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.
Delegation Within Hierarchies: How Information Processing and Knowledge Characteristics Influence the Allocation of Formal and Real Decision Authority (2015)
We observe a large multinational firm as it decentralizes and study under what conditions managers delegate authority to their subordinates. Our findings show how the specialization of decision-relevant knowledge, the matching of required knowledge and managers’ expertise, and information processing intensity affect (a) the occurrence of delegation and, (b) if delegation occurs, how far down the organizational hierarchy authority is delegated.
Fit Between Organization Design and Organizational routines (2014)
Despite decades of research on both organization design and organizational routines, little research has analyzed the relationship between them. Here we propose a normative theory in which the effectiveness of organization design and redesign depends on the characteristics of routines. The analysis shows which types of organization designs may be useful as well as which design changes may or may not succeed depending on (a) the specificity of routines and (b) the dynamic versus static purposes of organizational routines.
STRUCTURAL KNOWLEDGE: HOW EXECUTIVE EXPERIENCE WITH STRUCTURAL COMPOSITION AFFECTS INTRAFIRM MOBILITY AND UNIT RECONFIGURATION (2012)
We explore how knowledge embodied in executives is tied to the organizational context in which it develops. We predict that executives will move between units with similar ‘structural composition’—a characteristic representing unit origin (as acquired or internally developed) and how the unit was reconfigured — and be conduits of organizational change. We predict that units receiving more transferred executives, executives with recombination experience, and executives from core internal units will have a greater likelihood of being recombined, while units receiving executives from previously acquired units will tend to remain unchanged. The study examines a 20-year panel of 48 multidivisional firms from the U.S. medical sector.