Publication records

Teams performing scientific research are becoming increasingly large and interdisciplinary. While prior work has examined antecedents and performance implications of these trends, it is not clear how team size and interdisciplinarity relate to teams’ internal organization, especially the division of labor (DoL) between members. We first develop an organizing framework that integrates three complementary dimensions of DoL: (1) the specialization of individual team members, (2) the distribution of activities across team members, and (3) interdependencies between activities. We then discuss how these aspects of DoL are related to team size and interdisciplinarity and test our hypotheses using author contribution data from over 12,000 scientific articles. We find that team size has a positive relationship with an aggregate measure of DoL, but disaggregated measures show that this relationship holds for some aspects of DoL and not others. We also find that interdisciplinary teams use greater division of labor, although this effect depends on the degree to which interdisciplinarity is intra- versus inter-personal. We conclude by discussing how our conceptual and empirical toolkit may be applied in future research on the drivers and consequences of division of labor in teams.

With permission of Elsevier

With the onset of the 2020 coronavirus pandemic, industrial suppliers are increasingly challenged to close their open sales opportunities and keep generating business. Against this backdrop, the authors of this study investigate which offerings industrial customers are most likely to purchase as the pandemic progresses. Drawing on positive decision theory and empirically investigating 31,353 sales opportunities across 57 countries, the authors show that the coronavirus pandemic significantly decreases industrial customers' purchase probability, especially for high-priced offerings. In countries with low uncertainty avoidance and strong long-term orientation (e.g., China, India, Singapore), purchase probability is less affected by the pandemic. The coronavirus pandemic even increases purchase probability for offerings with low prices in countries where cultures are simultaneously uncertainty-avoidant and short-term oriented (e.g., Argentina, Brazil, Mexico). This is presumably because customers safeguard their operations in the face of impending supply shortages. Consequently, this helps suppliers focus on the right sales opportunities to secure their business during exogenous global shocks such as the coronavirus pandemic.

With permission of Elsevier

The digital transformation of all areas of life also involves the public sphere. The government and politicians are called upon to digitally redesign state and local public services in all areas - from education to health care and transport. Digital platforms play a central role in the digital transformation. On the one hand, platform companies are drivers and supporters in the digitization also of public services. On the other hand, they are often market-dominating companies that can reduce the government's ability to design the digital services. Governments are requested, on the one hand, to develop their own platform strategy for the public sector and, on the other hand, to reduce the power of the market-dominating global platforms and to ensure competition.

Private cartel damages litigation is on the rise in Europe since early 2000. This development has been initiated by the European courts and was supported by various policy initiatives of the European Commission, which found its culmination in the implementation of the EU Directive on Antitrust Damages end of 2016. This paper explores the impact of this reform process on effective compensation of damaged parties of cartel infringements. For that purpose we analyse all European cartel cases with a decision date between 2001 and 2015, for which we analyse litigation activity and speed. Overall, we find a substantial reduction of the time until first settlement (increase in litigation speed) together with a persisting high share of cases being litigated (high litigation activity). This supports the view that the reform not only increased the claimant’s expectation about the amount of damages being awarded, but also resulted in an alignment in the expectations of claimants and defendants in the final damages amount, i.e. the European Commission succeeded in reaching its objective to clarify and harmonize legal concepts across Europe.

 

View all ESMT Working Papers in the ESMT Working Paper Series here. ESMT Working Papers are also available via SSRN, RePEc, EconStor, and the German National Library (DNB).

This chapter examined the experiences of tertiary students in Bogota when taking public transport. Based on a sample of 1065 students, results showed that more than 70% of females and nearly 50% of males had experienced sexual violence at some point in the last three years, about one-third of both males and females had experienced theft, and about one-fifth other serious crimes. As expected, females in the sample felt significantly less safe than males in public transportation settings. However, rather than gender, the best predictors of low perceptions of safety were prior experiences of multiple types of sexual victimization (e.g., sexual looks and gestures, sexual comments, groping, touching inappropriately) as well as poor guardianship of vehicles and stops/stations. The study shows that fear of crime in public transport is not merely a social construction, but is directly related to prior experiences of violence in these public spaces.

This chapter examines the influence of both the physical and social environment on sexual harassment and on the perceptions of transit safety among university students. We compare results from four cities: Los Angeles in North America, Bogota in South America, Stockholm in Europe and Manila in Asia. Based on a total sample of over 2800 students, we used descriptive statistics and logistic regression models to evaluate the effect of environmental factors while controlling for individual characteristics. Our results provided evidence that environmental factors increase opportunities for crime in transportation settings. Specifically, in most models, litter and vandalism, poorly guarded and poorly illuminated settings had an impact on the risk of victimization. Also, in most models, two elements of social disorder (drunkenness and panhandling) affected risk. However, some environmental characteristics affect some types of sexual offenses but not others, and factors affect the risk of victimization differently depending on the city.

Through two studies we observed, that leaders must make a concerted effort to encourage assertiveness and speak-up behavior in their area of responsibility by asking open-ended questions before posing solutions, even (and especially) in high-stakes and urgent situations. When people are under pressure, it’s not uncommon for many to shut down and grow quiet as oppose to proactive. This is why inquiry must be used as a means for getting information — especially during crises. Further, leader’s encouragement will help to create an environment of psychological safety, and the solutions they gather will be much better for it. A business framework that emphasizes leading with questions, and one that trains and retains leaders with this skill set, is capable of achieving operational excellence.

Previously published on HBR.org
December 9, 2019

Following the turn to practice in organization theory and the emerging interest in the microfoundations of ambidexterity, understanding the role of individuals in realizing ambidexterity approaches becomes crucial. Drawing insights from Greek philosophy on paradoxes, and practice theory on paradoxes and ambidexterity, we propose a view of individual ambidexterity grounded in paradoxical practices. Existing conceptualizations of ambidexterity are largely based on separation strategies. Contrary to this perspective, we argue that individual ambidexterity can be accomplished via paradoxical practices that renegotiate or transcend boundaries of exploration and exploitation. We identify three such paradoxical practices at the individual level that can advance understanding of ambidexterity: engaging in “hybrid tasks,” capitalizing cumulatively on previous learning, and adopting a mindset of seeking synergies between the competing demands of exploration and exploitation.

With permission of SAGE Publishing