Brian S. Silverman's Research and Data Page

Research

My research (here's the c.v.!) focuses on the ways that firms' strategies and organizational structures interact to affect their performance - in particular, their ability to access and exploit technological capabilities. Recent research has also focused on the external competitive implications of firms’ internal organization decisions. One of my current projects looks at the effect of political ideology on innovation teams - i.e., do Republican inventors tend to collaborate with other Republicans, and Democrats with Democrats, and does this matter for innovative outcomes? For a change of pace, in recent projects I have studied transatlantic shipping from Liverpool in the 18th and 19th centuries, notably 1) the role of asset ownership in aligning incentives of ship captains and ship owners and 2) the role of social ties, particularly to high-status ship owners, in leading Liverpool merchants to enter the slave trade in the face of an increasing stigma against that trade.

My work has appeared in Administrative Science Quarterly; Academy of Management Journal; International Journal of Industrial Organization; Journal of Economics and Management Strategy; Journal of Law and Economics; Journal of Law, Economics & Organization; Management Science; Research Policy; Social Science Research; Strategic Management Journal; and Strategic Organization, among other venues.

Some of this research has also been featured in articles in The New York Times (here), Business Week on-line (here), and Sloan Management Review (here), among others.

Most of my research is the result of collaborative effort. Repeated co-authors include:
David C. Mowery of UC-Berkeley and Joanne E. Oxley of University of Toronto (for research on the interaction between alliance choices and technological capabilities);
Joel A.C. Baum of University of Toronto (for research on the competitive dynamics of alliances and networks);
Anita M. McGahan of University of Toronto (for research on the evolution of innovative behavior and the market valuation of intellectual property);
Jackson A. Nickerson of Washington University in St. Louis (for any and all research on strategy, organization, and performance in the trucking industry);
John de Figueiredo of Duke University (for research on competitive dynamics in the laser printer industry, on university lobbying to obtain "earmarked" research funds from the U.S. government, and on the above-mentioned ideology and innovation project);
Nicholas S. Argyres of Washington University in St. Louis and Luis Rios of Purdue University on the relationship between a firm's internal organization of its R&D function and the nature of innovative activities that it undertakes;
Paul Ingram of Columbia University on the above-mentioned research project concerning Liverpool transatlantic shipping in the 18th and 19th centuries.

Data