Organizational Inertia and Attention Co-evolution of Enterprises in Transition

In this study, exploratory case study method and grounded theory were adopted to analyze organizational inertia and attention structure in the strategic behavior and cognitive process, and construct the co-evolution model of attention allocation and inertia. It is found that organizational inertia varies with antecedent variables in each stag, and it is both transformative and stable, and has the characteristics of evolution. The initial attention configuration guides the path of inertia generation, and with the development of the enterprise, the dominant inertia will shape the strategic model in the later stage. Corporate change and transformation need to balance the relationship between inertia and attention. The research expands and improves the related studies of inertia and attention, and provides enlightenment for the transformation practice of traditional enterprises. 1. Research background Organizational ecology school notes that it is inertia as opposed to dynamic capability and organizational flexibility that pervades in organizations [1]. As a result, the organization is not able to immediately generate response mode in pace with environmental changes. Especially for the leading enterprises in a certain field for a long time, when faced with discontinuous and breakthrough changes, large-scale incumbents are often difficult to overcome inertia in a timely and effective way, which leads to the "incumbent curse"[2]. Inertia is often not presented in a single way, but rather a combination of different inertial antecedents, such as based on past experience, or conventional processes, or historical path and executive perception. Therefore, it is particularly important to tease out the specific role played by the sources or antecedents of structural inertia. Attention-Based View (ABV) defines enterprise strategy as a mode of attention. Its core argument is that the behavior of a firm is the result of how the firm guides and distributes decisions and attention. Ocasio points out that ABV by itself cannot provide a complete answer, but it must be supplemented by other perspectives and theories. The ABV of the enterprise provides a unified process-based explanation for the contradictory results of inertia and successful adaptation in the organization [3-5]. The strategic position of the manufacturing industry and the characteristics of the digital economy times urgently require the high quality development and transformation of traditional manufacturing enterprises. Many traditional enterprises' long-term strategies are influenced by specific executives, and there are few attempts to combine the attention studies on strategic behavior and cognitive processes with the perspective of inertia. Therefore, it is more difficult to form a model of organizational behavior difference under the action of inertia in the allocation of executive attention based on the local transition situation in China. In view of this, this study integrates the research framework of inertia and ABV, and tries to answer the process mechanism of the co-evolution of inertia and attention in the transition period.