Publications
Samina’s research has been published in a wide array of top journals including the Academy of Management Journal, Harvard Business Review, Management Science, Organization Science, Sloan Management Review, and Strategic Management Journal. She currently serves as Deputy Editor at Organization Science, and on the editorial review boards of Journal of Organization Design (where she was Senior Editor 2013-2017), Strategic Management Journal (where she was Associate Editor 2014-2020), Strategic Organization, and Strategy Science.
- Acquisitions
- Alliances
- Bottlenecks
- Competition
- Complex Systems
- Decentralization
- Decision making
- Hierarchy
- Human capital
- Innovation
- Knowledge recombination
- Modularity
- Organization design
- Patenting
- Reconfiguration
- Resource redeployment
- Scientists
- Sector: Airlines
- Sector: Banking
- Sector: Education
- Sector: Energy
- Sector: Medical devices
- Sector: Petrochemicals
- Sector: Pharmaceuticals
- Startups
View works on…
The Power of Modularity Today: 20 Years of Design Rules (2023)
This is the introductory essay by the co-editors of a special issue celebrating the 20thyear anniversary of the book “Design Rules: The Power of Modularity” (by Carliss Baldwin and Kim Clark)published in 2000,a book that introduced new ways of understanding and explaining the architecture of complex systems.We review the impact of the book across numerous fields and offer perspectives on key themes that emerge from contributions in the special issue,including the alignment between organizational and technical designs (“mirroring”), the dynamics of industry evolution, and the role that individuals play in shaping and responding to system designs.
GROUPING INTERDEPENDENT TASKS: USING SPECTRAL GRAPH PARTITIONING TO STUDY COMPLEX SYSTEMS (2016)
We describe a method for analyzing the architecture of complex systems that contain directed and weighted component interactions, and in which each component is interdependent on every other component. Using the spectra of a complex
system, the method provides groupings. We illustrate this method using the firm-level production task system of a firm in the U.S. passenger airline sector. The method is useful if the system architecture is hidden, in flux, or both. The method may also permit a holistic comparison of different systems and their architectures.
MODULARITY IN ORGANIZATIONAL STRUCTURE:THE RECONFIGURATION OF INTERNALLY DEVELOPED AND ACQUIRED BUSINESS UNITS (2006)
Unit reconfiguration is the addition of units to, deletion of units from, and recombination of units within the firm. This study compares the reconfiguration of internally developed vs. acquired units, explores what forms of unit recombination are common, and observes whether firms pursue recombination before divestiture. We find that acquired and internally developed units serve different roles in the process of change, and that firms perceive reconfiguration to be beneficial.