The persistence of a stigmatised practice: a study of competitive intelligence

Studies on the diffusion of practices provide valuable insights into how organizations adopt, adapt, sustain and abandon practices over time. However, few studies focus on how stigmatized practices diffuse and persist, even when they risk tainting the adopters. To address this issue and understand how firms manage stigmatized practices, we study US organizations associated with the practice of competitive intelligence (CI) between 1985 and 2012. CI includes legitimate information gathering practices that are sometimes also associated with infringements and espionage. Our findings suggest that CI became highly diffused and persisted despite the risk of stigmatizing its adopters. We identified three factors to explain CI's persistence: (1) keeping it opaque to avoid the negative effects of stigmatization, (2) ‘constructing’ usefulness to justify its ongoing use by leveraging accepted beliefs and invoking fear of unilateral abandonment and (3) adapting it by developing multiple versions to increase its zone of acceptability. These three factors contribute to practice persistence by allowing firms to dilute the potential stigma from use of the practice. Our contribution lies in explaining the adoption, diffusion and ongoing use of a stigmatized practice whose benefits cannot be overtly acknowledged or made public

Sense Worldwide: Transforming the rules of innovation

This is part of a case series. This case series focuses on the complex sources of success of Sense Worldwide, a London-based creative agency, and its quest to adapt and change in tune with its environment to maintain its competitive advantage. It has been developed with a particular attention to introductory courses on strategic management, innovation and idea generation because it supports a complete analysis and integration between classic approaches to external analysis and more recent, internally oriented lens. Part (A) allows for a discussion of the context in the start-up phase and of the core competences and capabilities that helped it become successful. Part (A) can be used to assess Sense Worldwide’s strategy using popular themes such as industry analysis, SWOT analysis, the resource based view, and the dynamic capability view. Part (B) provides material for discussing the company`s method, its development over time and the consequences of external change on its business model. Part (B) can thus be used to show the dynamics of internal and external change by allowing for a comparison of Sense Worldwide’s evolution over time in terms of changing strategic positioning and key resources, processes and capabilities. Taken together, the two parts of the case series encourage in-depth discussion on focused topics such as starting up or business idea generation, co-creation and open innovation. It can also be used to discuss a more transversal theme such as knowledge creation

The Hidden Cost of Ubiquity: Globalisation and Terrorism

Terrorism is not a natural hazard outside the range of corporate decision-making. Simple micro-economic analysis shows how globalisation changed the supply of terrorist attacks and the costs for tolerating terrorist hazard. Approaches developed in organizational strategy help to single out three strategic decisions directly affecting the vulnerability of firms in a globalised world: exposure, geographical spread, and organisational form. The analysis suggests that the gains from ubiquity, leanness in production, and long-term commitment need to be adjusted for the terrorist hazard involved

Historical Attitudes and Implications for path dependence: FDI development and Institutional changes in China

This paper attempts to explain how institutions in the reform era of China have evolved by looking into the FDI policies and regulations. As history matters, we don’t look solely into the previous direct stage to the reform era, and rather look into a longer history starting from prior to the 14th century. The study shows that a dimension of time is crucial to understand institutional change in China. Though the initiation of the open-door policy in the reform era is commonly regarded as path-break event, we claim that this institutional change is a path dependent event from a longer historical view. The path takes a zigzag that is shaped by interaction among interested parties: the central government, local governments and economic agents (foreign investors in terms of the open-door policies). The historical study shows that mutual needs and their behaviours influence their attitudes which further influence institutional building. This also further implies how Chinese institutions may evolve in the future and what we should concern more about institutional changes in transitional economies

Open-system orchestration as a relational source of sensing capabilities: Evidence from a venture association

Research on innovation networks has highlighted the pivotal role that actors with more prominence and power, such as hub firms, may play in orchestrating the activities of other network members along a collective innovation effort. Our study examined the undertheorized, but no less important, type of orchestration that characterizes other organizations, such as business incubators and venture associations, who seek to support the dispersed entrepreneurial efforts of network members. We refer to this type as ‘open-system’ orchestration, as opposed to the commonly studied ‘closed-system’ type performed by hub firms. Our findings reveal how the processes of open-system orchestration differ markedly from those of closed-system orchestration, and detail how these processes influence the micro-foundations of network members’ sensing capabilities. By doing so, we also offer empirical substantiation and theoretical elaboration to the idea that dynamic capabilities might not reside exclusively inside firms, but could be co-created relationally with other parties in the business ecosystem

The Hidden Cost of Ubiquity: Globalisation and Terrorism

Terrorism is not a natural hazard outside the range of corporate decision-making. Simple micro-economic analysis shows how globalisation changed the supply of terrorist attacks and the costs for tolerating terrorist hazard. Approaches developed in organizational strategy help to single out three strategic decisions directly affecting the vulnerability of firms in a globalised world: exposure, geographical spread, and organisational form. The analysis suggests that the gains from ubiquity, leanness in production, and long-term commitment need to be adjusted for the terrorist hazard involved.multinationals;terrorism;internationalisation;deterrence;organizational strategy

Peer effects and intentional entrepreneurial behaviour: a systematic literature review and research agenda

What role peers play in individuals’ decisions to become entrepreneurs and to what extent peer effects play a role in influencing behaviours at the various stages of business venturing are important questions for scholars and policymakers. This systematic review takes stock of the recent additions to the literature around the phenomena of peer influence in entrepreneurship. The review identified 2,894 documents which were then narrowed down through three consecutive filtering stages. We thematically analysed the final sample of 27 empirical studies that shed light on how individuals’ peers influence the process and outcomes of these individuals’ entrepreneurial intentions and behaviour, allowing for critical analysis. We propose a conceptual schema of social influence that occurs in interactions among entrepreneurial individuals within business venturing and across the three stages of pre-formation, formation, and growth. Our framework reconciles the conceptual classification around discovering, evaluating and exploiting entrepreneurial opportunities with the mechanisms of social influence affecting entrepreneurial behaviours. Grounded in the findings of the literature review, this framework synthesizes peer influence in entrepreneurship with the tripartite distinction of the behavioural motives recognised in contemporary theories of social influence. We suggest promising directions for further research on how interactions with peers might affect individuals’ entrepreneurial behaviours

Historical Attitudes and Implications for path dependence: FDI development and Institutional changes in China

This paper attempts to explain how institutions in the reform era of China have evolved by looking into the FDI policies and regulations. As history matters, we don’t look solely into the previous direct stage to the reform era, and rather look into a longer history starting from prior to the 14th century. The study shows that a dimension of time is crucial to understand institutional change in China. Though the initiation of the open-door policy in the reform era is commonly regarded as path-break event, we claim that this institutional change is a path dependent event from a longer historical view. The path takes a zigzag that is shaped by interaction among interested parties: the central government, local governments and economic agents (foreign investors in terms of the open-door policies). The historical study shows that mutual needs and their behaviours influence their attitudes which further influence institutional building. This also further implies how Chinese institutions may evolve in the future and what we should concern more about institutional changes in transitional economies.China;path dependence;institutions;attitudes;FDI policy

Relational Capital and Individual Exploration: Unravelling the influence of goal alignment and knowledge acquisition

We investigate how the relational capital of a person within an organization affects the extent to which she or he conducts exploration activities. Our theory separates out a negative effect that comes from aligning goals with other organizational members from a positive effect that stems from acquiring knowledge from them. Our data from 150 members of the R&D teams of three leading R&D-intensive firms support the theoretical model. By developing and testing this theory, we contribute to the literature on exploration, which lacks understanding of the antecedents of individual exploration in organizations. We also contribute to relational capital literature, which has focused on organizational and group-level exploration, but which has shown inconsistent findings regarding the relationship between relational capital and exploration. A reason for this may be that this body of research has emphasized positive effects of relational capital for exploration only, and has not accounted for the different mechanisms that mediate the effects of relational capital on individual exploration activities. Our theory offers a more comprehensive view by explaining how relational capital may provide both benefits and liabilities to individual exploration activities