Publications
Mawdsley, J.K., Paolella, L., & Durand, R. A Rivalry-Based Theory of Gender Diversity. 2023. Strategic Management Journal, 44(5): 1254-1291.
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We offer a rivalry-based perspective of gender diversity as a form of competitive action. We theorize that a firm adjusts its senior-level female representation when they identify business opportunities that may be seized by demonstrating alignment to gender parity expectations. Examining US corporate law firms and potential buyers of their services, we theorize and find that when the buyers of rivals of the focal firm increase their gender diversity, the focal firm responds by increasing its female partner representation. Reinforcing the strategic approach to managing gender diversity, we also show that a focal firm reduces its gender-related response to rivals’ buyers as the opportunity to attract those buyers decreases, and when the focal firm can use racial diversity as a credible substitute for gender diversity.
Mawdsley, J.K., Meyer-Doyle, P., & Chatain, O. 2022. Client-Related Factors and Collaboration between Human Assets. Organization Science, 33(2): 518-540.
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Collaboration between individuals in firms has important implications for the development of relational and human capital and is thus of critical concern to individuals and firms alike. In knowledge-intensive contexts where collaborations are formed to deliver services to clients, collaboration decisions can involve non-trivial trade-offs between short-term and long-term collaboration performance. Individuals and firms must carefully manage the trade-offs between leveraging existing relational and human capital to realize predictable performance of repeat collaboration, and creating new relational and human capital through new collaboration which involves greater performance uncertainty. Building from the premise that serving clients is central to decision-making by autonomous individuals in human asset intensive firms, we examine how client-related factors shape collaboration choices among lawyers (partners) in UK law firms. We focus on three key client-related dimensions that we predict govern collaboration decisions: the depth of individual-and firm-level relationships with the focal client, key client attributes that reflect the client’s status and the use of different firms to undertake its outsourced work, and individual-and firm-level resource constraint at the time of the focal deal due to the demand experienced from clients. Our empirical findings support our proposition that client-related factors influence the patterns of collaboration between individuals in firms. We also reveal how client-related factors at the individual level can have opposite effects on collaboration decisions than at the firm level. Overall, our findings contribute to the research literatures on relational capital, strategic human capital, and professional service firms.
Mawdsley, J.K., & Somaya, D. 2021. Relational Embeddedness, Breadth of Added Value Opportunities, and Business Growth. Organization Science, 32(4): 1009-1032.
The current paper complements and extends traditional Penrosean theories of firm growth by examining how a (supplier) firm’s relational embeddedness with its portfolio of existing buyers affects its business growth. Our theorizing rests on the foundation that a firm’s business growth stems from its breadth (or volume) of opportunities for creating added value with buyers, which more fully realizes the Penrosean vision that firm growth can be explained by a dynamic interaction between productive resources and demand-side market opportunities. While relational embeddedness may give a supplier dyadic advantages with focal buyers, which supports business growth, we theorize that it can also lead to narrower added value business opportunities with the supplier’s entire portfolio of buyers. Critically, we hypothesize that the effect of relational embeddedness on business growth is moderated by a set of relational and demand-side attributes. These hypotheses are tested on a panel dataset of patent law firms (suppliers) and their relationships with corporate clients (buyers). We find that greater relational embeddedness is associated with slower supplier business growth, and consistent with our hypotheses, this negative effect is alleviated when these firms have greater cross-servicing ability and receive more relational commitment from buyers, but exacerbated when suppliers hold more buyer-specific knowledge and when buyers undertake more (internal) concurrent sourcing. In turn, our research demonstrates how the attributes of a supplier’s relationships with its portfolio of buyers can impact access to new business opportunities, and thus opens up new directions for research on firm growth, demand-side strategy and buyer-supplier relationships.
Coff, R., El-Zayaty, A., Ganco, M., & Mawdsley, J.K. 2020. Firm-Specific Human Capital at the Crossroads: A Conversation on Current Issues and Future Directions in Tzabbar, D, & Cirillo, B. (eds.) Employee Mobility: A Conversation Across Disciplines and Setting a New Agenda. Advances in Strategic Management v41.
Firm-specific human capital (FSHC) has been an integral part of the vocabulary in the Strategy field. Many scholars argue that FSHC inhibits employee mobility, drives employee retention at a discount, value appropriation and firms’ competitive advantage. FSHC also plays a central role in the Resource-Based View of the firm. In recent years, however, a significant debate has emerged on the validity and usefulness of the construct. The purpose of the chapter is to revisit this debate and discuss both challenges and opportunities related to FSHC. In a form of conversation, we take aim at the FSHC from different angles and discuss its role as a mobility friction, in value appropriation of established firms, in the context of transitions between paid employment and entrepreneurship, and in the views of practitioners. While we agree that our understanding of the concept of FSHC must evolve, we continue to see its value in our theoretical toolbox.
Mawdsley, J.K., & Somaya, D. 2018. Demand-Side Strategy, Relational Advantage and Partner-Driven Corporate Scope: The Case for Client-Led Diversification, Strategic Management Journal, 39(7): 1834-1859.
We advance research on corporate diversification by joining insights from the demand-side and relational views in strategy to offer a novel theory of client-led diversification. We propose that client-led diversification results from a combination of the customer-driven opportunities emphasized in the demand-side view and the creation of added value through relational assets that is a central tenet of the relational view. Furthermore, we hypothesize that suppliers’ client-specific knowledge, clients’ relational commitment to suppliers, and growth opportunities in clients’ markets (relative to the suppliers’ own markets) will magnify the client-led diversification effect. We test our hypotheses using a longitudinal dataset on patent law firms and their diversification into new domains of patent prosecution work for their corporate clients.
Mawdsley, J.K., & Somaya, D. 2016. Employee Mobility and Organizational Outcomes: An Integrative Conceptual Framework and Research Agenda. Journal of Management, 42(1):85-113.
A large and growing literature spanning multiple fields has identified employee mobility as a critical influence on several important organizational outcomes. However, extant research on the topic is highly fragmented and lacks a unifying theoretical framework, impeding the development of a cumulative conceptually integrated body of research. We seek to remedy this situation by undertaking a review of research on employee mobility and its organizational impacts and casting it within a novel integrative conceptual framework. As a critical foundation for this framework, we highlight how the various organizational impacts of employee mobility are ultimately engendered by different dimensions of human and/or relational capital that are conveyed by mobile individuals. Building on this foundation, we describe how multilevel contextual factors—characterized as attributes of the employee, source and destination firms, and environmental conditions—may moderate the transfer and utilization of human and relational capital held by mobile individuals. Finally, we review how constraining factors, such as labor market imperfections on both demand and supply sides, can impede employee mobility and also how alternative competing channels—for example, alliances, networks and geographic spillovers, and acquisitions—may be used for effectuating the same organizational impacts as mobility events. These constraints and competing channels are important because they circumscribe the conditions under which employee mobility can be a critical influence on organizational outcomes. We seek to provide a rich integrative theoretical understanding of employee mobility and spur future research on important unanswered research questions.
Mawdsley, J.K., & Somaya, D. 2016. Strategy & Strategic Alignment in Professional Service Firms; in Empson, L., Muzio, D., Broschak, J., Hinings, B. (eds.), The Oxford Handbook of Professional Service Firms, Oxford: Oxford University Press.
This chapter reviews the strategic management choices that are central to professional service firms (PSFs), which in turn undergird their competitive advantage and long run performance. In the first part of the chapter we focus on human capital as a critical resource for PSFs, and explore different ways in which firm value is created by attracting, developing, configuring and leveraging human capital. Further, it is critical that PSFs’ human capital be aligned with and harnessed to the firm’s objectives, which naturally raises issues related to motivating professionals, the sharing of economic rents with (and among) them, and the overall governance of the firm. We then draw on these building blocks of strategy in PSFs in the second half of the chapter to explain the corporate strategy decisions (such as service and geographic diversification) that PSFs must make, and discuss the value creating role of client relationships.
