Combining artefact analysis, interview and participant observation to study the organizational sensemaking of knowledge-based innovation

"Innovation studies have hardly investigated the link between innovation and organization with respect to what individual actors in organizations mean when they refer to innovation. More precisely, there are few research designs with the goal to understand (Verstehen) the meaning of innovation in organizations. To address this gap on a methodological level, I introduce an interpretative research design to study the organizational sense-making of innovation. Informed by the knowledge-based view of innovation and organizations, this research design suggests a combination of the qualitative methods artefact analysis, semi-structured qualitative interview and participant observation to generate data. Using qualitative content analysis to analyze the collected data separately, first-order concepts are constructed. Joining these separate concepts with the constant comparison technique creates second-order concepts and therefore a comprehensive understanding of the meaning of innovation in an organization. The application of the interpretative research design in innovation studies enables to build new theory on the link between innovation and organization that is empirically grounded." (author's abstract

Aligning the design of intermediary organisations with the ecosystem

Intermediary organisations such as technology transfer organisations (TTOs) are an important mechanism of open ecosystem governance, as they support how ecosystem participants search for knowledge. While scholars have identified TTO activities to support knowledge search, little is known about how these activities relate to the struc-tural dimensions of TTOs or ecosystem-level factors. We propose that ecosystem search scope and problem complexity are key ecosystem- level factors that influence how TTOs support knowledge search. We further argue that coupling, specialisation, centralisation, and forma-lisation are the key structural dimensions of TTOs. We combine these arguments to develop TTO designs that detail the interplay of the structural dimensions and activities of a TTO given varying ecosys-tem-level factors. Our paper contributes to research on the open governance of ecosystems, ecosystem structures, and the ecosystem structure–intermediary organisations relation

Verursachen Funken ein Feuer? Eine qualitative Fallstudie an der Grenze von Bildung und Wissenschaft

"Der Übertritt von der Schule an die Universität ist ein zentraler Angelpunkt der modernen Gesellschaft. Das Forschungsprogramm 'Sparkling- Science' des österreichischen Bundesministeriums für Wissenschaft und Forschung, das Schülerinnen in reale Forschungsprojekte einbindet, will die betroffenen Akteurinnen bei dieser Entscheidung unterstützen. Der vorliegende Beitrag untersucht im Rahmen einer qualitativen Fallstudie ein Projekt dieses Programms hinsichtlich der Modi zur Entfachung von Leidenschaft für die Wissenschaft. Aufgrund der Emergenz einer hierarchischen Struktur, die jener des Organisationstyps Unternehmens ähnelt, und der Umkehrung der intendierten Zweck-Mittel-Konfiguration lässt sich jedoch nur bedingt ein loderndes Feuer der Leidenschaft für die Wissenschaft konstatieren. Vielmehr zeigt sich, wie nicht-intendierte Effekte von zweckgerichtetem Handeln formale Absichten unterwandern und zur Bildung von hierarchischen quasi-organisationalen Strukturen beitragen." (Autorenreferat

Zum Teilen anregen: Konzeptionelle Überlegungen aus einer Netzwerkperspektive

A community in which persons share resources is of great relevance for firms in the sharing economy. However, so far little attention has been paid to the activities with which a community can be encouraged to share. To address this gap, this conceptual paper argues to focus on the relationships between persons of a community that together constitute a sharing network. The activities to encourage sharing in this network can be systematized with the process types "mobilizing„, "distributing", and "stabilizing". The paper discusses and illustrates these three activity types. The aim is to complement insights on the functioning of firms in the sharing economy with a perspective that centers community-oriented activities

Capturing the dynamics of the sharing economy: Institutional research on the plural forms and practices of sharing economy organizations

To date, management research has paid little attention to dynamics of the sharing economy: how markets for sharing resources emerge and change, and the intended and unintended consequences of resource sharing. We propose a definition of the sharing economy that brings the role of organizations as infrastructure providers to the fore and helps us to assess the culturally rooted pluralism of forms and practices in these organizations. We introduce two perspectives in research on organizational institutionalism that focus on culture and pluralism – institutional complexity and institutional work – and argue that unpacking the pluralism of organizational forms and practices is critical to examine the dynamics of the sharing economy. We propose an agenda for research to capture the dynamics of the sharing economy at the organizational, field, and inter-field level. Such an agenda helps to document and analyze how the sharing economy manifests and evolves across various economic systems and has the potential to refine and recast existing management theory

Digital sustainability : Tackling climate change with bits and bytes

Recent studies suggest that firms can reduce their impact on the natural environment through the creative deployment of technologies that create, use, transmit, or source electronic data. While this work on digital sustainability is promising, so far it remained unclear how firms can leverage digital technologies as part of their sustainability management. We address this issue by providing an integrative picture of how to leverage digital technologies to tackle climate change across levels. We develop this picture in three steps. First, we argue for three key levels of sustainability management - the single firm, competitor and research organizations, and institutional actors. Second, we identify key functions that current digital technologies provide - (certified) measurement and information, motivation, and transaction - and assess key promises and downsides with respect to their potential to tackle climate change. Third, we develop a multi-level framework of digital sustainability enablers

Unmanaged Transparency in a Digital Society: Swiss army knife or double-edged sword?

Reischauer G, Ringel L. Unmanaged Transparency in a Digital Society: Swiss army knife or double-edged sword? Organization Studies. 2022: 01708406221106329.Facing increasing demands for transparency, more and more organizations have embraced managed forms of information disclosure that rely on digital technologies. However, when doing so, they tend to create an idealized self-presentation for their audiences. Aggravated by these attempts to undermine 'true openness', calls for a 'hands-off' approach to information disclosure - also known as unmanaged transsparency - have grown louder. Following this development, the paper conceptualizes organizations as sites of managed and unmanaged transparency practices and asks how these practices shape audience support and are affected by audiences. Empirically, we study a German political party from 2011 to 2017. Audiences initially supported the party's commitment to unmanaged transparency but soon withdrew their support. Members in executive positions reacted by enacting multiple managed transparency practices to change the party's negative public image. These efforts, however, were futile, and the party could not regain audience support. We theorize this dynamic in a framework that draws attention to the impact of (un)managed transparency and the organizational environment on audience support. Overall, our study suggests that unmanaged transparency in a digital society is more like a double-edged sword rather than a Swiss army knife: organizations might profit from its positive effects on the audience's support, but they also make themselves vulnerable by the high level of dissonance they put on display

Platform Organizing in the New Digital Economy: Revisiting Online Communities and Strategic Responses

We are currently witnessing a new wave of the digital economy. A prime example is the sharing economy where an organization operates a platform for its online community, the sum of individuals who interact to exchange goods and services. The sharing economy blurs several boundaries of economic life – a fact that extant theory on platform organizing has yet paid little attention. We argue to consider two aspects of the sharing economy and revisit related theory to address this lacuna. First, we revive the concept of hybrid community to denote a variant of an online community that mirrors the boundary-blurring nature of the sharing economy. In a hybrid community, individuals interact both online and offline (instead of only online) and consume as well as produce. Second, we revisit the range of strategic responses suggested by extant literature to minimize the dependence of a platform organization on its hybrid community and show that the sharing economy requires management research to adapt and potentially recast existing claims