Seminar (Dept. of General Management)

Theme：Relational Structure and Similarity in Organizational Strategy: The Roles of Individuals in Interorganizational Relationships

Speaker：Jing Ping （Yale University）

Time：2021-12-09 10:40

Address：Zoom Meeting

Language：Chinese

Venue：Zoom Meeting https://zoom.us/j/86163135593?pwd=SjgzZ0lCazcxVy93NE4vZkhiNkVydz09

Meeting ID：861 6313 5593

Password：531757

ABSTRACT：

Interorganizational relationships are maintained by individuals. This study examines how the individual relational structure underpinning interorganizational relationships affects strategic similarity between organizations. I propose that connections within and across individual and organizational levels influence the internal and external processes that shape the information transfer and mutual trust of organizations. Using data on 4.3 million housing transactions in California from 2009 to 2018, I find that two real estate offices are more likely to have similar pricing strategies in the future when agents conducting current interoffice transactions previously worked for the partner office. However, the two offices are less likely to have similar strategies when the agents involved had prior interpersonal relationships. I also find that having multiple agents involved in a current exchange of two offices undermines the similarity of their pricing strategies in the future, but the extensive experience of agents can alleviate this negative effect. Taken together, these findings suggest that relational structure not only serves as the interface for organizations’ absorbing external resources, but also shapes the attribution of social capital between individuals and organizations and the intraorganizational process of information integration, which then influence organizational strategic similarity.

SHORT BIOGRAPHY：

Jing Ping is a Doctoral Candidate in the Department of Sociology at Yale University. She received her Master’s Degree in Economics at the University of Michigan-Ann Arbor in 2016. Her research interests lie in the areas of interorganizational relationships, business strategic networks, and community. She studies how complex social structure shapes the behaviors, relationships, and performances of organizations and individuals. She has been embracing the emerging big data and computational methods in her research projects and working on different empirical settings, including real estate industry and biotechnology industry.