Tyler Wry

More than a Metaphor: Assessing the Historical Legacy of Resource Dependence and its Contemporary Promise as a Theory of Environmental Complexity

At its inception, resource dependence (RD) held the promise to become a robustly developed theoretical perspective. However, behind an ever-growing citation count, scholars—including one of its key architects—have asserted that RD no longer inspires much substantive research and now serves as little more than an appealing metaphor about organizations [Pfeffer, J. (2003). Introduction to the classic edition. In J. Pfeffer & G.R. Salancik, The external control of organizations: A resource dependence perspective (classic edition). New York: Harper & Row]. A systematic analysis of RDs uses in the management literature lends some credence to this assessment. However, our analysis also shows a perspective that has been broadly influential and well-supported in applications that cross multiple empirical domains. Moreover, this impact has been achieved despite the widespread neglect of what is arguably RDs most distinctive insight; namely that an organizations external environment is composed of other organiza...

Institutional sources of technological knowledge: a community perspective on nanotechnology emergence

Although the cottage industry of neoinstitutional research gained its momentum through a conceptual architecture that was centred on a bifurcation of technological/material forces and cultural dynamics, current research in this genre has begun to re-examine the utility of such distinctions. One of the downsides of such a conceptual distinction is that the institutional approach to technology is anachronistic, treating it as an exogenous force. Even though early work by Woodward and others usefully contributed to our understanding of organizations by highlighting how different technologies correlate with various organizational forms, recent scholarship has enhanced our more functional understanding of technology by highlighting processes of coevolution and structuration. In this chapter, we draw on such social constructionist developments in the study of technology to reanimate institutional analysis. More specifically, drawing on the case of the development of nanotube intellectual property, we focus on how technological knowledge production is embedded in community cultures. Our arguments and evidence suggest that there are distinctive community cultures around intensive versus extensive knowledge-generating patents, highlighting how an approach that appreciates the interactive dynamics of technology and culture can yield important insights into the institutional dynamics of technology development.

SOCIETAL PATRIARCHAL LOGICS AND THE EMERGENCE OF MICROFINANCE ORGANIZATIONS

Why do countries differ so much in the extent to which their microfinance market has developed over the past two decades? Building on neo-institutional theories in sociology and research on patriar...

Taking Trade-offs Seriously: Examining the Contextually Contingent Relationship Between Social Outreach Intensity and Financial Sustainability in Global Microfinance

A key insight from research on hybrid organizing is that the joint pursuit of competing goals exposes an enterprise to potentially problematic tensions and trade-offs. Yet while studies have examined the former, the actual trade-offs that these organizations face—and how these might vary among enterprises and contexts—has been largely overlooked. Focusing on social enterprise, we address these gaps by (1) developing a framework that can be used to predict the compatibility of social outreach and financial sustainability for different types of enterprises and (2) arguing that the acuteness of trade-offs will vary based on the cultural roots of the issue an enterprise addresses, the market conditions where it operates, and the quality of its management. We test our arguments by studying 2,037 microfinance organizations in 115 nations between 1995 and 2013. Results support our predictions. Social–financial trade-offs are amplified when a social issue is intertwined with deep-seated cultural problems, such as...

Opportunity, Status, and Similarity: Exploring the Varied Antecedents and Outcomes of Category Spanning Innovation

Abstract Studies have shown that actors who affiliate with multiple categories generally do so at their own peril. Still, category spanning is routinely observed, although it is less understood. We address this gap by a longitudinal study of category spanning among nanotube technology inventors. Our results highlight the importance of the evolving structure of category relationships, actor embeddedness within the structure, and interactions with other factors, including the attractiveness of related categories. When a category is relationally similar to others, associated inventors are more likely to engage in category spanning, whereas when a category is dissimilar, inventors are more likely to remain within it.

Doing Well and Doing Good? Employee Exit in Social Enterprise

The literature on hybrid organizations offers a number of strategies designed to avoid destabilizing, internal tensions within such organizations. We argue, however, that in implementing these prac...

The Recognition and Development of Social Enterprise Opportunities: An Identity Based Approach

Social enterprise has gained widespread acclaim as a tool for addressing social and environmental problems. Yet, because these organizations integrate the social welfare and commercial logics in their core, they face the challenge of pursuing goals that frequently conflict with each other. Studies have begun to address how established social enterprises can manage these tensions, but we know little about how, why, and with what consequences social entrepreneurs mix competing logics as they work to create new organizations. To address this gap, we develop a theoretical model based in identity theory that helps to explain: (1) how the commercial and social welfare logics become relevant to entrepreneurship; (2) how different types of entrepreneurs perceive the tension between these logics, and; (3) the implications this has for how entrepreneurs go about recognizing and developing plans to address opportunities that integrate social welfare and commercial goals. Our approach thus responds to calls from organizational and entrepreneurship scholars to extend existing frameworks of opportunity recognition and development to better account for social enterprise creation.