About

Donald E. Hatfield is an Associate Professor in the Department of Management at Virginia Tech, with a research focus on how managers address the uncertainties of technological environments. His work examines phenomena related to entrepreneurship, industry focus, managing the innovation process, and research methods, grounded in organization economics and behavioral theories of organization. Dr. Hatfield teaches courses across all academic levels—including Ph.D., MBA, and undergraduate—covering strategic management, management of innovation, and entrepreneurship, and has experience teaching in both traditional and distance learning formats. His academic background includes a Ph.D. from UCLA, an M.S. from the University of Iowa, and a B.S. from Iowa State University. Dr. Hatfield has held various positions, including visiting professor at Jilin University in China, and has served as the Director of the Small Business Institute at Virginia Tech. His professional service includes editorial board memberships for prominent journals such as Organization Science, the Journal of Management, and the Academy of Management Journal. His research has been published in numerous journals, and he has presented internationally at major management and economics conferences. His interests also encompass the interaction between economics, finance, organizational theory, and strategic management, with a particular focus on how managers deal with technological uncertainty and the factors driving geographic industrial clustering.

Research topics

• Computer Science
• Business
• Political Science
• Mathematics
• International trade
• Economic geography
• Data science
• Economic system
• Engineering
• Management science
• Economics
• Marketing
• Knowledge management
• Industrial organization

Selected publications

• The impact of differences in internationalization processes on innovation by emerging economy firms

  International Journal of Emerging Markets · 2021 · 26 citations

  Senior authorCorresponding
  • Industrial organization
  • Business
  • Economic geography

  Purpose The purpose of this paper is to study the differences in the internationalization process of firms from emerging economies and the impact of their international expansion related choices on the nature of technological innovations developed by these firms. Specifically, the authors compare two principal perspectives on internationalization – the incremental internationalization process (slow, gradually increasing commitments using greenfield investments to similar host countries) and the springboard perspective (aggressive, rapidly increasing commitments using mergers and acquisitions to advanced host countries). Design/methodology/approach Building on key differences between the incremental internationalization and springboard perspectives, the authors argue that differences in the speed and mode of entry, as well as the interaction between the mode of entry and location of internationalization, will lead to differences in the types of technologies (mature versus novel) developed by emerging economy firms. The authors examine the hypotheses using panel data from 1997 to 2013 on emerging economy multinationals (EMNEs) from the Indian bio-pharmaceutical industry. Findings The findings suggest that firms internationalizing at higher speeds and using cross-border M&As tend to have innovations in mature technologies. The interesting findings can be explained by the challenges faced by emerging economy firms in experiential learning and the assimilation of external knowledge. In addition, the authors find that internationalization to technologically advanced countries weakens the relationship between cross-border M&As and innovation in mature technologies, suggesting that direct learning from technologically advanced environments may help alleviate the assimilation challenges of cross-border M&As. Originality/value The authors advance literature on EMNE internationalization by comparing the impact of their choice of internationalization approaches (incremental internationalization or springboard approach) on their innovation performance. The authors contribute to literature on EMNEs that has focused on the determinants of internationalization by identifying the learning implications of internationalization. The authors contribute to the nascent stream of literature on the level of innovation and catching up by EMNEs by performing a fine-grained analysis of the nature of technology innovation.

  PublisherDOI

• Mapping Patent Usage in Management Research: The State of Prior Art

  Journal of Management · 2020 · 46 citations

  • Computer Science
  • Political Science
  • Data science

  Patents play an important, and increasingly influential, role in management scholarship. In this study, we conduct a broad and systematic review of patent-based empirical work in the management field, which involves mapping the ways in which scholars are using patent-based measures to represent concepts and assessing this usage based on measurement principles. With respect to mapping, our review identifies the different types of measures that researchers have constructed based on different types of patent data (e.g., patent counts, backward citations) as well as delineates the classes of theoretical concepts that are being represented by those measures. In terms of assessing, as a complement to prior surveys of patent-based research that have assessed patents as indicators based on features of patents, patenting, and patent offices, we develop a framework that is based on measurement principles. Using this framework, our assessment of patent-based research in management reveals important patterns surrounding foundational measurement issues, i.e., method bias, validation threats, model misspecification. Our review makes two core contributions: one centering on summarizing how patents have been used in management research and one focusing on guiding management scholars in terms of common measurement issues for patent-based indicators. These contributions have important implications for future scholarly work in management.

  PublisherDOI

• Does the focus of renewable energy policy impact the nature of innovation? Evidence from emerging economies

  Energy Policy · 2019-11-26 · 90 citations

  articleSenior author
  PublisherDOI

• trinet-panel.dta

  Harvard Dataverse · 2019-01-01

  datasetOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  Dataset in Stata format

  PublisherDOI

• TRINET Inc: Large Establishment Database

  Harvard Dataverse · 2018-12-21

  datasetOpen access1st authorCorresponding

  Provides longitudinal data on over 800,000 U.S. establishments owned by public firms, private firms and foreign subsidiaries in all U.S. four-digit SIC industries, alternate years, 1979-89. It covers over 80 percent of all establishments in the United States and over 95 percent of establishments owned by public companies. Each establishment is assigned an individual identification number. The record for each establishment includes the parent company identification number, four-digit SIC code, number of employees, dollar value of sales, and its address and telephone number. Data due to Donald Hatfield. See Donald E. Hatfield, Julia Porter Liebeskind and Tim C. Opler, "The Effects of Corporate Restructuring on Aggregate Industry Specialization", Strategic Management Journal, Vol. 17, No. 1 (January 1996), 55-72.

  PublisherOA PDFDOI

• Resource Utilization and Competitive Behaviors: The Moderating Effect of CEO Attention

  Academy of Management Proceedings · 2017-08-01

  articleSenior author

  Recent CEO research has moved beyond simple demographics studies to investigate the influence of attention focus of CEOs. Although this line of research is gaining some traction, two theoretical limitations are seen in the current literature. First, research has not identified the crucial underlying mechanisms that unpack the micro to macro process, i.e., how CEO attention (a micro construct) translates into organizational outcomes (macro constructs). Second, research has focused primarily on what CEOs attend to but neglects how CEOs attend. To extend the literature, we develop a model that integrates the concepts of resource utilization and CEO attention and examines how CEO attention structure may facilitate or constrain a firm’s ability to effectively utilize resources to compete in a hypercompetitive market. We used the U.S. software and IT services industry as our empirical setting. The results show that: (1) firms compete less aggressively when their CEOs attend to a broader and more diverse set of information; and (2) firms use competitive actions that deviate from industry norms when their CEOs attend to a unique set of information in the environment.

  PublisherDOI

• Environment, Resource Integration, and New Ventures’ Competitive Advantage in China

  Management and Organization Review · 2016-06-01 · 28 citations

  articleSenior author

  ABSTRACT Chinese new ventures have two principal approaches to resource integration: the stabilizing approach, which makes minor changes to a firm's current resource bundles, or the pioneering approach, which creates new capabilities. Two characteristics of Chinese entrepreneurial environment are distinct: environmental dynamism (uncertain markets, unstable institutions and the rapid technology upgrading) and munificence (the degree of competitive intensity and resource abundance). This study suggests that environmental dynamism and environmental munificence moderate the relationships between resource integration approaches and competitive advantage. Results based on a study of 410 Chinese new ventures show that both stabilizing and pioneering approaches to resource integration positively influence new ventures’ competitive advantage under the condition of low environmental dynamism and either high or low environmental munificence. However, neither stabilizing nor pioneering approaches have a significant effect on new ventures’ competitive advantage under the condition of low environmental munificence and high environmental dynamism. Only the pioneering approach has a positive effect on new ventures’ competitive advantage under the condition of high environmental munificence and high environmental dynamism.

  PublisherDOI

• Technology Catch up in Emerging Economies: Emerging versus Mature Technologies

  Academy of Management Proceedings · 2015-01-01

  article

  This paper examines how emerging economies (EE) overcome their latecomer disadvantages and catch up technologically with developed economies (DE). Specifically, we examine the nature of technologies that EE firms innovate in (namely emerging or mature technologies) and also investigate the role of governmental effort and firm activity in directing technology development. Data from 57 countries on patents filed with USPTO from 2000 to 2008 is used to test our hypotheses. We find that government R&D efforts are more likely to focus on mature technologies whereas R&D efforts by independent firms are more likely to focus on emerging technologies. We also find that firms are more likely to innovate in mature technologies, and that EE firms may have higher propensity to innovate in mature technologies than DE firms.

  PublisherDOI

• Technological Disclosure Versus Secrecy in an Emerging Technology Context

  Academy of Management Proceedings · 2015-01-01

  articleSenior author

  Integrating economic perspectives on intellectual property rights, institutional theory, and the resource-based view of the firm, our study illuminates the current debate on whether firms should disclose technological advances or keep them secret. First, we show that two key forms of technological disclosure–patents and academic publications–have different consequences for the timing of new emerging technology products. Second, we show how the importance of technological disclosure changed over time as an emerging technology evolved from a pre-standard to a post- standard stage.

  PublisherDOI

• Behavioral implications of absorptive capacity: The role of technological effort and technological capability in leveraging alliance network technological resources

  Technological Forecasting and Social Change · 2015-02-12 · 99 citations

  articleSenior author
  PublisherDOI

Frequent coauthors

• Linda F. Tegarden

  Virginia Tech

  12 shared

• Laura B. Cardinal

  Moore College of Art and Design

  10 shared

• Mengge Li

  The University of Texas at El Paso

  6 shared

• Ann E. Echols

  5 shared

• Fiona Xiaoying Ji

  Santa Clara University

  5 shared

• Devi R. Gnyawalị

  Virginia Tech

  3 shared

• Julia Porter Liebeskind

  3 shared

• Tim C. Opler

  3 shared

Awards & honors

• Pamplin Faculty Undergraduate Teaching Award