Ad van den Oord

The role of macro context for the link between technological and organizational change

Purpose – Technology is an important driver of organizationalnchange and often strategically used to facilitate adaptationsnin organizational processes and cultures. While the linknbetween technological and organizational change is widelynrecognized, the role of macro-context for this link remainsnundervalued. Based on data from technology implementations innEuropean police forces the paper aims to illustrate thenimportance of integrating analyses of the macro-context tonunderstand the complexity of technology driven organizationalnchange. Design/methodology/approach – The authors conducted 56ninterviews and five focus groups with police officers from 13ncountries on two of the major technology trends in Europeannpolice forces: automatic number plate recognition systemsn(ANPR) systems and social media. They further conducted sitenvisits to police forces in The Netherlands and the UnitednKingdom to observe technology usage first hand. Comparingnaccounts across countries they analyzed how macro-contextnimpacted adoption decisions and implementation processes. Innthis analysis they concentrated on the five macro-contextualnfactors in the PESTL framework, i.e. political, economic,nsocial, technological and legal factors. Findings – In analysesnof ANPR systems and social media the paper details how thenmacro-context of police organizations impacted decisions tonadopt a technology as well as the intra-organizationalnalignments of processes and structures. Practical implicationsn– Organizational decision makers and implementers need to benaware not only of the strong agency of technology fornorganizations structure and processes, but also of thenrelevance of the organizational macro-context for the processnand impact of technology implementations on the organizationalnas well as individual level. Originality/value – The papernillustrates the impact of the macro-context of organizations innshaping the link between technological change andnorganizational change.

Policing opportunities and threats in Europe

Purpose: This paper aims to take stock and to increase understanding of the opportunities and threats for policing in ten European countries in the Political, Economic, Social, Technological and Legal (PESTL) environment. Design/methodology/approach: This study is part of the large EU-funded COMPOSITE project into organisational change. A PESTL analysis was executed to produce the environmental scan that will serve as a platform for further research into change management within the police. The findings are based on structured interviews with police officers of 17 different police forces and knowledgeable externals in ten European countries. The sampling strategy was optimized for representativeness under the binding capacity constraints defined by the COMPOSITE research budget. Findings: European police forces face a long list of environmental changes that can be grouped in the five PESTL clusters with a common denominator. There is also quite some overlap as to both the importance and nature of the key PESTL trends across the ten countries, suggesting convergence in Europe. Originality/value: A study of this magnitude has not been seen before in Europe, which brings new insights to the target population of police forces across Europe. Moreover, policing is an interesting field to study from the perspective of organisational change, featuring a high incidence of change in combination with a wide variety of change challenges, such as those related to identity and leadership.

A multi-level model of emerging technology : An empirical study of the evolution of biotechnology from 1976 to 2003

In this paper, we develop an ecological, multi-level model that can be used to study the evolution of emerging technology. More specifically, by defining technology as a system composed of a set of interacting components, we can build upon the argument of multi-level density dependence from organizational ecology to develop a distribution-independent model of technological evolution. This allows us to distinguish between different stages of component development, which provides more insight into the emergence of stable component configurations, or dominant designs. We validate our hypotheses in the biotechnology industry by using patent data from the USPTO from 1976 to 2003.

A cognitive organization theory (COT) of organizational change: Measuring organizational texture, audience appeal, and leadership engagement

In this paper, the authors develop a cognitive organization theory (COT) of organizational change. COT was developed in the 2000s, by taking insights from cognitive psychology and anthropology to rebuild the foundation of organizational ecology (OE), grounding macro processes of organizational legitimation, inertia and mortality in micro processes of appeal and engagement. COT also explored the micro-level process of organizational change, arguing that four features (i.e. asperity, intricacy, opacity, and viscosity) of an organizations texture impact the appeal of organizational change. However, to data, empirical studies of a COT of organizational change are absent. An important reason is that many of the new COT constructs are not linked to empirical measures. The purpose of this paper is to develop reliable and valid survey measures of COTs key constructs.,The authors follow a three-step procedure to develop reliable and valid survey measures of COTs key constructs. First, the authors construct survey measures by using existing organizational behavior (OB) scales and develop new scales in consultation with COT experts. Second, the authors apply factor analysis to evaluate convergent and discriminant validity and use Cronbachs α to determine the reliability of the scales. Third, the authors estimate a structural equation model to determine external validity, by exploring whether the measures have the effect hypothesized in COT.,The authors find that existing OB scales can be used to proxy for COTs key constructs of appeal and engagement. The authors also find that two organizational texture variables (i.e., asperity and opacity) are significantly associated with the appeal of organizational change, further confirming the validity of applying a COT to organization change. The results are promising, proving evidence as to the criterion-related validity of the measures of COT constructs. From the total of 39 coefficients of COT-inspired independent and control variables, 22 are significant.,The authors’ findings illustrate that micro OB and macro OE can be effectively combined in a COT of organizational change. However, the authors contribution is only a first step, requiring further theoretical and methodological refinement. Theoretically, OB and OE can be integrated further, by linking together more concepts and constructs from the two streams of literature. Methodologically, the link between constructs and empirical measures can be refined, by adding extra scales and items, and collecting more data to validate them.,In this paper, the authors develop a COT of organizational change and link its central constructs to empirical measures, by connecting them to existing OB constructs and developing new scales and items. This opens the door to empirical studies on a COT of organizational change, hereby providing a stepping-stone for further integration of micro OB and macro OE.