Research on innovation networks has highlighted the pivotal role that actors with more prominence and power, such as hub firms, may play in orchestrating the activities of other network members along a collective innovation effort. Our study examined the under-theorized, but no less important, type of orchestration that characterizes other organizations, such as business incubators and venture associations, who seek to support the dispersed entrepreneurial efforts of network members. We refer to this type as "open-system" orchestration, as opposed to the commonly studied "closed-system" type performed by hub firms. Our findings reveal how the processes of open-system orchestration differ markedly from those of closed-system orchestration, and detail how these processes influence the micro-foundations of network members' sensing capabilities. By doing so, we also offer empirical substantiation and theoretical elaboration to the idea that dynamic capabilities might not reside exclusively inside firms, but could be co-created relationally with other parties in the business ecosystem. Entrepreneurship and innovation often occur within large networks of independent or semiindependent firms (Freeman, 1991; Howells, 2006; Powell, Koput, & Smith-Doerr, 1996). Previous studies have drawn attention to the fact that, in some of these networks, a central actor takes a leading role in "orchestrating" collaboration among member firms (Dhanaraj & Parkhe, 2006; Paquin & Howard-Grenville, 2013). This line of inquiry has focused on so-called "hub firms"typically large corporations attempting to harness the resources and capabilities of several smaller partners to pursue a collective innovation goal (Nambisan & Sawhney, 2011)-and has begun to unpack the processes through which these orchestrators govern their networks (see Dagnino, Levanti, & Mocciaro Li Destri, 2016, for a review). Recent studies, however, indicate that in other types of innovation networks, rather than attempting to extract value from members' coordinated efforts as hub firms do (Dhanaraj & Parkhe, 2006), central actors primarily support members' dispersed and largely independent search and pursuit of new business opportunities. This is the case, for instance, of business incubators and accelerators, national and regional agencies, or associations of small and medium-sized enterprises. Scholars have referred to organizations that perform this supporting role as "bridging organizations" (Berkes, 2009; Sapsed, Grantham, & DeFillippi, 2007) or "open-system This paper has greatly benefitted from the support and comments provided by the Editor Scott Sonenshein and three anonymous reviewers whom we thank sincerely. We also gratefully acknowledge the constructive comments of

No abstract

This is the accepted version of the paper.This version of the publication may differ from the final published version. (Forthcoming in Strategic Organization) We gratefully acknowledge the constructive comments of SO editors and reviewers, Shazad Ansari, Cliff Bowman, David Denyer, Koen Heimeriks, Constance Helfat, Pursey Heugens, Mark Jenkins, Gianvito Lanzolla, Donna Ladkin, Will Mitchell and Taco Reus as well as the feedback received from participants at a seminar at Rotterdam School of Management, Erasmus University. An earlier version of the paper was presented at the 2010 Academy of Management Conference in Montreal, Canada, and benefited from the extensive comments of three anonymous reviewers and the participants themselves. Permanent repository link: 2 DYNAMIC CAPABILITIES IN THE DOCK: A CASE OF REIFICATION?In his award-winning SO!APBOX essay, Donald Hambrick observed that the strategic management field "is rapidly being pulled apart by centrifugal forces. Like a supernova that once packed a wallop, our energy is now dissipating and we are quickly growing cold " (2004: 91), and included dynamic capabilities as one of the constructs that appeared to be most detrimental to the field's stability. At first sight, as scholars interested in dynamic capabilities, we conceded that Hambrick appeared to be right. Navigating the literature we encountered a plethora of dynamic capability definitions, countless number of capability types (e.g. R&D, marketing, etc.) labelled as 'dynamic' and a variety of formulaic expressions under the generic umbrella of 'to adapt and change firms need dynamic capabilities'. Yet, after nearly two decades, a rising number of over 100 articles, special issues and conference presentations (Di Stefano, Peteraf and Verona, 2010) seem to suggest that dynamic capabilities were, instead, one of the centripetal forces that helped keep the field together. So we were faced with a puzzle: were dynamic capabilities the last flash of the dying supernova, or could they rather save strategic management from its anticipated selfdestruction?More recently, dynamic capability research appears to have become an academic conversation polarized between equally passionate critics and supporters. Perhaps a paramount example is the exchange between Arend and Bromiley (A&B) and Helfat and Peteraf (H&P) on the future of dynamic capabilities published in Strategic Organization in 2009: whereas A&B suggested that the dynamic capability construct should be abandoned due to its weak theoretical foundations and inconsistencies, H&P called for further developmental efforts given the infancy of the field and its growing relevance. Not 3 surprisingly, this paradigmatic match between advocates of rigor and defendants of relevance (Hirsch and Levin, 1999 1 ) has regularly appeared in Strategic Organization's 2 'Most-Read' rankings, together with Hambrick's (2004) call for the consolidation of strategic management. How to solve this dilemma, then: should we discard dynamic capabilities or persist with them?In the...

We investigate how the relational capital of a person within an organization affects the extent to which she or he conducts exploration activities. Our theory separates out a negative effect that comes from aligning goals with other organizational members from a positive effect that stems from acquiring knowledge from them. Our data from 150 members of the R&D teams of three leading R&D-intensive firms support the theoretical model. By developing and testing this theory, we contribute to the literature on exploration, which lacks understanding of the antecedents of individual exploration in organizations. We also contribute to relational capital literature, which has focused on organizational and group-level exploration, but which has shown inconsistent findings regarding the relationship between relational capital and exploration. A reason for this may be that this body of research has emphasized positive effects of relational capital for exploration only, and has not accounted for the different mechanisms that mediate the effects of relational capital on individual exploration activities. Our theory offers a more comprehensive view by explaining how relational capital may provide both benefits and liabilities to individual exploration activities.

Studies on the diffusion of practices provide valuable insights into how organizations adopt, adapt, sustain and abandon practices over time. However, few studies focus on how stigmatized practices diffuse and persist, even when they risk tainting the adopters. To address this issue and understand how firms manage stigmatized practices, we study US organizations associated with the practice of competitive intelligence (CI) between 1985 and 2012. CI includes legitimate information gathering practices that are sometimes also associated with infringements and espionage. Our findings suggest that CI became highly diffused and persisted despite the risk of stigmatizing its adopters. We identified three factors to explain CI's persistence: (1) keeping it opaque to avoid the negative effects of stigmatization, (2) 'constructing' usefulness to justify its ongoing use by leveraging accepted beliefs and invoking fear of unilateral abandonment and (3) adapting it by developing multiple versions to increase its zone of acceptability. These three factors contribute to practice persistence by allowing firms to dilute the potential stigma from use of the practice. Our contribution lies in explaining the adoption, diffusion and ongoing use of a stigmatized practice whose benefits cannot be overtly acknowledged or made public.

We develop and test the thesis that corporate social performance (CSP) constitutes a socially constructed and shared strategic asset, which is not only influenced by factors specific to a firm, but also by the social performance of firms in its industry and inter-corporate network. Using variance decomposition, we analyze data from 130 large Japanese firms and find that both firm-specific and industrylevel factors account for significant variance in CSP, but network-level factors do not.Keywords Corporate social performance . Japan . Variance decomposition . Keiretsu . Networks . Industry-effects . Resource based view Over the past two decades, corporate social performance (CSP) has been the focus of significant attention from policy makers and the public at large and much theorizing and empirical investigation from the academic community. Wood (1991) defines CSP as the responsiveness a firm has towards its stakeholders. Similarly, Hillman and Keim (2001) consider CSP to combine a firm's attention to the needs of its stakeholders with its efforts to address social issues. Research has shown that firms exhibiting stronger CSP may gain advantages in attracting consumers (Brown & Asia Pacific J Manage (2007) 24:283-303

No abstract

How firms address pressing societal needs during crises is not well understood. The COVID-19 pandemic disrupted societies worldwide, and many firms quickly developed new product innovations in personal protective equipment -an area outside of their core businesses and with uncertain profitability but demanded by stakeholders. We conducted inductive case studies of eight firms to understand why firms pivot from shareholder-to stakeholder-oriented innovation of product categories new to the firm and how they satisfy new stakeholder needs during crises. The findings suggest a three-stage process model that explains how firms (1) internalize information signalling a lack of product supply that leads to urgent innovation needs, which in turn triggers a shift, (2) how the firm's extant resources are understood and (3) thus how the capability assembly of new product innovation is initiated. We theorize that the increase in responsiveness to societal crises is a sensitization process. This process explains how for-profit product innovation prior to the pandemic led to the crisis-driven innovation of products new to the firm by temporarily suspending a profit orientation to respond quickly to calls for help. Implications for theory and practice are discussed.