Systemic Innovation in a Distributed Network Paradox or Pinnacle?

Previous research has suggested that there is a dichotomy of organisational practices: companies involved in autonomous or modularised innovations, it is argued, benefit from decentralised approaches where coordination primarily takes place through the marketplace, whereas the benefits of systemic innovation are said to be appropriated best by centralised organisations. However, case studies of subcontractors to the Danish wind turbine industry suggest that the ability to meet heterogeneous demands plays an important role for the success of different forms of organisational practices in relation to innovation. The modularised versus systemic architecture approach therefore appears to be a too sweeping dichotomy for describing what can better be perceived as an array of different practices for balancing innovation contribution with the ability of individual firms to appropriate innovation benefits – and a heterogeneous market perception is a core element in building and sustaining this ability.Organisational Forms, Innovation System, Knowledge Complementarities, Value Appropriation

Organizing International Technological Collaboration in Subcontractor Relationships An Investigation of the Knowledge-Stickyness Problem

Technological knowledge is often claimed to be context-bound and sticking to local surroundings. This paper investigates how technological knowledge can be exchanged in international subcontractor relationships, using relationship-oriented organizational practices. Five hypotheses concerning such practices are tested. It is shown that the use of relationshiporiented practices varies with exports and the active development of subcontractors in product and process development activities. Moreover, international development-oriented subcontractors are more likely to use interpersonal exchange, electronic data interchange and formalized contracts than other types of subcontractors. Research implications as well as managerial implications are derived

Transient commitments and dynamic business networking

AbstractA business network is a dynamic organizational form, ever shifting and changing. Capturing conceptually the dynamics of a network is difficult. We seek to explicate and understand how transient commitments focused on instrumental activities unfold and how they lead to network dynamics. We study this using the activity and actor dimensions of a dynamic network. Our empirical data is based on the defense supply industry where a number of firms act, interdependently and yet also somewhat independently, to change and adjust their surrounding network and so bring new solutions to their customers

Corporate sustainable brand identity work and network embeddedness:Learnings from Better Place (2007–2013)

The growing attention to the climate crisis in today's business environment, increases the need for B2B firms to integrate corporate sustainable branding activities in stakeholder interactions. Motivated by a continuous push for market reforms to promote a sustainability agenda for B2B firms, this research uses an intensive single case study design to showcase how corporate sustainable brand identity work is carried out in B2B firms and how business network embeddedness affects this work. We describe how Petter Place, a company that attempted to introduce a radically new way of providing charging for electric cars, provides an opportunity to outline and discuss corporate sustainable brand identity work in B2B networks. We identify how corporate sustainable brand identity work is carried out through different sub-processes, such as building corporate sustainable brand identity and awareness, network mobilizing, and ongoing actor commitment and coalignment, and how network embeddedness facilitates and restricts these processes in different ways.</p

How purchasing departments facilitate organizational ambidexterity

Companies must pursue both exploration and exploitation of supplier’s knowledge in increasingly competitive and complex production environments. This has been referred to as pursuing an ambidextrous supply strategy, extending the mobilisation of resources in pursuit of both aims beyond the borders of the lead manufacturer and into supplier organizations as well. Purchasing and supply management plays an increasingly central role in mobilizing and involving the suppliers in the pursuit of this agenda. The purpose of this paper is to contribute to the literature on organizational ambidexterity and operations management by exploring how purchasing departments contribute to the organizational pursuit of organizational ambidexterity. We explore practices followed by purchasing departments for mediating tensions between supply networks and organizational functions

how institutional contexts matter

The paper has a dual purpose. First, we suggest that entrepreneurs in their establishment of new businesses draw on a range of pre-existing socially embedded routines for creating acceptance by their environment. Also they draw upon external resources that are used in patterning specific practices. This ability is treated as entrepreneurial assets. Secondly, we argue that the existence and patterning of these socially embedded routines used in new business development are contingent on the institutional context. We see the institutional context as complex and fragmented, composed and shaped by different institutional domains: the normative, the cognitive and the regulatory domain