Charles Snow - Academia.edu (original) (raw)

Papers by Charles Snow

Understanding the nature and consequences of the competitive dynamics among firms is a key object... more Understanding the nature and consequences of the competitive dynamics among firms is a key objective of the strategic management field. We review recent developments in six research streams relevant to competitive dynamics: competitive action and response, first-mover advantage, co-opetition, multipoint competition, strategic groups, and regional clusters. As a first step toward filling gaps in knowledge identified in our review, we provide suggestions for future inquiry within each research stream. We also describe opportunities for conceptual integration across the streams that could significantly advance the understanding of competitive dynamics.

Journal of Organization Design

Articles published in the Journal of Organization Design (JOD) from its inception in 2012 until m... more Articles published in the Journal of Organization Design (JOD) from its inception in 2012 until mid-2018 are reviewed and summarized according to their type: research, point of view, translational, case study, research primer, and Organization Zoo. Using multiple assessment criteria, JOD's contributions to the field of organization design are identified. Important topics for future research on organization design are suggested.

Journal of Organization Design

Established in 2010, the Organizational Design Community (ODC) is an international community of s... more Established in 2010, the Organizational Design Community (ODC) is an international community of scholars, practitioners, and organizations dedicated to advancing the theory and practice of organization design. Organization design is an applied field-it takes what we know about forming and managing organizations and applies that knowledge to practice. Well-designed organizations are critical to the efficient and effective functioning of the global economy, and how an organization is designed and managed can have a large impact on the well-being of its members. ODC is committed to bridging the gap between scholars and practitioners by creating a forum for them to exchange ideas. ODC started the Journal of Organization Design in 2012. JOD is an open access journal, meaning that the knowledge and information it publishes is freely available to anyone who wants to learn about organization design. Moreover, JOD is the only journal that focuses solely on this topic. The founding editors of JOD are Børge Obel and Charles Snow. They envisioned a journal that would be future-oriented, scientifically rigorous, and relevant to practice. JOD tries to give voice to different types of authors by offering multiple paper formats: research articles, research primers, point of view articles, translational articles, and case studies. There is also a regular feature called the Organization Zoo where new or unusual species of organizations are described and analyzed. Lastly, JOD publishes special issues on timely and important topics, and these become special collections over time as related articles are added. In January 2016, JOD's publishing operations were moved to Springer Open Access. This allowed JOD to use Springer's editorial management system and to benefit from Springer's vast publishing resources. Today, JOD publishes a variety of useful articles, supported by Springer's marketing and indexing services, while publishing decisions continue to be made by an editorial team of prominent individuals in the area of organization design. Through Springer's open access system, JOD's articles also may include video abstracts, supplementary videos, and other resources. Beginning in January 2018, JOD's new chief editors are John Joseph (University of California-Irvine, USA) and Metin Sengul (Boston College, USA). The new co-editors are charting a course for the journal that builds on its current strengths, increases its impact, and attracts new contributors and readers. They have provided their goals for JOD over the next few years: Continue JOD's tradition of offering a variety of formats reflecting diversity of disciplines, theories, and methodologies in the field of organization design.

The Cornell Hotel and Restaurant Administration Quarterly

To assess a firm's strategic position, its managers must collect and interpret data ... more To assess a firm's strategic position, its managers must collect and interpret data regarding the firm itself, its competitors, its stakeholders, and the industry. Having implement a strategy based on that information, the managers further must measure that strategy's effect. The “competitive-edge model” presented in this article provides a series of questions to guide the strategic decision-making and data-collection process

Journal of Leadership & Organizational Studies

The purpose of this article is to describe how organizations have evolved across three periods of... more The purpose of this article is to describe how organizations have evolved across three periods of modern economic history. These periods can be called the age of competition, age of cooperation, and age of collaboration. The major organizational forms that appeared in each of the three eras, including their capabilities and limitations, are discussed.

Thought Leadership in Advancing International Business Research, 2008

Periodically, leading scholars in the organization sciences have paused to reflect on the status ... more Periodically, leading scholars in the organization sciences have paused to reflect on the status of organization and management theory (e.g., Perrow, 1973; Hambrick, 1993; Huber, 2010). Their overall conclusions have been strikingly similar: organization and management theories may matter a great deal to the scholars who produce them, but they matter very little to managers. As an applied discipline, the field of organization design offers a true opportunity to bridge the worlds of scholarly research and management practice. Problems of organization design exist at the nexus of theory and practice, demanding rich understanding, robust theorizing, strong empirical analysis, and futuristic thinking. Further, with rapid technological evolution, new forms of organizing, and dynamic economic and social environments within and across countries, problems of organization design in the private, public, and nonprofit sectors are ever more complex and challenging, for both researchers and managers.

International Encyclopedia of the Social & Behavioral Sciences, 2015

Network theory and analysis have played a prominent role in the field of organization science for... more Network theory and analysis have played a prominent role in the field of organization science for more than six decades. Previous articles of the organizational networks literature have discussed the attributes, antecedents, and consequences of networks. Our article focuses on the organizational functions of networks. Specifically, we discuss how networks enable exploration, exploitation, and organization.

Business & Society, 2015

Research examining firm and industry effects on performance has primarily focused on the financia... more Research examining firm and industry effects on performance has primarily focused on the financial aspects of firm performance. Corporate social performance (CSP) is a major aspect of firm performance that has been under-examined empirically in the literature to date. Adding to the fundamental debate regarding firm versus industry effects on performance, this study uses data drawn from the Kinder, Lydenberg and Domini Co. (KLD) database to examine the degree to which CSP is related to firm, industry, and temporal factors. The results of these analyses suggest that CSP tends to change in a linear manner over time; however, the slope of this line varies across firms and industries. These findings are supported by several robustness checks accounting for autocorrelation, alternative measures of industry, different samples commonly used when using KLD data to measure CSP, and alternative measures of CSP when using the KLD database. The authors also directly compare firm, industry, and t...

Strategic Management Journal

Firms increasingly face competitive pressures related to rapid and continuous adaptation to a com... more Firms increasingly face competitive pressures related to rapid and continuous adaptation to a complex, dynamic, and highly interconnected global environment. Pressing challenges include keeping pace with shorter product life cycles, incorporating multiple technologies into the design of new products, cocreating products and services with customers and partners, and leveraging the growth of scientific and technical knowledge in many sectors. In response, we observe experimentation with new organization designs that are fundamentally different from existing forms of organizing. We propose that these new designs are based on an actor-oriented architectural scheme composed of three main elements: (1) actors who have the capabilities and values to s elf-organize; (2) commons where the actors accumulate and share resources; and (3) protocols, processes, and infrastructures that enable multi-actor collaboration. We demonstrate the usefulness of the actor-oriented scheme by applying it to o...

Sumario: The best way to increase corporate earnings is through top-line growth, and the best rou... more Sumario: The best way to increase corporate earnings is through top-line growth, and the best route to it, is innovation. The hability to innovate comes from collaboration, what is essentially knowledge creation and utilisation. Understanding this long-linked process will be profitable for companies in the twenty-first century global economy

Academy of Management Proceedings, 1977

In a recent study, Mintzberg, Raisinghani, and Theoret (1976) found that the process by which str... more In a recent study, Mintzberg, Raisinghani, and Theoret (1976) found that the process by which strategic decisions are made in organizations has an underlying structure. However, it is our belief th...

Information and Organization Design Series, 2006

The overall objective of this chapter is to reinvigorate interest in the configurational approach... more The overall objective of this chapter is to reinvigorate interest in the configurational approach to organization design. Configurational analysis developed in promising ways in the 1970s and 1980s and then stalled. We believe, however, that the configurational approach can be improved such that it will serve the interests of scholars, managers, and organizational designers alike. We discuss four research initiatives that can be combined to produce a theoretically and practically useful approach: (1) adding the configurational elements of organizational capabilities and management philosophy; (2) incorporating into theory development a mechanism for anticipating future organizational forms and helping managers to consider those forms; (3) developing valid quantitative measures of capabilities and other intangible assets; and (4) improving the model of change that underlies the redesign process.

Managing the Global Network Corporation, 2003

Research in Personnel and Human Resources Management, 2001

This paper analyzes the impact of the Converging Economy on the role and function of human resour... more This paper analyzes the impact of the Converging Economy on the role and function of human resource management (HRM) practice and research. The forces driving convergence - information technology, globalization, and the importance of human assets - are discussed and then ...

Journal of Organization Design, 2014

passed away on april 8, 2014. Jay was a leading authority on organization design, a founding memb... more passed away on april 8, 2014. Jay was a leading authority on organization design, a founding member of the Organizational Design Community, and a valued contributor to the Journal of Organization Design. We invited Jay's colleagues from around the world to offer their comments on his work. The specific question we asked was: What ideas or insights regarding organization design have you obtained from the work of Jay Galbraith? as you will see from the comments below, Jay provided many valuable contributions to the field of organization design, and he was a caring, generous colleague. he will be greatly missed. Børge Obel Charles Snow Jay Galbraith was my friend and colleague at TruePoint, a management consulting firm I co-founded and that Jay was associated with as a Director. He was a giant in the field of organization design and effectiveness. Jay's information-processing theory of organizations was foundational. It provided an essential lens for understanding what makes organizations effective and an analytical framework for developing alternative organizational designs. Jay's work on matrix organizations was groundbreaking. He was the first to see that matrix designs were in the future of all complex, global, and customer-centric organizations that seek to move up the value chain to sell solutions. his grounded research informed academics and practitioners alike about the critical design features for a well-functioning matrix. Jay's genius was to anticipate, as he did most recently with big data, future business trends, find best-practice examples of organizational design solutions, and then provide an analysis of why and how those design solutions were effective answers to the trend. this in turn led him to develop sound and analytically rigorous recommendations for practitioners. Jay was the epitome of the scholar-practitioner working at the interface between theory and practice, a professional identity and style of knowledge creation of which we need more. In this regard, Jay's professional life is a model that all of us should try to emulate. It is why he was awarded the academy of Management's Scholar-Practitioner award. Jay died in the middle of an organization design consultation, of which Russ eisenstat and I were a part. Indeed, he had a call with the client planned for two days after he died. he had a book on big data in the works. Jay's identity was closely tied to his professional work, and this stirred a work ethic that fueled his many accomplishments as a researcher, theorist, and practitioner. More importantly, Jay was a great human being. Despite his world-class professional standing, he was a humble and collaborative professional colleague we should all emulate. Mike Beer Emeritus Professor, Harvard Business School Jay Galbraith was a rare individual. as an academic, he spoke to practitioners. as a practitioner, he spoke to academics. how was he able to do this? he began with the fundamentals of information processing which he developed early on. In his 1974 Interfaces article, he proposed that greater task uncertainty requires greater information processing for a given level of performance. The organizational design problem was to find an efficient balance between (a) the reduction of the need for information processing with slack resources or self

Understanding the nature and consequences of the competitive dynamics among firms is a key object... more Understanding the nature and consequences of the competitive dynamics among firms is a key objective of the strategic management field. We review recent developments in six research streams relevant to competitive dynamics: competitive action and response, first-mover advantage, co-opetition, multipoint competition, strategic groups, and regional clusters. As a first step toward filling gaps in knowledge identified in our review, we provide suggestions for future inquiry within each research stream. We also describe opportunities for conceptual integration across the streams that could significantly advance the understanding of competitive dynamics.

Journal of Organization Design

Articles published in the Journal of Organization Design (JOD) from its inception in 2012 until m... more Articles published in the Journal of Organization Design (JOD) from its inception in 2012 until mid-2018 are reviewed and summarized according to their type: research, point of view, translational, case study, research primer, and Organization Zoo. Using multiple assessment criteria, JOD's contributions to the field of organization design are identified. Important topics for future research on organization design are suggested.

Journal of Organization Design

Established in 2010, the Organizational Design Community (ODC) is an international community of s... more Established in 2010, the Organizational Design Community (ODC) is an international community of scholars, practitioners, and organizations dedicated to advancing the theory and practice of organization design. Organization design is an applied field-it takes what we know about forming and managing organizations and applies that knowledge to practice. Well-designed organizations are critical to the efficient and effective functioning of the global economy, and how an organization is designed and managed can have a large impact on the well-being of its members. ODC is committed to bridging the gap between scholars and practitioners by creating a forum for them to exchange ideas. ODC started the Journal of Organization Design in 2012. JOD is an open access journal, meaning that the knowledge and information it publishes is freely available to anyone who wants to learn about organization design. Moreover, JOD is the only journal that focuses solely on this topic. The founding editors of JOD are Børge Obel and Charles Snow. They envisioned a journal that would be future-oriented, scientifically rigorous, and relevant to practice. JOD tries to give voice to different types of authors by offering multiple paper formats: research articles, research primers, point of view articles, translational articles, and case studies. There is also a regular feature called the Organization Zoo where new or unusual species of organizations are described and analyzed. Lastly, JOD publishes special issues on timely and important topics, and these become special collections over time as related articles are added. In January 2016, JOD's publishing operations were moved to Springer Open Access. This allowed JOD to use Springer's editorial management system and to benefit from Springer's vast publishing resources. Today, JOD publishes a variety of useful articles, supported by Springer's marketing and indexing services, while publishing decisions continue to be made by an editorial team of prominent individuals in the area of organization design. Through Springer's open access system, JOD's articles also may include video abstracts, supplementary videos, and other resources. Beginning in January 2018, JOD's new chief editors are John Joseph (University of California-Irvine, USA) and Metin Sengul (Boston College, USA). The new co-editors are charting a course for the journal that builds on its current strengths, increases its impact, and attracts new contributors and readers. They have provided their goals for JOD over the next few years: Continue JOD's tradition of offering a variety of formats reflecting diversity of disciplines, theories, and methodologies in the field of organization design.

The Cornell Hotel and Restaurant Administration Quarterly

To assess a firm's strategic position, its managers must collect and interpret data ... more To assess a firm's strategic position, its managers must collect and interpret data regarding the firm itself, its competitors, its stakeholders, and the industry. Having implement a strategy based on that information, the managers further must measure that strategy's effect. The “competitive-edge model” presented in this article provides a series of questions to guide the strategic decision-making and data-collection process

Journal of Leadership & Organizational Studies

The purpose of this article is to describe how organizations have evolved across three periods of... more The purpose of this article is to describe how organizations have evolved across three periods of modern economic history. These periods can be called the age of competition, age of cooperation, and age of collaboration. The major organizational forms that appeared in each of the three eras, including their capabilities and limitations, are discussed.

Thought Leadership in Advancing International Business Research, 2008

Periodically, leading scholars in the organization sciences have paused to reflect on the status ... more Periodically, leading scholars in the organization sciences have paused to reflect on the status of organization and management theory (e.g., Perrow, 1973; Hambrick, 1993; Huber, 2010). Their overall conclusions have been strikingly similar: organization and management theories may matter a great deal to the scholars who produce them, but they matter very little to managers. As an applied discipline, the field of organization design offers a true opportunity to bridge the worlds of scholarly research and management practice. Problems of organization design exist at the nexus of theory and practice, demanding rich understanding, robust theorizing, strong empirical analysis, and futuristic thinking. Further, with rapid technological evolution, new forms of organizing, and dynamic economic and social environments within and across countries, problems of organization design in the private, public, and nonprofit sectors are ever more complex and challenging, for both researchers and managers.

International Encyclopedia of the Social & Behavioral Sciences, 2015

Network theory and analysis have played a prominent role in the field of organization science for... more Network theory and analysis have played a prominent role in the field of organization science for more than six decades. Previous articles of the organizational networks literature have discussed the attributes, antecedents, and consequences of networks. Our article focuses on the organizational functions of networks. Specifically, we discuss how networks enable exploration, exploitation, and organization.

Business & Society, 2015

Research examining firm and industry effects on performance has primarily focused on the financia... more Research examining firm and industry effects on performance has primarily focused on the financial aspects of firm performance. Corporate social performance (CSP) is a major aspect of firm performance that has been under-examined empirically in the literature to date. Adding to the fundamental debate regarding firm versus industry effects on performance, this study uses data drawn from the Kinder, Lydenberg and Domini Co. (KLD) database to examine the degree to which CSP is related to firm, industry, and temporal factors. The results of these analyses suggest that CSP tends to change in a linear manner over time; however, the slope of this line varies across firms and industries. These findings are supported by several robustness checks accounting for autocorrelation, alternative measures of industry, different samples commonly used when using KLD data to measure CSP, and alternative measures of CSP when using the KLD database. The authors also directly compare firm, industry, and t...

Strategic Management Journal

Firms increasingly face competitive pressures related to rapid and continuous adaptation to a com... more Firms increasingly face competitive pressures related to rapid and continuous adaptation to a complex, dynamic, and highly interconnected global environment. Pressing challenges include keeping pace with shorter product life cycles, incorporating multiple technologies into the design of new products, cocreating products and services with customers and partners, and leveraging the growth of scientific and technical knowledge in many sectors. In response, we observe experimentation with new organization designs that are fundamentally different from existing forms of organizing. We propose that these new designs are based on an actor-oriented architectural scheme composed of three main elements: (1) actors who have the capabilities and values to s elf-organize; (2) commons where the actors accumulate and share resources; and (3) protocols, processes, and infrastructures that enable multi-actor collaboration. We demonstrate the usefulness of the actor-oriented scheme by applying it to o...

Sumario: The best way to increase corporate earnings is through top-line growth, and the best rou... more Sumario: The best way to increase corporate earnings is through top-line growth, and the best route to it, is innovation. The hability to innovate comes from collaboration, what is essentially knowledge creation and utilisation. Understanding this long-linked process will be profitable for companies in the twenty-first century global economy

Academy of Management Proceedings, 1977

In a recent study, Mintzberg, Raisinghani, and Theoret (1976) found that the process by which str... more In a recent study, Mintzberg, Raisinghani, and Theoret (1976) found that the process by which strategic decisions are made in organizations has an underlying structure. However, it is our belief th...

Information and Organization Design Series, 2006

The overall objective of this chapter is to reinvigorate interest in the configurational approach... more The overall objective of this chapter is to reinvigorate interest in the configurational approach to organization design. Configurational analysis developed in promising ways in the 1970s and 1980s and then stalled. We believe, however, that the configurational approach can be improved such that it will serve the interests of scholars, managers, and organizational designers alike. We discuss four research initiatives that can be combined to produce a theoretically and practically useful approach: (1) adding the configurational elements of organizational capabilities and management philosophy; (2) incorporating into theory development a mechanism for anticipating future organizational forms and helping managers to consider those forms; (3) developing valid quantitative measures of capabilities and other intangible assets; and (4) improving the model of change that underlies the redesign process.

Managing the Global Network Corporation, 2003

Research in Personnel and Human Resources Management, 2001

This paper analyzes the impact of the Converging Economy on the role and function of human resour... more This paper analyzes the impact of the Converging Economy on the role and function of human resource management (HRM) practice and research. The forces driving convergence - information technology, globalization, and the importance of human assets - are discussed and then ...

Journal of Organization Design, 2014

passed away on april 8, 2014. Jay was a leading authority on organization design, a founding memb... more passed away on april 8, 2014. Jay was a leading authority on organization design, a founding member of the Organizational Design Community, and a valued contributor to the Journal of Organization Design. We invited Jay's colleagues from around the world to offer their comments on his work. The specific question we asked was: What ideas or insights regarding organization design have you obtained from the work of Jay Galbraith? as you will see from the comments below, Jay provided many valuable contributions to the field of organization design, and he was a caring, generous colleague. he will be greatly missed. Børge Obel Charles Snow Jay Galbraith was my friend and colleague at TruePoint, a management consulting firm I co-founded and that Jay was associated with as a Director. He was a giant in the field of organization design and effectiveness. Jay's information-processing theory of organizations was foundational. It provided an essential lens for understanding what makes organizations effective and an analytical framework for developing alternative organizational designs. Jay's work on matrix organizations was groundbreaking. He was the first to see that matrix designs were in the future of all complex, global, and customer-centric organizations that seek to move up the value chain to sell solutions. his grounded research informed academics and practitioners alike about the critical design features for a well-functioning matrix. Jay's genius was to anticipate, as he did most recently with big data, future business trends, find best-practice examples of organizational design solutions, and then provide an analysis of why and how those design solutions were effective answers to the trend. this in turn led him to develop sound and analytically rigorous recommendations for practitioners. Jay was the epitome of the scholar-practitioner working at the interface between theory and practice, a professional identity and style of knowledge creation of which we need more. In this regard, Jay's professional life is a model that all of us should try to emulate. It is why he was awarded the academy of Management's Scholar-Practitioner award. Jay died in the middle of an organization design consultation, of which Russ eisenstat and I were a part. Indeed, he had a call with the client planned for two days after he died. he had a book on big data in the works. Jay's identity was closely tied to his professional work, and this stirred a work ethic that fueled his many accomplishments as a researcher, theorist, and practitioner. More importantly, Jay was a great human being. Despite his world-class professional standing, he was a humble and collaborative professional colleague we should all emulate. Mike Beer Emeritus Professor, Harvard Business School Jay Galbraith was a rare individual. as an academic, he spoke to practitioners. as a practitioner, he spoke to academics. how was he able to do this? he began with the fundamentals of information processing which he developed early on. In his 1974 Interfaces article, he proposed that greater task uncertainty requires greater information processing for a given level of performance. The organizational design problem was to find an efficient balance between (a) the reduction of the need for information processing with slack resources or self