Who Does an Elite Organization Emulate?
研究一家银行的标杆管理项目，发现声誉高的公司和有高管流动关系的公司更可能被选为模仿对象并产生影响力，而董事会关联和地理邻近则无此效果。
We advance theories of the diffusion of innovations by examining the structure of emulation that emerged in one bank's benchmarking program. Prestigious firms and firms linked to the bank through executive migration were disproportionately likely to be recruited as benchmarking partners and, once visited, to be highly influential. Firms tied to the bank by board interlocks and geographic proximity were neither overrepresented nor influential. The bank also paid modest attention to other financial service providers, particularly rival money centers. These relationships hold net of area-specific recognition for excellence, which promotes attention but not influence, and financial performance, which affects neither. We emphasize the way organizational identity and decision-making processes activate and deactivate network ties as potential channels of innovation diffusion.