Browsing by Author "Harrison, J. Richard"
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Item Adaptation and Learning in Social Networks(2018-12) Kemp, Ayenda; Harrison, J. RichardThis dissertation broadly addresses the issue of learning in social networks. The dissertation builds on existing literature that leverages learning as a mechanism for predicting the performance effects of different network structures, and focuses on two competing structures: open networks in which none of an actor’s partners are connected to each other, and closed networks in which all of an actor’s partners are connected to each other. The dissertation examines these issues at both the inter-organizational and intra-organizational levels. At the inter-organizational level, the dissertation addresses two related issues. First, prior network research has favored a simplistic view of learning, conceptualized as a firm’s acquisition of information from its network partners. Second, in its focus on information acquisition, this work has prioritized a single informational characteristic—informational diversity. This dissertation uses formal simulation models to advance this literature by (1) accounting for learning not only as information transfer but also as a firm’s ability to adapt in response to performance feedback, and (2) by demonstrating the importance of redundant rather than diverse information for learning from networks. It is shown that once these two issues are properly accounted for, open and closed networks may each generate performance advantages in contexts thought impossible from the perspective of prior work. At the intra-organizational level, prior work conceptualizes learning as an employee’s process for developing expertise. However, the literature on expert development has ignored the importance of an actor’s social network configuration for influencing whether the actor progresses from novice to expert. This dissertation advances the literature on intra-organizational networks by proposing a conceptual model which explains the importance of an actor’s network structure for his or her development as an expert. These insights are then leveraged to propose organizational interventions that may be implemented to improve an employee’s advancement toward expertise within the firm. Overall, the dissertation advances existing research by bringing closer the disparate literatures on network structure and learning at the individual and organizational levels. Opportunities for future research are discussed.Item Who Will Stay and Who Will Go? Related Agglomeration and the Mortality of Professional Sports Leagues in the United States and Canada, 1871–1997(Sage Publications Ltd) Wade, J. B.; Harrison, J. Richard; Dobbs, M. E.; Zhao, X.; Harrison, J. RichardProfessional sports leagues play a major role in our society, but little attention has been given to organizational factors related to league survival. We address this issue by examining the effects of related agglomeration (the extent to which league teams are located near teams from other sports that share the same broad professional sport identity), sport age, market heterogeneity (high variance in the number of teams from other sports in its teams’ cities), and within-sport league competition (high niche overlap) on league mortality. Related agglomeration may lead to intensified competition but may also lead to benefits by producing agglomeration economies and by driving the development of regional identities. We propose that the effects of related agglomeration vary over a focal population’s life cycle. We also argue that leagues with high market heterogeneity have higher chances of failure, particularly under conditions of high competition. We test our ideas using event history analysis to examine mortality in the entire population history of professional sports leagues in the United States and Canada (which are fundamentally different from leagues in other parts of the world) from the first league founding in 1871 until 1997. We find that leagues in young sports whose teams tend to be located in cities with large numbers of other sports (high related agglomeration) suffer from higher mortality rates while leagues that are in more established sports are less likely to fail under these circumstances. Consistent with prior research, leagues are more likely to fail when they experience higher competition (higher niche overlap) with other leagues in their sport, and the effects of competition are exacerbated by high variance in the number of other sports across the leagues’ cities (high market heterogeneity). We end by discussing the implications of our results for more common multi-unit organizational forms such as franchises and by considering promising avenues for future research. © The Author(s) 2018.