Essays of strategic alliance portfolio configuration—Its performance properties, strategic antecedents and consequential effects on multinational firms' continuing foreign expansion

This dissertation focused on an increasingly prevalent phenomenon in today's global business environment—strategic alliance portfolio. Building on resource-based view, resource dependency theory and real options theory, this dissertation adopted a multi-dimensional perspective to examine the performance implications, strategic antecedents of alliance portfolio configuration, and its strategic effects on firms' decision-making on their continuing foreign expansion. The dissertation consisted of three interrelated essays, each of which dealt with a specific research question. In the first essay I applied a two-dimensional construct that embraces both alliance relations' and alliance partners' attributes to illustrate alliance portfolio configuration. Based on this framework, a longitudinal study was conducted attempting to explore the performance properties of alliance portfolio configuration. The results revealed that alliance diversity and partner diversity have different relative contributions to firms' economic performance. The relationship between alliance portfolio configuration and firm performance was shaped by degree of multinationality in a curvilinear pattern. The second essay attempted to identify the firm level driving forces of alliance portfolio configuration and how these forces interacting with firms' internationalization influence firms' strategic choices on alliance portfolio configuration. The empirical results indicated that past alliance experience, slack resource and firms' brand images are three critical determinants shaping alliance portfolios, but those shaping relationships are conditioned by firms' multinationality. The third essay primarily employed real options theory to build a conceptual framework, revealing how country-, alliance portfolio-, firm-, and industry level factors and their interactions influence firms' strategic decision-making on post-entry continuing expansion in foreign markets. The two empirical studies were resided in global hospitality and travel industries and use panel data to test the relevant theoretical models. Overall, the dissertation advanced and enriched the theoretical domain of alliance portfolio. It particularly shed valuable insights on three fundamental questions in the domain of alliance portfolio research, namely "if and how alliance portfolios contribute to firms' economic performance"; "what determines the appearance of alliance portfolios”; and "how alliance portfolios affect firms' strategic decision-making". This dissertation also extended the international business and strategic management research on service multinationals' foreign expansion and performance.

CEO Humility: Development of an Unobtrusive Measure and Strategic Implications

Over the past 30 years, the Upper Echelons perspective of strategic management has sought to explain a given organization’s strategies and effectiveness as a reflection of the differences in personality, background, and other characteristics of the senior executives that guides each organization. An important stream of research within this field has linked a firm’s strategy to the grandiose way that executives are often thought to view themselves – namely through examining the narcissism, core self-evaluations (CSE), and hubris of Chief Executive Officers (CEOs). In this dissertation, I focus on understanding the strategic impact of CEO humility – a trait that has often been erroneously thought of to represent a poor view of oneself. Consistent with ancient writings and recent research, humility is defined herein as a multi-faceted trait that is the common core of four dimensions: self-awareness, developmental orientation/teachability, appreciation of others' strengths and contributions, and low self-focus. In the first essay, I explore the conceptual relevance and various potential implications of executive humility. Drawing on existing empirical research about the humility construct and general behavioral implications of humility, I argue that executive humility is a critical avenue toward a more rich and nuanced understanding of the delicate interplay and implications of executive self-concept. In essay two, I develop and validate an unobtrusive measure of CEO humility. Ten indicators of humility are suggested and then validated using a self-reported survey administered to a sample of 30 U.S. and Canadian CEOs. Two behaviors were found to be significantly positively related to self-reported humility: CEOs who volunteered some of their time for non-profit organizations and CEO’s who reported that part of their own firm’s success was due to the help of the board of directors. In essay three, I examine the relationship between the level of CEO humility and four firm-level outcomes. Employing a sample of 163 CEOs appointed to S&P 500 firms between 2005-2008, I show that firms led by humble CEOs (measured by the unobtrusive indicators) tend to outperform others in regards to corporate social performance, while at the same time showing that their financial performance is generally no better or worse.