The PhD School Succeeds at the SMS Conference
Two Bocconi PhD students in Business Admnistration and Management received prestigious acknowledgements at the Strategic Management Society (SMS) 33rd Annual International Conference in Atlanta.
Alessio Cozzolino obtained an honorable mention in the SMS Best Paper Prize category for the paper Shift in Value Creation: Competence-Destroying Discontinuity on Complementary Assets, co-authored with Gianmario Verona (Department of Management and Technology and SDA Bocconi). The paper aims to fill a gap in the theory of technological change developing a theory that explains what happens when a technological discontinuity destroys the complementary assets of incumbents while leaving undestroyed their core know-how. To develop their theory the authors conduct an extensive qualitative study of the Italian newspaper industry facing the Internet discontinuity, from 1995 to 2013.
Addis Gedefaw Birhanu was one of the five recipients of the SMS Best Conference PhD Paper Prize for her research on The Competitive Advantage of Business Groups: Entrepreneurial or Rent Seeking? Evidence From North Africa. In this paper Birhanu untangles alternative explanations of the positive link between affiliation to business groups and firm performance. Using an exogenous shock that destabilizes potentially existing political connections of firms in the North Africa, the 'Arab spring', she finds that the appropriation of rent through political connection is the main mechanism by which firms affiliated to business groups outperform their standalone counterparts.
The SMS consists of nearly 3,000 members representing a kaleidoscope of backgrounds and perspectives from more than 80 different countries. Membership, composed of academics, business practitioners, and consultants, focuses on the development and dissemination of insights on the strategic management process, as well as on fostering contacts and interchange around the world.