Marjorie A. Lyles

• PhD. Business
• Indiana University – Purdue University Indianapolis

Research on CEO overconfidence establishes its important effects on organizational strategy and performance. It can lead CEOs to overestimate their firm's capabilities and inaccurately assess the risk of new actions. Due to these effects, we argue that in need of the access to external knowledge, CEOs exhibiting greater overconfidence are more like...

This Special Issue focuses on the importance of political institutions, such as democratic and autocratic beliefs, and examines their impact on international business (IB). The traditional definition of democracy refers to a political system characterized by “free and fair elections, adult suffrage, protection of civil liberties, and few non-electe...

Building on recent developments in optimal distinctiveness (OD) research, we identify two dimensions of corporate social responsibility (CSR) practices – CSR scope conformity and CSR emphasis differentiation – and examine the antecedents of both. We theorize that private ownership and enhanced media coverage may increase scope conformity and emphas...

Twenty years after the prior survey, the seventh international business curriculum survey was conducted in 2020 under the sponsorship of the Academy of International Business (AIB) and the Association to Advance Collegiate Schools of Business (AACSB). This paper reports the survey's findings and makes relevant comparisons with the results of the tw...

Over the past several decades, the “Bring In” and “Go Global” policies implemented in China have encouraged an unprecedented level of investment in and out of the country, creating unique opportunities for Chinese firms to learn and innovate along the paths of inward and outward internationalization. The international business (IB) literature has y...

Informal institutions influence all aspects of international business (IB), but they have received limited attention in the literature relative to formal institutions. This article extends prior IB work by examining the relationships between several key formal and informal institutional factors and the international strategy of MNEs. First, it exam...

This editorial introduces the literature on informal institutions and international business (IB) as well as the Special Issue. Informal institutions serve as the invisible threads that connect the fabric of social groupings, making them a critical element in the study of IB, but also especially challenging to capture both theoretically and empiric...

Research Summary This article examines whether and under what conditions multinational enterprises (MNEs) are likely to divest a subsidiary exposed to host‐country terrorist attacks. Drawing on construal level theory from social psychology, we propose that the association between subsidiaries' exposure to host‐country terrorist attacks and MNEs' li...

This collective essay was born out of a desire to honor and remember Professor Mark Easterby-Smith, a founder of the Management Learning community. To do this, we invited community members to share their experiences of working with Mark. The resulting narratives remember Mark as a co-author, co-researcher, project manager, conference organizer, res...

This contributed volume provides the knowledge portfolio for the Strategic Management field. Strategic Management has experienced significant growth as a research discipline and builds on strong theoretical and empirical research to provide valuable knowledge for managerial practice. The book is designed to capture the rich breadth and depth of kno...

Cambridge Core - Strategic Management - Frontiers of Strategic Alliance Research - edited by Farok J. Contractor

Frontiers of Strategic Alliance Research - edited by Farok J. Contractor March 2019

Purpose The purpose of this paper is to empirically investigate the mechanisms through which absorptive capacity (AC), trust and information systems jointly influence product innovation. Design/methodology/approach This study proposes a research model to examine the mediating role of AC on the impacts of trust and information systems on product in...

Researchers agree that organizational learning is a process, not an event (Fiol and Lyles, 1985). Many theorists describe the process as being comprised of three stages: understanding new external knowledge, assimilating it, and applying it to commercial ends (Cohen and Levinthal, 1990; Lyles, 1998). Despite the aptness of this description, little...

Plain language summary Today, more than ever, Chinese multinational enterprises (MNEs) are investing abroad in search of advanced technology and managerial knowledge. Our study aims to understand whether Chinese MNEs' overseas investments benefit their home productivity. Focusing on provinces as the unit of analysis, we capture both direct and indi...

Purpose – Chinese firms were operating within a closed economic environment before the “opening up” in the late 1970s, but it has only been in the late 1990s that China has recognized the importance of innovation. The Chinese government has attempted to rectify this liability by providing funding to assist Chinese firms in developing innovation cap...

Organizational learning and the learning-based view of the firm have become popular topics in international business. Despite their popularity, limited attention has been devoted to examination of the organizational and managerial implications to international business. In this chapter is a discussion of how organizational learning impacts alliance...

Existing theories of international business and strategy do not fully explain how local knowledge disadvantage faced by foreign investors can be mitigated. We conducted an in-depth qualitative study into four MNCs to investigate the micro-processes of how they generated value from their dispersed sources of local knowledge in China. The results sug...

Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to investigate the effects of a manufacturer’s absorptive capacity (AC) on its mass customization capability (MCC). Design/methodology/approach – The authors conceptualize AC within the supply chain context as four processes: knowledge acquisition from customers, knowledge acquisition from suppliers, knowledg...

Organizational learning (OL) and knowledge management (KM) research has gone through dramatic changes in the last twenty years and, without doubt, the field will continue to change in the next ten years. This chapter presents a general mapping of the field of organizational learning and knowledge management and tries to demonstrate some of the inte...

Research summary : Strategic alliances have been recognized as a means for firms to learn their partners' proprietary knowledge; such alliances are also valuable opportunities for partner firms to learn tacit organizational routines from their counterparts. We consider how relatively novice technology firms can learn intraorganizational collaborati...

Despite the interest in issues of knowing and learning in the global strategy field, there has been limited mutual engagement and interaction between the fields of global strategy and organizational learning. The purpose of our article is to reflect on and articulate how the mutual exchange of ideas between these fields can be encouraged. To this e...

We define the ‘Chinese way’ of internationalization as oriented toward experimental learning, in contrast to traditional internationalization models, such as the Uppsala model. Analyses of survey data of private Chinese firms that have made outward foreign direct investments (OFDI) show that only 50 percent follow the Uppsala model in which firms f...

We define the ‘Chinese way’ of internationalization as being oriented toward experimental learning in contrast to traditional internationalization models such as the Uppsala model. Analyses of survey data of private Chinese firms that have made outward foreign direct investments (OFDI) show that only 50% follow the Uppsala Model in which firms foll...

This paper attempts to bring the discussion about knowledge creation, innovation and organizational learning to a level that addresses how messy problems are addressed and how the organizations must integrate the viewpoints of the key decision-makers, establish a process for testing their assumptions, include the context including the environment d...

Prior research and the articles included in this special issue demonstrate that in emerging markets in general and in China in particular, knowledge spillovers exist between foreign firms and domestic firms. As domestic markets become more sophisticated, and competition between domestic firms and foreign firms becomes stronger, knowledge is flowing...

A China strategy is becoming more important for a growing number of mid-sized companies as they observe China's increasingly greater impact on the U.S. economy. Our study surveyed Indiana and Guangdong firms to assess their interest in future international engagement in the other's country. Our results confirm current engagement by mid-sized firms...

Identifying the unique U.S. state-level factors that more often give rise to Chinese firm-led investment is the central focus of this article. Looking at Chinese investment in the United States between 2007 and 2011, this article (1) explores the determinants underlying the locational choices of Chinese firms, (2) seeks to understand why some U.S....

Knowledge flow between two firms has been found to be enhanced by both technological relatedness and social interaction. We build on work in education psychology and consider how cognitive and social aspects of learning may be compensatory. Using a sample of 61 alliances involving Eli Lilly and its partners, we find the importance of social interac...

Existing theoretical models of internationalization do not fully explain the international venturing of emerging economy private ventures (Yiu, Lau & Burton, 2007; Lu, Liu, & Wang, 2010; Zahra, 2003). Using survey data of midsized private Chinese firms that have already made outward foreign direct investments (OFDI), this paper introduces how past...

This article reviews and evaluates the concept of organizational forgetting. Drawing on established literature in the field of organizational learning, the authors analyze forgetting from three perspectives—cognitive, behavioral, and social. They argue a counterintuitive line that forgetting, in the right circumstances, can be beneficial for compan...

Special Issue on ‘Knowledge Search, Spillovers, and Creation in Emerging Markets’ - Volume 7 Issue 1 - Haiyang Li, Yan Anthea Zhang, Marjorie Lyles

MOR Special Issue Knowledge Search, Spillovers, and Creation in Emerging Markets - Volume 6 Issue 3 - Haiyang Li, Yan Anthea Zhang, Marjorie Lyles

The purpose of this Perspective Paper is to advance understanding of absorptive capacity, its underlying dimensions, its multi-level antecedents, its impact on firm performance and the contextual factors that affect absorptive capacity. Nineteen years after the Cohen and Levinthal 1990 paper, the field is characterized by a wide array of theoretica...

Special Issue: Knowledge Search, Spillovers, and Creation in Emerging Markets - Volume 6 Issue 2 - Haiyang Li, Yan Anthea Zhang, Marjorie Lyles

Varying institutional environments provide the foundation for a great deal of international business research, yet relatively little empirical work has examined the determinants of small and medium-sized enterprise (SME) growth during institutional upheaval, although the importance of SME development for economic transition and growth is widely ack...

The article presents management science research on the role of social capital regarding knowledge transfers within organizations. Social capital is defined as the resources created by the network of relationships within a social unit. It is hypothesized that knowledge transfer mediates the relationship between social capital, innovative ability wi...

The field of dynamic capabilities has developed very rapidly over the last ten years. In this paper we discuss the evolution of the concept, and identify two major current debates around the nature of dynamic capabilities and their consequences. We then review recent progress as background to identifying the contributions of the seven papers in thi...

China's outward foreign direct investment (FDI) is steadily increasing. The United States is now a key target for China's outward FDI, and the response by the American public tends to fall at opposite ends of the spectrum: fever or fear. Chinese FDI in the United States faces challenges posed by its liability of foreignness in political, cultural,...

Companies often bring in what they believed and utilized in the past when they invest in the dynamic market of China, where changing environmental conditions often render existing beliefs and practices irrelevant. Over-generalizing from past situations could become a source of corporate rigidity, which results in a company's inability to anticipate...

The article reports on meta-analysis of social capital, knowledge transfer, and performance. Social capital is needed for knowledge transfer and success in business through different factors such as structural and relational. Social capital is gained through an organization's position within social networks. Knowledge transfer can be done internall...

Our paper conceptualizes and highlights the role of the supply chains in China's product recall problems. We raise questions about the interrelationships of the focal manufacturer and the supplier firms and the consequences of these relationships. We address some of the causes of the current situation, including a discussion of deep supply chains,...

Knowledge and learning are ascribed pivotal roles in firms' internationalization processes: perceived market uncertainties, namely knowledge gaps related to business environments in foreign markets, may curb firms' inclinations to commit resources to these markets. This study explores whether knowledge gaps tend to increase or decrease with time wh...

Research on organizational knowledge transfer is burgeoning, and yet our understanding of its antecedents and consequences remains rather unclear. Although conceptual and qualitative reviews of the organizational knowledge transfer literature have emerged, no study has attempted to summarize previous quantitative empirical findings. As a first step...

Many papers have been published recently in the fields of strategy and international business research incorporating the role of organizational knowledge as a basis of firm competitive advantage. While such knowledge is normally developed within the firm, it is important that firms possess the ability to learn from others in order to meet the incre...

Although international joint ventures (IJVs) may mature over time and develop competitive viability, they maintain some risk of instability owing to their shared ownership. Such instability can ultimately lead to their internalization by one of the partners. In this study, we consider factors that influence (1) whether IJVs evolve toward becoming a...

Research on organizational knowledge transfer is burgeoning, yet our understanding of organizational antecedents and consequences remains rather unclear. Although there have been conceptual and qualitative reviews of the organizational knowledge transfer literature, no study has attempted to summarize the quantitative findings present in the large...

This article explores the relationships among influence, autonomy and control in a joint venture setting. It addresses the mechanisms available to joint venture (JV) managers to influence and gain compliance from parent firms. Control categories derived primarily from research on unified structures are explored in a new domain, an international joi...

The cognitive aspects of strategic management and organizational learning have been receiving increasing interest from researchers (Fahey and Narayanan, 1986; Prahalad and Bettis, 1986). Researchers have called for more detailed descriptions of the ways that individual-level cognitions contribute to organizational-level strategies (Daft and Weick,...

This article reviews the major theoretical approaches to strategic decision-making and identifies how each treats the process of problem formulation. Five models of strategic decision-making are analysed to determine the assumptions and biases made about strategic problem formulation. Successful strategic problem formulation is described and propos...

The importance of thinking strategically is often glossed over when academics try to apply this concept to themselves. This frequently results in research or articles that are not very insightful or useful either to other academics or to practising managers. To overcome this problem and to explore the future needs of the field of strategic manageme...

We look at the development of absorptive capacity, organizational learning and IJV research literatures since 1996, using our 1996 JIBS paper as our ‘centering point’. Taking stock of the timing and patterns of citations to this paper opened up a unique window across time, venues and topics. This permitted us to more clearly position the paper vis-...

In this paper, we examine organizational characteristics, structural mechanisms and contextual factors that influence knowledge acquisition from the foreign parent in international joint ventures (IJVs). We in turn relate assessments of knowledge acquisition to IJV performance. The data come from a survey of IJVs in the Hungarian context, where lea...

The study explores how firms close their knowledge gaps in relation to business environments of foreign markets. Potential determinants are derived from traditional internationalization process theory as well as more recent literature on organizational learning processes, including the concept of absorptive capacity. Building on these two literatur...

Through studying joint ventures during the early (1993) and late phases (2001) of Hungary's economic transition to market economy, we demonstrate how institutional and economic transformation alters foreign parents' roles in the success of joint ventures. Foreign parent decision influence and resource provision affected market performance and knowl...

There has been significant interest in understanding how the distribution of parental control over international joint ventures (IJV) influences IJV outcomes (e.g., parent conflict, survival, performance). Yet, the accumulation of research on the relationship between control structure and IJV outcomes has been somewhat inconclusive and even contrad...

This special issue of Management Learning provides the opportunity to reflect on the contribution over the past 30 years of Chris Argyris to the field of organizational learning and on some implications for future research. In order to do this we will reconsider his work against the context of other research that has been done over this period. Thi...

The article discusses research relating to the influence of power, learning, and conflict on international joint ventures. The research indicates that conflict between parent companies plays an indirect role as to whether ventures become wholly-owned subsidiaries and which partner (local or foreign) gains control. An imbalance in power between the...

Drawing on organizational learning and economic sociology, we address how relational embeddedness between the foreign parent and international joint venture (IJV) managers influences the type of knowledge (i.e., tacit and explicit) transferred to the IJV, and how the importance of relational embeddedness varies between young and mature IJVs. We als...

This chapter presents a conceptual framework of organizational learning that integrates process models of learning (Argyris and Schon, 1974; Lyles, 1988; Nonaka, 1994; Ring and Van de Van, 1992, 1994) with the structural models of learning (Badaracco, 1991; Mowery et al., 1996). We apply this framework by using it to analyse two published case stud...

Many theorists describe organizational learning as having three stages: learning, unlearning, and innovation. Little is known, however, about the details associated with each stage, or the impact on performance. We attempt to fill this gap by reporting on a ten-year study in Hungary of the knowledge acquisition process, foreign parent contributions...

Through studying Hungarian joint ventures early (1993) and late (2001) in the transition process, we demonstrate how the evolution of institutional and economic context alters the role that foreign parents play in the success of the local joint ventures. We find that foreign parent contributions in terms of decision-making and resources influence j...

Learning-in-action, the cyclical interplay of thinking and doing, is increasingly important for organizations as environments and required capabilities become more complex and interdependent. Organizational learning involves both a desire to learn and supportive structures and mechanisms. We draw upon three case studies from the nuclear power and c...

This study addresses Enablers that facilitate the acquisition of knowledge by international joint ventures (IJVs) from their foreign parents. Enablers are important factors influencing the foreign parents’ sharing of knowledge with the IJV. We also posited that Enablers such as Knowledge Acquisition (KA) Capacity, Interaction Climate within the IJV...

This paper proposes and tests a model of IJV learning and performance that segments absorptive capacity into the three components originally proposed by Cohen and Levinthal (1990). First, trust between an IJV's parents and the IJV's relative absorptive capacity with its foreign parent are suggested to influence its ability to understand new knowled...

In this study, we combine social exchange and knowledge-based perspectives to develop a general path model of IJV survival. We further refine our expectations by considering the transitional economic context of our study and the somewhat unique managerial values resulting from the legacy of Marxist ideology. Results from structural equation modelin...

Successful adaptation in strategic alliances "calls for a delicate balance between the twin virtues of reliability and flexibility" [Parkhe 1998]. On one hand, the joint venture must be flexible enough to respond to the uncertainties of competitive business environments because it is not feasible to plan for every possible contingency. Yet, on the...

This paper aims to provide some general guidance and factors of success for those interested in the burgeoning Asian infrastructure sector. What separates successful foreign contractors from those that flounder? This investigation is based on interviews with managers, directors and other executives from American construction and engineering firms t...

In this paper we examine organizational characteristics, structural mechanisms and contextual factors that influence knowledge acquisition from the foreign parent in international joint ventures (IJVs). We in turn relates assessments of knowledge acquisition to IJV performance. The data come from a survey of IJVs in the Hungarian context, where lea...

This study examines entrepreneurs and new ventures in a transition economy, Hungary, and identifies what variables distinguish between Hungarian entrepreneurs and their new ventures in the pre-1988 transition period from that which followed. The variables that discriminate most strongly are their business strategies. The newer firms had a concentra...

The time and attention that managers in firms are spending on joint ventures and the decisions to formulate joint ventures in increasing as the numbers of joint ventures increase. This article develops insights into the impact of past organizational learning on the decision to form new joint ventures. It builds on a model of organizational learning...

Analyses four firms to determine if they develop the ability to be selective and to determine what factors have the greatest impact on discrimination. Discrimination skills involve the ability to discriminate or to discern differences among decision situations and to choose appropriate behaviours or actions for each situation. The factors which see...

The authors of this article describe a study identifying factors associated with small firm international strategy choice and evaluating differences between the performance of firms with an international strategy versus those without. The international strategy of small firms is significantly related to a higher return on sales but negatively relat...

Research on large firms shows that cooperative strategies have the potential to improve performance by helping firms gain access to necessary resources, enter new markets, and spread the risk over several partners. Interviews with thirty-four small business managers show small firms also can profit from using a cooperative network. Highly-allied sm...

A study of 188 small businesses was conducted to examine three distinct relationships in the planning process ¿ planning formality in relation to strategic decision processes, planning formality in relation to the strategies adopted, and planning formality in relation to firm performance. The results demonstrated that firms with formal planning emp...

Describes a simulation that provides an alternative method for teaching managers about the organizational renewal process and about the skills which are necessary to effect change in organizations. The simulation is based on theories about change, diffusion of innovations, and power and influence. It gives the participants a way of being involved i...

This paper suggests that Chinese attitudes towards joint ventures are organized around critical expectations regarding (1) the foreign parent's provision of key resources, and (2) the local venture's managerial autonomy. An exploratory survey of Chinese managers offers some support for the proposition that more Western attitude are found among mana...

Measures of relatedness were used to assess (1) the degree to which diversified firms utilize joint ventures, (2) the nature of the relatedness in firms that joint venture, and (3) the performance and relevance of risk. For firms that joint venture in related business areas, the results suggest the importance of the risk of failure to reach their t...