m i c r o- f o u n d a t i o n s i n s t r a t e g i c m a n a g e m e n t（m i f c r o - o u n d t i o n s i n s t r t e g i c m n a g e m e n t）.doc

MICRO-FOUNDATIONS IN STRATEGIC MANAGEMENT: SQUARING COLEMAN’S DIAGRAM Jack Vromen EIPE Erasmus University Rotterdam Vromen@fwb.eur.nl 1. Introduction In a series of joint papers (Felin and Foss 2005, 2006; Abell et al. 2007; Felin and Hesterly 2007), Teppo Felin and Nicolai J. Foss recently launched a microfoundations project in the field of strategic management. Felin and Foss argue that extant explanations in strategic management are predominantly collectivist. In these explanations, routines and organizational capabilities, which are taken to be properties of firms (and hence are situated at the collective, or ‘macro’, rather than at the individual or ‘micro’ level), figure prominently. In the extant literature in strategic management, routines and organizational capabilities sometimes are explananda in explanations (e.g., when they are seen as outcomes of organizational learning). At other times they are explanantia in explanations (e.g., when firm behavior and firm performance are seen as outcomes of routines or capabilities that are in operation). In both cases the explanations remain at the collective level: phenomena or events at the collective level are explained in terms of other phenomena or events at the collective level. The explanations do not refer to what is going on at the underlying individual (or ‘micro’) level. This is a significant deficiency of the explanations, Felin and Foss argue, for it is clear that individual agents and their actions and interactions play a crucial, indispensable role not only in how routines and organizational capabilities originate in the first place, in how they are subsequently maintained, revised or replaced, but also in how routines and organizational capabilities affect firm behavior and firm performance. Felin and Foss’s microfoundations project is meant to repair this deficiency: more attention should be paid to exactly how individual agents and their actions and interactions are involved in the emergence