Luis Adrian Rios

Research Program

Three Interdependent Drivers of Organizational Structure

Assistant Professor of Strategy
Mitch Daniels School of Business· Purdue University
Editorial Boards: Strategic Management Journal · Organization Science · J. of Organization Design

Luis Adrian Rios

The author.

My research examines how organizational structure forms, why it persists, and how it shapes what firms can learn and become. Informed by years of experience managing organizational restructuring, my dissertation "Internal Capital, External Knowledge, and Random Draws: Three Drivers of Organizational Structure" laid out this agenda. The work since has deepened each of its three drivers and increasingly their convergence. The program's methodological and theoretical range serves a set of interrelated questions. Solo longitudinal archival work establishes that technological acquisition is to some extent not a continuous choice but a trajectory that can belocked in early. Patent-based network analysis maps how structure channels knowledge within the firm. Computational and formal modeling isolates the mechanisms that archival data cannot observe. Figure 1 locates projects on theoretical and empirical dimensions: Rings mark the level of observation, hatching marks the driver.

Fig. 1: The Map References Curriculum Vitae
1.

The Research Program, Mapped

Three drivers, three levels of observation. Fine print at the core is an invitation to zoom.

FIG. 1.  Rings mark the level of observation: mechanisms at the core, intrafirm constructs in the middle, firm-environment interface at the boundary. Click any box or circle to see its note.

Two intrafirm inventor network maps for the same firm under different R&D authority structures

FIG. 2.  Two of the intrafirm inventor networks constructed for Argyres, Rios & Silverman (2020): the same firm under different R&D authority structures. I built one of these maps for every firm-year in the sample, from patent co-invention records, allowing replicable quantification of network structure across large samples and over time.

Two pie charts of patent assignment across corporate affiliates: a decentralized pattern at Johnson & Johnson and a centralized pattern at Abbott Laboratories

FIG. 3.  Patterns of patent assignment from Arora, Belenzon & Rios (2014), top 30 affiliates shown: a decentralized pattern (Johnson & Johnson, left) and a centralized one (Abbott Laboratories, right). The patent-assignment-based measure of R&D decentralization built from these data underlies the finding that decentralized units, positioned at the market boundary, derive more value from external knowledge.

Two simulation panels showing learning histories after hiring: lucky jumps and tug of war

FIG. 4.  Two learning histories after a 'perfect' hire, from Pham, Rios & Workiewicz (2025): 'lucky jumps' (left) and 'tug of war' (right). Star markers are changes proposed by the new hire; round markers, changes resulting from voting rounds with incumbent employees. The inertia, unfreezing, and change phases of the right panel show why the value of hiring is realized dynamically rather than at the moment of acquisition.

FIG. 5.  The mechanism of hysteresis, interactive. Each dot in the left panel is a hysteron, an elementary relay that switches up when the input passes its threshold α and down when it falls below a lower threshold β; filled dots are up, hollow dots are down. The inset in the empty half below the diagonal unpacks one representative relay (the red-ringed dot nearest the population center): rising input flips its marker up at α, falling input flips it down at β, and the thresholds themselves relocate as the population and spread sliders move. Drag the input and the red front sweeps the population: rising input flips relays from the bottom of the triangle, falling input flips them from the side, so which relays are on depends on the direction of travel, not just the level. The right panel traces the resulting path; the dashed outline is the major loop from a full sweep. Reverse course inside the loop and the trace forms nested minor loops that close on their own turning points: return-point memory, the formal signature at the center of the hysteresis work above. More hysterons smooth the curve; wider threshold spread fattens the loop. Changing the population restarts the sweep from negative saturation.

The Convergence

Structure is what the three drivers jointly produce, and what shapes downstream choices and outcomes.

The arc: environments and early conditions shape structure and trajectory. Structure channels knowledge creation and absorption. The structures formed persist.

2.

Publications & Working Papers

Peer-Reviewed and Conditionally Accepted

1.

Early Environmental Shocks and Organizational Reconfiguration in High-Growth Ventures

Dutta, S., Nahm, J., & Rios, L.A.  ·  Organization Science  ·  Conditionally Accepted

Building on the organizational plasticity framework and data methodology developed in prior work in this program, a study of 19,984 venture-backed startups finds that early disaster exposure imprints structural fluidity that carries a trade-off: it improves market timing while raising mortality risk. LinkedIn personnel histories from a knowledge-intensive subsample show what imprinted fluidity looks like inside the firm: flatter hierarchies, greater role overlap, and broader, non-standard hiring.

Cond. Accept
2.

When Do Firms Learn By Hiring? How Complexity Moderates the Value of New Knowledge

Pham, D.N., Rios, L.A., & Workiewicz, M.  ·  Strategic Management Journal  ·  2025

Computational modeling reveals a mechanism of inertia: firms with high internal fit may face greater difficulty absorbing external knowledge because new hires disrupt tightly matched internal routines, even absent cognitive or social barriers. The value of hiring is realized dynamically rather than at the moment of acquisition.

Winner, Best Paper Award, Behavioral Strategy Interest Group, and nominee, Best Conference Paper Award, SMS Annual Conference 2025.

SMJ
3.

On the Heels of Giants: Internal Network Structure and the Race to Build on Prior Innovation

Argyres, N., Rios, L.A., & Silverman, B.S.  ·  Strategic Management Journal  ·  2025

Drawing on patent and inventor network data, we show that specific network topologies, near-decomposability and integration may influence the speed at which firms build on their own knowledge before rivals can expropriate. We provide the first systematic large-scale documentation of Generative Appropriability, the race to recombine internal knowledge before it leaks and becomes external knowledge for rivals. A novel finding is that this process is strongly conditioned by organizational structure.

SMJ
4.

On the Origin of Technological Acquisition Strategy: The Interaction Between Organizational Plasticity and Environmental Munificence

Rios, L.A.  ·  Strategic Management Journal  ·  2021  ·  Solo Authored

A firm's acquisitiveness is not simply a contemporaneous response to market opportunities. Using 1,201 IPO firms observed over 20 years, this paper shows that favorable conditions during a firm's early plastic period can shape persistent acquisition trajectories that remain visible across later market conditions. External sourcing is not a continuous choice but a trajectory, locked in early and persistent for decades.

Solo
5.

Organizational Change and the Dynamics of Innovation: Formal R&D Structure and Intrafirm Inventor Networks

Argyres, N., Rios, L.A., & Silverman, B.S.  ·  Strategic Management Journal  ·  2020

Using inventor network measures developed in this line of research, formal R&D authority changes propagate through informal inventor networks over a multi-year lag. Centralization increases inventor connectedness, which in turn broadens innovation impact and technological search, showing how formal structure shapes research behavior through informal networks.

SMJ
6.

Make, Buy, Organize: The Interplay Between Research, External Knowledge, and Firm Structure

Arora, A., Belenzon, S., & Rios, L.A.  ·  Strategic Management Journal  ·  2014  ·  342 Citations

Develops a patent-assignment-based measure of R&D decentralization to show how organizational structure shapes the mode of innovation: centralized firms extract more value from internal R&D, while decentralized units, positioned at the market boundary, derive more value from external knowledge.

SMJ
7.

Capital Markets and Firm Organization: How Financial Development Shapes European Corporate Groups

Belenzon, S., Berkowitz, T., & Rios, L.A.  ·  Management Science  ·  2013  ·  178 Citations

Using firm-level data across 15 countries, this paper shows that underdeveloped external capital markets encourage corporate group formation, linking macro-environmental conditions to firm-boundary decisions. The literal case of the internal-capital driver: where external markets fall short, firms construct internal ones.

MS

Under Review and Work in Progress

8.

Organization Design and Learning in the Remote Era

Pham, D.N., Rios, L.A., & Workiewicz, M.  ·  Strategic Management Journal  ·  Under Second-Round Review

Computational modeling suggests that remote work can improve outcomes in simple, stable environments but hinder organizational learning in complex, turbulent ones. These effects depend on organizational structure, implying that effective remote-work adaptation may require redesigning communication and coordination architecture, not policy adjustments alone.

R&R
9.

Temporal Knowledge Brokers: Inventor Network Dynamics, Structural Isolation, and the Exploration/Exploitation Dilemma

Rios, L.A. (First Author), Argyres, N., & Silverman, B.S.  ·  Preparing for Strategic Management Journal

Documents inventors who are sequentially embedded, deeply inside one region of the firm's network and then deeply inside another, carrying knowledge across boundaries that no single tie spans. Sequencing may unbundle the closure-brokerage tradeoff: within each region, the high-bandwidth transfer of closure; across regions, the non-redundant access of brokerage. The construct is dynamic embeddedness over time, not a static bridging position in a snapshot.

WP
10.

Persistent Strategies and Performance: The Moderating Role of the Environment

Jena, D., McGrath, P., & Rios, L.A.  ·  Preparing for Organization Science

Group-based trajectory modeling across thousands of firms documents a broad tradeoff: firms following persistent transactional reconfiguration patterns exhibit higher survival rates but lower market valuations. The trajectories associated with survival differ from those associated with value creation.

WP
11.

Organizational Hysteresis: How Informal Knowledge Networks Persist Beyond the Formal Structures That Built Them

Rios, L.A.  ·  Working Paper  ·  Solo Authored

In the 2020 paper, centralizing R&D increased inventor connectedness but decentralizing did not symmetrically unwind it, a directional asymmetry consistent with hysteresis. New formal modeling seeks to explain why: the components of informal ties run on different clocks. Knowing who knows what arrives in a single encounter and fades only as knowledge becomes obsolete, while trust accumulates slowly and rarely dissolves.

WP
12.

Alliances and Acquisitions: Complements or Substitutes?

Nary, P. & Rios, L.A.  ·  Preparing for Strategic Management Journal

Compares alliances and acquisitions as alternative channels to external resources, examining the conditions under which the two modes complement one another and those under which they substitute.

WP

Interdisciplinary & Formal Modeling Publications

Peer-reviewed work on hysteresis, threshold dynamics, and path-dependent switching. These projects reflect formal foundations for my current research on organizational persistence, adaptive constraint, and dynamic embeddedness.

13.

A Model of Hysteresis Arising from Social Interaction within a Firm

Rios, L.A., Rachinskii, D., & Cross, R.  ·  Journal of Physics: Conference Series

Uses formal hysteresis modeling to examine how social interaction within firms can generate path-dependent organizational outcomes.

Formal
14.

On the Rationale for Hysteresis in Economic Decisions

Rios, L.A., Rachinskii, D., & Cross, R.  ·  Journal of Physics: Conference Series

Extends hysteresis logic to economic decision-making, showing how prior states and threshold effects can make organizational and economic responses history-dependent rather than immediately reversible.

Formal
15.

A Model of Probabilistic Hysteretic Switching in Organizations

Rios, L.A., Rachinskii, D., & Cross, R.  ·  Slow-Fast Systems and Hysteresis: Theory and Applications

Develops a formal model of probabilistic switching in organizations, linking threshold dynamics and history-dependent response to persistent organizational behavior.

Formal
3.

Background

Academic Positions

  • Assistant Professor of Strategy
    Purdue University, Daniels School · 2020 to present
  • Assistant Professor of Strategy
    The Wharton School, University of Pennsylvania · 2016 to 2020

Education

  • PhD, Strategic Management
    Duke University, Fuqua School of Business
  • MBA, Real Estate Development and Finance
    UNC, Kenan-Flagler Business School
  • BA, English & American Literature and Language
    Harvard University

Editorial Service

  • Editorial Board
    Strategic Management Journal
  • Editorial Board
    Organization Science
  • Editorial Board
    Journal of Organization Design
  • Ad Hoc Reviewer
    Strategic Management Journal, Management Science, Organization Science, Strategy Science, Research Policy, and others

Selected Awards & Grants

  • Best Paper, Behavioral Strategy IG, for "When Do Firms Learn by Hiring?"
    SMS Annual Conference, 2025
  • Olin Award: Research Enhancing Business Results · $25,000
    Washington University in St. Louis
  • Krannert Young Faculty Scholar Award · $5,000
    Daniels School of Business, Purdue University
  • SSHRC Grant · $96,000
    Social Sciences and Humanities Research Council of Canada
  • Wharton/Mack Institute Grants (4) · $43,000
    The Wharton School