bluuebunny/crossref_metadata_2025 huggingface dataset:
Managerial Openness to Change and the Introduction of GDSS: Explaining Initial Success and Failure in Decision Conferencing
Authors: McCartt Anne T. , Rohrbaugh John
Published: October 2008

The term Group Decision Support System (GDSS) refers broadly to any application of information technology that supports the work of groups. As more organizations increasingly explore possible applications of GDSS in ways that have the potential to alter managerial routines, the extent of managerial openness to change will be tested at least as much as the new technology. The relation of managerial openness to the successful introduction of GDSS was studied by analyzing a survey of participants in 26 decision conferences hosted by the Decision Techtronics Group of the State University of New York. The perceived benefit of each conference was assessed by a global outcome scale. Eight additional scales were employed to measure group decision process effectiveness, based on the Competing Values Approach to organizational analysis. Results indicated that conferences were evaluated as most beneficial by flexible client organizations that appeared open to the initial use of GDSS. As expected, positive outcomes also were found to be associated with conferences that involved fewer participants and in which participants believed that important decisions had been made. To the extent that the process of GDSS introduction can be managed to avoid failures, the research findings strongly encourage the design of meetings that both efficiently focus on the task (i.e., are highly goal centered) while simultaneously engaging the full involvement of every group member (i.e., are highly participatory). While new technology must be repeatedly modified following adoption to suit the unique demands of each workplace, an organizational unit also must be able to change appropriately its established structures and processes to make accommodation. Such mutual adaptation suggests that the eventual assimilation of new technology will become threatened wherever it is rigidly introduced or wherever management teams are not flexible enough to alter their decision-making routines at the time of initiation.
A Socio-Political Theory of Workplace Democracy: Class Conflict, Constituent Reactions and Organizational Outcomes at a Gainsharing Facility
Authors: Collins Denis
Published: October 2008

This article examines the role of class conflict and group processes during the transitional stage of an organization experimenting with a high involvement management system and a group-based bonus. Review articles on workplace democracy often report ambiguous empirical findings. This is because much of the writing about participatory management is narrowly grounded in either human relations or human resource management theory. This study uses organization theory literature on class conflict and the political science literature on change from authoritarian rule to democracy to develop grounded theory based on events and outcomes at a nonunion, privately-owned manufacturing facility, during four years of operation under a Scanlon-type gainsharing system. Since organizations are governance systems, gainsharing can be conceptualized as a middle-range democracy. As demonstrated by this study, both management and labor, in some ways, benefitted from gainsharing. Although democratization was extremely worthwhile, it did not disperse class distinctions and the concentration of capital.
Mortality, Reproducibility, and the Persistence of Styles of Theory
Authors: Pfeffer Jeffrey
Published: October 2008

It seems somehow appropriate that Peter Frost’s letter sending me a draft of John Van Maanen’s (Van Maanen, J. 1995. Style as theory. Organ. Sci. 6(1) 132–143.) article should have been dated November 7, 1994. For on November 8 we witnessed, at least in the United States and particularly in California, the culmination of a season of political campaigns notable for their viciousness and appeal to emotion rather than reason. Frost’s (Frost, P. 1995. Crossroads. Organ. Sci. 6(1) 132.) characterization of Van Maanen’s article as “less restrained than we are used to” was an understatement. John is nothing if not a master of rhetoric, and his comment on my paper employs tried and true rhetorical devices. This includes contrastive pairs (Atkinson [Atkinson, M. 1984. Our Masters’ Voices. Methuen, London, England.]), in this instance, implicitly Weick and a style of theory that “rests on its more or less unique style” (p. 135) versus Pfeffer, a presumed apologist for (if not an example of) “a logocentric tradition of empirical science with its count-and-classify conventions” and “more than a little physics envy” (p. 134). Van Maanen’s article also follows Edelman’s ([Edelman, M. 1964. The Symbolic Uses of Politics. University of Illinois Press, Urbana, IL.], p. 124) description of political speech as “a ritual, dulling the critical faculties rather than awakening them. Chronic repetition of clich’es and stale phrases that serve simply to evoke a conditioned uncritical response is a time-honored habit among politicians and a mentally restful one for their audiences.” Van Maanen promotes a caricature of normal science and reinforces its protagonists’ unacceptability with emotion-laden adjectives (shrill, sour, vain, autocratic, insufferably smug, orthodox, and naive, among many others).
Managerial Categorization of Competitors: Using Old Maps to Navigate New Environments
Authors: Reger Rhonda K. , Palmer Timothy B.
Published: October 2008

The authors empirically examine differences between automatic and controlled processing by executives in an increasingly dynamic industry. The results suggest that cognitive inertia affects judgments in both modes, but the effect is stronger with automatic processing. Specifically, the authors conducted two studies examining executives' cognitive maps of competitive positioning. First, they explored differences in ways strategists categorize competitors in a cross-sectional field study conducted during a period of significant environmental upheaval. They found that managers relied on cognitive maps that reflected obsolete industry boundaries rather than configurations representative of the deregulated marketplace. Hence, managers must be mindful to incorporate new information proactively from many sources and to actively discard old, automatic maps in order to develop reliable maps for changing environments. In a second study, managerial competitive schemas of competitive positioning were compared longitudinally across three research projects conducted in the financial intermediary industry. An eight-year time frame provided a unique opportunity to explore the content of mental models in an industry undergoing an accelerating rate of change. The longitudinal results indicate that change creates diversity of thought across managers in the same environment. Managers at competing firms are therefore apt to view competition quite differently in turbulent environments. Implications of the study findings for strategic decision making, consensus and conflict, and organizational learning and executive succession in turbulent environments are discussed. Issues are identified that warrant further research.
A Funny Thing Happened! The Management of Consumer Emotions in Service Encounters
Authors: Locke Karen
Published: October 2008

This paper examines the interplay between emotions expressed by patients and their families (consumers) and those expressed and recruited by physicians (service providers) in the pediatric department of a subspecialty medical setting. Detailed observations made during a year of fieldwork demonstrate that physicians enacted comedic performances in response to patient families' negative emotions. These comedies are a vehicle for the display and generation of fun: incompatible with the anxiety, fear, and despondence patient families typically bring to medical encounters. They further invite a move to positive emotions because the performances themselves are cues for optimism. Four comedies were identified, selectively presented by physicians at various emotional junctures in the service delivery process. Sociability comedy is initiated as physicians and patient families first come face-to-face, and it invites the former to like and feel comfortable with the performing physicians. Mastery comedy induces feelings of reassurance in families at the moment when physicians lay hands on the patients' bodies. Ostentatious Celebratory comedy promotes feelings of joy as it marks treatment successes while carefully modulated Magical performances bid for resilience at those times when patient families find it difficult to be hopeful about the medical prognosis.

The positive feelings engendered by these comedies likely expedite physicians' and patient families' dependence on each other. For example, liking, feeling comfortable with, and reassured with their physicians will make patient families less likely to hesitate about cooperating with the diagnostic and treatment procedures the former suggest. Reciprocally, confident of these feelings, physicians can be assured that families will continue in the service relationship and follow through with their medical recommendations.

The account provided in this paper has several implications for the study of organizational emotions and of service encounters. For example, the emotional exchanges described in this paper underscore the appropriateness of understanding clients as co-participants in the service process because the emotional displays of physician providers arise in response to various feelings that clients bring to encounters. Additionally. where previous studies of emotion in service encounters highlight the relationship between providers' emotional displays and client satisfaction, this study suggests the emotions that prevail in service encounters influence client cooperation with the service delivery process. And, they may be important to the quality of services generated.
The Platform Organization: Recombining Strategies, Structures, and Surprises
Authors: Ciborra Claudia U.
Published: October 2008

The global technology strategy of Olivetti, a leading European computer firm, is analyzed over the last decade in order to illustrate how high-tech firms undergo transformations which not only tend to destroy their best core competencies, but also affect their very business identity. Task uncertainty is so pronounced that conventional ways of looking at the organizational structures and processes, such as the transaction costs approach or the strategy-structure link, need to be amended in favor of a more dynamic perspective. Such a perspective looks at organizations as platforms, or contexts, out of which specific structures arc extracted, tried out and discarded in a pragmatic manner. A platform is a meta-organization, a formative context that molds structures, and routines shaping them into well-known forms, such as the hierarchy, the matrix and even the network, but on a highly volatile basis. Hence, the platform organization may appear to be confused and inefficient but its value lies in its readiness to sport whatever organizational form is required under the circumstances Platforms are characterized by surprises, and organization members, no matter how they see them-selves after the fact, are busy improvising and tinkering. Drawing on similar studies carried out in Silicon Valley, one can draw the conclusion that high-tech firms can survive if they are smart at doing what “savages do daily,” i.e., bricolage.
Misbehavior in Organizations: A Motivational Framework
Authors: Vardi Yoav , Wiener Yoash
Published: October 2008

Observers of organizations recognize now that work related misconduct is both pervasive and costly. There is ample evidence that members of organizations sabotage processes, steal company property, harass others, cheat the government, or mislead customers. Companies and the public pay dearly.

What are the motivational forces that drive organizational members to exhibit such varied forms of misconduct? Are these forces different from those that drive them to engage in constructive behavior? What kinds of personal and organizational factors influence such acts of intentional misbehavior?

Our basic objectives in this paper are three-fold; first, to formally define a new construct of Organizational Misbehavior (OMB), and to discuss the theoretical implications of the definition; second, to identify different types of OMB; and third, to develop a conceptual framework that would allow the inclusion of OMB in a comprehensive theory of work motivation, applicable to both proper and improper conduct.

We define Organizational Misbehavior as “any intentional action by members of organizations that violates core organizational and/or societal norms.” A crucial element in the definition is the intention underlying the misbehavior. It therefore serves as the basis for the distinction among three types or organizational misbehavior: (a) OMB Type S, misbehavior that intends to benefit the self; (b) OMB Type O, misbehavior that intends to benefit the organization; and (c) OMB Type D, misbehavior that intends to inflict damage.

In order to integrate these forms of misconduct within a comprehensive motivational framework, we use the distinction between normative and instrumental sources of motivation. We propose that people who engage in OMB Type S are primarily motivated by self-interest consideration (i.e., instrumental processes), whereas those that perpetrate OMB Type O do so mostly because of strong identification with and loyalty to their organization (i.e., normative processes). OMB Type D, however, may he triggered by either instrumental or normative forces, or by both at the same time.

The various instrumental and normative factors that influence misbehavior are not only personal; they can also be organizational. On the individual level, we refer to such factors as the stage of moral development and personal need satisfaction At the organization level, we examine the role of such factors as organization culture and cohesiveness. We finally use the instrumental-normative framework to derive a set of formal propositions about the effects of some of these factors on the form and intensity of OMB.
Crossroads—Describing Differences in Approaches to Organization Science: Rethinking Burrell and Morgan and Their Legacy
Authors: Deetz Stanley
Published: October 2008

When Gibson Burrell and Gareth Morgan wrote Sociological Paradigms and Organisational Analysis, I doubt that they, or anyone else, would have anticipated the widespread impact or resultant contestation that their four-paradigm grid would have. Many grids had appeared before in sociology and after in organizational studies, but none have gained the almost hegemonic capacity to define the alternatives in organizational analysis. In my development below, I will privilege programmatic differentiations rooted in what I will develop as a dialogic perspective. What Burrell and Morgan called “functionalist” research will thus be implicitly represented as an “other.” In doing so, both the lines of division and the arguments that extend from this can be redrawn. “Functionalist” style work can be reclaimed as legitimate in specifiable ways as reunderstood from dialogic conceptions. Nondialogic research programs will not be seen as alternative routes to truth, but as specific discourses which, if freed from their claims of universality and/or completion, could provide important moments in the larger dialogue about organizational life. The test of my suggested differentiations is not whether they provide a better map, but whether they provide an interesting way to talk about what is happening in research programs.
New Organizational Forms and Strategies for Managing in Hypercompetitive Environments
Authors: Ilinitch Anne Y. , D'Aveni Richard A. , Lewin Arie Y.
Published: October 2008

Strong forces of change—globalization, demographic shifts (e.g., aging population and declining fertility rates), advances in information technology, demassification of society, and hypercompetition—are reshaping the competitive landscape worldwide. As a result, companies in most industries are not only undergoing rapid and radical change, but are also experiencing a fundamental shift in the rules of competition and the way the game of competition is played. The old, genteel, stable oligopolies that defined competition during the 20th century are rapidly restructuring. In their place are emerging markets fraught with uncertainty, diverse global players, rapid technological change, widespread price wars, and seemingly endless reorganization. That transition is occurring not only in the United States, but also in Europe, Latin America, and Asia. In this issue, we demonstrate that (as predicted by those early researchers) a dramatic and far-reaching shift has occurred in the nature of competition in most industries. We present evidence that the shift has resulted in a new organizational paradigm that has been described as “hypercompetition”.
The Evolution of Intracorporate Domains: Divisional Charter Losses in High-Technology, Multidivisional Corporations
Authors: Galunic D. Charles , Eisenhardt Kathleen M.
Published: October 2008

Modern corporations have become synonymous with the multidivisional form of organization. Variously interdependent divisions are “chartered” to look after one or more business areas, in effect defining the “turf” of the division and its purpose within the corporation, and collectively defining the corporate domain. However, once created, these divisional charters should not be regarded as rigid; they are susceptible to change. Particularly in fast-paced environments, such as in high-technology industries, divisional charters are liable to change as divisions add or subtract businesses to their charter responsibilities. These charter changes are seen as an adaptive device for large, multidivisional corporations in fast-paced environments.

This paper presents a process model of how divisions change their domains in hypercompetitive contexts, focusing on the specific question of how divisions lose all or portions of their business charters. The paper is based on a larger inductive study of charter changes in ten divisions, both domestic and foreign, of a large, multinational, high-technology corporation. Data were collected over an 18-month period and included formal interviews, questionnaires, company documents, group interviews, media publications and direct observations of strategy formation sessions. Over 80 informants were interviewed across several managerial levels.

Our data revealed three distinct patterns and logics of charter loss depending upon what phase of core business development a division found itself: (1) Divisions starting-up new core businesses lost these charters because of a combination of their failure in the new area and competition with other divisions in the company—the process revealed a competitive market for new charters; (2) Divisions rapidly growing new core businesses lost peripheral business areas in order to focus on the core business—the process emphasized a focus logic for charter change: finally (3) Divisions with mature charter areas were found to shed their core business areas because of an emerging misfit between their skills and culture and the nature of competition in the industry—the process emphasized the emerging nature of corporate mis-alignment and the abrupt charter changes that can follow. This paper contributes to organizational theory by exploring the evolution of large, diversified corporations, focusing on the organizational responses to fast-moving, competitive environments. It also contributes to strategy by revealing a “re-combinant” multidivisional organizational form, by which timely charter changes can be used by large corporations to keep pace in these turbulent contexts.
Prospering in Dynamically-Competitive Environments: Organizational Capability as Knowledge Integration
Authors: Grant Robert M.
Published: October 2008

Unstable market conditions caused by innovation and increasing intensity and diversity of competition have resulted in organizational capabilities rather than served markets becoming the primary basis upon which firms establish their long-term strategies. If the strategically most important resource of the firm is knowledge, and if knowledge resides in specialized form among individual organizational members, then the essence of organizational capability is the integration of individuals' specialized knowledge.

This paper develops a knowledge-based theory of organizational capability and draws upon research into competitive dynamics, the resource-based view of the firm, organizational capabilities, and organizational learning. Central to the theory is analysis of the mechanisms through which knowledge is integrated within firms in order to create capability. The theory is used to explore firms' potential for establishing competitive advantage in dynamic market settings, including the role of firm networks under conditions of unstable linkages between knowledge inputs and product outputs. The analysis points to the difficulties in creating the “dynamic” and “flexible-response capabilities” which have been deemed critical to success in hypercompetitive markets.
Garbage Cans and Advancing Hypercompetition: The Creation and Exploitation of New Capabilities and Strategic Flexibility in Two Regional Bell Operating Companies
Authors: Smith Anne D. , Zeithaml Carl
Published: October 2008

How does an organization functioning in a regulated, monopoly environment transform itself to prepare for hypercompetitive conditions? Two of the regional Bell operating companies (RBOCs) found one answer to that question: create self-contained areas of chaotic activities with the potential to spawn new managerial capabilities and flexibility.

After divestiture from AT&T, the RBOCs maintained their local telephone service monopolies, but they all became involved in numerous unregulated activities, such as international expansion. For two of the seven RBOCs, the international activities led to new skills; learning and capabilities developed inside their stodgy bureaucracies. By the early 1990s, the RBOCs' local telephone service was facing dramatic change. Powerful potential entrants such as long-distance, wireless, and cable companies were surrounding and converging on the local telephone service industry through their new wireless licenses, collaborations crossing traditional industry borders, and new network development. The RBOCs saw clear signs of impending hypercompetitive conditions.

How the two RBOCs changed over an eight-year period and prepared for hypercompetition illustrates several aspects of Volberda's model of organizational transformation. The two RBOCs proceeded through two parallel trajectories of change, which after several years converged and necessitated reorganization. Only through a major organizational change were the two RBOCs able to redeploy the capabilities acquired from international activities into their regulated core business, thereby creating the flexibility they needed to prepare for advancing hypercompetition. With the imminent removal of regulatory barriers and legal roadblocks to competition in local telephone service in the United States, the RBOCs' flexibility and ability to manage hypercompetition may soon be tested.
Social networks, Learning, and Flexibility: Sourcing Scientific Knowledge in New Biotechnology Firms
Authors: Liebeskind Julia Porter , Oliver Amalya Lumerman , Zucker Lynne , Brewer Marilynn
Published: October 2008

We examine how two highly successful new biotechnology firms (NBFs) source their most critical input—scientific knowledge. We find that scientists at the two NBFs enter into large numbers of collaborative research efforts with scientists at other organizations, especially universities. Formal market contracts are rarely used to govern these exchanges of scientific knowledge. Our findings suggest that the use of boundary-spanning social networks by the two NBFs increases both their learning and their flexibility in ways that would not be possible within a self-contained hierarchical organization.
Refining Our Understanding of Hypercompetition and Hyperturbulence
Authors: Zohar Asaf , Morgan Gareth
Published: October 2008

The lead “Crossroads” essay by Kenneth Aupperle presents a strong case for the relevance of an ancient Greek story for the “new realities” faced by present-day organizations. Aupperle's story of the story of the “March Up Country” is intended to highlight the historical parallels of this remarkable event with current “hypercompetitive” conditions. He identifies some of the critical factors that contributed to the Greek army's successful organizational “reconfiguration” under the “hypercompetitive conditions” of war. Basically, his argument is that, by analogy, Hellenian culture, “was to individual city-states as a contemporary corporation is to its separate departments and strategic business units,” and that the episode offers useful insights into some of the critical ingredients necessary for meeting the challenges of current organizational conditions and circumstances.
Toward a Model of Risk in Declining Organizations: An Empirical Examination of Risk, Performance and Decline
Authors: Wiseman Robert M. , Bromiley Philip
Published: October 2008

Scholars who study organizational decline have argued that declining organizations reduce or eliminate their riskier activities such as innovation. Further, they cite reduced risk-taking as a primary contributor to further decline. Scholars with an interest in risk per se come to the opposite conclusion: low performing firms often take more risks than other firms and such risks reduce subsequent performance. This study attempts to resolve these conflicting views by examining the risk of firms in decline.

Our model, based on Cyert & March's (Cyert, R. M., J. G. March. 1963. A behavioral theory of the firm. Prentice-Hall, Englewood Cliffs, NJ.) behavioral theory of the firm, includes six basic variables: (1) performance, (2) slack, (3) aspirations, (4) expectations, (5) risk (income stream uncertainty), and (6) organization size as a measure of decline. The estimated model includes prior levels of risk and performance in the risk and performance equations respectively as controls. This study uses data on 344 low-performing firms in 19 manufacturing industries to estimate a time-series model that addresses both decline's influence on risk and risk's influence on performance while controlling for firm slack resources and industry factors.

The results suggest (1) organizational decline and potential slack (debt/equity) positively influence risk whereas recoverable slack (SGA/Sales), and the difference between performance aspirations and expectations negatively influence risk; and (2) recoverable slack and risk negatively influence performance. We also examined the influences of performance and slack on organizational decline and found that performance associates negatively whereas recoverable and potential slack associate positively with decline.

These results challenge the argument that declining firms reduce risk and so hurt their subsequent performance. Instead, the results suggest a cyclical process with positive feedback in which decline and the loss of certain slack resources increases risk which in turn reduces performance and results in further organizational shrinkage. Thus firms facing decline fall into a trap of taking unprofitable risks that ultimately exacerbates the decline. In addition, results relating slack to risk and performance exhibited inconsistent relations across the measures raising questions about the role slack resources play in risk and decline. Previous discussions of this slack implicitly assume all forms of slack have similar influences but our results demonstrate different forms of slack have very different effects.
Dominance, Deference, and Egalitarianism in Organizational Interaction: A Sociolinguistic Analysis of Power and Politeness
Authors: Morand David A.
Published: October 2008

Organizational literature has long presumed that power is communicated and enacted through behaviors exchanged at the level of face-to-face interaction. Little research, however, has investigated this aspect of power. The author explores how power is embedded in manners of speech exchanged in everyday interaction among superiors and subordinates. He draws upon the sociolinguistic theory of “politeness.” Politeness, linguistic behaviors used to demonstrate regard and consideration for others, is hypothesized to be sensitive to the social distribution of power. Low power actors are most likely to use linguistic politeness behaviors because such behaviors minimize the possibility of conflict with superiors. Results of a laboratory study confirm that politeness behaviors are sensitive to the distribution of formal authority in organizations. When superiors use politeness, they are more likely than subordinates to employ a subtype of politeness that demonstrates consideration by intimating social familiarity and camaraderie. The hypothesis that egalitarian values moderate the overall effect of power politeness is not supported, perhaps because of the constraints of the experimental situation.

Overall, the study demonstrates how abstractions such as authority and equality can be measured in terms of the manners of comportment that actors bring to bear on one another in face-to-face contexts. Given the possibility that egalitarianism can be operationalized at a linguistic level of analysis, the findings have important ramifications for the study of the presumed status leveling associated with programs of workplace participation. The study broadly shows how sociolinguistic perspectives can contribute to our understanding of organizational phenomena.
Learning the Innovation Journey: Order out of Chaos?
Authors: Cheng Yu-Ting , Van de Ven Andrew H.
Published: October 2008

This paper examines whether the developmental process of two biomedical innovations followed either (1) an orderly periodic progression of stages or phases, (2) a random sequence of chance “blind” events, or (3) a seemingly random process of chaotic events. Various diagnostics are applied to distinguish periodic, chaotic, and random patterns in time series data on innovation development events. We find that the actions and outcomes experienced by innovation teams exhibit a chaotic pattern during the initial period of innovation development, and an orderly periodic pattern during the ending development period: however, exogenous context events exhibit a random pattern during both the beginning and ending periods of innovation development. These research findings, if substantiated in other studies, significantly alter prior views of innovation and learning processes. The two most commonly-used explanations of the innovation process, that it follows either an orderly periodic sequence of stages or a random sequence of “blind” events, are not valid where chaos is found. Chaos tells us that the innovation process consists of a nonlinear dynamical system, which is neither orderly and predictable nor stochastic and random. The findings of chaos also expand existing definitions of organizational learning. Learning in chaotic conditions can be viewed as an expanding and diverging process of discovery. Learning during more stable and periodic conditions is viewed as a narrowing and converging process of testing. Timing of transitions from chaos to periodic patterns may explain whether decision or action rationality prevails. Hence, the difference between behavioral learning theorists and cognitive learning theorists may be just a matter of time.
Does Governance Matter? Keiretsu Alliances and Asset Specificity as Sources of Japanese Competitive Advantage
Authors: Dyer Jeffrey H.
Published: October 2008

This empirical study suggests that Japanese competitive advantage in complex-product industries is at least partly due to differences in value chain governance and interfirm asset co-specialization. Comparative data are offered which indicate that U.S. firms rely largely on markets and hierarchies to facilitate exchange, whereas Japanese firms rely largely on “hybrid” governance or alliances. The empirical findings suggest that Japanese automotive firms (value chains) have been able to achieve a competitive advantage over their U.S. counterparts by effectively using hybrid/alliance governance for three primary reasons: (1) Japanese automotive value chains are characterized by greater interfirm asset co-specialization than U.S. chains. In particular, greater human asset co-specialization between firms results in superior coordination, information sharing, and learning which is critical in complex-product industries, (2) hybrids/alliances as employed by Japanese automakers realize virtually all of the advantages of hierarchy (e.g., asset co-specialization) without the disadvantages (e.g., loss of market discipline, loss of flexibility, higher labor costs), and (3) Japanese automotive value chains incur lower transaction costs than U.S. value chains. Thus, alliances, as structured in Japan, simultaneously realize the benefits of decentralization and competition without sacrificing economies of scale, coordination, or co-specialization of assets. These findings support transaction cost theories which suggest that effectively aligning governance structures with transactions will result in efficiency advantages. However, inconsistent with extant transaction cost theory, findings from this study suggest that: (1) hybrid governance may be more efficient than hierarchical governance under conditions of uncertainty, and (2) transaction costs do not necessarily increase with an increase in asset specificity.
Attaining Flexible Stability by Integrating Total Quality Management and Socio-Technical Systems Theory
Authors: Manz Charles C. , Stewart Greg L.
Published: October 2008

Total Quality Management (TQM) and Socio-technical Systems Theory (STS) are two widely recognized and used work design strategies. While both approaches advocate some degree of technical proficiency and employee involvement, little research exists that has investigated potential synergies to be gained from combining central elements of the two. This paper directly addresses how these two approaches can be combined to simultaneously achieve organizational stability and flexibility. Contradictory as well as complementary features of TQM and STS are explored. A theoretical model addressing the potential for synergistic integration of TQM and STS is developed. Research propositions derived from this model are also provided to guide future research. Research based on these propositions can be instrumental in guiding ongoing organizational investments in TQM and STS. Ultimately, an integrated approach may be established that promises to simultaneously foster efficiency, stability, innovation, flexibility, psychological ownership, quality of worklife, continuous and discontinuous learning, and high organizational performance and customer satisfaction.
The Situated Nature of Adaptive Learning in Organizations
Authors: Tyre Marcie J. , von Hippel Eric
Published: October 2008

This paper explores the nature of adaptive learning around new technology in organizations. To understand this issue, we examine the process of problem solving involving new production equipment during early factory use. We find that adaptation is a situated process, in that different organizational settings (1) contain different kinds of clues about the underlying issues, (2) offer different resources for generating and analyzing information, and (3) evoke different assumptions on the part of problem solvers. Consequently, actors frequently must move in an alternating fashion between different organizational settings before they can identify the causal underpinnings of a problem and develop a suitable solution.

These findings suggest that traditional, decontextualized theories of adaptive learning and of collaboration could be improved by taking into account that learning occurs through people interacting in context—or, more specifically, in multiple contexts. Learning is often enhanced not just by bringing people together, but by moving them around to confront different sorts of clues, gather different kinds of data, use different kinds of tools, and experience different pressures relevant to a given problem. We discuss both managerial and theoretical implications of these findings.
Social Capital, Structural Holes and the Formation of an Industry Network
Authors: Walker Gordon , Kogut Bruce , Shan Weijian
Published: October 2008

The formation of a network is determined by the opposition of two forces. The first is the reproduction of network structure as a general social resource for network members. The second is the alteration of network structure by entrepreneurs for their own benefit. The idea of reproduction is a conventional one in organizational sociology but has taken on increased importance due to the work of Bourdieu and Coleman. In contrast, Burt stresses the entrepreneurship of individual agents in exploiting structural holes that lie between constrained positions. Though complementary, the theories of social capital and structural holes have fundamentally different implications for network formation.

This paper investigates these theories by examining empirically the formation of the interorganizational network among biotechnology firms. We propose that network structure determines the frequency with which a new biotechnology firm (or startup) establishes new relationships. Network structure indicates both where social capital is distributed in the industry and where opportunities for entrepreneurial action are located. The reproduction of network structure depends on how startups value social capital compared to these opportunities. The critical test is, consequently, whether new relationships reproduce or alter the inherited network structure. We find strong support for the power of social capital in reproducing the network over time.
A Coordination Theory Approach to Organizational Process Design
Authors: Crowston Kevin
Published: October 2008

An important practical problem for many managers is finding alternative processes for performing a desired task, for example, one that is more efficient, cheaper, or that is automated or enhanced by the use of information technology. Improving processes also poses theoretical challenges. Coordination theory provides an approach to the study of processes. In this view, the design of a process depends on the coordination mechanisms chosen to manage dependencies among tasks and resources involved in the process.

In this paper, I use coordination theory to analyze the software change process of a large mini-computer manufacturer. Mechanisms analyzed include those for task assignment, resource sharing, and managing dependencies between modules of source code. For each, I suggest alternative mechanisms and thus alternative designs for the process. The organization assigned problem reports to engineers based on the module that appeared to be in error, since engineers only worked on particular modules. Alternative task assignment mechanisms include assignment to engineers based on workload or market-like bids. Modules of source code were not shared, but rather “owned” by one engineer, thus reducing the need for coordination. An alternative resource sharing mechanism would be needed to manage source code if multiple engineers could work on the same modules. Finally, engineers managed dependencies between modules informally, relying on their personal knowledge of which other engineers used their code; alternatives include formally defining the interfaces between modules and tracking their users.

Software bug fixing provides a microcosm of coordination problems and solutions. Similar coordination problems arise in most processes and are managed by a similar range of mechanisms. For example, diagnosing bug reports and assigning them to engineers may have interesting parallels to diagnosing patients and assigning them to specialists.

While the case presented does not formally test coordination theory, it does illustrate the potential of coordination theory for exploring the space of organizational processes. Future work includes developing more rigorous techniques for such analyses, applying the techniques to a broader range of processes, identifying additional coordination problems and mechanisms and developing tools for collecting and comparing processes and automatically suggesting potential alternatives.
Interorganizational Collaboration and the Preservation of Global Biodiversity
Authors: Westley Frances , Vredenburg Harrie
Published: October 2008

Using grounded theory development research methods, the authors examine collaborative processes in the global biodiversity preservation domain. The processes examined are those initiated and convened by a subgroup of the Swiss-based International Union for the Conservation of Nature known as the Conservation Breeding Specialist Group of the Species Survival Commission. The global collaborative initiatives of the group suggest that extant theory on collaboration may not adequately explain collaborative processes in so complex a domain as global biodiversity preservation. Specifically, the authors suggest that in highly complex domains, effective structuring of collaborative initiatives may take different forms. Propositions about structuring of collaborations in complex domains are derived.
The Organizing Vision in Information Systems Innovation
Authors: Swanson E. Burton , Ramiller Neil C.
Published: October 2008

We offer a revised institutional view of how new technology for information systems (IS) comes to be applied and diffused among organizations. Previous research argues that early adoption of a technological innovation is based on local, rational organizational choice, while later adoption is institutionalized and taken for granted. We suggest that institutional processes are engaged from the beginning. Specifically, a diverse interorganizational community creates and employs an organizing vision of an IS innovation that is central to its early, as well as later, diffusion. This vision serves key functions in interpretation, legitimation, and the organization and mobilization of economic roles and exchanges. The development and influence of an organizing vision is determined by a variety of institutional forces. Among these forces, the community's discourse serves as the developmental engine. Other factors—business commerce, the IS practitioners' world view, the motivating business problematic, the core technology, and material processes of adoption and diffusion—provide the discourse with its content, structure, motivation, and direction. Primary development of the organizing vision takes place during the innovation's earliest diffusion. The hesitant early majority among the prospective adopters relies on this development in its efforts to make sense of the innovation. Where the organizing vision remains underdeveloped after early adoption, later diffusion and institutionalization of the innovation is likely to be retarded.
The Ethical Superiority and Inevitability of Participatory Management as an Organizational System
Authors: Collins Denis
Published: October 2008

During the heady revolutionary days of the 1960s, Slater and Bennis (Slater, P. E., W. G. Bennis. 1964. Democracy is inevitable. Harvard Bus. Rev. 42(2) 51–59.) declared the inevitability of democracy at the workplace. Twenty-five years later, in a retrospection of that article, the authors claimed that they were right (Slater and Bennis [Slater, P. E., W. G. Bennis. 1990. Democracy is inevitable. Harvard Bus. Rev. 68(5) 167–176.]). Unfortunately, the data do not support their claim (Lawler et al. [Lawler, E. E., S. A. Mohrman, G. E. Ledford. 1992. Employee Involvement and Total Quality Management. Jossey-Bass Publishers, San Francisco.]). Nonetheless, workplace democracy is inevitable.

This article argues in favor of the inevitability of participatory management, one form of workplace democracy, on the basis of its coherence to the social philosophical assumptions about human nature that underlie the forms of political arrangements (democracy) and economic arrangements (mixed economy) in the United States. These communitarian philosophical assumptions have been thoroughly argued in the political science and economic literature to be ethically superior to other sets of social philosophical assumptions that underlie authoritarianism and libertarianism. Currently, organization theory is approximately 200 years behind this literature. Persons who experience significant benefits as a result of the central position of “liberty” in the social philosophical assumptions of democracy and capitalism tend to design organizational systems that significantly restrict the liberty of their employees.

The current push for more democratic features is coming from organization theorists doing work on corporate culture, total quality management, gainsharing, and other systems of management that encourage decentralization, and from business ethics scholars doing work on the societal accountability of organizations. The very slow rate of evolution to workplace democracy is primarily attributed to the central role of the power elite. Whereas the American political and economic revolutionaries came from within the power elite of their times that is not yet the case for workplace democracy advocates.
The Relationship Between Control and Partner Learning in Learning-Related Joint Ventures
Authors: Makhija Mona V. , Ganesh Usha
Published: October 2008

The model developed draws on resource-based, information-processing, and organizational learning theories to show how JV control processes affect the dynamics of interpartner learning. According to the model, firms forming learning-related JVs match with partners in line with their differences in capability and other requirements; the result is referred to as the asymmetry-need configuration. A satisfactory post-negotiation match implies a balance in perceived bargaining power, enabling both partners to institute controls appropriate for the specific types of learning undertaken. The model stresses that appropriate controls are essential for learning to take place, yet dissimilar learning needs or learning capabilities of the two partners may nonetheless result in unequal learning rates. Such unequal learning sets into motion a continual reconfiguration of the original relationship between the two partners, including modification of the initial asymmetry-need configuration and perception of bargaining power. The model emphasizes that JVs with learning objectives are inherently and inevitably dynamic because of these internal processes. However, control mechanisms themselves are an important means for diagnosing these processes and realigning the relationship.

The formulation of such a process model helps to integrate many aspects of the JV relationship, including initial configuration, partner bargaining power, JV controls, and interpartner learning. In addition, the model captures the evolution of the partner relationship over the life of the JV. The focus on JV control processes in this research complements the insights gained from previous work that has looked at JV learning mainly in relation to the characteristics of the partners.
A Chaotic Model of Innovative Search: Some Answers, Many Questions
Authors: Koput Kenneth W.
Published: October 2008

The dynamics of innovative search are investigated. A formal learning model is explicated to understand (1) how attention is allocated and (2) how attention and ideas are related during an active search. A particular chaotic regime of the model is shown to have dynamics similar to an actual search process. This motivates an agenda for research along three primary directions: refinements to the model, extensions that link the model to actions and decisions, and surroundings required to embed such a model in a larger context. The findings here suggest that chaos can occur in specific organizational processes over particular periods of time. Whether such chaos is beneficial to organizations is unclear.