Activities
Distinguished Speaker Series
Intended to be different from a traditional research paper seminar, the ISOI Distinguished Speaker Series focuses on opinion, viewpoints, and debate about our research field(s), and also to make a connection to practice. Since 2021, ISOI has invited leading academic speakers and those with experience leading organizations to participate in the Distinguished Speaker Series on the Past, Present, and Future of Strategic Organizations.
Andy Hoffman
Holcim (US), Inc. Professor of Sustainable Enterprise
University of Michigan
Rebecca Henderson
John and Natty McArthur University Professor
Harvard University
Paula Jarzabkowski
Professor of Strategic Management
University of Queensland & University of London
ISOI Research Paper Award
This award is presented annually to a published journal article or book that embodies and furthers the mission of ISOI, which is to address unmet demand by academic communities and corporations for transdisciplinary research in strategic organizational design and management. To be eligible for the ISOI Research Award, the journal article or book must have been authored or co-authored by a University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign faculty member and published within the last five years.
2024 Winner
Arkadiy Sakhartov
Associate Professor of Business Administration
“Corporate Diversification and Risk: Portfolio Effects and Resource Redeployability,” published in Strategy Science. READ PAPER
ABSTRACT: By analogy with portfolio diversification by stock market investors, managers and researchers have often expected that firms that spread operations across product or geographic markets reduce risk. However, numerous exploratory studies in corporate strategy and in international business have not been able to robustly confirm this expectation. This study develops a formal model to scrutinize implications of corporate diversification for corporate risk. The model incorporates the key distinction of corporate diversification, economies of scope, that qualifies the analogy between corporate and portfolio diversification. The presence of a particular type of economies of scope, resource redeployability, not only inherently increases risk but it can also raise risk over the level in undiversified firms. The model uses determinants of resource redeployability from previous research to derive conditions with which corporate diversification enhances risk. The developed elaborate operationalization of corporate risk should facilitate future research and help corporate managers.
Past Winners
2023: Sonali Shah, Associate Professor of Business Administration
"Jewels in the Crown: Exploring the motivations and team building processes of employee entrepreneurs," coauthored with Rajshree Agarwal (Maryland) and Raj Echambadi (Northeastern) and published in Strategic Management Journal. READ PAPER
2022: Fiona Kun Yao, Assistant Professor of Business Administration
"Do Individual Employees' Learning Goal Orientation and Civic Virtue Matter? A Micro‐Foundations Perspective on Firm Absorptive Capacity," coauthored with Song Chang (Hong Kong Baptist University) and published in Strategic Management Journal. READ PAPER
2021: Gopesh Anand, Professor of Business Administration
"Sustainable process improvements: Evidence from intervention‐based research," coauthored with Aravind Chandrasekaran (Ohio State) and Luv Sharma (South Carolina) and published in Journal of Operations Management. READ PAPER