Organization and Strategy Seminar（2017-14）

Topic: Employing Complex Methods to Solve Complex Questions

Speaker: Guangrui Guo,University of Windsor

Time: Wednesday, 27 December, 10:00-11:30 am

Location: Room 109 , Guanghua Building 2

Abstract：

Management scholars, especially strategy scholars, often have complex questions but limited statistical methods, which leads to two consequences. One is that we attempt to use simple inappropriate methods that we understood to solve complex questions. The practice brings about extensive criticisms that our studies are over reductionist and are not able to capture business reality in any meaningful way. The other is that we endeavor to use appropriate complex methods that we do not understand. The latter is demoralizing and leads to bad research. Results from both are potentially misleading. In this presentation, I illustrate these issues with our recent study titledUndisentangling CEO Effect on Firm Performance: A Longitudinal Multilevel Perspective. Employing longitudinal multilevel modeling, we re-exam the CEO effect on firm performance. By illustrating how previous multilevel models of CEO effect are misspecified, we argue that CEO is an extricable part of firm rather than an independent level. The empirical results indicate that (1) CEO explains from 4 to 10 percent of total variation in firm performance and (2) year effects accounts for from 5 to 11 percent, (3) 94 percent of CEO effect lies on firm level while only 6 percent on industry level, (4) the higher the firm performance, the less the influence of CEO, and (5) the high the influence of previous CEOs, the higher the influence of the successors. These findings improve and extend our understanding of the CEO performance effects.

Introduction:

Guangrui Guo is an assistant professor of Strategy, Entrepreneurship, and International Business at the Odette School of Business, University of Windsor, Canada. He received his Ph.D. in Management (Strategy and International Business) from the University of Miami in 2015. Dr. Guo also received his Master of Economics (Management) from Nankai University (1992) and Bachelor of Engineering (Engineering Physics) from Tsinghua University (1989). He has many years of work experience in MNCs and startups. Dr. Guo’s research interest focuses on developing a systematic dynamic framework to make theories of strategic management closer to business reality and of substantial guide to executives, modeling systematic dynamic processes in which competitive advantage arises, and applications of these theoretical and empirical frameworks to relevant issues in Strategic Management, Technology, Innovation, Entrepreneurship, International Business, and Emerging Market research.

Your participation is warmly welcomed!