Publications

My primary research focuses on explaining the dynamics of organizational capabilities, specifically: why do firms in the same market show persistent heterogeneity in capabilities and performance?  I study capability development and erosion and its interaction with managerial learning through fieldwork, simulation modeling, and laboratory experiments. I have shown that organizational learning in the presence of feedback delays can lead to suboptimal capability configurations. Furthermore, I find that significantly different capability erosion rates across organizations emerge as a by-product of common managerial decision rules, and lead to variations in performance. In addition, I connect the capability dynamics within the firm with market-level forces to explain how investments in capabilities are contingent upon the competitive landscape. Results identify conditions in which it is optimal to focus on investments that have fast payoff even though they may starve investment in the capabilities needed to thrive over the long term. I also carry out empirical studies to ground and test these theoretical contributions, including studies in product development, project management, maintenance, manufacturing, and construction.

My other research streams include public health, and methodology for dynamic modeling. My public health research ranges from biological modeling of human growth and body weight dynamics to organizational challenges in implementing and sustaining health-related capabilities. To surmount various modeling challenges in my projects, I also push forward the methodological frontiers. For example, I have developed a general method to estimate new models based on results from prior research publications. This method relaxes restrictive assumptions of traditional meta-analysis, enabling a much wider range of studies to be considered, including studies that are mis-specified or face other threats to their validity. Other methodological contributions include comparing different modeling architectures and aggregation choices, new methods to build aggregate models based on micro-dynamics, and a few projects on estimation of dynamic models.

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