Building Micro-Foundations for the Routines, Capabilities, and Performance Links

By P. Abell, Teppo Felin, N. J. Foss. 2007

689 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Micro-foundations have become an important emerging theme in strategic management. This paper addresses micro-foundations in two related ways. First, we argue that the kind of macro (or 'collectivist') explanation that is presently utilized in the capabilities view in strategic management-which implies a neglect of micro-foundations-is incomplete. There are no mechanisms that work solely on the macro-level, directly connecting routines and capabilities to firm-level outcomes. While routines and capabilities are useful shorthand for complicated patterns of individual action and interaction, ultimately they are best understood at the micro-level. Second, we provide a formal model that shows precisely why macro-explanation is incomplete and which exemplifies how explicit micro-foundations may be built for notions of routines and capabilities and how these impact firm performance. Copyright © 2008 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Subfields: Management Science and Operations Research, Strategy and Management

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/1de45cc6711672eba867391b5a91676f00f5254d

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In Management Science and Operations Research

In Strategy and Management

Citations in the corpus

Linking Customer Interaction and Innovation: The Mediating Role of New Organizational Practices (2011, background): “Understanding this issue is crucial because the choice and design of organizational practices to exploit and build on knowledge for innovation depend on how these practices impact on individual motivation and knowledge, and therefore on individual knowledge seeking and sharing behaviors (Abell et al”
CROSSROADS - Microfoundations of Performance: Balancing Efficiency and Flexibility in Dynamic Environments (2010, background): “Yet despite progress, there remains a significant gap in understanding the microfoundations of organizational performance in dynamic environments (Abell et al. 2008, Gavetti 2005, Teece 2007).”
Toward An Integration of the Behavioral and Cognitive Influences on the Entrepreneurship Process (2016, methodology): “In this way, our model complements research on the microfoundations of capabilities, noting the key roles of individuals and their interactions with others that help shape the formation of capabilities (e.g., Abell, Felin, and Foss, 2008; Salvato, 2009).”
What Facilitates Dynamic Capabilities? The Role of Organizational Climate for Trust (2017, background): “First, our study adds to a strand of research concerned with drivers of dynamic capabilities, or their antecedents (e.g., Abell et al., 2008; Gavetti, 2005; Helfat and Peteraf, 2015; Moliterno and Wiersema, 2007; Zollo and Winter, 2002).”
Stakeholder co-creation during the innovation process: Identifying capabilities for knowledge creation among multiple stakeholders (2016, background): “These individual skills and routines, and their interactions, underlie each specific capability (Abell et al., 2008; Felin et al., 2012).”
CEO Power and Risk Taking: Evidence from the Subprime Lending Industry (2012, neutral): “, 2009), and answers calls within the broader strategic management literature to build individual-level origins, or micro-foundations for firmlevel phenomena (Abell et al., 2008; Eisenhardt et al., 2010; Felin & Foss, 2005).”
Microfoundations of Routines and Capabilities: Individuals, Processes, and Structure (2012, neutral): “These range from analytical methods (Abell et al., 2008), simulations (e.”