(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2008-07-08)
Murtha, Brian Robert
This thesis consists of two central Parts. Part 1 examines the extent to which an agent s transaction-specific investments (TSIs) in a customer relationship increase his/her concerns for opportunism by his/her own co-workers. Thus, unlike prior research in marketing that examines opportunism by the recipient of TSIs, I show that agents become concerned with opportunism by non-recipients of TSIs. I then introduce novel moderators that shape the relationship between TSIs and concerns for internal opportunism. Importantly, I also show that in response to concerns for internal opportunism, agents will engage in internal safeguarding behaviors. Notably, unlike external safeguards between firms which tend to benefit firms (e.g., relational norms), I show that internal safeguarding has a deleterious effect on performance. I test the set of hypotheses with data collected from two sources: account managers and their supervisors.
In Part 2, I advance the emerging view on customer solutions by simultaneously examining the networks within and between selling and buying teams involved in the development and deployment of complex customer solutions. Such a concurrent within-and-between perspective helps to bridge research on buying and selling teams, which prior research tends to examine only in isolation of each other. This research also extends the literature by showing how within-team network characteristics interact with between-team network characteristics to affect solution effectiveness. Notably, I advance the literature by moving beyond firm-level and individual-level dyads to team-level dyads and introduce a new network characteristic mirrored ties to help our understanding of the interactions between these dyads. I develop my hypotheses in the context of a sales team selling a complex customer solution to a buying team and test the hypotheses using an innovative, picture-based conjoint field experiment from 233 purchasing managers.
(Georgia Institute of Technology, 2005-07-20)
Vincent, Leslie Harris
The key objective of Part I is to synthesize 23 years of innovation research findings from economic, strategy, and marketing literatures and extend the current theoretical knowledge base in these domains through meta-analysis. In general, empirical evidence of the nature of the relationship between innovation and its antecedents and consequences is provided, while at the same time providing answers to conflicting conclusions within this field. The conclusions reached provide a more comprehensive understanding of the drivers of innovation as well as the implications associated with the phenomena. In addition, this study seeks to aid in building a strong theoretical foundation relating to the nature of the relationship of innovation with key antecedents and outcomes. It is demonstrated that innovation serves as a partial mediator of the relationships between organizational and environmental antecedents and firm performance.
Part II builds upon the innovation foundations set forth in Part I and extends the focus to consider how innovations are commercialized outside traditional organizational boundaries. Drawing upon the Resource-based view of the firm, the impact of two dynamic capabilities (network ties and absorptive capacity) on marketing strategy formulation effectiveness is explored. Utilizing a unique sample of university pre-startup teams, this research is able to track these teams over time (longitudinal research design) and provide an empirical examination of the role of dynamic capabilities in the effective formulation of marketing strategies. There has been very little empirical research on the formation of strategies at the team level and furthermore, even less research examining marketing strategy making for technologies that were developed outside traditional organizational boundaries and without a predefined market application. Overall, this research will not only contribute significantly to the current innovation and marketing strategy literature, but will also open up new avenues of research in marketing entrepreneurship.