Managerial meta-knowledge and adaptation: Governance choice when firms don’t know their capabilities

How well do managers know the capabilities of the firms they manage? Such knowledge, which we refer to as managerial meta-knowledge, has not been systematically addressed in the management and governance literature—which is problematic, as managerial meta-knowledge influences governance choice. In fact, transaction cost economics, the dominant theory of governance choice in management research, assumes that managers perfectly know the capabilities of their firms. However, micro-level research streams on resource cognition and transactive memory, as well as the knowledge-based view of strategy, suggest that this assumption is not in general warranted: Managers’ meta-knowledge is in general imperfect. We therefore examine the implications of imperfect managerial meta-knowledge for governance choice. The key mechanism we highlight is that imperfect managerial meta-knowledge leads to surprises and frictions in contractual relationships, negatively influences the ability to engage in coordinated adaptation, and is a driver of ex post transaction costs. For these reasons, managerial meta-knowledge holds implications for governance choices, which we summarize in four propositions

Theory in humanitarian operations research

© 2016, Springer Science+Business Media New York. Academic research on humanitarian operations (HO) is growing (Anaya-Arenas et al. in Ann Oper Res 223(1):53–79, 2014; Burkart et al. in Ann Oper Res 1–21, 2016; Duhamel et al. in Ann Oper Res 1–21, 2016). However, attention to and use of relevant theories in associated research is limited (Richey Jr in Int J Phys Distrib Logist Manag 39(7):619–628, 2009). Theories are valuable for cultivating a deeper scholarly understanding of a concept such as humanitarian operations. As such, this paper advocates increased deployment of theory in humanitarian operations research. The paper suggests and analyzes three social science and management theories as worthy of consideration by scholars and practitioners. The paper generates and stimulates new theory driven research ideas and outlines potential directions for future theoretically rigorous investigations of the practice of operations management in humanitarian contexts