H.W. Volberda

University of Amsterdam | UVA · Amsterdam Business School

We test a number of case descriptions of firms that are successfully developing into professional communities.

The road ahead; getting to work with your community.

We describe the professional community which for many firms is the best response to the disruptions of today.

Our community can only succeed if it has six strong foundations. We show how they can be developed.

Chapter 1 summarizes some of the important trends in our environment and helps us understand the disruptions that will fundamentally threaten our firm—sooner or later.

Chapter 2 describes the business model of a professional firm as well as the archetypes that dominate our business today. This gives us the building blocks to construct a model that meets our needs.

Scholarship on strategic leadership has undergone considerable advancement in the 40 years since the introduction of upper echelon theory (UET). In this special issue we engage with the state-of-the-art in the field and categorize the manuscripts along a new typology of what constitutes the dominant coalition in the firm. From traditional models fo...

This research explores how the strategy of firms evolves as a result of the imitation of several reference groups. In particular, it analyzes the extent to which firms replicate the strategic behaviors of successful firms, direct rivals and firms from the same category. Additionally, it examines potential variations in the speed of imitation depend...

The 1st Dutch Sports Innovation Monitor investigated Sports innovation in several domains of sport. This concerns the development and/or introduction of new products, services and sports activities that directly affect the practice of sport and which are primarily directed towards the promotion of sport and exercise. This first assessment has revea...

In this chapter we argue that in foundational theories of knowledge and innovation, innovation is either path-dependent, and thus incremental and largely passive, or active and radical, with strategists playing a decisive role in shaping innovation outcomes. Moving on from foundational theories of knowledge and innovation, we show in this chapter t...

Increasingly, organizations have been employing self‐managing teams to circumvent bureaucratic controls and stimulate innovation. However, this goal is not easily achieved; in many situations, informal controls replace formal controls. This study develops a multi‐level perspective of control. We explicitly analyze control mechanisms at different le...

As digital technologies such as cloud and edge computing, machine learning, advanced artificial intelligence (AI), and the internet of things (IoT) unfold, traditional industries such as telecoms, media, entertainment, and financial services are being reconfigured and new sectors are emerging. In this new competitive landscape we observe new organi...

Uit de Nederlandse Innovatie Monitor 20202 blijkt dat de Coronacrisis als aanjager fungeert van digitale transformatie; het zwaartepunt van deze transformatie ligt echter nog op de toepasiing van nieuwe technologieën en in mindere mate op nieuwe vormen van waardecreatie, organisatorische veranderingen en financieel-stategische aspecten. Nederlandse...

Although transforming economies offer many examples of business model innovation, they have been largely overlooked in academic research, with most studies focusing on what happens in developed countries. However, in their push to become innovation economies, transforming economies have become experimentation arenas for new ways of doing business....

Desorptive capacity is the organisational ability to transfer internal knowledge to external actors to obtain competitive advantage. We distinguish two forms of desorptive capacity to investigate how organisations active in emerging technology domains explore and exploit opportunities to match internally developed technology to external needs. We a...

At the level of a cognitive schema, a business model is a mental map of a firm’s value-creating, value-delivering and value-capturing activities and the linkages between them. An important question in the study of business models as cognitive schemas is whether and how schemas differ across industry actors and whether the differences are connected...

As top management teams (TMTs) become progressively more diverse, an important question arises: how does greater TMT diversity affect a company’s ability to innovate its business model? To examine this, we draw on the upper‐echelons literature and on research on business models as activity systems to theorize that cognitive and ideological diversit...

Against the backdrop of spirited public and academic discourse about women’s low visibility in corporate leadership positions, we examine board gender diversity’s influence on strategic change in firms. Viewing gender as an institutionalized system of social beliefs, the article makes two related arguments. First, it contends that because of gender...

Strategic flexibility (SF) is a concept that has evolved from strategy through other disciplines, including management, marketing, innovation, entrepreneurship and operations. However, despite attempts to consolidate the domain of SF, there remain theoretical and empirical tensions underlying its antecedents, the consequences and contingencies. Bas...

In this article, we explore how paradoxical tensions related to exploration–exploitation dynamics may shape vicious cycles in high-growth ventures. Based on an inductive, interpretive case study at a telecommunications firm in the United Kingdom, we identify a set of drivers through which vicious cycles may emerge and persist over time. While some...

Although research and development (R&D) is a key indicator of (technological) innovation, scholars have found mixed results regarding its effect on product innovation and firm performance. In this paper, we claim that variations in R&D effectiveness can be explained by changes in a firm’s social system, in particular in its management innovation. I...

Our knowledge is limited regarding the psychological antecedents of individuals' exploration and exploitation in general and regarding the identity‐related antecedents in particular. The corporate brand of the organisation we work for is an important element of our collective identity, and the way we perceive the corporate brand personality of our...

The adaptive strategies of firms depend on executives’ forward-looking cognitive search. We examine how cognitive search is affected by the formative experiences of the executives making up a firm’s top management team (TMT). Drawing on research on adaptive search, cognition, and the upper echelons, we examine the extent to which educational level,...

Senior executives can seek advice both inside and outside the boundaries of the organization and that can affect the choices made and the overall direction of the organization. Perceived environmental dynamism is a primary antecedent of this behaviour as it substantially increases the information-processing demands when solving strategic decision p...

Healthcare organizations and their managers operate in highly complex environments. Whereas they are subject to a wide variety of constraining contextual characteristics, they are also highly in need of innovation to be able to deliver high quality care and compete in a highly dynamic environment. In this chapter, we utilize a dynamic capabilities...

MAINTENANCE OF CROSS-SECTOR PARTNERSHIPS: THE ROLE OF FRAMES IN SUSTAINED COLLABORATION ABSTRACT We examine the framing mechanisms used to maintain a cross-sector partnership (XSP) that was created to address a complex long-term social issue. We study the first eight years of existence of an XSP that aims to create a market for recycled phosphoru...

We examine the framing mechanisms used to maintain a cross-sector partnership (XSP) that was created to address a complex long-term social issue. We study the first eight years of existence of an XSP that aims to create a market for recycled phosphorus, a nutrient that is critical to crop growth but whose natural reserves have dwindled significantl...

In an age of rapid advances in technology, understanding how firms can respond to emergence of disruptive technologies is paramount for survival. While prior research on incumbents' responses to disruptive technologies assumes demand homogeneity, many firms, including multinational enterprises (MNEs), need to respond to technological disruption in...

Although research on business model innovation is flourishing internationally, important questions on the 'how', 'what', and 'when' of this process remain largely unanswered, particularly in regard to the role of top management. Using new knowledge derived from a survey among firms from various industries and several case studies, this book seeks t...

Transforming economies such as the BRIC countries – Ex-Soviet Republics, or Eastern European countries – share national aspirations of becoming innovation economies. These aspirations have stimulated a push for entrepreneurship and experimentation with new ways of doing things. This has created a fascinating context for research on business model i...

Considerable advances have been made in corporate governance research in recent years and opportunities exist to consider these developments within alliances. We extend the "scope of operations" hypothesis to the domain of joint ventures. This proposition suggests that the monitoring carried out by boards increases when organizations become more co...

How do large multiunit firms renew? How do they reconcile the conflicting forces for change and stability? How do they promote order and control among their different units, while having to respond and learn? Past work has focused on issues of the interaction between the firm seen as a business and its industry, examining different processes and jo...

Transforming economies such as the BRIC countries – Ex-Soviet Republics, or Eastern European countries – share national aspirations of becoming innovation economies. These aspirations have stimulated a push for entrepreneurship and experimentation with new ways of doing things. This has created a fascinating context for research on business model i...

Substantial past research has investigated the effects of top management team composition on strategic change outcomes. In light of the mixed results from these studies, this paper explores the effect of the interdependence of top managers on upper echelon predictions. According to the Upper Echelon Theory, cognitive diversity in a top management t...

Initiatives represent an important vehicle for firms to renew themselves. Firms must renew in order to co‐evolve and maintain their fit with a changing environment. Many authors, such as Burgelman (1983) and Kanter (1989), have shown that initiatives can lead to the desired strategic renewal. Although the causal relation between initiatives and str...

Transforming economies such as the BRIC countries – Ex-Soviet Republics, or Eastern European countries – share national aspirations of becoming innovation economies. These aspirations have stimulated a push for entrepreneurship and experimentation with new ways of doing things. This has created a fascinating context for research on business model i...

Despite the legacy of experience, some established firms are able to avoid a mindset, behaviors, and routines that can be expected to lead them down paths of local search and incremental product innovations of ever-declining value. Indeed, established firms are often adept at introducing successful path-breaking innovations. To explain this apparen...

Rapportages die worden voorzien van een accountantsverklaring zijn onderworpen aan strenge kwaliteitseisen. Datzelfde geldt voor de controle- en samenstelprocessen als zodanig. Kwaliteit gaat echter over meer dan procedures en standaarden. Een accountantskantoor heeft diverse stakeholders die elk hun eigen perceptie en oordeel over kwaliteit hebben...

Wat gaan big data en blockchain-technologie betekenen voor de accountants? En wat voor implicaties hebben zelfrijdende auto's voor de verzekeringsbranche? Ontwikkelingen op het gebied van bijvoorbeeld big data, Internet of things, geavanceerde robotica, cloud technologie, en 3D-printing kunnen een fundamentele verandering teweegbrengen in hoe markt...

We further current understanding about the role of management teams in driving exploratory innovation by proposing that the regulatory focus of an organizational unit's management team is a key antecedent of the unit's level of exploratory innovation, and by clarifying the organizational coordination mechanisms through which this antecedent generat...

We examine the relation between boards of directors’ knowledge heterogeneity and organizational ambidexterity (OA) (i.e. simultaneous exploration and exploitation) in knowledge-intensive firms (KIFs). Although the literature on OA has started to emphasize its antecedents, the role of the board remains unaddressed. This is an important omission, as...

Strategic renewal has become a prominent theme in a variety of organization and management research domains in recent years. It refers to the process that allows organizations to alter their path dependence by transforming their strategic intent and capabilities. With contributions from an increasing range of theoretical perspectives and research c...

Onderzoek onder 212 mkb-accountancykantoren maakt duidelijk dat vernieuwing van het accountancy-businessmodel niet vanzelf zal gaan. Veel kantoren richten hun aandacht nog voornamelijk op verbetering van het bestaande, traditionele bedrijfsmodel en ontwikkelen onvoldoende vernieuwingspotentieel. De groep kantoren met de beste bedrijfsprestaties zet...

In this study we develop and test a model of how top management team (TMT) behavioral attributes allow top managers to accommodate entrepreneurial orientation (EO) when navigating dynamic environments. From an upper echelons perspective, we argue that TMT external advice-seeking and TMT absorptive capacity interactively impact the ability of top ma...

Management innovation entails the introduction of new-to-the-firm changes in management structures, processes, and practices intended to improve organizational functioning. We draw on relational demography theory to elucidate how behavioral dispositions stemming from top management and middle management similarity in professional characteristics (f...

This chapter reviews the literature on absorptive capacity with the aim to advance the construct in a coherent way. The progress made in the field in the past two decades is assessed, and the problems and prospects for future research are presented. An overview of how the definition of absorptive capacity has evolved, the levels of analysis involve...

The study of how various types of networks foster the management and organization of knowledge has been conducted under three banners: social networks, alliance networks, and organizational networks. Mainly used as an analytical tool, a social network perspective considers every organization or set of organizations as a network regard less of gover...

Entrepreneurial orientation (EO) plays an important role in explaining firm performance. In this study, we investigate the relation between EO and performance at the strategic business unit (SBU) level and examine the influence of decision-making mode and social capital of the focal business unit manager. Adopting the attention-based view (ABV) as...

This commentary targets the core ideas of the composition-based view (CBV). First, we argue that the deployment of compositional capabilities (CCs) to combine ordinary resources fits the resource-based view (RBV) and that there is therefore no need for a CBV. Second, we argue that the CCs should be presented as a specific type of dynamic capability...

In een businessmodel komen verschillende keuzes van een onderneming samen. Welke doelgroep wordt bediend en hoe onderscheidt het aanbod van het bedrijf zich van de concurrentie, bijvoorbeeld. Maar ook de manier waarop het bedrijf is georganiseerd. Welke bedrijfsmiddelen in huis aanwezig zijn en welke van externe partners worden betrokken. En uitera...

In recent years, there has been strong interest in leaders' exploration and exploitation activities, especially because of their positive effects on performance. Most prior research in this area has focused on the organizational antecedents of leaders' exploration and exploitation activities, with less consideration given to the psychological precu...

In this study of the warehousing company Pakhoed and its predecessors over a period of 200 years, we analyse the configuration of environmental forces, exploitation and exploration, and three firm-level longevity factors: a tolerant management style and decentralised structure; a strong sense of identity; and a conservative financial policy. The id...

Boards of directors are in a position to contribute vital knowledge resources to strategy-making. We propose that the relation between board functional background heterogeneity and exploration-focused versus exploitation-focused strategy is contingent on the extent to which the institutionally adopted board model enables or constrains inclusion of...

De accountancy heeft de grenzen bereikt van groei door schaalvoordelen en staat voor belangrijke uitdagingen. Accountants zijn genoodzaakt om aan de vernieuwing van hun businessmodel te werken. Dat vergt behalve andere competenties van partners en medewerkers een grotere gerichtheid op samenwerking in de waardeketen. Maar meer nog vergt dat een and...

Major ports such as Rotterdam, Antwerp, Houston and Singapore’s Jurong Port host large industrial complexes of (petro)chemical and other energy-intensive process industry firms. Port authorities face the challenge to contribute to both greater international competitiveness and better environmental performance of these complexes. The development of...

Entrepreneurial orientation (EO) plays an important role in explaining firm performance. In this study, we investigate the relation between EO and performance at the strategic business unit (SBU) level and examine the influence of decision-making mode and social capital of the focal business unit manager. Adopting the attention-based view (ABV) as ou...

Co-creation with customers is considered to be an important source of competitive advantage. However, prior research has provided mixed results to what extent it increases innovation performance and mainly included the role of formal coordination mechanisms within an organization in it. To contribute to address these gaps in the co-creation literat...

Dynamic capabilities are widely accepted as the cornerstone of a firm’s competitive ad-vantage. In this study, we examine for the first time how dynamic capabilities affect a firm’s performance by influencing the ability to introduce management innovations-the introduction of new-to-the- firm systems, structures, and practices. We argue that the po...

We aim to contribute to the institutional fit literature by investigating the relationship between regulatory institutional fit and firm performance. We offer a framework that allows for further analysis of what constitutes lack of (institutional) fit. We distinguish two categories of lack of fit and explain the difference between their occurrences...

Prior research contends that managerial cognition plays an important role in explaining the firm’s effective response to environmental dynamism. However, evidence suggests that firms may cope with significant change without the involvement or despite initial disapproval of senior managers. In this contested terrain, this study examines the influenc...

It is axiomatic that strategic flexibility is a key success factor in generating competitive ad-vantage. Despite this maxim, often peddled in the normative literature, empirical studies have produced inconsistent results for the strength and direction of this relationship. We synthesize these results and provide empirical support for a general, mod...

Research Question/IssueIn recent years, research aimed at identifying and relating the antecedents and consequences of diffusing organizational practices/ideas has turned its attention to debating the international adoption and implementation of the Anglo-American model of corporate governance, i.e., a shareholder-value-orientation (SVO). While fin...

Despite the mounting evidence that innovation in management can fuel competitive advantage, we still know relatively little about how firms introduce new ways of managing. The goal of this introductory essay-and the Themed Section it introduces-is to advance this knowledge. To this end, we first synthesize the main developments in the field of mana...

This paper presents the findings of a longitudinal study of a large corporation's transition to a new business model in the face of a major transformation in the ICT industry brought about by Cloud computing. We build theory on the process of business model innovation through a qualitative study that investigates how an established firm organizes f...

This study proposes top management team (TMT) shared leadership as an important enabler of organizational ambidexterity. Moreover, we examine both how and when TMT shared leadership enhances organizational ambidexterity by considering two TMT processes as mediators (i.e., cooperative conflict management style and decision‐making comprehensiveness)...

Competitive and institutional pressures challenge established firms to create new ways to improve resource productivity, innovation and sustainability. One of these ways is through inter-firm collaboration, which requires firms to manage resulting (inter)dependencies beyond firm-level boundaries so as to achieve system-level goals. Being conceptual...

Purpose – Crisis management entails among other things developing organizational systems that are capable of reacting to unpredictable and different types of crises. It also involves designing cohesive operational elements to deal with the local dynamics of an actual crisis situation. This challenge of responsiveness – where organizations simultane...

Vanaf halverwege de jaren ’90 is er een toenemende aandacht voor het fenomeen ‘businessmodel’. Hoewel wetenschappers (nog) geen uniforme definitie hebben van een businessmodel (vgl. Zott en Amit, 2007; McGrath, 2010) kunnen een aantal gemeenschappelijke kenmerken worden gedestilleerd: Een businessmodel analyseert hoe waardecreatie plaatsvindt en ho...