead to choice of R&D and non-R&D forms of innovation in response to problems and propose theoretical insights that I verify using data on financial activities of public firms. In the second essay, I conduct a meta-analysis of innovation publications that uncovers the importance of non-cash input (absorbed slack) to firms’ innovativeness and identify the setting that such input makes the most impact. Finally, in the third essay, I use unique data about innovation activities of Canadian public and private firms to distinctly study the innovation approaches of resource industries – as one of the neglected industries in the innovation literature – and investigate how innovation in these industries is induced, measured, and utilized.
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    Storm Clouds and Silver Linings: Responding to Disruptive Innovations Through Cognitive Resilience
    (Wiley-Blackwell, 2010) Dewald, Jim; Bowen, Frances
    Incumbent firms facing disruptive business model innovations must decide whether to respond through inaction, resistance, adoption, or resilience. We focus on resilient responses to simultaneous perceived threat and opportunity by managers of small incumbent firms. Using cognitive framing arguments, we argue that risk experience moderates perceptions of opportunity, whereas perceived urgency moderates situation threat. We test our framework in the real estate brokerage context, where small incumbents face considerable challenges from disruptive business model innovations, such as discount brokers. Analysis of data from 126 real estate brokers broadly confirms our fraframework. We conclude with implications of our research for small business incumbents.