D. Eleanor Westney

Bio: D. Eleanor Westney is an academic researcher from Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The author has contributed to research in topics: Multinational corporation & Internationalization. The author has an hindex of 19, co-authored 41 publications receiving 2720 citations. Previous affiliations of D. Eleanor Westney include Yale University & York University.

Institutionalization Theory and the Multinational Corporation

Abstract: Over the last decade and a half, analyses of the strategy and organization of MNCs have increasingly widened their scope to incorporate detailed institutional portrayals of business environments. Relatively little of this work, however, has drawn on the simultaneously evolving body of sociological theory concerning the relationships between organizations and environments. Indeed, the two fields seemed to moving in different directions. As researchers into multinational enterprises focused their level of analysis on the study of businesses and product lines within the MNC, organization theory increasingly raised the level of analysis above the level of the individual organization to populations or fields. Scholars working on MNC organization tended either to remain within the ‘strategy-structure’ tradition of contingency theory or to move away from the detailed studies of formal structure that had dominated earlier work in favor of an emphasis on strategy and process, whereas macro-organization theory concentrated increasingly on structure (organizational forms, institutionalized patterns, the structure of networks) and paid less and less attention to strategy.

Organization Theory and the Multinational Corporation

Abstract: List of Tables and Figures - Acknowledgements - Notes on the Contributors - Introduction S.Ghoshal & D.E.Westney - Managing DMNCs: A Search for a New Paradigm Y.Doz & C.K.Prahalad - PART 1: ENVIRONMENT AND ORGANIZATION-ENVIRONMENT INTERACTIONS - Institutionalization Theory and the Multinational Corporation D.E.Westney - The Multinational Corporation as an Interorganizational Network S.Ghoshal & C.Bartlett - The European Subsidiaries of American Multinationals: An Exercise in Ecological Analysis J.Delacroix - Learning, or the Importance of Being Inert: Country Imprinting and International Competition B.Kogut - PART 2: ORGANIZATION STRUCTURE AND GOVERNANCE - Control in Multinational Firms: The Role of Price and Hierarchy J-F.Hennart - Information Processing Theory and the Multinational Corporation W.Egelhoff - Assumptions of Hierarchy and Heterarchy: With Applications to the Management of the Multinational Corporation G.Hedlund - Procedural Justice Theory and the Multinational Corporation W.C.Kim & R.A.Mauborgne - PART 3: ORGANIZATIONAL CULTURE AND NORMS - The Reproduction of Inertia in Multinational Corporations M.Kilduff - The Flow of Culture: Some Notes on Globalization and the Multinational Corporation J.V.Maanen & A.Laurent - Index

Organizing competitor analysis systems

Abstract: Based on a detailed study of the competitor analysis (CA) systems in three large companies, this paper examines the assessments of the formal CA system by its members and its major users, the uses to which CA is put, and the organizational systems by which the function attempts to improve its contribution and strengthen its role.

Absorptive capacity: a new perspective on learning and innovation

Abstract: In this paper, we argue that the ability of a firm to recognize the value of new, external information, assimilate it, and apply it to commercial ends is critical to its innovative capabilities. We label this capability a firm's absorptive capacity and suggest that it is largely a function of the firm's level of prior related knowledge. The discussion focuses first on the cognitive basis for an individual's absorptive capacity including, in particular, prior related knowledge and diversity of background. We then characterize the factors that influence absorptive capacity at the organizational level, how an organization's absorptive capacity differs from that of its individual members, and the role of diversity of expertise within an organization. We argue that the development of absorptive capacity, and, in turn, innovative performance are history- or path-dependent and argue how lack of investment in an area of expertise early on may foreclose the future development of a technical capability in that area. We formulate a model of firm investment in research and development (R&D), in which R&D contributes to a firm's absorptive capacity, and test predictions relating a firm's investment in R&D to the knowledge underlying technical change within an industry. Discussion focuses on the implications of absorptive capacity for the analysis of other related innovative activities, including basic research, the adoption and diffusion of innovations, and decisions to participate in cooperative R&D ventures. **

The knowledge-creating company : how Japanese companies create the dynamics of innovation

Abstract: How has Japan become a major economic power, a world leader in the automotive and electronics industries? What is the secret of their success? The consensus has been that, though the Japanese are not particularly innovative, they are exceptionally skilful at imitation, at improving products that already exist. But now two leading Japanese business experts, Ikujiro Nonaka and Hiro Takeuchi, turn this conventional wisdom on its head: Japanese firms are successful, they contend, precisely because they are innovative, because they create new knowledge and use it to produce successful products and technologies. Examining case studies drawn from such firms as Honda, Canon, Matsushita, NEC, 3M, GE, and the U.S. Marines, this book reveals how Japanese companies translate tacit to explicit knowledge and use it to produce new processes, products, and services.

World society and the nation-state

Abstract: The authors analyze the nation‐state as a worldwide institution constructed by worldwide cultural and associational processes, developing four main topics: (1) properties of nation‐states that result from their exogenously driven construction, including isomorphism, decoupling, and expansive structuration; (2) processes by which rationalistic world culture affects national states; (3) characteristics of world society that enhance the impact of world culture on national states and societies, including conditions favoring the diffusion of world models, expansion of world‐level associations, and rationalized scientific and professional authority; (4) dynamic features of world culture and society that generate expansion, conflict, and change, especially the statelessness of world society, legitimation of multiple levels of rationalized actors, and internal inconsistencies and contradictions.

The knowledge-creating company

Abstract: How have Japanese companies become world leaders in the automotive and electronics industries, among others? What is the secret of their success? Two leading Japanese business experts, Ikujiro Nonaka and Hirotaka Takeuchi, are the first to tie the success of Japanese companies to their ability to create new knowledge and use it to produce successful products and technologies. In The Knowledge-Creating Company, Nonaka and Takeuchi provide an inside look at how Japanese companies go about creating this new knowledge organizationally. The authors point out that there are two types of knowledge: explicit knowledge, contained in manuals and procedures, and tacit knowledge, learned only by experience, and communicated only indirectly, through metaphor and analogy. U.S. managers focus on explicit knowledge. The Japanese, on the other hand, focus on tacit knowledge. And this, the authors argue, is the key to their success--the Japanese have learned how to transform tacit into explicit knowledge. To explain how this is done--and illuminate Japanese business practices as they do so--the authors range from Greek philosophy to Zen Buddhism, from classical economists to modern management gurus, illustrating the theory of organizational knowledge creation with case studies drawn from such firms as Honda, Canon, Matsushita, NEC, Nissan, 3M, GE, and even the U.S. Marines. For instance, using Matsushita's development of the Home Bakery (the world's first fully automated bread-baking machine for home use), they show how tacit knowledge can be converted to explicit knowledge: when the designers couldn't perfect the dough kneading mechanism, a software programmer apprenticed herself withthe master baker at Osaka International Hotel, gained a tacit understanding of kneading, and then conveyed this information to the engineers. In addition, the authors show that, to create knowledge, the best management style is neither top-down nor bottom-up, but rather what they call "middle-up-down," in which the middle managers form a bridge between the ideals of top management and the chaotic realities of the frontline. As we make the turn into the 21st century, a new society is emerging. Peter Drucker calls it the "knowledge society," one that is drastically different from the "industrial society," and one in which acquiring and applying knowledge will become key competitive factors. Nonaka and Takeuchi go a step further, arguing that creating knowledge will become the key to sustaining a competitive advantage in the future. Because the competitive environment and customer preferences changes constantly, knowledge perishes quickly. With The Knowledge-Creating Company, managers have at their fingertips years of insight from Japanese firms that reveal how to create knowledge continuously, and how to exploit it to make successful new products, services, and systems.

Knowledge and the Speed of the Transfer and Imitation of Organizational Capabilities: An Empirical Test

Abstract: The capabilities of a firm, or any organization, lie primarily in the organizing principles by which individual and functional expertise is structured, coordinated, and communicated. Firms are social communities which use their relational structure and shared coding schemes to enhance the transfer and communication of new skills and capabilities. To replicate new knowledge in the absence of a social community is difficult. A classic demonstration is the well-studied problem of the transfer across country borders of manufacturing capabilities that support production of new product innovations. We show in this article that the degree of codification and how easily capabilities are taught has a significant influence on the speed of transfer. What makes the question of knowledge codification particularly interesting is that firms compete not only through the creation, replication, and transfer of their own knowledge, but also through their ability to imitate the product innovations of competitors. The capacit...