Microfoundations of Organizational Capabilities and Knowledge Processes

- a Conference organized by the Center for Strategic Management and Globalization

Notions of routines, capabilities, knowledge, and learning abound in management studies and social science, particularly in such fields as organization studies and strategic management (where the “capabilities-based view” is now dominant). Capabilities are collective level constructs that refer to firm-specific knowledge that is said to be collectively held.

The purpose of this two-day conference is to bring together a group of world-class scholars from several related disciplines - business, economics, sociology, philosophy, communications - to discuss the micro-macro link in knowledge and capabilities and related knowledge processes as they relate to social theory and strategic management.

Among the topics that the speakers will address are:

• What is the locus of knowledge?
• What are the origins of organizational capabilities and knowledge?
• What are key processes of knowledge creation or learning both at the individual and collective levels?
• Does learning emerge as a function of interaction with the environment and past experience (as suggested by Cyert & March, 1963) - what specifically are the underlying theoretical mechanisms?
• When building micro-foundations, what behavioral models do we (can we) make use of?
• Does the notion of bounded rationality easily transfer between individual and collective levels?
• How do we aggregate from individual to the collective level knowledge? Can we make use of “invisible hand-explanations”?
• What about the rationalist – behaviorist debate – where does social theory stand?
• While empiricist/behaviorist assumptions and approaches dominate the dialogue in organization science – from a philosophical perspective – are rationalist approaches feasible?
• Disciplines such as psychology, linguistics, and philosophy are moving toward more ‘internalist’ and cognitivist approaches to learning – what are the implications of a rationalist agenda of knowledge on organization science?
• No particular academic discipline has a monopoly on the constructs of learning and knowledge – what are unique/new insights coming from our respective disciplines in relation to others? Are we simply recycling concepts and theory between disciplines?
• What are the points of overlap between social theorists and organizational scholars with regard to the micro-macro link?
• The social sciences – for example, economics (Menger 1883; Arrow 1951) and sociology (Coleman 1990) – have always struggled with the micro-macro link, or individual-collective relationship – are there promising efforts/research, which begin to address this gap in organization science, sociology or other disciplines?

Conference Organizing Comittee:

	Nicolai Foss Professor of Management Copenhagen Business School		Teppo Felin Assistant Professor Goizueta Business School, Emory University

Presentations:
A few of the confirmed presenters/attendees include:

       Anna Grandori

Last updated by Yvonne Borkelmann 11-10-2005