Mooweon Rhee

In this paper, we explore opposing theoretical claims about how organizational reputation affects market reactions to product defects. On the one hand, good reputation could be a disadvantage because expectations about product quality are more likely to be violated by defects in highly reputed products. On the other hand, a good reputation could be an advantage because of strong inertial effects on reputation orderings. We empirically test these competing hypotheses using data on product recalls

Scholars have demonstrated substantial interest in the exploration–exploitation framework since the publication of March, James G (born 1928) seminal paper in 1991. The notions of exploration and exploitation and the trade-offs between them are briefly introduced, followed by investigation of their origins within March and his colleagues’ earlier works. Finally, current issues, especially those regarding conceptualizations and assumptions underlying the trade-offs between them, are discussed.

We explore the contextual factors surrounding reputation damage and their potential implications for reputation repair. We propose a model that examines how (1) the multidimensional property of reputation, (2) organizational age, (3) the diversity of market segments served by the organization, and (4) third parties influence a firm's perceived capability to cope with a reputation-damaging event and the external visibility of the event, which, in turn, determine the difficulty of the firm's reput

This article proposes that specific features of environmental dynamism and the notion of internal variety should be taken into consideration in response to caveats in prior research on choice or balance between exploration and exploitation and its implications for organizational performance. The study extends March's exploration—exploitation model by (1) conceptualizing and varying two dimensions — amplitude and frequency — of environmental dynamism and (2) articulating the notion of internal va

Our study examines the imitation behavior of UK automobile manufacturers from 1894 to 1981 and supports previous studies on interorganizational imitation by showing that manufacturers tend to imitate other manufacturers that are similar. We also find that the degree of confidence manufacturers have in their imitating behavior affects the intensity of that behavior, where an organization’s confidence is determined by the variance of the routines used by its reference group and the number of firms

This study warns organizations against falling into an “early success trap.” The timing of initial success may lead organizations to divergent evolutionary paths as their experience at early ages has a greater consequence for their evolution than does their experience at later ages. In particular, we propose that early initial success can be more detrimental to an organization’s performance and survivability than later initial success because exploratory competence takes a long time to develop.

abstract In this study I examine the effect of a firm's reputation for product quality on its effort in learning to reduce its product defect rate. Theoretical ideas on the motivation of learning associated with social aspiration levels and the self‐serving bias combined with social categorization suggest that poor quality reputation firms are more likely than their counterparts with a good reputation to attend to potential product defects and consequently reduce their defect rate. However, a st

The article explores the ways in which organizational reputation responds to the revelation of product defects or quality problems, as evidenced by formal product recalls in the U.S. automobile industry. Firm reputation helps create expectations about the firm's products among potential buyers. A good reputation conferred on a firm enhances a buyer's expectation that the firm's products will be of high quality. As long as consumers share expectations about product quality across reputations, the

ABSTRACT Manuscript Type: Empirical Research Question/Issue: This study explores a signaling role of the demographic composition of a firm's outside director by examining how the composition influences the growth of foreigners' investment in the firm. Research Findings/Insights: Using archival data from a panel sample of 96 large Korean firms between 2000 and 2003, our analysis shows that the growth of foreign ownership is positively affected if a higher proportion of outside directors hold adva

I suggest that doctoral students who emigrated to North America from Asia, in collaboration with their North American professors and colleagues, explore the shared wisdom of traditional Asian thoug...

Purpose Performance feedback theory (PFT) has informed analyses in numerous national contexts and has been used to explain various business and management activities of firms. Stemming from behavioral theory and grounded in a cognitive perspective, which views organizational actions as being the results of decisions produced by groups of individual decision-makers, PFT research has mostly assumed the universal nature of cognition and decision-making processes. However, PFT also presumes that ind

This article examines how the time relevance of social capital from social networks affects upward mobility. An analysis of survey data from 229 employees in a high-technology workplace shows that the effects of position-related networks (measured by network size and density) on promotion are affected by the temporal distribution of ties (measured by whether a tie was formed before or after an employee's positional change), while the effects of person-related networks are insensitive to temporal