Microfoundations for Strategy: A Goal-Framing Perspective on the Drivers of Value Creation

By N. J. Foss, Siegwart Lindenberg. 2013

249 citations recorded by the source corpus.

Scholars increasingly seek to proffer microfoundations for macro management theory, notably strategic management theory. These microfoundations naturally revolve around human resources. We argue that proper microfoundations for strategic management theory must recognize that the management of motivation is first and foremost a matter of the management of cognitions of organizational members, an insight we found in goal-framing theory, an emerging perspective based on cognitive science, behavioral economics, and social psychology. Building on this insight, we argue that a key reason why strategic goals matter to firm performance—that is, firm-level value creation and value capture and sustained competitive heterogeneity—is that such goals influence value creation rooted in employee motivations. Unfolding this idea allows us to generate new insight into the relations among value creation, strategic leadership, and strategic goals.

Subfields: Organizational Behavior and Human Resource Management, Safety Research, Strategy and Management

View Paper: https://www.semanticscholar.org/paper/5891e9ea3c7eb4a9a2f60f5f4307ea7c9baf79f4

How researchers see this paper

The researchers whose trusted networks rank it highest, strongest advocate first. Every researcher gets a different order.

In Organizational Behavior and Human Resource Management

1. Alfredo De Massis
2. Emanuel Gomes
3. Nadine H. Kammerlander
4. Stephen Brammer
5. Shlomo Yedidia Y. Tarba
6. T. Coltman
7. Paul P. Tallon
8. Rajeev Sharma

In Safety Research

1. Abraham Carmeli
2. David B. Audretsch
3. Alfredo De Massis
4. Stephen Brammer
5. Nadine H. Kammerlander
6. L. Uhlaner

In Strategy and Management

1. Rajeev Sharma
2. T. Coltman
3. Magno Queiroz
4. Alfredo De Massis
5. Emanuel Gomes
6. Paul P. Tallon
7. Abraham Carmeli
8. David B. Audretsch

Citations in the corpus

• Institutional Distance and Foreign Subsidiary Performance in Emerging Markets: Moderating Effects of Ownership Strategy and Host-Country Experience (2016, unknown): “, processes, routines, paths, organizational structures, decision rules, and disciplines—has argued that these are important drivers of the performance of firms (Felin et al. 2012; Foss and Lindenberg 2013; Teece 2007), including MNEs (e.”
• Innovation with Limited Resources: Management Lessons from the German Mittelstand (2018, background): “By examining strategy execution (Chrisman, Chua, De Massis, Minola, and Vismara, 2016) in a successful type of firm, this study generates new insights into the relation between innovation leading to competitive advantage, resource endowment, and strategic goals (Foss and Lindenberg, 2013).”
• Strategic IT alignment: twenty-five years on (2015, background): “To advance the micro-foundations notion, scholars would need to consider the way that strategic choices can be aggregated across actors and time to predict performance (Foss and Lindenberg, 2013).”
• An organizational ethic of care and employee involvement in sustainability-related behaviors: A social identity perspective (2017, background): “An emergent stream of research in the fields of organization theory and strategy points to the importance of micro-foundations in explaining higher-level phenomena (Barney & Felin, 2013; Felin & Foss, 2005; Foss, 2011; Foss & Linderberg, 2013; Powell, Lovallo, & Fox, 2011).”