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| Author: | Mors, M.L. |
| Title: | Innovation in a global consulting firm: when the problem is too much diversity |
| Journal: | Strategic Management Journal
2010 : AUG, VOL. 31:8, p. 841-872 |
| Index terms: | multinational companies consultants knowledge managers innovation networks strategy |
| Freeterms: | knowledge sharing firm boundaries social networks partners |
| Language: | eng |
| Abstract: | It is explored how individual multinational firms' managers utilize their informal (herein as: i-f.) relations to create new knowledge. It is questioned how the density of i-f. networks (as: nets) affects an actor's ability to access and integrate diverse information and consequently that actor's innovation performance (as: i-perf). The arguments are developed using the setting of nearly 80 senior partners in a global management consulting firm and tested on a dataset of almost 1,500 i-f. relationships. It is distinguished btw. internal, external, local, and global relations. This separation is found to permit a more nuanced understanding of the effect of network structure on i-perf. Particularly, it is argued that the most effective network strategy is contingent on the partners' operating context. It is shown that partners operating in homogeneous contexts with the primary challenge being to access diverse information benefit from low-density networks. In contrast, when crossing both firm and geographic boundaries, partners with dense networks have higher i-perf. It is argued that in such heterogeneous contexts, dense network interactions make it easier for partners to integrate the diverse information. |
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