Research Summary: We examine how competitive tensions and cooperative motivations together shape firms' interactions and group-level outcomes during technology coordination activities in multifirm settings. Analyzing the communication and voting behavior of 115 firms across three subcommittees of a computing industry technology standards-setting organization over 14 years, we find that existing product-market positions influence how firms with highly overlapped technological resources differ in their interactions: when their product-markets are more competitive, they exhibit greater support for the emerging standard, as evidenced by positivity and certainty of interaction tone; but when they possess a broader array of complementary products, support is tempered. At the subcommittee level, after accounting for aggregate competitive tensions in prior interactions, heterogeneity in both firms' relational influence as well as their prior multiparty experience improve consensus. Managerial Summary: In innovation ecosystems, competing firms are often obligated to collaborate with each other in large multifirm forums to develop the technical standards that enable interoperability between their products. We show how the networks of technical and commercial relationships between firms shape such standards activities in two steps. First, firms who share many common technology interests with others communicate their support for new standards more vigorously when they participate in more competitive product-markets, but less vigorously when they possess more complementary products. Second, communities find broader support for standards when there is greater imbalance across both firms'

An important outcome of technological change is industry "convergence," as a new technology spurs competition between established firms from different industries. We study the reactions of securities analysts, as important sources of institutional pressures for firms, to the similar product/market strategies undertaken by firms from different prior industries responding to industry convergence. Our empirical setting is the convergence between the wireline telecommunications and cable television industries in the period following the advent of voice over Internet protocol technology. Controlling for firm financial performance and capabilities, we find that analysts were consistently more positive toward the cable firms than toward the wireline telecom firms. Our findings further show that this divergence in reactions arises from differences in existing investor expectations and preferences concerning how firms create value; stocks owned by investors with a greater preference for growth receive more positive reactions than those owned by investors with a greater preference for margins. However, this divergence in reactions shrinks over time as convergence unfolds and as investors shift their shareholdings in response to misalignment between their preferences and firms' strategic changes. Reactions from analysts-reflecting inertial expectations of investors-may persist for a time despite changes to firms' strategies, thus creating challenges for some firms in responding to technological change and industry convergence while legitimating and enabling similar responses from their competitors. DIVERGENT REACTIONS TO CONVERGENT STRATEGIES: Investor beliefs and analyst reactions during technological change ABSTRACTAn important outcome of technological change is industry ‗convergence,' as a new technology spurs competition between established firms from different industries. We study the reactions of securities analysts, as important sources of institutional pressures for firms, to the similar product/market strategies undertaken by firms from different prior industries responding to industry convergence. Our empirical setting is the convergence between the wireline telecommunications and cable television industries in the period following the advent of Voice over Internet Protocol (VoIP) technology. Controlling for firm financial performance and capabilities, we find that analysts were consistently more positive towards the cable firms than towards the wireline telecom firms. Our findings further show that this divergence in reactions arises from different pre-convergence investor expectations and preferences concerning how firms create value; stocks owned by investors with a greater preference for growth receive more positive reactions than those owned by investors with a greater preference for margins. However, this divergence in reactions shrinks over time as convergence unfolds and as investors shift their shareholdings in response to misalignment between their preferences and firms' updated strategies. The...

Research summary: Endogenous characteristics of alliance network structure have repeatedly been shown to predict future alliance ties in the strategic management literature. Specifically, the concepts and measures of relational, structural, and positional embeddedness (per Gulati and Gargiulo, 1999), as well as interdependence, are foundational for many studies. We explore these determinants of alliance formation by replicating the baseline analyses of Ahuja, Polidoro, and Mitchell's, 2009 SMJ article. We examine the impact of empirical choices with respect to time period, underlying data generating model, and industry by isolating each effect in turn. We demonstrate that while geographic similarity and product-market similarity each robustly predict the interdependence effect, the effects of both technological similarity as well as the embeddedness predictors are sensitive to context and/or method.Managerial summary: Our examination of alliance formation in the chemical and semiconductor industries during the 1990s demonstrates how new alliances may be predicted by both the technical, geographic, and product-market fit of potential partners as well as characteristics of each partner's previous network participation. Comparing our results to an earlier study, we find that geographic and product-market similarity predict alliance formation across both industries and time frames while prior ties between partners predict alliance formation only when these industries are less mature. Other network participation indicators generate nuanced effects, which underscore the importance of quasi-replications of alliance formation across industries and time periods in building evidence-based management theories.

We examine shifts in how analysts assess the strategies of incumbent firms following a radical technological change. Specifically, we use an inductive study of earnings conference call transcripts and analyst reports to study how analysts’ evaluative schemas change with technological change in the wireline telecommunications industry. We find three temporal themes. At first, analysts pressure firms to reverse strategic changes that are at odds with the existing “income”-focused metrics and logic that constitute the evaluative schema. Next, schema change unfolds with the ongoing technological change, as firm performance declines when measured with traditional metrics, and as managers frame strategic changes using new “growth”-focused metrics and logic. Finally, a distinct shift in the schema is apparent as analysts’ increasing attention to growth spurs a more positive view of strategic changes that they previously opposed, a less positive view of previously supported strategies that conformed to an income logic, and the application of the growth logic even to a firm not pursuing growth-oriented strategic changes. Results from a supplementary content analysis support these results, showing a temporal shift toward “growth” words in analyst reports and conference calls. Our process model emphasizes the gradual shifts in analysts’ evaluative schemas that ultimately support firm responses to a new technology. We highlight the importance of managerial framing as firms facing technological change pursue strategic responses that initially diverge from stakeholders’ expectations, as well as the possibility that as schemas shift, actions that initially conform to analysts’ expectations may be questioned. The online appendix is available at https://doi.org/10.1287/orsc.2017.1140 .

Research Summary We examine whether acquisitions affect the divestment of firms' alliance‐based relational assets. Using data from the biopharmaceutical industry and a matched case–control research design, we find that alliances are more likely to be terminated following acquisitions compared to alliances not subject to acquisitions. This higher termination likelihood is driven by acquisitions where the acquirer's alliance management capacity is stressed, and by alliances inherited from targets. The inherited alliance effect is attenuated by the target's partner's common connections with the acquirer but amplified by the target's partner's unique connections outside the merging firms' alliance portfolios. These findings are consistent with our relational view‐based theorizing on the post‐acquisition challenges of retaining alliance‐based assets, contributing to corporate strategy scholarship on alliances and acquisitions. Managerial Summary In many industries, firms' portfolios of interorganizational alliances enable them to realize novel complementarities and, thereby, enhance their performance. In such sectors, managers also frequently acquire other organizations to obtain access to critical resources. However, what managers may overlook is that acquisitions can destabilize existing alliance relationships. In this study, we show that the acquiring firm's capacity to effectively manage alliance‐based assets is stressed once it inherits the target firm's alliances. In general, target firm alliances become more challenging to sustain, and, in particular, those that hold a higher potential for novelty become more unstable. Consequently, when evaluating acquisitions, managers should look beyond obvious measures of a target alliance's value and assess the post‐acquisition integration challenges that may threaten its stability.