Tag Archives: response

[12]. The Legal Environment of Side Project Ownership and IT Innovation: Evidence from the Alcatel v. Brown Case

Xi Wu, Charlotte Ren, and Min-Seok Pang. 2025. Accepted by MIS Quarterly.  https://doi.org/10.25300/MISQ/2025/18022

Abstract. Engaging in side projects outside of regular employment has become a growing trend among knowledge workers, particularly information technology (IT) professionals. Side projects offer valuable opportunities for employees to learn new skills and foster creativity. However, the legal ownership of side projects remains uncertain, raising questions about how this affects employee innovation at their primary jobs, which we refer to as “employee innovation at work.” In this study, we leverage an exogenous change in the legal arrangement of side project ownership—the Alcatel v. Brown case—to investigate how firms’ enhanced control over side projects influences employees’ innovation performance at work. We find that in states where firms gained greater contractual authority to claim ownership of employees’ side projects, the number of IT patents owned by firms decreased. However, paradoxically, the quality of these patents, as measured by the number of forward citations, improved following the legal change. Further analyses of the underlying mechanisms suggest that these contrasting findings likely stem from shifts in both employee innovation behaviors and firms’ innovation strategies post-Alcatel v. Brown. Our findings contribute to the information systems literature by highlighting the nuanced effects of side project ownership on IT innovation.

Note: An earlier version of this manuscript, titled “That’s mine! Employee side projects, intellectual property ownership, and firm innovation,” was selected for the International Conference on Information Systems Proceedings (2019).

[8]. Responding to Diffused Stakeholders on Social Media: Connective Power and Firm Reactions to CSR-Related Twitter Messages

Gregory Saxton, Charlotte Ren, and Chao Guo. Journal of Business Ethics, 2021, 172: 229-252. https://doi.org/10.1007/s10551-020-04472-x 

Abstract. Social media offers a platform for diffused stakeholders to interact with firms—alternatively praising, questioning, and chastising businesses for their CSR performance and seeking to engage in two-way dialogue. In 2014, 163,402 public messages were sent to Fortune 200 firms’ CSR-focused Twitter accounts, each of which was either shared, replied to, “liked,” or ignored by the targeted firm. This paper examines firm reactions to these messages, building a model of firm response to stakeholders that combines the notions of CSR communication and stakeholder salience. Our findings show that firm response to a stakeholder on social media is positively and most significantly associated with what we refer to as the stakeholder’s connective power but negatively associated with the firm’s own connective power. To a lesser extent, firm response is positively associated with the stakeholder’s normative power but negatively associated with the firm’s own normative power. Firm response is also shown to be positively associated with stakeholder urgency in terms of both the originality of a stakeholder message and the expression of positive sentiment.

Note: Click here for the paper: Saxton.Ren.Guo_2021 JBE.

[7]. Responses to Rival Exit: Product Variety, Market Expansion, and Preexisting Market Structure

Charlotte Ren, Ye Hu, and Tony H. Cui. Strategic Management Journal. 2019, 40(2): 253-276.

Research Summary. This study investigates incumbent responses to a main rival’s exit. We argue that long‐time rivals have developed an equilibrium by offering a mix of overlapping and unique products and by choosing geographic proximity to each other. A rival’s exit, however, disrupts this equilibrium and motivates surviving firms to expand in both product and geographic spaces to seek a new equilibrium. Using data from all U.S. Best Buy stores before and after the exit of Circuit City, we find that Best Buy uses product variety expansion as its major response in markets where Circuit City was colocated, but it more often responds by opening new stores in non‐colocated markets. Regardless of preexisting market structures, the magnitude of product variety expansion decreases with the opening of new stores.

Managerial Summary. How do surviving firms respond to a major rival’s exit? By studying Best Buy’s responses to Circuit City’s withdrawal, we find the survivor expands in both product space (increasing product variety) and geographic space (opening new stores), due to two motives. First, the survivor strives to fill in “holes” left in the market. Second, the survivor experiences uncertainty in the post‐exit world wherein its reference point is gone, threat of potential entry looms, and it lacks information about new entrants. Thus, it must deter potential entry ex ante by preempting many prime product and geographic locations. Best Buy also responds according to preexisting market structures, primarily through product variety expansion in markets wherein Circuit City was colocated and through opening new stores in non‐colocated markets.

Note: Click here for the Ren.Hu.Cui 2019 SMJ Paper.