Entry and Exit Decisions in Flexible Teams

35 Pages Posted: 27 Jun 2007 Last revised: 10 Feb 2008

See all articles by Thorbjorn Knudsen

Thorbjorn Knudsen

University of Southern Denmark - Department of Marketing & Management - Strategic Organization Design Unit (SOD)

Michael Christensen

University of Southern Denmark - Department of Marketing & Management - Strategic Organization Design Unit (SOD)

Date Written: March 28, 2007

Abstract

The present study identifies a major limitation of current research on multinational corporations (MNCs). Joint decision making in a distributed setting is of critical importance in practice, but has received little attention in our theories. To address this gap in the knowledge, we examine the effects of flexible decision teams when MNCs assess turbulent markets. Remarkably, flexible teams comprised of fallible evaluators can outperform what is usually thought of as an optimal decision. Our main result supports the claims advanced in recent empirical studies. Structural flexibility can help MNCs achieve high levels of performance even in conditions of turbulence. flexibility can help MNCs employing (very) fallible evaluators achieve high levels of performance even in conditions of turbulence.

Keywords: Organization Theory, Decision-Taking Structures, Industrial Organization, Entry and Exit Decisions, Market Turmoil, Flexible Teams

JEL Classification: D21, D83, F23, M10

Suggested Citation

Knudsen, Thorbjorn and Christensen, Michael, Entry and Exit Decisions in Flexible Teams (March 28, 2007). Available at SSRN: https://ssrn.com/abstract=996736 or http://dx.doi.org/10.2139/ssrn.996736

Thorbjorn Knudsen (Contact Author)

University of Southern Denmark - Department of Marketing & Management - Strategic Organization Design Unit (SOD) ( email )

Faculty of Social Sciences
Campusvej 55
DK-5230 Odense
Denmark

HOME PAGE: http://www.sdu.dk/sod

Michael Christensen

University of Southern Denmark - Department of Marketing & Management - Strategic Organization Design Unit (SOD) ( email )

Campusvej 55
Odense, DK-5230 M
Denmark