Small businesses in the new creative industries:innovation as a people management challenge

Purpose - This paper presents findings from an SME case study situated in the computer games industry, the youngest and fastest growing of the new digital industries. The study examines changing people management practices as the case company undergoes industry-typical strategic change to embark on explorative innovation and argues that maintaining an organisational context conducive to innovatin over time risks turning into a contest between management and employees as both parties interpret organisational pressures from their different perspectives. Design/methodology/approach - A single case study design is used as the appropriate methdology to generate indepth qualitative data from multiple organisational member perspectives. Findings - Findings indicate that management and worker perspectives on innovation as strategic change and the central people management practices required to support this differ significantly, resulting in tensions and organisational strain. As the company moves to the production of IP work, the need for more effective duality management arises. Research limitations/implications - The single case study has limitations in terms of generalisability. Multiple data collection and triangulation were used to migitate against the limitations. Practical implications - The study highlights the importance of building up change management capability in the small businesses typical for this sector, an as yet neglected focus in the academic iterature concerned with the industry and in support initatives. Originality/value - Few qualitative studies have examined people management practices in the industry in the context of organisational/strategic change, and few have adopted a process perspective

Diffusion and Cascading Behavior in Random Networks

The spread of new ideas, behaviors or technologies has been extensively studied using epidemic models. Here we consider a model of diffusion where the individuals' behavior is the result of a strategic choice. We study a simple coordination game with binary choice and give a condition for a new action to become widespread in a random network. We also analyze the possible equilibria of this game and identify conditions for the coexistence of both strategies in large connected sets. Finally we look at how can firms use social networks to promote their goals with limited information. Our results differ strongly from the one derived with epidemic models and show that connectivity plays an ambiguous role: while it allows the diffusion to spread, when the network is highly connected, the diffusion is also limited by high-degree nodes which are very stable

Dynamic Global Games of Regime Change: Learning, Multiplicity and Timing of Attacks

Global games of regime change–coordination games of incomplete information in which a status quo is abandoned once a sufficiently large fraction of agents attacks it–have been used to study crises phenomena such as currency attacks, bank runs, debt crises, and political change. We extend the static benchmark examined in the literature by allowing agents to take actions in many periods and to learn about the underlying fundamentals over time. We first provide a simple recursive algorithm for the characterization of monotone equilibria. We then show how the interaction of the knowledge that the regime survived past attacks with the arrival of information over time, or with changes in fundamentals, leads to interesting equilibrium properties. First, multiplicity may obtain under the same conditions on exogenous information that guarantee uniqueness in the static benchmark. Second, fundamentals may predict the eventual regime outcome but not the timing or the number of attacks. Finally, equilibrium dynamics can alternate between phases of tranquillity–where no attack is possible–and phases of distress–where a large attack can occur–even without changes in fundamentals.Global games, coordination, multiple equilibria, information dynamics, crises.