Entrepreneurial learning from failure: An interpretative phenomenological analysis

http://blog.educpros.fr/francois-fourcade/files/2014/06/Article.pdf

Failing to Learn and Learning to Fail (Intelligently): How Great Organizations Put Failure to Work to Innovate and Improve

Findings regarding the direction and intensity of the relation between size and innovation in the literature are contradictory. In the journal Organization Studies in 1992, Damanpour proposed a meta-analytical study in an attempt to clarify the diversity of existing conclusions. The present article is a replica and an extension of that study using the same methodology. Our aim is to (1) bring the pool of accumulated knowledge up to date, examining the time span 1970–2001, and (2) review in greater depth the effects of alternative ways of measuring organizational size. The sample used was made up of 87 correlations drawn from 53 empirical studies published in the most important journals on business administration. The analysis enabled us to confirm the existence of a significant and positive correlation between size and innovation. It also provided evidence showing that the contradictory results obtained in previous studies are due to divergences in the methods used to operationalize one, or more, of the v...

A Meta-analysis of Innovation and Organizational Size:

The notion of integration is central to the understanding of organizations in general as well as of contemporary phenomena such as e-commerce, virtual organizations, virtual teams, and enterprise resource planning (ERP) implementation. Yet, the concept of integration is ill-defined in the literature, and the impact of achieving high levels of integration is not well understood. The present paper addresses these issues. Drawing on the literature of several fields, this paper proposes the concept oforganizational integration (OI), which is defined as the extent to which distinct and interdependent organizational components constitute a unified whole. Six types of OI are identified: two intraorganizational OI (internal-operational, internal-functional) and four interorganizational OI (external-operational-forward, external-operational-backward, external-operational-lateral, and external-functional). This paper then presents a model and develops 14 propositions to predict (1) the effort needed to implement different types of OI, (2) the impact different types of OI will have on organizational performance, and (3) how six factors (interdependence, barriers to OI, mechanisms for achieving OI, environmental turbulence, complexity reduction mechanisms, and organizational configurations) influence the relationship between OI types, implementation effort, and organizational performance. The OI framework and model are then used to develop 14 propositions for ERP implementation research and to explain the findings of recent research on integration.

A Model of Organizational Integration, Implementation Effort, and Performance

Empirical research was conducted to investigate retrenchment as an integral component of the overall turnaround process. An industry study provided an anchored operational definition of a turnaround situation, indications of its internal and external causes, and an application of an absolute measure of its severity. The research further produced an empirical discrimination between retrenchment as a stand-alone response to financial decline and retrenchment as an initial phase of a turnaround strategy, and an identification of activities that can be used to classify entrepreneurial vs. efficiency emphases in a turnaround firm's recovery response.

Turnaround: Retrenchment and recovery

A call center can dramatically improve an organization's ability to serve its customers. in this article, three important questions are addressed for senior managers and executives who are establishing or expanding a call-center operation. First, as employees focus on responding to customer inquiries, will their skills become narrower and ultimately less beneficial to the organization? This article argues that skills for employees in call centers can and should be upgraded. Second, will the decentralized decision-making of the call center lead to a loss of managerial control? the article suggests ways of ensuring that the ideal configuration of decentralized decision making and centralized control takes hold in the organization after the call center is established. Third, how can an organization's teamwork and corporate spirit be maintained and enhanced after the establishment of a call center? the article offers practical advice for enhancing an organization's culture even as employees begin to ...

Making Room for the Call Center

https://www.sfu.ca/~sheppard/papers/JPS05a.pdf

Riding the Wrong Wave: Organizational Failure as a Failed Turnaround

Turnaround in small firms: An assessment of efficiency strategies

In strategic management, an impressive body of literature on turnaround has accumulated over the last three decades; however, the topic remains largely idiosyncratic and open-ended. Based mainly on the tenets of the life-cycle family of process theory, this paper presents a composite four-stage model that unfolds the dynamics of turnaround and provides a basis for the development of a theory on which to draw further. By categorizing the elements of turnaround as three critical requirements–incidents, events, and concepts–the model explains how the elements germane to each stage, when combined, facilitate the progression from a crippling deterioration in performance to an enduring success or to an eventual death. An analysis of the turnaround of Chrysler Corporation provides preliminary support for the model. The model's implications for theory, research, and practice are also given.

Resume
Au cours des trois dernieres decennies, un nombre impressionant d'etudes portant sur le redressement des entreprises ont ete menees en gestion strategique. Toutefois, ces etudes demeurent dans l'ensemble tres subjectives et manquent un encadrement methodique tres rigoureux. La presente etude, en prenant pour base certains postulats de la theorie du processus de la famille du cycle de vie, propose un modele a quatre etapes pour analyser le processus de redressement d'entreprise. Ce modele pose les premiers jalons d'une theorie qui peut faire l'objet d'etudes ulterieures plus approfondies. En definissant les trois etapes constitutives d'un redressement, a savoir les incidents, les evenements, et les concepts, notre modele explique comment les elements propres a chaque etape, une fois combines, facilitent le passage d'une performance mediocre a un succes stable, ou a une mort eventuelle de l'entreprise. L'etude du redressement de la compagnie Chrysler constitue l'illustration preliminaire du modele. Enfin, nous discutons l'apport possible du modele pour la theorie, la recherche et la mise en pratique des redressements d'entreprise.

Turnarounds: A Stage Theory Perspective

Although small firms are usually more vulnerable than large firms to faltering performance, investigations into their decline and turnaround are sparse in the small business literature. Risks faced by small firms are evident in their high mortality rates (Bracker and Pearson 1986, Vance 1983), and the natural selection assumptions of classical economics or organization ecology theories fatalistically preclude the possibility of individual firms making the adjustments necessary to turn around a deteriorating business situation. Nevertheless, most managers and management researchers would argue that failure is not inevitable; managers can indeed take discretionary action to turn around many deteriorating situations. However, at this point relatively little systematic knowledge or understanding of the etiology of their decline or turnaround exists. In this study, we examine two aspects of small firm decline and turnaround. The first tests competing theories as to whether a gradual decline or a crisis is more likely to precede successful turnaround. The second tests the relationships of external financial support with rate of decline and with turnaround success. BACKGROUND Both earlier research and common experience suggest a relationship between patterns of deteriorating performance and the likelihood of a performance turnaround, with a distinction often made between "crisis" and "decline" situations. Although crisis and decline are often rooted in different causes (Cameron, Whetton, and Kim 1987), they are nevertheless reflected in the same performance measures and are usually characterized as the high and low extremes of the rate of performance deterioration. Decline is a relatively smooth trend, involving a sustained low rate of deteriorating performance. Crisis, however, involves a sudden performance drop, involving a major downward shift in the performance trends (Cameron and Zammuto 1988). Therefore, crises are more perceptible, more rapid, and appear to be more immediately threatening to the firm. This distinction might have implications both for the ability of a firm's management to effect turnaround and to generate necessary financial support from external sources. These two phenomena, of course, are not independent. Since access to external funds fuels critical operating and strategic moves, the availability and management of financial sources can be important determinants of recovery. Therefore, a firm needs to convince an array of creditors that the business is viable and often must press for extended debt financing and other concessions. The success of these efforts may be affected by the speed with which performance deteriorated. A significant part of the explanation for how small firms respond to either crisis or decline situations seems to lie in the management structures that characterize them. Often, because of a strong ownership position, the chief executive of the smaller firm enjoys the utmost discretion over resources. Since small firms are often tightly controlled by one person, or by a small circle of people, their boards may be just a "facade." Moreover, in small firms the board chairman and the chief executive officer (CEO) are usually the same person, which further weakens the board's ability for effective oversight. This reliance on one individual, or on a very small management team, leaves the decision-making of the firm more vulnerable to individual cognitive limitations, and to problems resulting from the lack of oversight. These vulnerabilities have led to two competing theories of decline and turnaround. The first suggests that, other things remaining the same, decline is more likely than crisis to precede turnaround; the second predicts the opposite. Threat-Rigidity Explanation Conventional wisdom expects that firms are less likely to pull themselves out of crisis situations than to reverse a gradual decline (Harrigan 1980). This explanation is also argued by Staw, Sandelands, and Dutton (1981) in their threat-rigidity thesis. …

Shamsud D. Chowdhury

Papers

Making Room for the Call Center

Riding the Wrong Wave: Organizational Failure as a Failed Turnaround

Turnaround in small firms: An assessment of efficiency strategies

Turnarounds: A Stage Theory Perspective

Crisis, Decline, and Turnaround: a Test of Competing Hypotheses for Short-Term PerformanceImprovement in Small Firms