Peter Cebon

Meanings on Multiple Levels: The Influence of Field-Level and Organizational-Level Meaning Systems on Diffusion

This study considers how organization-level and field-level meaning systems affect when firms adopt administrative innovations. We use a sample of over 1200 manufacturing sites to test hypotheses regarding the timing of adoption of Manufacturing Best Practice programmes. The results indicate that compatibility of the diffusing practice with the organizations internal meaning system is an important predictor of when firms adopt such programmes. However, the influence of such compatibility declines for later adopters - consistent with institutional pressures in the form of field-level meaning systems playing an increasing role over time. We also find that this decline occurs for sites with high exposure to institutional pressures, but not for sites with lower exposure. The findings suggest that internal meaning systems and differential exposure moderate the role of institutional pressures in the diffusion of administrative innovations. We discuss implications for theory and research on institutionalization and the diffusion of innovations. Copyright Blackwell Publishing Ltd 2007.

Product modularity and the product life cycle: new dynamics in the interactions of product and process technologies

Many aspects of product life cycle theory ? which underlies the theories of technical innovation in economics, strategy, marketing, operations management and product development ? are based on the implicit assumption that products are integrated wholes. We argue that the modularisation of products undermines specific synergies that are associated with integrated product designs and that have been characterised as driving the product life cycle. We suggest how this effect of modularity impacts the structure of organisations, the boundaries of industries and the structure of economies.

Stability and change

This special feature section of Journal of Management & Organization (Volume 17/1 - March 2011) sets out to widen understanding of the processes of stability and change in todays organizations, with a particular emphasis on the contribution of institutional approaches to organizational studies. Institutional perspectives on organization theory assume that rational, economic calculations, such as the maximization of profits or the optimization of resource allocation, are not sufficient to understand the behavior of organizations and their strategic choices. Institutionalists acknowledge the great uncertainty associated with the conduct of organizations and suggest that taken-for-granted values, beliefs and meanings within and outside organizations also play an important role in the determination of legitimate action.

Four views of “regional” in regional environmental change

Abstract For a number of reasons, mainly to do with data and computational insufficiency, a number of analysts are calling for regional models of global environmental change phenomena. This paper presents a typology for conceptualizing the dynamic relationship between the region being analyzed and the global system in which it is embedded. Regionalism can be convergent, divergent, local, or ambivergent. In addition to positing that regional phenomena can be modelled as a superposition of convergent, divergent, and local processes, it also shows that different regional specifications of a problem can lead to radically different analytical strategies, insights, and policy prescriptions.

Prologue: Stability and change

This special feature section of Journal of Management & Organization (Volume 17/1 - March 2011) sets out to widen understanding of the processes of stability and change in todays organizations, with a particular emphasis on the contribution of institutional approaches to organizational studies. Institutional perspectives on organization theory assume that rational, economic calculations, such as the maximization of profits or the optimization of resource allocation, are not sufficient to understand the behavior of organizations and their strategic choices. Institutionalists acknowledge the great uncertainty associated with the conduct of organizations and suggest that taken-for-granted values, beliefs and meanings within and outside organizations also play an important role in the determination of legitimate action.

When Less is More: How Limits on Executive Pay Can Result in Greater Managerial Effort and the Adoption of Better Strategies

We derive conditions under which state-imposed limits on executive compensation can enhance efficiency and benefit shareholders (but not executives). Having their hands tied in the future allows a board of directors to credibly enter into relational contracts with executives that are more efficient than performance-based contracts. This in turn can have implications for firm strategy and the ideal composition of the board. The analysis also offers insights into the political economy of executive-compensation reform.

Mimicry or Meaning Making: Variations in Manufacturing Best Practices Programs in Australia and New Zealand

We ask how institutionalization affects the way managers understand novel practices, and how that understanding affects adoption behaviour. We argue that all managers act as sensemaking agents who construct theories about novel practices on the basis of the theories they learn, the discourse in which they engage, and the behaviours they observe. As a consequence of their theorization, they grade the categories relevant to the novel practice. That is, they come to see some members as better exemplars of the category than others, and, we argue, more valued members of the category. Institutionalization leads to managers across the field developing a coherent set of category gradings. Consequently, late adopters, being more subject to institutional processes, will be more likely to adopt the most representative members of the category. We test this idea, and compare it to the idea that managers select processes through inter-organisational monitoring and mimicry, by examining the adoption of Manufacturing Best Practice programs in Australia and New Zealand. Our data support our arguments regarding theorization, but not inter-organisational monitoring.

Exposure to the Field and the Meanings Managers Hold: Evidence from Manufacturing Best Practices Programs

A central proposition of neo-institutional theory is that exposure to institutional fields shapes the meanings actors within the field hold. We test that proposition by asking whether variations in exposure to field-level processes will lead to variations in meanings held by actors. To do so, we examine the implementation of a managerial practice - Manufacturing Best Practices Programs - across a large sample of manufacturing sites in Australia and New Zealand. We assess exposure to field-level processes both indirectly (through structural characteristics such as site size and technological sophistication), and directly (as contact with theorizing agents and communities of practice). To assess variations in meanings held by managers, we draw on psychological research findings to do three things: 1) to conceptualize the cognitive representation of a practice as a category, 2) to recognise that categories are graded - that is, that some members (or components of the practice, in our case) are more representative of the category than others, and 3) to recognise that the grading of the category is driven by the way the category is theorized. We find that sites which are more exposed to field-level meanings - using both our direct and indirect measures - adopt, on average, more representative components in their Manufacturing Best Practice program. We discuss implications, especially for how categories are understood within institutional theory.

Finding The Money – How to Raise Venture Capital

management style of the core group – need to have particular characteristics (which he describes) so they can facilitate three key elements of organisational process. First, a COIN should be strictly meritocratic. Opportunities, responsibility, and rewards should go to those who put in the time and demonstrate competence. Second, the operations of a COIN should be completely transparent. All information should be available to all participants. Finally, operations should be consistent. All participants should be treated equally, given their membership status. If these three elements are in place, then swarm creativity will result. Project participants will organize themselves, like a hive of bees, to produce a superior solution to the problem at hand. The second half comprises three appendices. The first explains the relationship between COINs and other sorts of knowledge-based networks. The second presents computer tools which can be used to spot, analyse and nurture COINs in an organization. The final appendix provides tools for managing knowledge flows within a COIN. This book is better than most practitioner-oriented books in three ways. First, as a practitioner with extensive relevant experience, who has moved into an academic setting, Gloor provides examples that are both interesting and informative. Second, the three appendices are useful and make the book valuable for someone who wants to apply the ideas. Finally, it differentiates itself from other books on collaboration by taking networks seriously. The book would be improved significantly, however, if the argument was built logically, rather than being made principally by exhortation. Not only would this enable Gloor to put the pieces together much better, and consequently reduce the amount of repetition, but it would also enable him to delimit the scope of his argument much more clearly. For example, he recognizes that that the COIN model is not universal, and argues that it is optimal for disruptive innovations (Christensen 1997). However, there are two problems with this. First, the market doesn’t really enter into his model at all, so it is unlikely that market discontinuities, the core of Christensen’s model, will be the lynchpin of the innovations COINs produce best. Second, as Gladwell (2005) has demonstrated, collaborative networks do much better for innovations requiring lots of creativity around well-defined technical problems (such as building an operating system or copying and extending an existing product) than for innovations built on blinding fundamental insights. Overall, I recommend the book to anyone who is interested in work organization for innovation.

Swarm Creativity: Competitive Advantage Through Collaborative Innovation Networks

Volume 8, Issue 4–5, December 2006 INNOVATION: management, policy & practice SWARM CREATIVITY: COMPETITIVE ADVANTAGE THROUGH COLLABORATIVE INNOVATION NETWORKS Peter A Gloor (2006) Oxford University Press, Oxford; ISBN 9780195304121; HC; 224 pages; USD 29.95 sible when the underlying true distribution is asymptotically skewed. There is however one assumption underpinning some of the papers that, I suspect, may not be sustained with further research. Scherer adheres to the classical view that investment levels are limited by declining marginal returns. However, for investment into invention, this does not have clear intuitive logic. Following Shackle (1942, 1956), it is quite likely that the inherent uncertainty embodied in creation makes ex ante ranking of projects by benefits impossible. Investments in these activities are accordingly more likely to be limited by Kalecki’s principle of increasing risk (Kalecki 1939). All in all, a worthy volume of essays that cannot, and should not, be overlooked by innovation analysts.