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)

The Analysis of Variance.

The area of consumer cocreation is in its infancy and many aspects are not well understood. In this article, we outline and discuss a conceptual framework that focuses on the degree of consumer cocreation in new product development (NPD). The authors examine (a) the major stimulators and impediments to this process, (b) the impact of cocreation at each stage of the NPD process, and (c) the various firm-related and consumer-related outcomes. A number of areas for future research are suggested.

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Consumer Cocreation in New Product Development

Generating ideas for new products used to be the exclusive domain of marketers, engineers, and/or designers. Users have only recently been recognized as an alternative source of new product ideas. Whereas some have attributed great potential to outsourcing idea generation to the “crowd” of users (“crowdsourcing”), others have clearly been more skeptical. The authors join this debate by presenting a real-world comparison of ideas actually generated by a firm’s professionals with those generated by users in the course of an idea generation contest. Both professionals and users provided ideas to solve an effective and relevant problem in the consumer goods market for baby products. Executives from the underlying company evaluated all ideas (blind to their source) in terms of key quality dimensions, including novelty, customer benefit, and feasibility. The study reveals that the crowdsourcing process generated user ideas that score significantly higher in terms of novelty and customer benefit, and somewhat lower in terms of feasibility. However, the average values for feasibility – in sharp contrast to novelty and customer benefit – tended to be relatively high overall, meaning that feasibility did not constitute a narrow bottleneck in this study. Even more interestingly, it is found that user ideas are placed more frequently than expected among the very best in terms of novelty and customer benefit. These findings, which are quite counterintuitive from the perspective of classic new product development (NPD) literature, suggest that, at least under certain conditions, crowdsourcing might constitute a promising method to gather user ideas which can complement those of a firm’s professionals at the idea generation stage in NPD.

The Value of Crowdsourcing: Can Users Really Compete with Professionals in Generating New Product Ideas?

Lindell and Whitney introduced a partial correlation technique, now referred to as the correlational marker technique, for controlling method variance using a marker variable that is theoretically unrelated to substantive variables in a study. This article (a) first reviews their specific analysis plan, and then (b) reviews empirical studies that have followed all or part of this plan. The authors also (c) describe a structural equation method that has been applied to the analysis of marker variables and (d) review empirical studies using this analytical approach. Next, the authors (e) develop a comprehensive confirmatory factor analysis (CFA) marker technique analysis plan, and (f) demonstrate this plan with an empirical example. Finally, the authors (g) describe how marker variables can be examined along with other method variance processes, (h) discuss the important role of theory in the critical step of selecting marker variables, and (i) discuss assumptions and limitations of the Comprehensive CFA Ma...

Method Variance and Marker Variables: A Review and Comprehensive CFA Marker Technique

Purpose – The aim of this article is to propose a framework for a new perspective on the total service experience, which dimensions influence it, and how a service experience is linked to value in use.Design/methodology/approach – The article is conceptual and suggests a new theoretical frame of reference describing value in use through service experience in technology‐based services.Findings – According to this article, a service experience is the total functional and emotional value of a consumed service. The service experience is unique to every individual customer and the service consumption situation. Value in use is the cognitive evaluation of the service experience.Research limitations/implications – The framework is discussed in the context of technology‐based services and will provide a basis for future research. Empirical studies are called for concerning service experiences in different kinds of service contexts.Originality/value – This article contributes a new framework, illustrating the serv...

Value in use through service experience

Although user involvement is frequently practiced in companies, the research findings regarding its benefits for innovation are contradictory. This article experimentally assesses the contributions ...

Managing User Involvement in Service Innovation: Experiments with Innovating End Users

This paper presents an eight-firm study, conducted from the service-dominant logic perspective, which makes a contribution regarding knowledge of the anatomy of value propositions and service innovation. The paper suggests that value propositions are configurations of several different practices and resources. The paper finds that ten common practices, organized in three main aggregates, constitute and fulfill value propositions: i.e. provision practices, representational practices, and management and organizational practices. Moreover, the paper suggests that service innovation can be equated with the creation of new value propositions by means of developing existing or creating new practices and/or resources, or by means of integrating practices and resources in new ways. It identifies four types of service innovation (adaptation, resource-based innovation, practice-based innovation, and combinative innovation) and three types of service innovation processes (practice-based, resource-based, and combinative). The key managerial insight provided by the paper is that service innovation must be conducted and value propositions must be evaluated from the perspective of the customers’ value creation, the service that the customer experiences. Successful service innovation is not only contingent on having the right resources, established methods and practices for integrating these resources into attractive value propositions are also needed.

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Exploring value propositions and service innovation: a service-dominant logic study

Exploring the Contributions of Involving Ordinary Users in Ideation of Technology-Based Services

https://www.diva-portal.org/smash/get/diva2:494542/FULLTEXT01.pdf

Peter Magnusson

Papers

Value in use through service experience

Managing User Involvement in Service Innovation: Experiments with Innovating End Users

Exploring value propositions and service innovation: a service-dominant logic study

Exploring the Contributions of Involving Ordinary Users in Ideation of Technology-Based Services

Exploring the Contributions of Involving Ordinary Users in Ideation of Technology‐Based Services*