Kari Lilja

The Dominance of Firm-Level Competitive Pressures Over Functional-Level Institutional Pressures: The Case of the Finnish-Based Forest Industry Firms

Previous management and organization literature has recognized the contradictions between competitive and institutional pressures. Firms must simultaneously secure competitiveness by being different from their competitors, and legitimacy by being similar to them. While trade-offs between these conflicting pressures have been studied at the population and firm levels, little attention has been paid to the same phenomenon within firms. This paper suggests that, in order to achieve competitiveness at the firm level, firms need to deviate from some institutionally legitimate practices at the functional level. For example, we show how being strategically different at the firm level forces the Finnish-based forest industry firms to dismantle isomorphic practices in their organizational functions. Thus, we extend the previous work in this field by showing that the ability of firms to adopt and develop new practices is path-dependently biased in the sense that the firm-level definition of the strategic context can have a major impact on the types of organizational practices that are adopted, nurtured and abandoned within the functions.

Coordinating Transnational Competition: Changing Patterns in the European Pulp and Paper Industry

This volume investigates the relationship between economic globalization and institutions, or global governance, challenging the common assumption that globalization and institutionalization are essentially processes which exclude each other. Instead, the contributors to this book show that globalization is better perceived as a dual process of institutional change at the national level, and institution building at the transnational level. Rich, supporting empirical evidence is provided along with a theoretical conceptualization of the main actors, mechanisms and conditions involved in trickle-up and trickle-down trajectories through which national institutional systems are being transformed and transnational rules emerge.

Changing Managerial Competitive Practices in the Context of Growth and Decline in the Finnish Banking Sector

In this chapter we examine changes in managerial competitive practices in Finnish banks during the period of deregulation in the 1980s and 1990s. ‘Deregulation’ here refers to the process of removing various institutional barriers, namely protective banking regulations.

Orchestrating a new industrial field. The case of the Finnish wood-based bioeconomy

The articles focus is on how companies and institutions interact and cooperate in order to develop the wood-based bioeconomy field. Based on a case study of the Finnish forest sector, the paper shows that shifting to sustainability requires processes of co-creation. As radical innovation requires complementary competences, companies have had to cooperate with a large number of actors. By interacting with multiple actors at multiple levels, both companies and institutions have engaged in new types of activities that have led to a change in their respective roles. By taking on responsibility for developing the new industrial field, both companies and institutions act as orchestrators for mobilising a large number of public and private actors. Subsequently, the paper argues that this interaction has produced a new type of complementarity between companies and institutions facilitating the development of the new industrial field.

Adjusting to Macro-Economic Reforms in Russia: The Crisis Case of the Svetogorsk Mills

This article describes the transformation process of the Svetogorsk paper mills in 1988-1992 under conditions of perestroika, and the subsequent eco nomic reforms in the former Soviet Union. The study was carried out as a piece of action research, which means that crucial knowledge about the transformation was generated in the actual process of changing the produc tion and maintenance management of the mills. The decentralization of the planning system generated enthusiasm, opti mism and energy in the ranks of management. The results of the initial change efforts proved to be positive, and the most acute production prob lems were successfully resolved. But technical improvements and new main tenance practices were not enough. The instability and unpredictability of the institutional environment had destroyed the prerequisites for profitable business. The study provides some insight into the difficulties of organiza tional change under the conditions of a constantly changing environment and a weak internal resource base. It is a study of an organizational crisis under systemic collapse.

Book Reviews : Donald P. Cushman and Sarah Sanderson King: Communication and High-Speed Management 1995, Albany, NY: State University of New York Press. 544 pages

book as part of a course (and I think I shall), I will probably relieve my students of a couple of the chapters. Apart from that, the book is excellent reading for students and scholars interested in management and organization theory. The wealth of references and suggestions for further research makes the book a find for any budding research student. It is, however, less suited for practitioners. It leaves one with far more questions than answers, which may be very frustrating for any busy executive; and at times the writing style is nearly impenetrable for readers not fluent in the language of academia (e.g. Chapt. 5). >

Research Note: 'Contradictory Couplings': Culture and the Synchronization of Opponents:

Building upon recent discussions in the literature on the inherent duality of social and organizational existence, this research note approaches organizational culture through the theoretical construct of the synchronization of opponents. Where opponents are constrained to exist within the same territory, there is a functional requirement for such opponents to synchronize in order to avoid those collisions which are destructive of the energies and resources of both parties without generating benefit for either. This research note explores some of the mechanisms by which, and the conditions under which, such synchronization of opponents takes place.