Strategy and Entrepreneurship at Leeds
Research Themes
Innovation Strategy
- Technology & Intellectual Property Strategy
- Digital Platforms & Ecosystems
- AI & Emerging Technologies
Entrepreneurial Strategy
- Startup Growth & Scaling
- Ecosystems & Stakeholders
- Authenticity & Identity
Sustainability & Market Creation
- Sustainable Entrepreneurship
- Institutional Logics & Venture Survival
9
Tenure/Tenure Track-Faculty
Administrative Science Quarterly
Ethan Poskanzer
Additional Authors: Tristan L. Botelho
2026, Volume 71, Issue 3, Pages 613-656.
Research has consistently found that organizational evaluations produce gendered outcomes. We advance understanding of this inequality by examining how multistage evaluations—a common organizational design feature—shape gendered evaluative disparities. We integrate and extend research on evaluations, status, and inequality to theorize how gendered outcomes can vary between stages within a single, unified evaluation process—what we term “stakes-driven gender inequality.” Our theoretical framework centers on a ubiquitous feature of organizational multistage evaluation processes that is missing from prior theoretical accounts: escalating stakes across stages via increasingly binding commitments and rising cost of wrong selections. We conceptualize two stylized stages within the same evaluation process: a shortlisting stage (a preliminary selection of candidates for further consideration) and a winners stage (in which final, binding selections are made). Using data from a large multistage startup competition, we test our theory and find that female-led startups are 18.7 percent more likely than male-led startups to be selected in the shortlisting stage but 30.7 percent less likely to be selected in the winners stage. Mechanism tests in the shortlisting stage are most consistent with female-led startups being assessed as higher quality, whereas in the winners stage, we find evidence consistent with gendered performance expectations and evaluators’ risk aversion.
Strategic Management Journal
Tony Tong
Additional Authors: Tong TW; He W; Chen L; He Z-L; Lu J
April 2026
While changes in intellectual property rights (IPR) protection significantly shape firm innovation, the mechanisms driving firms' responses remain poorly understood. Leveraging the Second Amendment to China's Patent Law, which strengthens appropriability particularly for state‐owned enterprises (SOEs), as a natural experiment, we show that stronger IPR has mixed effects on SOEs' innovation. While SOEs increase the rate of innovation subsequent to the Amendment, they shift the direction of innovation toward more familiar areas in which they face a lesser need to adjust existing routines. This directional change suggests a quality decline in SOEs' innovation that may be attributed to path dependence. We further show that this change varies systematically depending on different firm‐ and industry‐level characteristics that loosen or tighten the historical grip of path dependence. Managerial Summary This study offers valuable insights for corporate leaders navigating intellectual property rights (IPR) reforms and shaping their firms' innovation strategies, particularly in emerging economies. While stronger IPR protection can increase innovation output, it may also lead firms to concentrate on familiar technologies rather than pursue more novel ideas.
Strategy Science
Tony Tong
Additional Authors: Xinying Qu, M.V. Shyam Kumar
February 2026, Volume 11 Issue 1, p1-179
We examine the role of predictions in acquisition decision making using stock market reactions as a context to formally highlight the foundations and implications of artificial intelligence (AI)–driven foresight. Drawing on behavioral perspectives, we propose that predictions related to market reactions can provide valuable foresight by capturing the wisdom of crowds of market participants and their assessments of value creation. As a result, these predictions, whereas probabilistic in nature, can enhance acquisition decision making in areas such as deal selection and target identification. Furthermore, we argue that predictions and the foresight they provide shape managerial expectations, and when actual market reactions deviate from predictions, they stimulate additional information gathering, which is reflected in processes such as deal completion. We provide evidence supporting these arguments by developing a novel measure of predicted market reactions that extrapolates prior reactions using machine learning models. Our findings highlight the informational value that predictions confer in acquisition decision making and provide formal support for investing in predictive capabilities and AI in such contexts. More broadly, we contribute to a richer understanding of the role of predictions and AI-driven foresight in strategic decision making by demonstrating not just their ex ante value in guiding managerial choices but also their ex post effects in terms of stimulating learning and subsequent information gathering.
Academy of Management Annals
Tony Tong
Additional Authors: Sergei Mozheiko, Xianwei Shi
July 2026
Value creation is increasingly shifting from standalone firms in linear value chains toward multilaterally coordinated efforts among heterogeneous actors in ecosystems. Yet, we know relatively little about how coordination unfolds when value creation activities are distributed in this manner. As a focal entity grows increasingly reliant on actors beyond its formal authority, value creation and capture depend on aligning and steering these interdependent actors through indirect means—an approach best described as “orchestration.” We define “ecosystem orchestration” as the application of control and coordination mechanisms beyond organizational boundaries to integrate complementary efforts across ecosystem participants. First, through a comprehensive integrative review, we identify four categories of mechanisms: codified, cognitive, incentive, and hierarchical. We then examine how these mechanisms are bundled into distinct orchestration regimes across platform, industrial, innovation, and entrepreneurial ecosystems. Further, we highlight salient connections between these mechanisms and classic theories of the firm—resource-based view, property rights theory, transaction cost economics, and knowledge-based view. By moving beyond generic notions of orchestration and revealing its underlying mechanisms, we establish a clearer foundation for advancing ecosystem research, integrate the fragmented ecosystem orchestration literature, and anchor it more firmly in established theories. Finally, we conclude by outlining conceptual, empirical, and methodological directions for future inquiry.
Management Science
Mu-Jeung Yang
Additional Authors: Michael Christensen, Nicholas Bloom, Raffaella Sadun, Jan Rivkin
2026, Volume 72, Issue 6, Pages 4569-4596.
We survey 262 chief executive officer (CEO) alumni of Harvard Business School and gather evidence on three aspects of each executive’s strategy practice: how formalized it is, how it is developed, and how it is implemented. We report three main results. First, firms with higher adoption of structured strategy practices outperform their peers; they grow faster and are more profitable, especially in industries with greater strategic complexity. Second, the appointment of CEOs with more structured styles appears to drive this outperformance, not firm-specific effects. This raises the question of how an executive comes to adopt more structured strategy practices. Our third finding provides a partial answer; business education can have a lasting impact on a CEO’s strategy practices as evidenced by a regression discontinuity analysis centered around a curriculum change at Harvard Business School.
Strategic Management Journal
Mu-Jeung Yang
Additional Authors: Yang Fan, Lubomir Litov, Todd Zenger
2026, Volume 47, Issue5, Pages 1211-1243
We establish a new paradox surrounding technological uniqueness, defined as the degree to which a firm's patented technology portfolio differs from its competitors. On the one hand, technological uniqueness acts as a barrier to incoming technology spillovers and impedes firm performance. On the other hand, technological uniqueness reduces outgoing technology spillovers and contributes to a strategic resource that is more costly to imitate. We empirically examine these competing arguments and find evidence that the strategic resource argument dominates for average firms in the data with more technologically unique firms performing better. At the same time, we show that pursuing technological uniqueness is costly, as unique firms indeed benefit less from incoming technology spillovers, are harder to understand by equity analysts and have higher costs of equity capital.
American Economic Association
Mu-Jeung Yang
Additional Authors: Kristina McElheran, Zachary Kroff, Erik Brynjolfsson
2026, Volume 116, Pages 20-25.
Using a mandatory, purpose-designed Census Bureau survey of approximately 28,500 establishments, we provide new evidence on industrial AI adoption in US manufacturing. Despite widespread digitization, only 22.8 percent of plants report any AI use as of 2021; intensity-weighted adoption is far lower. Adoption correlates with more-recent digital infrastructure—cloud computing and predictive analytics—rather than legacy on-premises IT or descriptive analytics. Structured production-process management and size are significant predictors. Cost and lack of applicable use case are the most cited barriers, followed by expertise. Prior productivity does not predict use, pointing to organizational readiness as a key barrier to AI diffusion.
Journal of Management Studies
Jeffrey G. York
Additional Authors: Raquel Antolin-Lopez, Theodore L. Waldron, Javier Martinez-del-Rio
April 2026
How can diverse sources legitimize new technology when it lacks economic parity? Government policies that endorse nascent technologies play a central role through regulatory legitimation. Yet, we know less about whether inducement policies that incentivize adoption or imposition policies that mandate it are more effective, and how that effectiveness depends on other sources of legitimation. We address this question by examining renewable energy adoption by incumbent electric utilities in the European Union from 1998 to 2009, a period when renewable energy had not yet achieved cost parity with fossil-fuel alternatives. We find that inducement policies were generally more effective than imposition policies in fostering adoption. Further, entrepreneurial entry strengthened the impact of inducement policies through pragmatic legitimation, while pro-environment cultural values strengthened the impact of imposition policies through normative legitimation. By showing how regulatory, pragmatic, and normative legitimation sources interact to shape technology adoption, we offer insights for accelerating technology transitions aimed at combating grand challenges such as climate change.
Management Science
Janet Bercovitz
Additional Authors: Denisa Mindruta, Vlad Mares, Maryann Feldman
Mar. 2025, Vol. 71 Issue 3, p2170-2191.
Although much attention is accorded to star performers, this paper considers the extent to which stars, themselves, benefit from the contribution of their collaborators (the constellation). By considering stars, constellations, and the synergies between them, we address a key question: To what extent is collaboration performance driven by the great individual or by great constellations? We introduce a novel approach that uses a matching model to uncover the complementarities driving collaboration formation. We use formal value-capture theory to estimate the relative contribution of stars and constellations to joint value creation. Analyzing a sample of academic research collaborations, we document that stars' relative contribution exceeds that of their constellations in less than 15% of collaborations, although constellations provide a greater relative contribution in 9%. In most collaborations, neither party dominates: Innovation is a collective endeavor driven equally by the star and the constellation. Joint value creation and relative contribution are explained by the subtle interplay between complementarities in joint work and the substitutability of collaborative parties in the market. Joint value creation increases with the strength of complementarities between parties in a match. Relative value creation, and hence dominance, increases with the substitutability of one's collaborative partner. Interestingly, joint value creation is greatest in collaborations where both stars and constellations offer bundles of rare attributes and where neither the star nor the constellation dominates.
Strategy Science
Janet Bercovitz
Additional Authors: Nicholas Argyres
2025, Volume 10, Issue 2, Pages 166-184.
It has long been argued that acquisitions can enable new owners to make changes to target firms that target owners could not make due to implicit commitments to the target’s stakeholders. The empirical evidence for this idea has been thin, however. We develop evidence for it in data on acquisitions of entire franchise systems. We show that acquisition of these systems tends to result in higher royalty fees, especially in systems in which “entitlement constraints” bind more tightly, namely where multiunit franchising is emphasized and where franchise units are older. The implication is that relieving entitlement constraints may be an important motive for, or at least an additional benefit of, some acquisitions.
Strategic Organization
Ashton Hawk
Additional Authors: Jeffrey J Reuer, Andrew Garofolo
2024, Volume 22, Issue 4, Pages 641-667.
This study focuses on the role of intrinsic speed capabilities, which refer to the ability to execute investment projects faster than competitors, in the attractiveness and selection of alliance partners. We predict that intrinsically faster firms have a higher likelihood of being selected as alliance partners due to the potential of accelerating the realization of future revenue streams of an alliance project as well as of preempting slower competitors. We also expect that intrinsic speed capabilities substitute for deficiencies in alliance experience and firm innovativeness. Using data on construction projects in the global Liquefied Natural Gas industry, we find empirical support for our theoretical expectations. Our results suggest that firm speed plays an important role in alliance partner selection and has the potential to facilitate the generation of future growth options for firms due to greater partner attractiveness in the market for alliance partners.
Organization Science
Ethan Poskanzer
Additional Authors: Brittany Bond
Mar/Apr. 2024, Vol. 35 Issue 2, p698-718.
Abstract: Organizing work around specialized professionals leverages their deep expertise and mastery of particular skills. However, as work becomes more flexible, organizations often require specialists to perform some work outside their specialization. These tasks, which distance specialists from the area of their greatest contribution, could diminish their performance by being distracting or tiring or by creating negative comparisons with others who are more proficient in that work. Contrary to these perspectives, we find robust evidence that specialists' performance can be enhanced, rather than diminished, after work outside their specialization. Using archival data from 22 years of Major League Baseball (MLB) games and interviews with former MLB players and coaches, we find that specialized players perform better in their specialty after obligatory tasks outside of their specialization. We argue that this occurs through a process we call forced task inferiority, in which underperformance in tasks outside their specialty frustrates specialists, generating heightened arousal and drive that they can channel into better performance in their specialty work. The results are robust to alternative mechanisms, such as tasks outside a specialist's area of specialization leading to learning, breaking monotony, or threatening the specialist's professional identity. This research advances knowledge about managing specialists and flexible work arrangements by showing that when tasks are particularly sequenced, specialists' performance can be enhanced, rather than diminished, by doing work outside their specialty.
American Journal of Sociology
Ethan Poskanzer
Additional Authors: Minjae Kim, Ezra Zuckerman Sivan, Oliver Hahl
2024, Volume 130, Issue 1, Page 193-240
This article presents results from a series of online surveys—conducted among American voters during and after the Trump administration—that show how voters from both parties provide explicit moral justification for politicians’ statements that flagrantly violate the norm of fact-grounding. Such justification is inconsistent with prevailing theory, whereby partisan voters’ tendency to mistake misinformation for fact is what drives their positive response to misinformation purveyed by partisan standard-bearers. The studies presented here provide consistent evidence of such factual flexibility. Yet they also provide consistent evidence of moral flexibility, whereby voters justify demagogic fact-flouting as an effective way of proclaiming a deeply resonant political “truth.” A key implication is that political misinformation cannot be fully eliminated by getting voters to distinguish fact from fiction; voters’ moral orientations may be such that they prefer fact-flouting. More general lessons pertain to the role of democratic norms in liberal democracies and to how moral orientations relate to perceived interests.
Organization Science
Ethan Poskanzer
Additional Authors: Alexandra Rheinhardt, Forrest Briscoe
2024, Volume 35, Issue 3, Pages 769-1202.
Despite recognizing potential ramifications for employees who protest in the workplace, researchers rarely explore the career consequences that stem from such instances of workplace protest participation. We integrated research on employee activism, workplace deviance, and careers to theorize that workplace protest represents a perceived deviation from workplace norms that can influence an individual’s organizational and labor market mobility outcomes. We investigated this premise with the 2016 National Football League “take a knee” protests as a strategic research setting. The results indicate that protesting is associated with an increase in organizational exit although this effect is moderated by the degree to which the organization is sensitive to the underlying social movement (with an organization’s movement sensitivity operationalized with a four-part index composed of the team’s managers, personnel decision makers, owners, and customers). Protesting also is associated with labor market sorting across organizations as players who protest are more likely to make subsequent transitions to more movement-sensitive teams compared with players who do not protest. Overall, our findings offer contributions for research on employee activism, workplace deviance, and careers.
Journal of International Business Studies
Tony Tong
Additional Authors: Shihao Zhou, Shaoqin Tang, Daitian Li
2025, Volume 56, Issue 9, Pages 1188–1196
As artificial intelligence (AI) increasingly permeates international business (IB), it raises two critical questions for IB research: (1) How does AI reshape the external environment for firm internationalization? and (2) How do firms adapt their internationalization strategies within this AI-transformed landscape? To address the first question, we argue that the AI era is characterized by the coexistence of multiple AI ecosystems—each rooted in a country’s national AI sectoral system, yet globally interconnected through participants’ across-ecosystem activities. To address the second question, we propose multihoming—firms operating simultaneously across multiple AI ecosystems—as a strategy of internationalization in this new context. We identify three distinctive features of this multihoming perspective and discuss how it advances our understanding of firm internationalization while extending existing IB theories.
Research Policy
Tony Tong
Additional Authors: Nianchen Han, Yuchen Zhang
Sep. 2024, Volume 53 Issue 7, 105028
Research has rarely studied how innovators conduct knowledge search in response to an increased risk that their original ideas may be imitated (i.e., duplicative imitation threat). We address this gap by focusing on a duplicative imitation threat common to digital platforms, which allows for the entry of pirated software at a low cost with rapid distribution and presents a significant appropriability risk to the original software developers. We treat the jailbreak of Apple's iOS 7 that enabled Apple users to install pirated apps as an exogenous shock that increases such a threat, and adopt a quasi-experiment design in our study. Our empirical analysis shows that after the jailbreak, iOS app developers increase their search depth and reduce their search scope compared to Android app developers. Our findings imply that innovators' adjustment in their knowledge search is contingent upon specific characteristics of the imitation threat they face.
Journal of International Business Studies
Tony Tong
Additional Authors: Dan Prud'homme
2024, Volume 55, Issue 1, Pages 91–109
We develop three sets of theoretical boundary conditions for the firm-specific advantages (FSA) and country-specific advantages (CSA) view of intellectual property rights (IPR) in international business. These conditions explain when and where MNEs’ FSAs accrued from IPR assets (IPR-FSAs) are larger or smaller. In terms of IPR assets’ structure, we explicate the conditions creating complementarity problems among MNEs’ IPR that make IPR-FSAs larger, and the conditions under which complementarity problems between MNEs’ IPR and closely related legal rights make IPR-FSAs smaller. In terms of IPR assets’ geographic deployability, we explicate the rare conditions under which certain IPR-FSAs are non-location bound. However, we also explain that most IPR-FSAs are quasi-location-bound, and sometimes can even be fully location-bound, and therefore are smaller for MNEs’ units abroad. In terms of IPR assets’ defensibility, we explicate the conditions allowing IPR to still afford FSAs to MNEs even if the IPR cannot be favorably enforced. We argue that integrating these conditions into the FSA–CSA framework enables it to more precisely explain when and where there are heterogeneities in the size of MNEs’ IPR-FSAs. We also explain how our work can facilitate the empirical study of IPR-FSAs in international business research and guide MNEs’ IPR strategies.
The Review of Economics and Statistics
Mu-Jeung Yang
Additional Authors: Marinho Bertanha, Nathan Seegert
2025, Volume 107, Issue 1, Pages 279–288.
We provide a method to track the active prevalence of COVID-19 in real time, correcting for time-varying sample selection in symptom-based testing data and incomplete tracking of recovered cases and fatalities. Our method only requires publicly available data on positive testing rates in combination with one parameter, which we estimate based on a representative randomized sample of nearly 10,000 individuals tested in Utah in May and June 2020. We validate our method using external studies in Indiana in April 2020 and two counties in Utah in March 2021. In all three locations and times, our estimates of latent prevalence are within the 95 percent confidence intervals of prevalence estimates from randomized testing. Applying our method to all 50 states, we show that true prevalence is 2–3 times higher than publicly reported.