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)

Although the literature on university–industry links has begun to uncover the reasons for, and types of, collaboration between universities and businesses, it offers relatively little explanation of ways to reduce the barriers in these collaborations. This paper seeks to unpack the nature of the obstacles to collaborations between universities and industry, exploring influence of different mechanisms in lowering barriers related to the orientation of universities and to the transactions involved in working with university partners. Drawing on a large-scale survey and public records, this paper explores the effects of collaboration experience, breadth of interaction, and inter-organizational trust on lowering different types of barriers. The analysis shows that prior experience of collaborative research lowers orientation-related barriers and that greater levels of trust reduce both types of barriers studied. It also indicates that breadth of interaction diminishes the orientation-related, but increases transaction-related barriers. The paper explores the implications of these findings for policies aimed at facilitating university–industry collaboration.

Investigating the factors that diminish the barriers to university-industry collaboration

Catch-up cycles and changes in industrial leadership:Windows of opportunity and responses of firms and countries in the evolution of sectoral systems ☆

Much of the prior research on interorganizational learning has focused on the role of absorptive capacity, a firm's ability to value, assimilate, and utilize new external knowledge. However, this definition of the construct suggests that a firm has an equal capacity to learn from all other organizations. We reconceptualize the firm-level construct absorptive capacity as a learning dyad-level construct, relative absorptive capacity. One firm's ability to learn from another firm is argued to depend on the similarity of both firms' (1) knowledge bases, (2) organizational structures and compensation policies, and (3) dominant logics. We then test the model using a sample of pharmaceutical–biotechnology R&D alliances. As predicted, the similarity of the partners' basic knowledge, lower management formalization, research centralization, compensation practices, and research communities were positively related to interorganizational learning. The relative absorptive capacity measures are also shown to have greater explanatory power than the established measure of absorptive capacity, R&D spending. © 1998 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

Relative absorptive capacity and interorganizational learning

One of the puzzles about why some countries have stronger economic growth than others revolves around the so-called 'middle-income trap', the situation in which a country that has grown strongly gets stuck at a certain level. In this book, Keun Lee explores the reasons why examples of successful catching-up are limited and in particular, why the Asian economies, including China, have managed to move, or are moving, beyond middle-income status but economic growth has stalled in some Latin American countries. This is one of the first studies to demonstrate using patent analysis that the secret lies in innovative systems at the firm, sector and country levels which promote investment in what the author calls 'short-cycle' technologies and thereby create a new path different from that of forerunning countries. With its comprehensive policy framework for development as well as useful quantitative methods, this is essential reading for academic researchers and practitioners.

Schumpeterian Analysis of Economic Catch-up: Knowledge, Path-Creation, and the Middle-Income Trap

Purpose



– The paper aims to address two key gaps in the literature of frugal innovation. First, it disambiguates frugal innovations into its types, and into the various levels at which it happens. Second, it builds upon the theoretical foundations of resource-based view, new institutional economics, economics of location, and institutional theory to offer testable propositions on determinants of frugal innovations. 




Design/methodology/approach



– This is a conceptual paper. The authors first systematically reviewed the extant literature on frugal innovation and related domains and categorized the existing understanding on the domain into various typologies of frugal innovation. The authors then justified why certain key theoretical lenses are tenable to understand the determinants of frugal innovation and then examined the conditions that enable such innovations. 




Findings



– The paper has three key findings. First, frugal innovation comprises of a frugal mindset, a frugal process and a frugal outcome, which may be practiced distinctly. Second, frugal innovators are of three types: grassroots-level, domestic-enterprise level, and MNC-subsidiary level. Each has their distinctive incentives and styles of frugal innovation. Third, a frugal mindset is encouraged by a resource-scarce environments, weaker institutional intermediaries, and a higher tolerance for uncertainty. Frugal processes are espoused by poor property rights regime and a critical size of lead market; and frugal outcomes are influenced by the network-position of innovators, and the presence of critical lead-markets. 




Research limitations/implications



– The propositions are though testable, but proxies need to be developed to measure the variables, such as a frugal mindset, and a frugal process. Further, the current view on various types and levels of frugal innovation is that of mutual exclusivity, whereas this may not always be the case. Hence, it might be useful to identify contingencies in which these distinctions fade away. 




Originality/value



– The paper is valuable in two key aspects. First, it offers a much-needed theoretical underpinning to the phenomenon of frugal innovation, such that the phenomenon could be better understood and influenced. Second, it nuances the phenomenon by identifying distinct types of frugal innovators in terms of their motivation, institutional influences, and styles of innovation.

Frugal innovation: aligning theory, practice, and public policy

Family firms and business groups play an important role in many emerging economies. In this paper we study how different aspects of family involvement influence technological innovation in a firm. Arguments drawn from agency theory and particularly the principal-principal agency hypothesize a negative influence of family involvement with respect to technological innovation. In contrast, stewardship theory predicts a positive influence of family involvement on technological innovation. Drawing on these theoretical lenses with contrasting directionalities with regard to the impact of family involvement on technological innovation, we study how family involvement in ownership, management and board of directors, and business group affiliation influence R&D investments and patents obtained by the firm. The hypotheses are empirically tested on a seven-year panel of 172 firms from the pharmaceutical industry in India. Our results indicate that family shareholding and family control over both CEO and chairperson positions have a positive and significant influence on the firm’s R&D investments, broadly lending support to stewardship theory. We also find a positive influence of business group affiliation on R&D investments and patents applied by the firm. Our conjecture is that the high technology opportunity environment in the Indian pharmaceutical industry facilitates stewardship behavior which in turn promotes innovation in these firms.

Family firms in India: family involvement, innovation and agency and stewardship behaviors

type="main"> Indian IT service firms are successfully competing with world leaders and research on the industry is emerging. Providing analysis at firm rather than industry level, this article identifies the windows of opportunity open to Indian firms, with the following findings: (i) the catching-up process by Indian IT firms can be classified as a three-stage ‘body shopping–offshoring–global delivery model’, comparable with the three steps in original equipment, own-design and own-brand manufacturing; (ii) the window of opportunity for Indian firms was primarily the techno-economic paradigm shift, and secondarily the government's regulation and support of the industry; and (iii) Indian firms initially partially re-invented their own path by offshoring and created their own global delivery model, gradually moving to higher value-added services.

Rishikesha T. Krishnan

Papers

Frugal innovation: aligning theory, practice, and public policy

Family firms in India: family involvement, innovation and agency and stewardship behaviors

Catching-up or Leapfrogging in the Indian IT Service Sector: Windows of Opportunity, Path-creating, and Moving up the Value Chain

From Jugaad to Systematic Innovation: The Challenge for India

Innovation in and from India: The who, where, what, and when