Suchergebnisse

This study examines how participants in routines view and balance pressures for consistency in the face of ongoing change. We address this question through a qualitative case-based inquiry into the ostensive aspects of the core operational routine in six waste management organizations. We find that organizational members simultaneously establish and maintain two ostensive patterns—one of targeted consistency and another of flexibility in internal coordination—by leveraging artifacts and connections. Organizations, however, could not establish similar patterns among their customers, who, lacking connections with other routine participants, expected consistency and performed their part less flexibly. These observations lead us to develop a theoretical model that identifies the processes through which simultaneous ostensive patterns of consistency and flexibility are established and sustained among organizational members, as well as the challenges that arise from multiplicity of ostensive patterns among routine participants with different roles and connections. The model advances the dynamic perspective on routines by articulating how artifacts and connections support the balancing of pressures for consistency and for change in routine functioning.

To understand how organizations combine conflicting institutional logics strategically to create and pursue new market opportunities, we conducted an in-depth longitudinal study of the multiple efforts of the Italian manufacturer of household goods Alessi to combine the logics of industrial manufacturing and cultural production. Over three decades, Alessi developed three different strategies to combine normative elements of the two logics, using each strategy to envision and pursue different market opportunities. By combining the logics of industrial manufacturing and cultural production, Alessi was able to envision new possibilities for value creation and to enact them through innovation in product design. The three strategies triggered a common set of mechanisms through which the purposeful combining of logics enabled the pursuit of opportunity, while each strategy structured the process differently. We develop a theoretical model linking the development of recombinant strategies to the dynamic restructuring of organizational agency and the related capacity to create and pursue new market opportunities. Our findings and theoretical insights advance understanding of the processes through which organizations challenge taken-for-granted beliefs and practices to create new market opportunities, use logics as resources to enable embedded agency, and design hybrid organizational arrangements.

Our study was motivated by the growing influence in cultural sociology and organizational research of the view of culture as a "toolkit," from which individuals draw resources flexibly to develop strategies of action that address different circumstances. To investigate if and how organizations can also use new and diverse cultural resources, we undertook a historical case study of the incorporation of new cultural resources in the cultural repertoire of the Italian manufacturer of household products Alessi. Through in-depth analysis of four rounds of incorporation of new cultural resources, we develop a robust theoretical model that relates the use of new cultural resources to the development of unconventional strategies and strategic versatility. We find that cultural repertoire enrichment and organizational identity redefinition are two core mechanisms that facilitate this process. The model contributes novel theoretical understanding regarding the use of cultural resources in strategy formation and change.

Innovation researchers recognize that the uncertainty with regard to the value-creating potential of product innovations increases with their technological novelty, and have argued that the usefulness and value of novel products are socially constructed. Despite this recognition, researchers have not explored how the outer form in which a technological innovation is embodied influences the processes through which the innovation's value is constructed and perceived. In this paper we argue that by embodying novel technologies in objects with specific functional, symbolic, and aesthetic properties, innovating firms also endow their products with cues that trigger a variety of cognitive and emotional responses. Drawing on psychological research we articulate how such cognitive and emotional responses underlie initial perceptions of value and theorize how innovating firms can influence them through product form design. Our framework explains how product form contributes to perceptions of value by modulating the actual technological novelty of a product innovation and facilitating how customers cope with it. Our theoretical framework makes an important contribution to innovation research and practice because it articulates how product form can be used strategically to achieve specific cognitive and emotional effects and enhance the initial customer perceptions of the value of an innovation.

A significant body of research has examined how new organizations gain legitimacy and how gaining it affects their subsequent access to resources. Less attention has been given to the problem of how new organizations attract collective attention. Although related to legitimation, the problem of attracting attention is distinct, as attention and evaluation are distinct cognitive processes. In this study, we examine the allocation of collective attention to new organizations in a system of relationships, within which new organizations seek to attract attention through their sensegiving activities; the information properties of their sensegiving activities affect the level of attention they receive from different types of media; and media attention, in turn, increases their perceived value potential in the eyes of venture capital investors (VCs). We examine these relationships in a sample of 398 information-technology start-ups that have obtained different levels of venture capital funding. Our results show that new organizations that engage in more intense and diverse sensegiving activities attract higher levels of industry media attention and that these effects are enhanced by the human capital of their founders and leaders. Diverse sensegiving activities are also associated with higher levels of attention from the general media, but only the attention of specialized industry media is positively associated with the level of VC funding obtained. These findings extend current research on information intermediation and institutional legitimation by demonstrating that media attention early in the life of new organizations affects how they are valued by a well-informed expert audience, such as VCs. They also contribute to entrepreneurship research on the effects of new organizations' strategies on their ability to secure resources and to research on VC funding decisions.