Hamid Bouchikhi

On the Dialectics of Strategic Alliances

Using Van de Ven and Pooles (1995) extensive assessment of process theories as an intellectual scaffold, we review theoretical contributions to our understanding of alliance dynamics and process. It appears that of four generic theoretical engines, only three-life cycle, teleology, and evolution-are reasonably well covered in this literature. Process studies informed by a dialectical theory, however, appear to be markedly absent. We explore the characteristics and contributions of a dialectical lens in understanding interorganizational collaborations by invoking a longitudinal case study of a biotechnology-based alliance. The case illustrates the coevolutionary interchange of design and emergence, cooperation and competition, trust and vigilance, expansion and contraction, and control and autonomy. It also emphasizes the importance of treating alliances as heterogeneous phenomena, of alliance performance as subject to social construction, and of unintended consequences as a change agent. The emerging ontological, epistemological, and methodological implications of a dialectical perspective comprise a novel extension to the existing literature.

A Constructivist Framework for Understanding Entrepreneurship Performance

This paper outlines a constructivist framework for understanding the outcomes of the entrepreneurial process. The core thesis of the paper is that, taken alone, neither the personality of the entrepreneur nor the structural characteristics of the environment determine the outcome. Rather, it is argued that the outcome of the entrepreneurial process is emergent from a complex interaction between the entrepreneur, the environment, chance events and prior performance. The framework is illustrated with evidence from biographies of six entrepreneurs involved in successful processes.

Living with and Building on Complexity: A Constructivist Perspective on Organizations

The paper introduces a theory of organizations built on the assumption that human behavior in organizational settings is relatively undetermined, multidirectional, and contradictory. Consistent with this assumption, the paper proposes a constructivist perspective on organizational persistence, equilibration, and structuration. The constructivist perspective represents an attempt at integrating extant, and often treated as incommensurable, theories of organizations within a complex framework.

Disruption on Steroids Sea Change in the Worlds of Higher Education in General and Business Education in Particular

Over the past three decades, several industries including newspapers, broadcasting, book publishing and selling, music, movie, travel, financial services, and now the automobile industry have been disrupted by entrepreneurs using innovative business models based on lean and customizable technologies. Business schools have celebrated and promoted these developments, producing books, articles, and case studies documenting the profound changes that have occurred. Currently, the worlds of higher education in general and business education in particular are themselves facing disruption in much the same way as other industries. Paradoxically, however, the established incumbents in the B-school world have remained committed to a high-cost business model that served them well in the second half of the past century but that has disconnected their faculties, to a large extent, from the real world of business practice and that may be compromising their future adaptation and survival. This article reviews this rapidly changing landscape by identifying a number of disruptive trends in higher education, discussing a set of challenges that are specific to business education, and articulating two possible scenarios for the future of business schools, namely variation and selection.

Competing Through Categorization: Product- and Audience-Centric Strategies in an Evolving Categorical Structure

We investigate how and why competing organizations position their similar products in categories of varying status. We studied the paired longitudinal case of the highly publicized contest between ESSEC and HEC, two French business schools, as they sought to position their core Grande Ecole program in the evolving international business education categorical structure. We conceptualize categorization as a competitive, relational process involving multiple actors and producing various meanings and perceptions. Our study (a) highlights the role of anticipated category status spillovers versus anticipated relative status within a category in producers’ entry decisions; (b) contrasts product- and audience-centric categorization strategies; and (c) shows the role of intermediaries in adjudicating categorization contests.

Quelles stratégies pour les business schools face à la sélection darwinienne en marche

Fermetures de MBAs, fusions entre ecoles, concurrents inedits, denigrements dans la presse... le piedestal des business schools se fissure. Si quelques-unes jouissant de marques puissantes pourront continuer a prosperer, les autres devront se reinventer.

Feeding and Breaking the Escalation of Commitment: The Role of Organizational Politics and Institutional Processes

This paper offers a longitudinal study grounded in the observation of an organization that was trapped in escalation of commitment to a failed strategy for a decade. Specifically, we will show how internal (organizational) and external (institutional) phenomena enabled the emergence of the strategy, fed the management team’s escalation of commitment despite internal opposition and institutional push-back and, eventually, constrained the management team to acknowledge failure and halt the escalation cycle. The case study reveals two mechanisms which played a central role in halting escalation and forcing a strategic reorientation: (1) expansion of organizational membership brings in new recruits who promote discrepant interpretations of ongoing courses of action thereby feeding political struggles inside the organization; (2) institutional field-level pressures provide political resources to internal opponents and enable them to force the management team to acknowledge failure and break the escalation cycle.

Institutional Entrepreneurs between A Rock and A Hard Place

The present study contributes to the literature on institutional entrepreneurship by exploring the phenomenon of failure – particularly, how it is construed as such and de-emphasized through face-saving efforts by institutional entrepreneurs. We draw on extant research on institutional entrepreneurship in established fields and insights from social movement literature and political theories of organizations to illustrate how a French business school tried and failed to promote a new MBA program format for students with no prior work experience. The longitudinal case study reveals several mechanisms which played a central role in increasing the project’s ambiguity and ultimately forced a strategic reorientation: (1) the institutional entrepreneurs’ inability to mobilize collectivities and persuade them of the credibility and appropriateness of the innovation, despite their central position in the French business education field; (2) the subsequent centralization of the audience’s social structure and their counter-mobilization around an alternative institutional project; (3) the expansion of organizational membership bringing in new actors who challenged the institutional innovation thereby feeding political struggles inside the organization. We also elaborate on organizational recovery from failure by showing (1) how the conjunction of intra-organizational and field-level factors led the institutional entrepreneurs to construe their innovation as unsuccessful and compelled them to acknowledge failure; and (2) how they sought to minimize the damage of a strategic U-turn and save face in the eyes of key audiences.

Les vertus de la transgression managériale

Les dirigeants peuvent etre amenes a faire des actes transgressifs pour provoquer le changement. Parce qu’ils violent du sacre, ils sont objets de represailles. Ceux qui reussissent survivent a ces represailles et construisent un sacre nouveau.

Construire et faire vivre une organisation de groupe

L’organisation des grandes corporations diversifiees passe par une clarification tres precise des roles entre le centre de pilotage et les differentes unites decentralisees.