Title: Organisational synergies, dissonance and spinoffs

Authors: Mili Shrivastava; T.V.S. Ramamohan Rao

Addresses: Executive Business Centre, Bournemouth University, 89 Holdenhurst Road, Bournemouth, BH8 8EB, UK ' Indian Institute of Technology Kanpur 6-5-45/1 Type 1, Self Finance Colony, Vanastalipuram, Hyderabad 500070, India

Abstract: Spinoff firms are a distinct class of new entrants across industries. The causes for their emergence have been widely investigated in the literature. However, the role of team environments has received little attention. On the one hand, talented individuals may find it necessary to team up with others to utilise complementary knowledge and generate synergies. On the other hand, some types of team production environments may exhibit dissonance and motivate individuals to leave them. This study introduces environments of synergy and dissonance utilising team production functions and utilises them to analyse how team environments vary in their propensity to generate spinoffs. We show that the teams exhibiting synergy are not likely to spawn spinoffs but a new idea from a team member gets implemented only if it is of exceptional quality. The concepts of synergy and dissonance can also be utilised to analyse other phenomena such as mergers and alliances.

Keywords: organisational synergy; production functions; spinoffs; dissonance; teams; teamwork.

DOI: 10.1504/IJEBR.2015.066012

International Journal of Economics and Business Research, 2015 Vol.9 No.1, pp.54 - 64

Received: 02 Sep 2013
Accepted: 18 Apr 2014
Published online: 30 Nov 2014 *

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