Event Details

CEO risk-taking propensity and the quality of strategic decisions & Reframing the favela space as a market through socio-technical assemblages. Speakers: Dr Ioannis Thanos (ENST) & Dr Josiane Fernandez (Department of Marketing, LUMS)

Ioannis’ abstract

CEO risk-taking propensity and the quality of strategic decisions.

CEOs hold positions of great responsibility, yet their effects on organizational outcomes are not well understood. In this study, we examine the effects of CEO risk-taking propensity on the quality of strategic decisions. We also examine whether these effects are moderated by uncertainty captured in terms of environmental, managerial and decision uncertainty. Despite the potentially important role of this aspect of CEO personality, it has been infrequently studied as a determinant of outcomes in organizational research. Using data from a multi-method field study of 143 strategic decisions, we find evidence for an inverted U-Shaped relationship between CEO risk-taking propensity and decision quality. Also, our findings indicate that decision uncertainty is an important moderator. Implications of these findings are discussed for research in the areas of CEO psychology, upper echelons, and managerial discretion.

Josiane’s abstract

Reframing the favela space as a market through socio-technical assemblages.

How can failing markets characterizes by stigma, violence and poverty and brought to a halt by conflict, be reframed and reproduced as spaces that agence market action? By combining Lefebvre’s (1991) notion of space as produced with market studies’ explanation of how actors manage to agence market action through socio-technical assemblages (STAs) (Callon, 2008; Cochoy, Trompette, & Araujo, 2016) we reveal how micro-entrepreneurs (MEs) in favelas of Rio de Janeiro, Brazil, use mobile phones, social media and other apps to reform the life-threatening spaces of the favela as war into the favelas as touristic space. We discuss the performativity of digital technology and the relationship between digital and physical spaces (Pinch, 2008). By analysing the case of favela tourism MEs in Rio, we argue that STAs must consider aspects of spatiality to perform markets.