Univ.-Prof. Dr. Christopher Lettl is going to present the IfSTO paper "Exploring Motivations to Participate in Grand Challenges: A Comparative Case Study in the Space Sector". The paper, which is joined work with Dr. Christian Garaus and Mag. Florian Schirg, was also selected for the Best Paper Proceedings (about the best 10% of the papers)

Abstract:
Understanding the motivations of participants in crowdsourcing contests for grand challenges is important. It allows organizers of such contests to design them in such a way that they attract a critical mass of motivated, capable contestants to work on those large and difficult problems. In our embedded case study of the Ansari X Prize and the Google Lunar X Prize, we explore two questions: (1) What are the participants’ motivations to enter the tournament, and (2) how do their motivations change over time in response to critical incidents in those multi-year contests? We find that idealism plays an important role in the decision to participate and also leads to different reactions to the same critical events. Our data also reveal that events that are perceived as positive lead to increased extrinsic motivation when they are related to the prize, while those unrelated to the challenge may prompt participants to drop out of the contest. Critical incidents that are perceived as negative lead to cognitive dissonance, which is resolved either by withdrawal from the contest or by finding an enriched set of justifications and thus developing “winning despite losing” strategies.

Furthermore, Dr. Christian Garaus will present the paper “The Joint Influence of Strategic Planning and Ambidextrous Culture on Organizational Ambidexterity" which is an intra-department collaboration with Dr. Arthur Posch from the Institute for Strategic Management and Management Control.

Abstract:
Prior studies on the influence of strategic planning on innovation activities have led to ambiguity as to whether it helps or hinders innovative activities. We extend this discussion by investigating the role of strategic planning in achieving organizational ambidexterity. We reason that the effect of strategic planning depends on whether employees perceive it as constraining or enabling. If strategic planning is perceived in an enabling way, it can unfold a positive effect on organizational ambidexterity. Furthermore, we argue that the perception of strategic planning as enabling is among others contingent upon the presence of an ambidextrous culture. Apart from a positive main effect of ambidextrous culture our results clearly support the hypothesis that strategic planning and ambidextrous culture have a synergistic positive effect on ambidexterity. Our findings also show that these results are robust for different ways of operationalizing organizational ambidexterity. The results thus indicate that leadership should foster an ambidextrous culture by communicating an overarching vision and promoting organizational diversity when applying strategic management practices, to allow the simultaneous pursuit of exploration and exploitation. Drawing on hand-collected performance data we investigate the performance consequences of organizational ambidexterity in a second step.

Additionally, the article „Combining Firm-level Secondary Data: Different Matching Methods Do Not Match“ was accepted for presentation and was also published in the Best Paper Proceedings. The study comes forth out of a research project, in which Dr. Steffen Keijl and Dr. Tim de Leeuw (Associate Professor at Tilburg University) collaborate.

Abstract:
Our general orientation and in-depth analyses of recent studies in a top management journal reveals that more than half (i.e., 63 percent) use multiple secondary databases, but only a small percentage (i.e., < 10 percent) reports how the connections between these databases were made. Based on this review, we report on four consecutive methods of matching firm-level data across different secondary databases. We used these four matching methods to obtain data from multiple firm-level data sources. Comparing the results reveals large differences in the number of observations obtained per matching method. Additionally, we empirically investigate the effects of different inter-organizational relationships (e.g., alliances, joint ventures, mergers and acquisitions) on firms’ innovative performance, based on these four matching methods. Since these results also differ based on which matching method was used, we argue that reporting the matching method used in a study is of vital importance. This will improve the accumulation of knowledge on how data across secondary databases can be combined and improves the clarity of the conducted studies. Moreover, and based on our results we provide a guideline for a complete matching method. As such this paper should support researchers, reviewers, and editors in making better-informed decisions about how different secondary firm-level databases can and should be combined.