Journal Article•
Management innovation
TL;DR: In this article, the authors present a set of reprint articles for which IEEE does not hold copyright. Full text is not available on IEEE Xplore for these articles, but full text can be found on the Internet Archive.
Abstract: This publication contains reprint articles for which IEEE does not hold copyright. Full text is not available on IEEE Xplore for these articles.
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Book•
01 Jan 1988
TL;DR: In this paper, the evolution of the Toyota production system is discussed, starting from need, further development, Genealogy of the production system, and the true intention of the Ford system.
Abstract: * Starting from Need* Evolution of the Toyota Production System* Further Development* Genealogy of the Toyota Production System* The True Intention of the Ford System* Surviving the Low-Growth Period
1,793 citations
TL;DR: In this paper, the emerging business model innovation literature addresses an importa-tation of business models to management research and among practitioners, and the emerging BMI literature addresses the importa...
1,201 citations
TL;DR: Eichinger et al. as discussed by the authors pointed out the utter implausibility of all attempts to explain continued lactase activity throughout life by reference to survival and reproductive advantages, and pointed out that if the Danes who are among the best lactose absorbers in the world, had acquired this trait through selection for fitness, they would have to have lived for thousands of years in such precarious nutritional conditions that drinking or not drinking fresh milk made a difference to their survival and reproduction, which is obviously absurd.
Abstract: by GABRIELLA EICHINGER FERRO-LUZZI via Mario Fascetti, 67, 00136 Rome, Italy. 24 ix 81 Cohen (CA 22:201-18) and all his commentators take it for granted that we know the mechanism of biological evolution. For him \"the basic mechanism, change resulting from reproductive success, is clear\" (p. 204), and commentator Swartz does not even want to speak of the theory of evolution because the \"facts are empirically established\" (p. 214). I think we have to distinguish between biological evolution and the explanation thereof. Biological evolution is a fact; general directional change towards greater complexity of organisms and, above all, towards greater complexity of the brain cannot be denied. Theory as to the mechanism of evolution, however, leaves much to be desired. Breeding success might at most be adduced to explain the survival of the species; it can never explain directional change unless we simultaneously assume that species become progressively fitter and hence survive longer, which is not borne out by paleontology. We have as a species little hope of matching the longevity of the scorpion, and the tortoise beats us in the longevity of the individual and the species. If reproductive success and the survival of the species were selected for, we would do well to return at least to the level of the rat, but unfortunately the general direction of evolution seems to be set once and for all, even if it means producing less and less viable species. Within the general direction of evolution, transient \"fashions\" are discernible, and these too cannot be explained in terms of fitness. After a long period in which the \"nude look\" was \"in,\" fur coats became fashionable, eventually to give way to another wave of nudism. At present ancient nudists, fur-clad beauties, and modern nudists may be found inhabiting the same environment, and therefore the appearance of the outermost layer of the body obviously cannot be said to possess survival or reproductive value. Also, Homo sapiens is evolving. We are getting taller, and our eyes and teeth are getting weaker. None of these changes has any influence on reproduction, and the latter two, at least, do not make us fitter. What could be better proof of the theory of selection through reproductive success than evolution towards a longer period of fertility? This is happening now, but the extra years the Western woman has gained at the beginning and end of her fertile period are not used for reproduction. I have recently pointed out (1980:247-56) the utter implausibility of all attempts to explain continued lactase activity throughout life by reference to survival and reproductive advantages. If, for instance, the Danes, who are among the best lactose absorbers in the world, had acquired this trait through selection for fitness, they would have to have lived for thousands of years in such precarious nutritional conditions that drinking or not drinking fresh milk made a difference to their survival and reproduction, which is obviously absurd; In my view, the Darwinian paradigm has lulled us into the false security of having found the answer to the evolutionary problem and thus prevented us from searching for internal mechanisms setting the evolutionary switches. One such switch seems to indicate the overall direction, others lead to temporary fashions, and still others, possibly, determine the life-spans of species. Change toward a drier climate may have been fatal for the Brontosaurus but was hardly so for the Ichthyosaurus, which probably died of old age after an enviably long lifetime as a species. If, as I hold, biological evolution is a fact but its mechanism totally unknown, the application of the evolutionary model to culture naturally becomes problematic. On this point, however, several reservations have been voiced by the commentators, and Cohen himself rightly insists that \"prediction of the future is impossible for human events\"; therefore I can limit myself to a few points. I suggest that we speak not of the evolution of culture as an omnibus category but of that of particular aspects of culture. Evolution in the direction of greater complexity and efficiency is clearly at work in technology. Number also imposes some constraints, and the state could develop only after the tribal band. This is about all, however, that can be said with certainty of cultural evolution; speculations about the evolution of family types, systems of reckoning descent, ways of thinking, and so forth I hold to be vain. Small autonomous villages in Africa may well have developed into a kingdom according to the sequence Cohen describes, but the postulate of \"selective factors\" implies that there was some kind of necessity at work, which, being concluded post hoc, can never be proven. Cohen cites a few options, it is true, but the very concept of \"pressure on the leaders to specialize\" so that they eventually transformed themselves into monarchs is questionable. If disputes had really been crucial, these could just as well have been settled by councils of elders or the like. In India, for instance, disputes have been very effectively settled by village and caste councils with or without the existence of monarchy, and Westerners have long been accustomed to consult lawyers. It is true that there have been \"attempts to create a basis for world order,\" but I would not conclude from these that there is an evolutionary trend in that direction. Attempts at world order (in the form of world domination) have repeatedly been made in the past; it is only that the known world, or the world that counted, was smaller then. Even if the existing states could be brought to abdicate voluntarily, a world government replacing them would be 'rather impracticable. Our minds have an innate tendency (only a tendency, not a necessity) to prefer unity to plurality, and attempts to create bigger states and international organizations participate in this tendency, which has little to do with the rational evaluation of advantages and disadvantages. Since smaller entities, however, are easier to administer, it is quite conceivable that some of the bigger existing states will shrink, judging from the diffusion of separatist movements all over the world. A parallel to this situation may be drawn in the economic field. There has been a tendency to create bigger and bigger industrial complexes, but it is unlikely that this tendency will continue. In Italy the big firms are in trouble, while family enterprises flourish. Similarly, the supermarket, which according to some prophets should long since have ousted the small shops, has not been able to do so, at least in Europe. I am glad that Cohen does not simplistically extend \"biological theory into sociocultural realms\" as some of his commentators are prone to, but the postulate that similar abstract principles govern \"the evolution of all things-inorganic, organic, and sociocultural\"-seems to be inspired more by the above-mentioned monistic tendency of our minds than by the observation of facts.
527 citations
TL;DR: This paper conducted a qualitative study of Nokia to understand its rapid downfall over the 2005-2010 period from its position as a world-dominant and innovative technology organization, and found that top...
Abstract: We conducted a qualitative study of Nokia to understand its rapid downfall over the 2005–2010 period from its position as a world-dominant and innovative technology organization. We found that top ...
318 citations
Cites background from "Management innovation"
...This suggests that one reason less-hierarchical structures might foster innovation (Burns and Stalker, 1961) is that more organic, egalitarian structures dampen the effects of hierarchy-based fear and the potentially harmful effects of morepowerful groups....
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...…have hinted that emotional reactions might influence people’s behavior inside structural communication channels during the innovation process (e.g., Burns and Stalker, 1961; Fang, Kim, and Milliken, 2013; Reitzig and Maciejovsky, 2014), very few, if any, empirical field studies have examined how…...
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...For example, as specialization increases, employees and managers have to escalate more issues further upward, which can slow down innovation (Burns and Stalker, 1961)....
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TL;DR: In this article, the authors focus on the relevance of different types of innovation for firms' export performance and show that organizational innovation enhances export performance both directly and indirectly by sustaining technological innovation.
307 citations
References
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TL;DR: In this article, the authors examined the link between firm resources and sustained competitive advantage and analyzed the potential of several firm resources for generating sustained competitive advantages, including value, rareness, imitability, and substitutability.
46,648 citations
"Management innovation" refers background in this paper
...It seems likely, for example, that certain management innovations will offer more potential for competitive advantage than others, depending on the extent to which they are valuable, rare, and hard to imitate (Barney, 1991), but this argument remains open to empirical testing....
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TL;DR: In this paper, it is argued that the degree of overlap of two individuals' friendship networks varies directly with the strength of their tie to one another, and the impact of this principle on diffusion of influence and information, mobility opportunity, and community organization is explored.
Abstract: Analysis of social networks is suggested as a tool for linking micro and macro levels of sociological theory. The procedure is illustrated by elaboration of the macro implications of one aspect of small-scale interaction: the strength of dyadic ties. It is argued that the degree of overlap of two individuals' friendship networks varies directly with the strength of their tie to one another. The impact of this principle on diffusion of influence and information, mobility opportunity, and community organization is explored. Stress is laid on the cohesive power of weak ties. Most network models deal, implicitly, with strong ties, thus confining their applicability to small, well-defined groups. Emphasis on weak ties lends itself to discussion of relations between groups and to analysis of segments of social structure not easily defined in terms of primary groups.
37,560 citations
Posted Content•
TL;DR: In this paper, the authors developed an evolutionary theory of the capabilities and behavior of business firms operating in a market environment, including both general discussion and the manipulation of specific simulation models consistent with that theory.
Abstract: This study develops an evolutionary theory of the capabilities and behavior of business firms operating in a market environment. It includes both general discussion and the manipulation of specific simulation models consistent with that theory. The analysis outlines the differences between an evolutionary theory of organizational and industrial change and a neoclassical microeconomic theory. The antecedents to the former are studies by economists like Schumpeter (1934) and Alchian (1950). It is contrasted with the orthodox theory in the following aspects: while the evolutionary theory views firms as motivated by profit, their actions are not assumed to be profit maximizing, as in orthodox theory; the evolutionary theory stresses the tendency of most profitable firms to drive other firms out of business, but, in contrast to orthodox theory, does not concentrate on the state of industry equilibrium; and evolutionary theory is related to behavioral theory: it views firms, at any given time, as having certain capabilities and decision rules, as well as engaging in various ‘search' operations, which determines their behavior; while orthodox theory views firm behavior as relying on the use of the usual calculus maximization techniques. The theory is then made operational by the use of simulation methods. These models use Markov processes and analyze selection equilibrium, responses to changing factor prices, economic growth with endogenous technical change, Schumpeterian competition, and Schumpeterian tradeoff between static Pareto-efficiency and innovation. The study's discussion of search behavior complicates the evolutionary theory. With search, the decision making process in a firm relies as much on past experience as on innovative alternatives to past behavior. This view combines Darwinian and Lamarkian views on evolution; firms are seen as both passive with regard to their environment, and actively seeking alternatives that affect their environment. The simulation techniques used to model Schumpeterian competition reveal that there are usually winners and losers in industries, and that the high productivity and profitability of winners confer advantages that make further success more likely, while decline breeds further decline. This process creates a tendency for concentration to develop even in an industry initially composed of many equal-sized firms. However, the experiments conducted reveal that the growth of concentration is not inevitable; for example, it tends to be smaller when firms focus their searches on imitating rather than innovating. At the same time, industries with rapid technological change tend to grow more concentrated than those with slower progress. The abstract model of Schumpeterian competition presented in the study also allows to see more clearly the public policy issues concerning the relationship between technical progress and market structure. The analysis addresses the pervasive question of whether industry concentration, with its associated monopoly profits and reduced social welfare, is a necessary cost if societies are to obtain the benefits of technological innovation. (AT)
22,566 citations
Book•
01 Jan 1995TL;DR: In this article, an intensive study of case study research methods is presented, focusing on the Unique Case Research Questions and the Nature of Qualitative Research Data Gathering Analysis and Interpretation Case Researcher Roles Triangulation.
Abstract: Introduction An Intensive Study of Case Study Research Methods The Unique Case Research Questions The Nature of Qualitative Research Data Gathering Analysis and Interpretation Case Researcher Roles Triangulation Writing the Report Reflections Harper School
22,208 citations
TL;DR: This article synthesize the large but diverse literature on organizational legitimacy, highlighting similarities and disparities among the leading strategic and institutional approaches, and identify three primary forms of legitimacy: pragmatic, based on audience self-interest; moral, based upon normative approval; and cognitive, according to comprehensibility and taken-for-grantedness.
Abstract: This article synthesizes the large but diverse literature on organizational legitimacy, highlighting similarities and disparities among the leading strategic and institutional approaches. The analysis identifies three primary forms of legitimacy: pragmatic, based on audience self-interest; moral, based on normative approval: and cognitive, based on comprehensibility and taken-for-grantedness. The article then examines strategies for gaining, maintaining, and repairing legitimacy of each type, suggesting both the promises and the pitfalls of such instrumental manipulations.
13,229 citations
"Management innovation" refers background in this paper
...…agents will seek to make the case with constituencies inside and outside the organization that the new practice is legitimate, even though this new practice represents (by definition) a departure from the tried-and-tested offerings of the fashion-setting community (Abrahamson, 1996; Suchman, 1995)....
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...Key change agents will seek to make the case with constituencies inside and outside the organization that the new practice is legitimate, even though this new practice represents (by definition) a departure from the tried-and-tested offerings of the fashion-setting community (Abrahamson, 1996; Suchman, 1995)....
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...…sources can be useful providers of both moral and cognitive legitimacy in the absence of hard evidence that management innovation will be valuable and can allow the innovators to “manipulate the environmental structure by creating new audiences and new legitimating beliefs” (Suchman, 1995: 587)....
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...In legitimacy-seeking terms, this can be seen as a strategy to “select among multiple environments in pursuit of an audience that will support current practices” (Suchman, 1995: 587)....
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...These factors, in turn, highlight the need for management innovators to seek out distinctive approaches to building the legitimacy of the new practice to make it acceptable to the various constituencies in the organization (Ashforth & Gibbs, 1990; Greenwood, Hinings, & Suddaby, 2002; Suchman, 1995)....
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