Incentives and ratcheting in a multiproduct firm: a field experiment

We develop a model and derive behavioral predictions for a multiproduct sales force subject to goals set based on past performance. We test these predictions using a field experiment in which 53 salespersons from a Chilean beverage company face exogenous variations in monthly sales goals. Confirming our predictions, we found that (1) absent strategic considerations—no goal ratcheting—salespersons increase (decrease) sales in the product category for which the return to effort increases (decreases), (2) including strategic considerations behavior reverses: salespersons who expect high goal ratcheting decrease (increase) sales in the category for which the return to effort increases (decreases), (3) sales did not change for the average salespersons, reflecting heterogeneity in the expectations of goal ratcheting rather than unresponsiveness to incentives. Our study points at the importance of the dynamics of incentive design, in particular, the importance of understanding the dynamics of goal setting in firms

Can firms be both broad and deep? Exploring interdependencies between horizontal and vertical firm scope

Firms can be horizontally diversified, with considerable breadth, or vertically integrated, with great depth. This study explores how breadth and depth affect each other as influenced by capability requirements and coordination demands. Using construction industry data, we assess the interdependence between contractors’ portfolios of building types (horizontal scope) and the extent of integration of the activities needed to complete each project (vertical scope). We find that vertical and horizontal scope have a negative interdependency only when contractors face managerial constraints due to coordination challenges. Further, we show that this effect can be mitigated through organizational structures that centralize key functions. Our findings highlight the importance of coordination in the theory of the firm, as we link firm boundaries to managerial coordination and internal organization

Search for associations containing young stars (SACY) VII. New stellar and substellar candidate members in the young associations

The young associations offer us one of the best opportunities to study the properties of young stellar and substellar objects and to directly image planets thanks to their proximity ($<$200 pc) and age ($\approx$5-150 Myr). However, many previous works have been limited to identifying the brighter, more active members ($\approx$1 M$_\odot$) owing to photometric survey sensitivities limiting the detections of lower mass objects. We search the field of view of 542 previously identified members of the young associations to identify wide or extremely wide (1000-100,000 au in physical separation) companions. We combined 2MASS near-infrared photometry ($J$, $H$, $K$) with proper motion values (from UCAC4, PPMXL, NOMAD) to identify companions in the field of view of known members. We collated further photometry and spectroscopy from the literature and conducted our own high-resolution spectroscopic observations for a subsample of candidate members. This complementary information allowed us to assess the efficiency of our method. We identified 84 targets (45: 0.2-1.3 M$_\odot$, 17: 0.08-0.2 M$_\odot$, 22: $<$0.08 M$_\odot$) in our analysis, ten of which have been identified from spectroscopic analysis in previous young association works. For 33 of these 84, we were able to further assess their membership using a variety of properties (X-ray emission, UV excess, H$_\alpha$, lithium and K I equivalent widths, radial velocities, and CaH indices). We derive a success rate of 76-88% for this technique based on the consistency of these properties. Once confirmed, the targets identified in this work would significantly improve our knowledge of the lower mass end of the young associations. Additionally, these targets would make an ideal new sample for the identification and study of planets around nearby young stars.Comment: 28 pages, 24 figures, accepted in A&

An eccentric companion at the edge of the brown dwarf desert orbiting the 2.4 Msun giant star HIP67537

We report the discovery of a substellar companion around the giant star HIP67537. Based on precision radial velocity measurements from CHIRON and FEROS high-resolution spectroscopic data, we derived the following orbital elements for HIP67537$\,b$: m$_b$sin$i$ = 11.1$^{+0.4}_{-1.1}$ M$_{\rm {\tiny jup}}$, $a$ = 4.9$^{+0.14}_{-0.13}$ AU and $e$ = 0.59$^{+0.05}_{-0.02}$. Considering random inclination angles, this object has $\gtrsim$ 65% probability to be above the theoretical deuterium-burning limit, thus it is one of the few known objects in the planet to brown-dwarf transition region. In addition, we analyzed the Hipparcos astrometric data of this star, from which we derived a minimum inclination angle for the companion of $\sim$ 2 deg. This value corresponds to an upper mass limit of $\sim$ 0.3 M$_\odot$, therefore the probability that HIP67537$\,b$ is stellar in nature is $\lesssim$ 7%. The large mass of the host star and the high orbital eccentricity makes HIP67537$\,b$ a very interesting and rare substellar object. This is the second candidate companion in the brown dwarf desert detected in the sample of intermediate-mass stars targeted by the EXPRESS radial velocity program, which corresponds to a detection fraction of $f$ = 1.6$^{+2.0}_{-0.5}$%. This value is larger than the fraction observed in solar-type stars, providing new observational evidence of an enhanced formation efficiency of massive substellar companions in massive disks. Finally, we speculate about different formation channels for this object.Comment: Accepted for publication to A&

Cultural Evolution Theory and Organizations

Fully explaining organizational phenomena requires exploring not only “how” a phenomenon works – i.e., the details of its internal structure and mechanisms – but also “why” the phenomenon is present in the first place – i.e., explaining its origins and the ultimate reasons for its existence. The latter is particularly important for central questions in organizational research such as the nature of organizations, the evolution of organizational culture, or the origin of organizational capabilities. In this article, we propose that cultural evolution theory (CET) can be usefully applied to organizational scholarship to pursue such “origin” questions. CET has adapted ideas and methods from evolutionary biology to successfully explain the evolution of culture in human societies, exploring the origins of various social phenomena such as religion, technological progress, large-scale cooperation, and cross-cultural psychological variation. We elaborate how CET can be also applied to understand the evolution and origin of important organizational phenomena. We discuss how CET provides ultimate explanations using micro-evolutionary formal models and deploying macro-evolutionary tools for empirical analysis. We provide a detailed application of these ideas to explain the origin of productive organizations (e.g., firms, partnerships, guilds). We also propose several avenues for future research; in particular, we explore how CET can serve as an overarching theoretical framework that helps integrate the myriad of theories that explain how organizations operate and evolve

Toward an integrated theory of the firm: The interplay between internal organization and vertical integration

Two central issues in strategic management are the determination of a firm's internal delegation and its vertical boundaries. Despite the importance of these issues, there is scant analysis concerning their interaction. Using a comprehensive database of the construction industry, we show that vertical integration positively influences the centralization decision and that the main mechanism driving this relationship is an improvement in the hierarchically coordinated adaptation of firm activities when complexity and uncertainty are high. We also observe that centralization is negatively related to the extent of relational contracts between principals and agents, and positively related to an exogenous increase in the cost of employee layoffs. Our results suggest that managers cannot consider firm boundaries and internal organization to be independent decisions

The evolution of productive organizations

Organizations devoted to the production of goods and services, such as guilds, partnerships and modern corporations, have dominated the economic landscape in our species’ history. We develop an explanation for their evolution drawing from cultural evolution theory. A basic tenet of this theory is that social learning, under certain conditions, allows for the diffusion of innovations in society, and therefore, the accumulation of culture. Our model shows that these organizations provide such conditions by possessing two characteristics, both prevalent in real world organizations: exclusivity of membership and more effective social learning within their boundaries. The model and its extensions parsimoniously explains the cooperative nature of the social learning advantage, organizational specialization, organizational rigidity and the locus of innovation. We find supportive evidence for our predictions using a sample of pre-modern societies drawn from the Ethnographic Atlas. Understanding the nature of these organizations informs the debate about their role in society

Organizational Culture, Adaptation, and Performance

Prior research emphasizes how organizational culture can hinder organizational adaptation. In this study, we investigate how organizational culture can help promote organizational adaptation to environmental changes, using a formal model from cultural evolution theory. In the model, organizational members face a trade-off between innovating versus following tradition (because environmental changes are uncertain). Members can also decide to help others who are following the tradition, thereby improving its diffusion. Organizational leaders shape the culture of their organization, which influences members’ decisions to choose innovation or tradition or to help others following tradition. Culture comprises two dimensions: beliefs and prosocial values. We find that increasing the accuracy of beliefs leads to improvements in both innovation and following tradition, thereby mitigating the trade-off between them and boosting adaptation and performance. On prosocial values, we find that increasing their intensity reduces the cost of following tradition but at the expense of reduced adaptation, resulting in an inverted-U relationship between intensity of prosocial values and performance. Overall, we show how leaders can fine-tune the dimensions of organizational culture to foster improvements in adaptation and performance. The formal model we introduce is novel to the literature and offers a way of studying adaptation to a changing environment and to incorporate social learning into models of adaptation under bounded rationality. Funding: J. Poblete was supported by Instituto Sistemas Complejos de Ingenieria [Grant ANID PIA/PUENTE AFB230002]. Supplemental Material: The online appendix is available at https://doi.org/10.1287/orsc.2022.16791

Four new planets around giant stars and the mass-metallicity correlation of planet-hosting stars

CONTEXT. Exoplanet searches have demonstrated that giant planets are preferentially found around metal-rich stars and that their fraction increases with the stellar mass. AIMS. During the past six years, we have conducted a radial velocity follow-up program of 166 giant stars, to detect substellar companions, and characterizing their orbital properties. Using this information, we aim to study the role of the stellar evolution in the orbital parameters of the companions, and to unveil possible correlations between the stellar properties and the occurrence rate of giant planets. METHODS. Using FEROS and CHIRON spectra, we have computed precision radial velocities and we have derived atmospheric and physical parameters for all of our targets. Additionally, velocities computed from UCLES spectra are presented here. By studying the periodic radial velocity signals, we have detected the presence of several substellar companions. RESULTS. We present four new planetary systems around the giant stars HIP8541, HIP74890, HIP84056 and HIP95124. Additionally, we find that giant planets are more frequent around metal-rich stars, reaching a peak in the detection of $f$ = 16.7$^{+15.5}_{-5.9}$% around stars with [Fe/H] $\sim$ 0.35 dex. Similarly, we observe a positive correlation of the planet occurrence rate with the stellar mass, between M$_\star$ $\sim$ 1.0 -2.1 M$_\odot$, with a maximum of $f$ = 13.0$^{+10.1}_{-4.2}$%, at M$_\star$ = 2.1 M$_\odot$. CONCLUSIONS. We conclude that giant planets are preferentially formed around metal-rich stars. Also, we conclude that they are more efficiently formed around more massive stars, in the mass range of M$_\star$ $\sim$ 1.0 - 2.1 M$_\odot$. These observational results confirm previous findings for solar-type and post-MS hosting stars, and provide further support to the core-accretion formation model.Comment: Accepted for publication in A&