Programme

PhD

Term

V

Academic Year

2021-22

Course title

Institutions and Firm Strategy

Area

Strategy

Credits

0.50

Instructor(s)

Prof. Mayank Varshney

Course Description & Objectives

Objective: The objective of this course is that the participants develop an insight on the strategic perspective of institutions, i.e., how do (various) institutions impact firm performance. After developing an understanding of what institutions are, we will focus on how certain firms benefit (or lose) disproportionately from their institutional settings. Participants will be encouraged to identify, develop, and discuss various research questions in the literature. Participants will also be encouraged to extend their research questions (if they are working on one) to incorporate moderating effects of institutions on their research questions. By the end of the course, the participants should be grounded in taking an (neo) institutional perspective on other strategy research schools and developing research questions concerning institutions.

Class Preparation

Participants should read the assigned papers of the week and complete the assignment (if there is one) before the class. While reading the papers and doing the assignment, they may be puzzled by the argument that the authors are making and intrigued by some gaps in the literature, which can turn into future research opportunities. Participants should try to relate papers, construct a picture of the overall theme that emerges from the set of papers, and come up with a set of questions that may be useful and interesting to explore in their own future research.