Steven J. Kahl

Services, industry evolution, and the competitive strategies of product firms

Services of different types have become increasingly important for product firms. While these firms mainly focus on products, managers and researchers lack a comprehensive framework to understand when to make significant investments in particular kinds of services. We identify three categories of product-related services from a product firm – smoothing and adapting services, which complement products, and substitution services, which enable customers to pay for the use of a product without buying the product itself. We develop propositions about the relative level of these different kinds of services vis-a-vis industry evolution, as well as suggest how these services affect industry structure. We draw upon various literatures, though we conclude that the relationship between products and services is more complex and richer than any one literature suggests.

Audience Structure and the Failure of Institutional Entrepreneurship

Purpose – The broader aim of this research is twofold. First, we aim to better understand how the business computer was conceptualized and used within U.S. industry. Second, this research investigates the role of social factors such as relational structure, institutional entrepreneurs, and position in the formation of conceptualizations of new technologies. Design/methodological/approach – This paper is theoretically motivated in the sense that it responds to the lack of attention to the failure of institutional entrepreneurs to change belief systems. Through detailed archival, network, and descriptive statistical analysis, the paper shows how the failed institutional entrepreneur fits conventional explanations for success. The paper then analyzes two matched cases, comparing the insurance industrys rejection of the institutional entrepreneur with manufacturings acceptance, in order to identify what is missing in current explanations of institutional entrepreneurs. Findings – Our analysis reveals that the role of the audience structure in interpreting the institutional entrepreneurs message influences the change outcome. In our case, the institutional entrepreneurs view of the computer as a brain that supported decision-oriented applications did not fit with views of the insurance groups who had centralized authority over interpreting the computer. Because manufacturing had less centralized control in its discourse around the computer, there were fewer constraints on assimilation, allowing the entrepreneurs views to resonate with some of the occupational groups. Research limitations/implications – This paper develops a theoretical approach to institutional entrepreneurship that situates the entrepreneurial efforts of individual actors within a system characterized by the structure of its audience and subject to distinct historical macro-structural processes that present significant obstacles to the realization of their entrepreneurial projects.

The Integration of History and Strategy Research

Purpose – This chapter is intended to identify the actual and potential linkages between history and strategy research. Design/methodology/approach – Drawing on examples from research at the intersection of history and strategy, we identify research topics that have received attention from a historical-strategy lens, and those that are thus far understudied. We then place the studies that appear in this volume into their relevant context. Findings – The chapter outlines benefits that the strategy field can gain from a greater emphasis on history, and that the history field can gain from a greater use of strategic insights. Originality/value – The chapter sets the context for the studies in this volume, and provides a lens for evaluating the benefits of historical-strategy research.

Occupational Survival Through Field-Level Task Integration: Systems Men, Production Planners, and the Computer, 1940s–1990s

This paper examines how occupational groups survive the introduction of a new technology and associated jurisdictional changes. We draw on a comparative historical analysis of two occupational associations’—systems men and production planners—efforts to frame their evolving tasks and relate to other occupations after the introduction of the computer into U.S. business in the early 1950s. We observe that systems men followed the path traditionally advocated in the occupations and professions literature by seeking autonomy through differentiating their task domains from other groups and by trying to get other groups to recognize their control. But they were unsuccessful and disbanded by the mid-1990s. In contrast, the successful production planners took an integrative approach through efforts to frame the interdependencies of their tasks and relate to other occupations, making them more necessary to the functioning of other groups and the organization. Our study contributes to the growing relational perspec...

The Discursive Perspective of Market Categorization: Interaction, Power, and Context

Abstract Scholars have primarily focused on how language represents categories. We move beyond this conception to develop a discursive perspective of market categorization focused on how categories are constructed through communicative exchanges. The discursive perspective points to three under-researched mechanisms of category evolution: (1) the interaction between market participants, (2) the power dynamics among market participants and within the discourse, and (3) the cultural and material context in which categories are constructed. In this theoretical paper, we discuss how each of these mechanisms shed light on different phases of category evolution and the methods that could be used to study them.

Product Conceptual Systems: Toward a Cognitive Processing Model

Abstract Market participants form conceptualizations of the products exchanged within product markets. Strategy scholars have begun to investigate how these product conceptual systems influence firm strategic behavior. Much of this work characterize these concepts as categories and theorize that the strategic implications derive from the potential penalties of not fitting into a category. This view has limitations in that it does not fully address the other cognitive tasks that concepts perform as well as other system-level characteristics of the conceptual systems. This chapter addresses these limitations by framing the use of concepts as part of the interpretive processes that enable market exchange. It develops a system-view of product concepts and then shows how the structure of the product categorical system influences the interpretation of product concepts. It introduces new mechanisms centered on cognitive processing that influence strategic action within product markets.