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臺大管理論叢
第
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卷第
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期
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6.2 External Ties
Table 4 presents the empirical results of hypothesis testing. The current study measured
a TMT’s environmental scanning capabilities by examining three types of external ties that
top managers accumulate from their past work: (1) ties to the CTIA, (2) ties to other cell-
phone service providers, and (3) ties to firms outside the industry. The results of Model 1 in
Table 4 reveal that the simple effects of these external ties on firm subscriber increase are
positive but non-significant.
6.3 Accounting for Industry Age
Model 2 in Table 4 included the interaction between a TMT’s external ties and intra-
industry experience addition to test Hypothesis 1, which predicts that the more external ties a
TMT has, the greater the TMT’s ability to convert intra-industry experience into intra-
industry performance. The results of Model 2 in Table 4 reveal that the coefficient of the
interaction between the TMT’s external ties and intra-industry experiences addition is
significantly negative for ties to the CTIA (
γ
= -1.36,
p
< 0.01), significantly positive for ties
to other cell-phone service providers (
γ
= 0.31,
p
< 0.01), and positive but non-significant for
ties to extra-industry firms (
γ
= 0.01). Thus, Hypothesis 1 is supported only for a TMT’s ties
to intra-industry competitors.
Table 2 Summary Statistics of Variables
Variable
Mean
Std. Dev.
Min
Max
Intra-industry performance of firm
i
at
t
1.97
3.80
-21.89
36.06
Firm size at
t
-1
6.28
11.42
0.003
59.64
Growth of industry subscribers (
t
)
0.37
0.12
0.22
0.70
CR4
0.47
0.06
0.39
0.58
N of acquisitions (
t
)
0.06
0.25
0
2
Size of TMT
9.35
5.69
1
32
# Execs w/ missing info
0.15
0.43
0
3
Below industry median firm size
0.48
0.50
0
1
Focal year is before digital technology regime
0.29
0.45
0
1
Industry age
10.92
3.47
4
16
Intra-industry experience addition of TMT at
t
0.28
0.98
-4.9
4.37
Intra-industry ties to CTIA of TMT at
t
-1
1.08
0.81
0
5
Intra-industry ties to other cell-phone
operators of TMT at
t
-1
1.28
3.81
0
32
Extra-industry ties to other firms of TMT at
t
-1
2.44
3.25
0
18