By Pierre Bourdieu (London: Routledge, 2010), xxx + 607 pp. £15.99 paper. A combination of social theory, statistical data, illustrations, and interviews, Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judg...

Distinction: A Social Critique of the Judgement of Taste

What makes organizations so similar? We contend that the engine of rationalization and bureaucratization has moved from the competitive marketplace to the state and the professions. Once a set of organizations emerges as a field, a paradox arises: rational actors make their organizations increasingly similar as they try to change them. We describe three isomorphic processes-coercive, mimetic, and normative—leading to this outcome. We then specify hypotheses about the impact of resource centralization and dependency, goal ambiguity and technical uncertainty, and professionalization and structuration on isomorphic change. Finally, we suggest implications for theories of organizations and social change.

The iron cage revisited: Institutional isomorphism and collective rationality in organizational fields (Chinese Translation)

As well as review the literature on the notion of institutional entrepreneurship introduced by Paul DiMaggio in 1988, we propose a model of the process of institutional entrepreneurship We first present theoretical and definitional issues associated with the concept and propose a conceptual account of institutional entrepreneurship that helps to accommodate them We then present the different phases of the process of institutional entrepreneurship from the emergence of institutional entrepreneurs to their implementation of change Finally, we highlight future directions for research on institutional entrepreneurship, and conclude with a discussion of its role in strengthening institutional theory as well as, more broadly, the field of organization studies

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How actors change institutions : Towards a theory of institutional entrepreneurship

Organizational learning has been an important topic for the journal Organization Science and for the field. We provide a theoretical framework for analyzing organizational learning. According to the framework, organizational experience interacts with the context to create knowledge. The context is conceived as having both a latent component and an active component through which learning occurs. We also discuss current and emerging research themes related to components of our framework. Promising future research directions are identified. We hope that our perspective will stimulate future work on organizational learning and knowledge.

http://disciplinas.stoa.usp.br/pluginfile.php/3502/mod_resource/content/1/2011%20Organizational%20learning%20-%20form%20experience%20to%20knowledge.pdf

Organizational Learning: From Experience to Knowledge

https://epublications.marquette.edu/cgi/viewcontent.cgi?article=1270&context=mgmt_fac

Qualitative case studies in operations management: Trends, research outcomes, and future research implications

How organizations create, transfer, and retain knowledge has been the focus of intensive investigation by management researchers. However, one aspect of the dynamics of knowledge--organizational forgetting--has received comparatively little attention. In this paper, we draw on an exploratory, multiple-case study of learning in international strategic alliances to explore how and why organizations forget. Based on our case study, we develop a theory of organizational forgetting, discuss the role of forgetting in the dynamics of organizational knowledge, and present a typology of types of organizational forgetting.

Remembrance of Things Past? The Dynamics of Organizational Forgetting

Fabrizio Salvador is Professor of Operations Management at the Instituto de Empresa Business School, adjunct professor at the MIT-Zaragoza Logistics Program and research affiliate at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. Pablo Martin de Holan is the chairman of the Entrepreneurial Management Department of the Instituto de Empresa Business School and a professor of Strategy at INCAE Business School. Frank Piller is a chair professor of management at the Technology & Innovation Management Group of RWTH Aachen University in Germany. He is also a co-founder of the MIT Smart Customization Group and a founding partner of Think Consult, a management consultancy.

/pdf/cracking-the-code-of-mass-customization-50cn933h9t.pdf

Cracking the Code of Mass Customization

Companies often focus on creating organizational processes and structures that allow them to learn quickly. But recent research shows that organizations must also effectively manage how they forget. The authors present a new construct for companies to determine how best to remember the knowledge they should and forget the knowledge they shouldn?t. According to them, forgetting can be categorized along two dimensions. The first differentiates between accidental and intentional forgetting. The former is most often associated with the loss of valuable knowledge, which thus reduces a company?s competitiveness. Intentional forgetting, on the other hand, can benefit an organization by helping to rid it of knowledge that has been producing dysfunctional outcomes. The other dimension highlights the difference between knowledge that is entrenched versus new. The two dimensions form a matrix that categorizes the four types of organizational forgetting: 1. memory decay, 2. failure to capture, 3. unlearning and 4. avoiding bad habits. Each form is associated with a distinct set of processes and contexts that result in a specific set of challenges. As such, each of the four processes must be managed differently.

Managing Organizational Forgetting

After decades of research, the link between organizational learning and competitive advantage is clear: firms that are better at learning are better positioned to take advantage of emerging opportunities and deal with emerging threats, especially ones that require significant organizational change. Firms that are better able to create new knowledge, ‘learning organizations’, are able to innovate more effectively and adapt to changing environmental conditions more quickly and efficiently, gaining competitive advantage over firms that cannot. Research on the nature of organizational knowledge, the processes that support learning and the barriers that prevent it and the functioning of organizational memory systems has all accumulated rapidly. The result is a well-developed perspective on the management of knowledge that provides an effective framework for research and a useful guide for management practice. We find the progress made in understanding organizational knowledge and organizational learning impressive and the resulting framework useful and convincing. At the same time, based on the results of our research into the knowledge dynamics of international joint ventures (Martin de Holan and Phillips, 2003; Martin de Holan and Phillips, in press; Martin de Holan et al., 2004),1 we believe that one important dimension of knowledge in organizations deserves much more attention: the dynamics of organizational forgetting. We are convinced that competitiveness is not just about learning; it is also about forgetting the right things at the right times. Deeply entrenched stocks of knowledge can act as barriers to new learning, or even to the recognition of the opportunity to innovate a new product, service or business model. Unneeded stocks of knowledge require expensive management and can consume critical management attention, leading to a loss of competitiveness. Increasing numbers of collaborations mean increasing opportunities to pick up bad habits from partners that must be forgotten quickly before they adversely affect competitiveness. Furthermore, firms can overlearn from bad experiences, leading to organizational dysfunction, loss of competitiveness and a critical need to forget. We believe that managers must become as skilled at managing forgetting as they have become at managing learning and, we will argue here, management STRATEGIC ORGANIZATION Vol 2(4): 423–433 DOI: 10.1177/1476127004047620 Copyright ©2004 Sage Publications (London,Thousand Oaks, CA and New Delhi) www.sagepublications.com

Pablo Martin de Holan

Papers

Remembrance of Things Past? The Dynamics of Organizational Forgetting

Cracking the Code of Mass Customization

Managing Organizational Forgetting

Organizational forgetting as strategy

Sun, sand, and hard currency. Tourism in Cuba.