UCI business professor is lead author of Harvard Business Review article

Could the organizational structure of Samsung have affected the response time in terminating the Galaxy Note7? John Joseph, UCI assistant professor of strategy, is lead author of an article recently published in the Harvard Business Review that answers that question. Co-authored by Ronald Klingebiel, a professor of strategy at Germany’s Frankfurt School of Finance & Management, “Centralized Decision Making Helps Kill Bad Products” contends that vertical hierarchies like Samsung’s are much more efficient at information processing, decision-making and coordinating termination decisions. This is especially important for corporations holding large product portfolios in markets facing continuous technological changes, short life cycles and high levels of product obsolescence, such as mobile device companies. The authors’ advice to managers is “to streamline their product withdrawal decisions if speed and agility are the name of the game.”