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
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Improve workflows by managing bottlenecks (2024)
This is a practitioner oriented article summarizing the findings from our more, in-depth, 2023 research article. Eliminating negative bottlenecks can help firms improve performance. Our framework focuses on two types of bottlenecks: task bottlenecks and resource bottlenecks. Firms benefit when task system properties of decentralization and complexity are aligned (as more of both or less of both), and when firms’ resources are both fungible and available; these characteristics also reinforce each other.
Who gets redeployed? Inventor characteristics and resource redeployment decisions (2024)
As executives face businesses that are more or less profitable they often respond by moving resources between businesses. But which specific resources do they move? We study innovation active firms and their decisions to redeploy inventors between business units. Examining the US petrochemical industry, we find that generalist inventors (vs specialists in few domains) are more likely to be redeployed, while brokers (i.e., inventors who connect others) in the collaboration network are less likely to be redeployed. In addition, conditions that alter opportunity costs at the source unit matter. When there are larger proportions of generalists (and brokers), this facilitates redeployment of that type of inventor, and knowledge interdependencies in the source unit mitigate redeployment to a target unit.
Acqui-hires: Redeployment and retention of human capital post-acquisition (2024)
Acqui-hires (or talent acquisitions) are acquisitions of small firms solely for the employees(and their knowledge and skills). This paper studies the beginning of the acqui-hire phenomenon in the technology sector. We find that the disruptiveness of the acquired technology leads more likely to the acqui-hired team being preserved within a business unit (versus dispersed)at the new parent firm, and the founder being given a high status position. We find that a mismatch can lead to negative implications such as the premature departure of the founder(s).
Task and resource bottlenecks: Holistic examination of task systems through an organization design lens (2023)
Eliminating negative bottlenecks can help firms improve performance. This study focuses on two types of bottlenecks: task bottlenecks and resource bottlenecks. Our results show that firms benefit when task system properties of decentralization and complexity are aligned (as more of both or less of both), and when firms' resources are both fungible and available; these characteristics also reinforce each other.
Managing institutional distance: Examining how firm-specific advantages impact foreign subsidiary CEO staffing (2018)
Access to knowledge can help foreign firms overcome the liabilities of foreignness. We examine whether possession of firm-specific advantages (of multinationality,regional agglomeration, and host-country experience) impacts foreign firms’ likelihood to appoint expatriates (versus local managers) as CEOs. Local managers provide host-market insight, whereas expatriates possess knowledge transfer and coordination capabilities. We find that, as institutional distance increases, these advantages substitute for the host-market insight of local CEOs. Thus, foreign firms with these advantages are more likely to staff the CEO role with expatriates.Our results are particularly relevant to multinational corporations seeking to allocate a limited talent pool across different countries
EXAMINING RESOURCE REDEPLOYMENT IN MULTI-BUSINESS FIRMS (2016)
This is the introductory paper by the co-editors of a special volume on resource redeployment and corporate strategy, which is devoted to exploring a relatively new justification for how multi-business firms create value–having flexibility to internally redistribute non-financial resources across their businesses. We clarify how a theory around resource flexibility differs from other theories of how multi-business firms create value. We synthesize the collection of papers in this volume and describe how they contribute to our understanding of resource redeployment.