Antecedents and Consequences of Exploration and Exploitation Decisions : Evidence from Corporate Venture Capital Investing

Abstract

This dissertation addresses unexplored issues on the antecedents, management, and outcomes of corporate venture capital (CVC). More specifically, I examine how negative performance feedback and corporate governance influence the direction of organizational change ˗ in terms of exploration and exploitation ˗ and how balancing such change over time influences firm performance in the CVC context. I first review the extant literature on CVC and lay out the unique contributions of my research. Then, in the first essay, I theorize on how poor firm performance influences the resource allocation decisions on exploration and exploitation and how such decisions are affected by the concentration of dedicated and transient shareholders and by the board of directors' monitoring and advising intensities. In the second essay, I empirically examine how the resource allocation decisions on exploration and exploitation are influenced by dedicated and transient shareholders in the context of CVC investing. In the third essay, I examine how balancing exploration and exploitation over time and the characteristics of oscillation impact firm performance. The empirical analysis in the latter two essays is based on CVC investments made by 286 U.S. companies during 1993-2013. This dissertation contributes to the Behavioral Theory of the Firm and Corporate Governance research by introducing how shareholders and boards influence managerial decision-making in search and change, Ambidexterity research by studying how continuous change and organizational inertia impact temporal spillover between exploration and exploitation, and CVC research by examining the antecedents and consequences of explorative and exploitative initiatives in CVC investing.