Nikolaus Beck

Technical Efficiency or Adaptation to Institutionalized Expectations? The Adoption of ISO 9000 Standards in the German Mechanical Engineering Industry

In this paper we examine technical and internal organizational contingencies which encourage and discourage the adoption of institutionalized structural elements, namely ISO 9000 standards. The results show that the extent of customized production and a dominant influence of top management on quality control decisions reduce the likelihood of adopting ISO 9000 standards. However, the latter factor changes its influence significantly with greater organizational size and administrative intensity — two entities which increase the pressure to adapt to external expectations.

ISO 9000 and Formalization - How Organizational Contingencies Affect Organizational Responses to Institutional Forces

We investigate the adoption of ISO 9000 standards by the German mechanical engineering industry and analyze how organizational contingencies affect susceptibility to institutional forces. Our study’;s findings show that differences in organizational size, proportion of administrative staff, and type of production technology lead to variations in the probability of adopting ISO 9000 standards. Moreover, our findings show that despite the modern anti-bureaucratic management ideology, there has been a remarkable increase in the degree of formalization.

Rationality and Institutionalized Expectations: The Development of an Organizational Set of Rules

In this study I analyze changes of an entire set of organizational of rules over time. I also analyze how the size of individual rules develops over time. The theoretical background for this study is based on the bureaucracy theory of Weber and his successors and on the considerations of the New Institutionalism and contingency theory. I find that over time, the portion of the general rule mass continues to increase. This result corresponds to the considerations of the New Institutionalism, since the general section of the rule body con-tains the rules that are oriented to fundamental institutionalized management principles or legal regulations. However, my results also suggest that institutional adjustment and ra-tional management need not be mutually exclusive. Rather, both phenomena can co-exist within an organization.

The economic consequences of ISO 9000 Certification in East and West German firms in the mechanical engineering industry

A central argument of new institutionalism is that organizational success depends not only on efficient coordination and control of productive activities, but on conforming to institutionalized expectations. There is a dearth of empirical studies which analyze the effects of the adoption of institutionalized elements. In our study, we examine the effect of ISO 9000 certification on resource inflow of German mechanical engineering firms. Our findings suggest that organizations are actually rewarded for complying with institutionalized expectations and implementing ISO 9000 standards. Our findings also show that the readiness to comply with institutionalized norms led to different economic consequences in East and West Germany.

Grown Local: Community Attachment and Market Entries in the Franconian Beer Industry

Geographic communities are often thought to support new ventures, particularly when newcomers are able to replicate incumbents’ characteristics. This paper elaborates on the conditions under which geographic communities may hinder the action of newcomers. Particular attention is dedicated to the case in which incumbents’ identities build on community traditions and rely on strong connectedness with community inhabitants, as these factors are difficult for newcomers to replicate. We explore this question within the context of market entries in the Franconian microbrewery industry. The results of our empirical analysis confirm that geographic communities exert an unfavorable effect on the entry of new organizations when incumbents are deeply attached to the community. Conversely, when incumbents relate poorly to the community, residential stability within the community displays a positive effect on founding.

May I join the club? On the architecture of code systems and the success of strategic diversification

Organizational ecology is oftentimes considered to be a theoretical framework that is not very informative for the analysis of strategic decisions. The reservation towards organizational ecology is primarily due to the original anchoring of this theory in organizational inertia. Indeed, the seminal paper of Hannan and Freeman (1977) portrayed organizational change as difficult and Hannan and Freeman (1984) reinforced this argument by proposing that inert organizations exhibit survival advantages thanks to reliability and accountability. Critics of organizational ecology interpreted this line of reasoning as downplaying the role of top managers in actively steering the fate of organizations. In this essay we aim to challenge this view and show how organizational ecology may be informative for strategic decision-making. In developing our arguments, we rely on the recent advancements of the theory (Hannan et al., 2007), which underscore that organizations are evaluated with respect to the standards of the social category to which they belong. Thus, the assessment of audience members (e.g. customers and other stakeholders) becomes fundamental for gaining access to the material and symbolic resources needed by organizations to survive. We extend this logic to the case of organizational change, thereby revisiting the original ecological approach to this topic in light of the more recent considerations concerning audience members’ expectations and evaluations. In particular, we argue that the extent and complexity of an organizational change remains contingent on the type of audience that an organization faces and on the type of industry in which it operates. We proceed by first reviewing a few common misunderstandings on organizational ecology. Then, we briefly review the inconsistencies of the empirical findings on organizational change, mostly due to the arbitrary distinction between core and peripheral aspects of change – an aspect that has led to a revision of the original arguments (Hannan et al., 2003a, 2003b). The role of expectations and external audience members’ evaluations in determining the magnitude of an organizational change are discussed and several propositions on the consequences of organizational change under different environmental conditions are presented. In developing our arguments, we focus on diversification as a specific instance of organizational change. Two reasons justify our decision. First, diversification into novel markets represents a topic central to strategic management (see Barney, 1986; Grant, 1996; Teece et al., 1997) and debated by ecologists as well (see McKendrick 453106 SOQ10310.1177/1476127012453106Beck and WezelStrategic Organization 2012

Industry Clusters and Organizational Prototypes: Evidence From the Franconian Brewing Industry:

In this article, we argue that in addition to facilitating organizational learning and specialization, an industry cluster related to tradition or to the practice of a craft influences audience expectations through the definition of the prototypical features that define an organizational form. Analyzing the population of northern Bavarian (Franconian) breweries, we show that compliance with a prototype involves multiple dimensions and depends on an organization’s location in geographic space with reference to the center of the industry cluster. Using qualitative interviews, archival data, and a survey of consumers, we provide evidence that as distance from the cluster center increases, organizations are more likely to deviate from the prototype and suffer fewer of the negative consequences that result from such deviations.

When newcomers cannot break with authenticity: identity implications in the Franconian beer industry

In this paper we explore the implications of authenticity on entrepreneurial activity. Authenticity is seen as an intersection point between producers’ efforts and audience claims to preserve traditional attributes in a market. Both, relative prevalence of authentic attributes among producers as well as audience members’ quest for authenticity are expected to reduce market attractiveness for newcomers who cannot improvise authenticity and thereby, market entry is discouraged. In turn, locations where there are few commitments to authenticity from the supply and the demand side are thought to represent more opportunities for newcomers and therefore, stimulate market entry. We test our arguments in the microbrewery industry in Franconia (Germany) during the period 1989-2012. Our findings suggest that entrepreneurial action in a county is constraint as producers and audience’ commitments to authenticity increase. Implications for the study of identity as well as for the fields of economic geography and entre...