Actors within organizations commonly must make choices armed with incomplete and asymmetrically distributed information. Signalling theory seeks to explain how individuals are able to do so. This theory's primary predictive mechanism is ‘separating equilibrium’, which occurs when a signal's expectations are confirmed through experience. A content analysis finds that most strategic management signalling theory studies have not fully leveraged separating equilibrium. This presents two possible paths for future research. First, some researchers may wish to incorporate separating equilibrium. We illustrate how doing so can uncover new relationships, generate novel insights, and fortify the theory's application. Others who want to theorize about signals, but not examine separating equilibrium, could integrate ideas from signalling theory with other information perspectives. Here a signal becomes one stimulus among many that corporate actors interpret and act upon. We provide research agendas so strategy scholars can apply signalling theory most effectively to meet their research objectives.
This paper demonstrates how meta-analysis can be combined with structural equation modeling (MASEM) to address new questions in strategic management research. We review this integration, describe its implementation, and compare findings from bivariate meta-analyses, a direct-effect structural equations model, and two mediating frameworks using data on the strategic leadership and performance relationship. Results drawn from 208 articles that collectively included data on 495,638 observations demonstrate the new insights available from MASEM while also suggesting a revision to conventional thinking on strategic leadership. Whereas some theories posit that boards of directors influence firm performance through monitoring and disciplining the top management team, MASEM provides more support for the view that boards mediate the top management teams' decisions. Implications for applying MASEM in strategic management are offered.As the strategic management field matures, scholars are increasingly using meta-analysis to synthesize prior work on many topics, including the perfor-
Reputation is thought to differentiate organizations and help explain variability in their performance. A recent study contributed to knowledge about the reputation-performance relationship by depicting reputation as having two dimensions and linking each dimension to the prominence and performance of U.S. business schools. The authors propose an alternative approach that draws on the resource-based view (RBV) wherein reputation is an intangible asset that is composed of complementary and reinforcing relationships whose synergies create causal ambiguities that have positive performance implications. The authors also test a direct effect of faculty experience on prominence. Their results support the merit of the RBV model, indicating that it offers greater explanatory power. The findings suggest that reputation cannot be bought by additive and independent investments. Instead, enhancing a reputation requires managers to carefully nurture interdependencies and complex relationships. The findings also provide new insights about the determinants of business school reputation.
Information asymmetry is a condition wherein one party in a relationship has more or better information than another. The information asymmetry concept is widely diffused throughout management research, and its existence is a core assumption within leading theories on organizations. Despite information asymmetry’s central role, however, there have been no systematic reviews of the management literature using the concept. As a result, there is no established level of knowledge of information asymmetry as a management concept, nor is there a unified basis for directing future research leveraging the concept. In response, we review 223 relevant articles from leading management journals and develop a framework for organizing and assessing information asymmetry research. We consolidate understanding of information asymmetry’s meaning, conceptual applications, roles in different theoretical models, antecedents, and how focal actors’ self-interests influence the selection of mechanisms for managing it. Further, we highlight opportunities for extensions to core management theories and specify research prospects within several management subfields. Overall, the framework can help guide researchers as they work to advance understanding of one of the management field’s most ubiquitous concepts.
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