The Organizational Fitness Navigator: Creating and Measuring Organizational Fitness for Fast-Paced Transformation

In the fast-changing environment of today dynamic capabilities to manage organizational transformation are regarded as crucial for business survival and improved performance. Although dynamic organizational capabilities have been receiving intense scrutiny by researchers and practitioners in the past few years, relatively little attention has been directed towards creating a systemic model of dynamic capabilities, and how to effectively measure what the authors call organizational fitness capabilities. This paper builds on the concepts of organizational fitness and its profiling (OFP), and proposes the organizational fitness navigator (OFN) as a systemic model of dynamic organizational capabilities. Part of the OFP model is a systemic scorecard (SCC) as a measurement tool for organizational fitness - in contrast to the well-known balanced scorecard (BSC) - for improving business survival and performance in increasingly networked environments.dynamic capabilities, organizational fitness, organizational fitness profiling, organizational fitness navigator, systemic scorecard

Managerialism and the neoliberal university: Prospects for new forms of "open management" in higher education

The restructuring of state education systems in many OECD countries during the last two decades has involved a significant shift away from an emphasis on administration and policy to an emphasis on management. The "new managerialism" has drawn theoretically, on the one hand, on the model of corporate managerialism and private sector management styles, and, on public choice theory and new institutional economics (NIE), most notably, agency theory and transaction cost analysis, on the other. A specific constellation of these theories is sometimes called "New Public Management," which has been very influential in the United Kingdom, Australia, Canada and New Zealand. These theories and models have been used both as the legitimation for policies that redesigning state educational bureaucracies, educational institutions and even the public policy process. Most importantly, there has been a decentralization of management control away from the center to the individual institution through a "new contractualism" - often referred to as the "doctrine of self-management" - coupled with new accountability and competitive funding regimes. This shift has often been accompanied by a disaggregation of large state bureaucracies into autonomous agencies, a clarification of organizational objectives, and a separation between policy advice and policy implementation functions, together with a privatization of service and support functions through "contracting out". The "new managerialism" has also involved a shift from input controls to quantifiable output measures and performance targets, along with an emphasis on short-term performance contracts, especially for CEOs and senior managers. In the interests of so-called "productive efficiency," the provision of educational serviceshas been made contestable; and, in the interests of so-called allocative efficiency state education has been progressively marketized and privatized. In this paper I analyze the main underlying elements of this theoretical development that led to the establishment of the neoliberal university in the 1980s and 1990s before entertaining and reviewing claims that new public management is dead. At the end of the paper I focus on proposals for new forms of "the public" in higher education as a means of promoting "radical openness" consonant with the development of Web 2.0 technologies and new research infrastructures in the global knowledge economy

Toward a Theory of Public Entrepreneurship

This paper explores innovation, experimentation, and creativity in the public domain and in the public interest. Researchers in various disciplines have studied public entrepreneurship, but there is little work in management and economics on the nature, incentives, constraints and boundaries of entrepreneurship directed to public ends. We identify a framework for analyzing public entrepreneurship and its relationship to private entrepreneurial behavior. We submit that public and private entrepreneurship share essential features but differ critically regarding the definition and measurement of objectives, the nature of the selection environment, and the opportunities for rent-seeking. We describe four levels of analysis for studying public entrepreneurship, provide examples, and suggest new research directions.Entrepreneurship, public administration, political economy, institutions, transaction costs

The long and winding road: Routine creation and replication in multi-site organizations

Prior research on organizational routines in the ‘capabilities’ literature has either studied how new routines are created during an exploratory process of variation and selection or how existing routines are replicated during a phase of exploitation. Few studies have analyzed the life cycle of new routine creation and replication as an integrated process. In an in-depth case study of England’s Highways Agency, this paper shows that the creation and replication of a new routine across multiple sites involves four sequential steps: envisioning, experimenting, entrenching and enacting. We contribute to the capabilities research in two ways: first, by showing how different organizational levels, capabilities and logics (cognitive and behavioural) shape the development of new routines; and second, by identifying how distinct evolutionary cycles of variation and selective retention occur during each step in the process. In contrast with prior research on replication as an exact copy of a template or existing routine, our study focuses on the replication of an entirely new routine (based on novel principles) that is adapted to fit local operational conditions during its large-scale replication across multiple sites. We draw upon insights from adjacent ‘practice research’ and suggest how capabilities and practice studies may complement each other in future research on the evolution of routines

Games for a new climate: experiencing the complexity of future risks

This repository item contains a single issue of the Pardee Center Task Force Reports, a publication series that began publishing in 2009 by the Boston University Frederick S. Pardee Center for the Study of the Longer-Range Future.This report is a product of the Pardee Center Task Force on Games for a New Climate, which met at Pardee House at Boston University in March 2012. The 12-member Task Force was convened on behalf of the Pardee Center by Visiting Research Fellow Pablo Suarez in collaboration with the Red Cross/Red Crescent Climate Centre to “explore the potential of participatory, game-based processes for accelerating learning, fostering dialogue, and promoting action through real-world decisions affecting the longer-range future, with an emphasis on humanitarian and development work, particularly involving climate risk management.” Compiled and edited by Janot Mendler de Suarez, Pablo Suarez and Carina Bachofen, the report includes contributions from all of the Task Force members and provides a detailed exploration of the current and potential ways in which games can be used to help a variety of stakeholders – including subsistence farmers, humanitarian workers, scientists, policymakers, and donors – to both understand and experience the difficulty and risks involved related to decision-making in a complex and uncertain future. The dozen Task Force experts who contributed to the report represent academic institutions, humanitarian organization, other non-governmental organizations, and game design firms with backgrounds ranging from climate modeling and anthropology to community-level disaster management and national and global policymaking as well as game design.Red Cross/Red Crescent Climate Centr

Institutions and Dynamic Capabilities: Theoretical Insights and Research Agenda for Strategic Entrepreneurship.

The current paper aims to comparatively analyze both institutional and dynamic capabilities approaches conceptually in the context of strategic entrepreneurship. We offer a conceptual review, where strengths, as well as limitations of both theoretical approaches, are highlighted. Our review and discussion show that both approaches are subtly intertwined and can complement each other to further understanding of firm’s behavior including strategic entrepreneurship. Institutions provide templates for action and cognition in developing, managing, and utilizing dynamic capabilities in that context. Dynamic capabilities, as enablers of agency, can be expected to play a role in creating, maintaining, bridging, and disrupting institutions. The synthesis of institutional and dynamic capabilities approaches leads to a better understanding of agency, behavior, and structure in the context of strategic entrepreneurship. Finally, we also present a research agenda for strategic entrepreneurship that explores key concepts germane to both institutions and dynamic capabilities

The Behaviour of Corporate Actors. A Survey of the Empirical Literature

Much of behavioural research, both in economics and in psychology, is limited in one respect: it tests isolated individuals. In many practically relevant situations, there are discernible actors, but these actors are not individuals. Rather firms, regulatory bodies, associations, countries or international organisations become active. The social problem at hand is best understood if one attributes judgement and decision making to higher level aggregates of individuals. Which elements from the rich body of behavioural evidence transfer to these corporate actors? Are there other deviations from the predictions of the rational choice model, not present or studied in individuals? This paper surveys the empirical literature from experimental economics, psychology, sociology and law. While some building blocks, like the behaviour of managers and of ad hoc groups, are relatively well understood, our knowledge about the effects of more elaborate internal structure on the dealings of corporate actors with the outer world is still relatively limited.Behaviour, Firms, Organizations, Associations, Groups

Public Procurement for Innovation (PPI) – a Pilot Study

Public organizations may place an order for something (normally a product or a system) that does not exist. This “something” has to be developed by the supplier before it can be delivered. In other words, R&D and/or innovation are needed before delivery can take place. Until about 10 years ago this phenomenon was called “public technology procurement” Edquist et al 2000). This vocabulary of the 1990s and earlier has changed; the concept of “technology” has been replaced by the concept of “innovation”, reflecting a widening of the content of the notion. The phenomenon is a matter of using public demand (or similar) to trigger innovation. We will use the term “public procurement for innovation (PPI)” to denote this phenomenon. Further definitions are presented in section 2.4.Innovation Systems; innovation policy

Aha? Is Creativity Possible in Legal Problem Solving and Teachable in Legal Education?

This article continues and expands on my earlier project of seeking to describe how legal negotiation should be understood conceptually and undertaken behaviorally to produce better solutions to legal problems. As structured problem solving requires interests, needs and objectives identification, so too must creative solution seeking have its structure and elements in order to be effectively taught. Because research and teaching about creativity and how we think has expanded greatly since modern legal negotiation theory has been developed, it is now especially appropriate to examine how we might harness this new learning to how we might examine and teach legal creativity in the context of legal negotiation and problem solving. This article explores both the cognitive and behavioral dimensions of legal creativity and offers suggestions for how it can be taught more effectively in legal education, both within the more narrow curricula of negotiation courses and more generally throughout legal education