Organizations are exposed to a multitude of inter-connected environmental dynamics. Some buyer-supplier relationships are able to cope well with these dynamics and others are not. This paper intends to understand the characteristics of successful relationships that contribute to the viability of involved organizations. A single, in-depth case study is applied to gain the described insights. The results show how different dynamics cause conflicting priorities to buyer-supplier relationships. They demonstrate that viable relationships can be characterized by autonomous, but still connected interrelation layers with short decision paths. In addition, our findings explain how relational and formal governance mechanisms complement each other.

The concept of organizational fields occupies a central position in organizational studies and strategy research. A rich array of scholars has studied the emergence of fields bottom-up, through the actions of grassroots activists. Others have called attention to the importance of top-down intervention to preclude framing contests and hasten field emergence, especially in the case of urgent and pressing grand challenges. Still others have focused on dynamics that operate in the wider ecosystem and on how these influence the emergence of fields. This symposium brings together scholarly contributions from all these different points of view to answer the question, How do such dynamics that occur at different levels (micro, macro, ecosystem) interact to influence the emergence and reconfiguration of fields from their origins to their maturation? In particular, what are the limits of bottom-up field emergence and when might top-down intervention be warranted? What are the advantages and d...

For years, there has been an emphasis on how to efficiently and effectively identify, evaluate, and implement innovative information systems in both design science research (DSR) and practice. Nonetheless, still today, these efforts continue to be hampered by the temporal gap between ideation and evaluation. Usually, innovative ideas are implemented at a late stage of maturity (e.g., prototypes) to test their viability in practice. This widespread approach results in waste of resources and time if the viability of an idea fails outside the lab environment. This paper discusses an ex-ante evaluation approach derived from “pretotyping” that allows innovative ideas to be tested in naturalistic settings even before they have been implemented. Thus, we call them “phantoms”. We show how this approach reduces temporal and relevance gaps, and we provide a preliminary assessment of its practicability by presenting and discussing three case studies conducted with real organizations and prospe...

Case and codified law, present in many enforcement systems, might lead to legal innovation (changes in the interpretation of landmark cases) at the expense of legal certainty (codified law) and vice versa. In the European Union, antitrust enforcement is one example of administrative law enforcement comprising parts of codified and landmark case law. Legal scholars discuss modifications of existing law using landmark case analyses at the EU Court of Justice level, discussing either one or several cases targeting similar antitrust concerns. We aim at understanding quantitatively this modification process by analyzing whether Eu- ropean Union antitrust enforcement offers a successful balance relying on codified laws and simultaneously introducing new landmark cases. Therefore, we show the evolution of the network of landmark cases in terms of forward and backward citations. Moreover, we find the determinants of Court of Justice case citations. We find that European case law gets more c...

This study aims to extend the springboard view by exploring the dynamic nature of the springboard process and contextualizing it from a strategic angle. To accomplish this, we investigate cross-border strategic asset acquisitions by ten Chinese multinational enterprises over eight years. Four distinct springboard trajectories from four initial strategy types to three post-springboard types are revealed. By putting strategic assets into the context of strategic intent and path-breaking change, we shed light on their critical role in building emerging market multinational enterprises globally. Specifically, we reveal a common value-adding asset-bundling mechanism that contains three progressive and additive asset-bundling processes across the cases. Furthermore, we extend the current strategy typology of emerging market multinational enterprises and discuss the specific ownership advantages and disadvantages associated with each strategy type.

Using a longitudinal case study, this chapter unveils the critical antecedents and their impacting mechanisms leading to foreign divestment, particularly the divestment of strategic assets in developed markets that acquirers from emerging markets fervently pursued. This interesting phenomenon is not yet sufficiently understood. Most studies on this topic apply quantitative methods and use one-time data collection; thus, the dynamic evolutionary process from foreign direct investment to divestment is under-researched. This study is based on 22 in-depth interviews conducted during 2012-2020 with top managers of both the subsidiary and the parent firm and external experts involved in the acquisition process, complemented by extensive secondary data. Through the analysis, the evolutionary process from initial investment to foreign divestment is depicted and discussed. Meanwhile, a conceptual framework is developed from a reversed eclectic paradigm perspective that identifies particular ...

Citizens become more and more relevant in financing renewable energy projects, as well as in bringing about individual and collective socio-technical change. CiFi PV allow citizens to financially participate in new PV projects located elsewhere than their premises. In return, participants receive monetary or non-monetary compensation. CiFi PV bears potential to accelerate the energy transition, by providing financial resources for new PV installations and improving social and political support through citizen’s involvement.

In Switzerland, the decolonization of ethnological and historical museums and collections is in progress. This is true in practice, especially by federally funded provenance research projects and by single restitutions of human remains and colonial objects. However, provenance research and its goals need to be better understood in Switzerland, and the reluctance towards restitution is still high. There are no regulations or guidelines that would support the decolonization activities and supplement existing cultural heritage law. In practice and by regulation, the goal to strive for should be to implement the international human rights of Indigenous peoples to control or restitute their cultural heritage.