Michael V. Russo

University of Oregon | UO · Department of Management

Where do hybrid companies flourish and why? We draw on economic theories of agglomeration and sociocultural theories of community to examine the specific contexts in which hybrids flourish, and offer an understanding of why place matters to the unique business models they employ. We hypothesize that a community's collectivism, political orientation...

The relationship between regionally tied institutional logics and the location of organizations is an important issue in organization theory. Recent work highlights how supportive regional logics can give rise to products or organizations that resonate with these logics and how the geographic patterns that underlie industries may be understood by e...

Recently issued United Nations Sustainable Development Goals call for people to make extensive behavioral changes, including consuming food more sustainably. The authors explore the role that meso-level retailers play in local purchasing, an activity that the United Nations recognizes as a contributor to sustainability. In so doing, the authors pro...

This paper joins the emerging literature that elevates geography and local social context to more prominent roles in explaining organizational phenomena. We explore personal values that are widely held in communities and their influence on local hybrid companies. In particular, we test whether or not differences in support for other-regarding value...

With the emergence of a knowledge-based, digital economy, value creation is predicated on the ability to enhance consumer access, engagement, and interactivity. The requirements for successful website features that build on access and interactivity, however, are not in accord with some consumer surveys that indicate dissatisfaction with online tran...

The public increasingly holds firms accountable for social and environmental outcomes, such as product toxicity problems and human rights violations, throughout their global supply chains. How can companies improve the social and environmental performance within their supply chains, particularly as other competitive pressures, such as cost and qual...

"Let your social and environmental conscience be your guide" can be a successful and durable strategy for a firm. This is the first book to explain how following a vision for the earth and for society can be a powerful route to profits for small and medium sized companies. Companies on a Mission explains that mission-driven companies appreciate and...

I draw upon the dynamic capability model to explore how new process standards influence the ability of manufacturing facilities to improve environmental performance by reducing toxic emissions. The process standards studied are the ISO 14001 environmental management standards, in use since 1996. Hypotheses are developed to account for how early ado...

This paper analyzes how economic deregulation impacts firm strategies and environmental quality in the electric utility industry. We find evidence that the deregulation introduced to this historically staid industry has stimulated environmental differentiation. Differentiation is most likely to appear where its point of uniqueness is valued by cust...

This paper analyzes how economic deregulation impacts firm strategies and environmental quality in the electric utility industry. We find evidence that the deregulation introduced to this historically staid industry has stimulated environmental differentiation. Differentiation is most likely to appear where its point of uniqueness is valued by cust...

A congruence model of organizational design suggests that direct reporting relation- ships between plant managers and environmental quality managers, monetary incen- tives for environmental performance, and coordination between environmental qual- ity managers and business strategists reduce plant-level toxic emissions. We tested these relationship...

This paper analyzes how economic deregulation impacts resource reconfiguration in the electric utility industry. We argue that to understand strategic change in this industry, we need to understand how development and deployment of a firm's resources reflects path dependencies that nonmarket actors impose on firms. We find evidence that the deregul...

This paper focuses on the emergence and growth of sustainable industries, specifically analyzing the rise of the wind energy industry in California. Based on a favorable institutional environment and the presence of abundant natural capital, the wind energy industry took root and flourished in California during the last two decades. This paper anal...

Institution theory and the resource-based theory of the firm represent two explanations of how organizations adapt to institutional change. These two theories are compared, contrasted, and applied to the context of environmental management. Arguments based on the theories are used to generate hypotheses about the diffusion and efficacy of the ISO 1...

A central debate in organizational theory concerns how organizations evolve. There are two diametrically opposing viewpoints. Adaptation theories predict that change occurs as fluid organizations adjust to meet shifting environmental demands, while selection theories predict that change occurs through the differential selection and replacement of i...

This paper analyzes how a new field, independent (or non-utility) power production, was created by a federal mandate that electric utilities purchase power from private generating sources and how the field was populated. Results show that key rules that state regulatory bodies adopted or rejected regulating exchange between independent power produc...

A central debate in organizational theory concerns how organizations evolve. There are two diametrically opposing viewpoints. Adaptation theories predict that change occurs as fluid organizations adjust to meet shifting environmental demands, while selection theories predict that change occurs through the differential selection and replacement of i...

Drawing on the resource-based view of the firm, we posited that environmental performance and economic performance are positively linked and that industry growth moderates the relationship, with the returns to environmental performance higher in high-growth industries. We tested these hypotheses with an analysis of 243 firms over two years, using i...

Why do so many joint ventures fail? Despite the fact that their success is the exception rather than the rule, the literature on why joint venture performance has been so poor remains fragmentary. We address this issue, adopting a transaction-cost economics perspective and modeling joint ventures as governance structures that blend the advantages a...

This paper uses a transactions cost perspective to examine the development of organizational tendencies that plague the governance of unregulated subsidiaries by regulated parent companies. By focussing on what Williamson (1985) calls the ‘incentive limits’ of firms, conditions that should exacerbate the problems facing these firms as they diversif...

This paper explores how regulatory oversight influences strategic management. Predictions of the extent to which a firm diversifies and integrates upstream based on transaction-cost economics are developed and then tested among 49 American electric utilities from 1974 through 1986, a period that witnessed increasingly hostile regulatory relations....

This study's argument is that adoption of a multidivisional, or M-form, organizational structure is linked to increases in a firm's levels of dis-cretionary cash. I developed this proposition hy assessing the advantages of the M-form as an instrument for directing cash, a fully fungible corporate resource, to alternative uses. Event history analysi...

The article uses an historical analysis to explore how the American federal government, through a policy of decontrol and active restructuring, played a leading role in the transformation of the electricity and telephony industries. As a result of public policy initiatives, companies in each sector are experiencing vertical disintegration, organiza...

The intertwining influences on the telecommunications industry of regulatory initiatives and technological advancement are discussed. It is argued that the combined effect of this simultaneous change has been to undermine the traditional support structure enforcing an important social goal of telecommunications policy. By focusing on this particula...

Cover title. Thesis (M.B.A.)--University of California, Berkeley, Graduate School of Business Administration, 1986. "May 1, 1986." Includes bibliographical references (p. 97-99).

Organizations, with strategic management theories, try to explain how they can reduce their impacts on the natural environment. The way to perform, making an implementation and using new technologies without measuring them directly