Raghu Garud

Institutional Entrepreneurship in the Sponsorship of Common Technological Standards: The Case of Sun Microsystems and Java

The institutional entrepreneurship implicit in a firms sponsorship of its technology as a common standard is beset by several challenges. These challenges arise from a standards property to enabl...

Institutional Entrepreneurship as Embedded Agency: An Introduction to the Special Issue

We are delighted to introduce this special issue of Organization Studies ,t he purpose of which is to develop a deeper understanding of the concept of institutional entrepreneurship and to offer new avenues for future research. This concept has been attracting considerable attention in recent years, as was reflected in the record number of papers that were submitted ‐ the largest number that this journal has received for any of its special issues to date. As a result, the selection process has been stringent and we are very pleased to present the eight articles in this special issue, all of which survived the demanding review process. Each of these articles contributes important insights to our understanding of institutional entrepreneurship and, collectively, they provide an important benchmark for subsequent research on this phenomenon. In different ways, they explore how actors shape emerging institutions and transform existing ones despite the complexities and path dependences that are involved. In doing so, they shed considerable light on how institutional entrepreneurship processes shape ‐ or fail to shape ‐ the world in which we live and work The term institutional entrepreneurship refers to the ‘activities of actors who have an interest in particular institutional arrangements and who leverage resources to create new institutions or to transform existing ones’ (Maguire, Hardy and Lawrence, 2004: 657). The term is most closely associated with DiMaggio (1988: 14), who argued that ‘new institutions arise when organized actors with sufficient resources see in them an opportunity to realize interests that they value highly’. These actors ‐ institutional entrepreneurs ‐ ‘create a whole new system of meaning that ties the functioning of disparate sets of institutions together’ (Garud, Jain and Kumaraswamy, 2002). Institutional entrepreneurship is therefore a concept that reintroduces agency, interests and power into institutional analyses of organizations. It thus offers promise to researchers seeking to bridge what have come to be called the ‘old’ and ‘new’ institutionalisms in organizational analysis (Powell and DiMaggio, 1991; Greenwood and Hinings, 1996). We preface these papers with some of our own observations on institutional entrepreneurship stemming from its paradoxical nature. Research on institutions has tended to emphasize how organizational processes are shaped by institutional forces that reinforce continuity and reward conformity. In contrast, the literature on entrepreneurship tends to emphasize how organizational processes

Path dependence and creation

The third lens employed in Invisible Management draws on the role of broader cultural and social forces in the construction of leadership. Chapter 6, for example, describes the executive recruitment process and demonstrates once again the role of social homophily in reproducing existing elite structures. Unlike previous research, however, which emphasizes the role of uncertainty in relying on human capital and high-status signals in making executive selection decisions, the authors emphasize the alternate mechanism of self-presentation and impression management, which is consistent with societal imagery of leadership. Chapters 7 and 8 examine leadership attribution and selection through the lens of gender relations by asking why women remain underrepresented in elite positions and positing a complex answer. Like previous gender scholars, the authors emphasize that understanding leadership requires understanding the essence of power relations in the broader society. Relying on intensive interviews, these chapters highlight that both mens attitudes and, to some extent, womens own-many of which are merely reflections of broader societal attitudes-keep many potential women leaders from seeking and/or obtaining leadership positions in organizations. In the realm of leadership research, Invisible Management is a breath of fresh air. Trait-based theories of leadership, which are really only academic versions of popular images of the man on horseback riding in to save the day, need serious reevaluation now that we must come to terms with the havoc that so many of the corporate heroes of the last decade have wrought. This book offers a set of ideas that can potentially begin to guide us out of this morass.

Path Dependence or Path Creation

We discuss the assumptions that underlie path dependence, as defined by Vergne and Durand, and then provide the outlines of an alternative perspective which we label as path creation. Path creation entertains a notion of agency that is distributed and emergent through relational processes that constitute phenomena. Viewed from this perspective, ‘initial conditions’ are not given, ‘contingencies’ are emergent contexts for action, ‘self-reinforcing mechanisms’ are strategically manipulated, and ‘lock-in’ is but a temporary stabilization of paths in-the-making. We develop these points using a narrative approach and highlight the theoretical and methodological implications of our perspective.

Organizational identification among virtual workers: the role of need for affiliation and perceived work-based social support

Organizational identification, which reflects how individuals define the self with respect to their organization, may be called into question in the context of virtual work. Virtual work increases employees’ isolation and independence, threatening to fragment the organization. This study finds that virtual workers’ need for affiliation and the work-based social support they experience are countervailing forces associated with stronger organizational identification. Furthermore, perceived work-based social support moderates the relationship between virtual workers’ need for affiliation and their strength of organizational identification. Thus, when work-based social support is high, even workers with lower need for affiliation may strongly identify with the organization.

Vicious and virtuous circles in the management of knowledge: the case of infosys technologies

We adopt a systems perspective to explore the challenges that organizations face in harnessing knowledge. Such a perspective draws attention to mutually causal processes that have the potential to generate both vicious and virtuous circles. Based on a longitudinal study at Infosys Technologies, we conclude that knowledge management involves more than just the sponsorship of initiatives at and across different organizational levels. It also involves an active process of steering around and out of vicious circles that will inevitably emerge.

The Role of Narratives in Sustaining Organizational Innovation

Sustaining innovation is a vital yet difficult task. Innovation requires the coordinated efforts of many actors to facilitate (1) the recombination of ideas to generate novelty, (2) real-time problem solving, and (3) linkages between present innovation efforts with past experiences and future aspirations. We propose that innovation narratives are cultural mechanisms that address these coordination requirements by enabling translation. Specifically, innovation narratives are powerful mechanisms for translating ideas across the organization so that they are comprehensible and appear legitimate to others. Narratives also enable people to translate emergent situations that are ambiguous or equivocal so as to promote real-time problem solving. With their accumulation, innovation narratives provide a generative memory for organizations that enable people to translate ideas accumulated from particular instances of past innovation to inform current and future efforts.

Complexity Arrangements for Sustained Innovation: Lessons from 3M Corporation

Innovation processes are complex. It is through local interactions among people and technologies that diverse and novel outcomes emerge. Even when governed by simple rules, such interactions can generate nonlinear temporal dynamics. Given such complexities, how might an organization sustain innovation for continued growth and vitality? Drawing on an in-depth study of innovation practices and journeys at 3M Corporation, we identify how combinations of practices — which we conceptualize as complexity arrangements — afford multiple agentic orientations simultaneously for the actors involved and thereby facilitate sustained innovation.

Calculators, Lemmings or Frame-Makers? The Intermediary Role of Securities Analysts:

As Wall Street specialists in valuation, sell-side securities analysts constitute a particularly important class of market actor. Analysts produce the reports, recommendations and price targets that professional investors utilize to inform their buy and sell decisions, which means that understanding analysts’ work can provide crucial insights on the determinants of value in the capital markets. Yet our knowledge of analysts is limited by insufficient attention to Knightian uncertainty. Analysts estimate the value of stocks by calculating their net present value or by folding the future back into the present. In so doing, they are faced with the fundamental challenge identified by Frank Knight, that is, with the difficulty of making decisions that entail a future that is unknown. These decisions, as Knight wrote, are characterized by ‘neither entire ignorance nor complete . . . information, but partial knowledge’ of the world (Knight, [1921] 1971: 199). The finance literature has not examined the Knightian challenge faced by analysts. Indeed, existing treatments circumvent the problem by adopting one of two extreme positions. In the first, put forward by orthodox economists, it is assumed that Knightian uncertainty is non-existent and that calculative decision-making is straightforward. Analysts are presented as mere calculators in a probabilistic world of risk (Cowles, 1933; Lin and McNichols, 1998; Lim, 2001). In the second, put forward by neo-institutional sociologists and behavioural finance scholars, analysts face too much uncertainty to engage in individual calculation. Analysts confront this uncertainty by resorting to a lemming-like imitation of their colleagues’ opinions (see respectively Rao, Greve and Davis, 2001; Scharfstein and Stein, 1990; Hong, Kubik and Solomon, 2000). None of these views, however, examines the Knightian challenge that analysts confront, namely, the imperative to decide with a significant but limited knowledge of the world. In recent years, an emerging sociological literature has begun to redress this neglect of Knightian uncertainty by viewing analysts as critics. According to the

Factors contributing to virtual work adjustment

We explore factors associated with employee adjustment to virtual work. In particular, we explore structural factors (i.e., work independence and evaluation criteria) and relational factors (i.e., trust and organizational connectedness) as predictors of adjustment to virtual work. Additionally, we explore age, virtual work experience and gender as moderators of the relationships. We find that structural and relational factors are important predictors of adjustment and that the strength of the relationship is contingent upon individual differences. We explore the implications of these findings for future research and for practice.