A Review of Positive Feedback Mechanisms in Technology Markets, Regional Clusters, and Organizations

The concept of path dependence has often been criticized as vague and only narrowly applicable. Although we can find some very refined definitions of the concept, we also find a wide range of empirical phenomena being described as path-dependent. We argue that more detailed accounts of the positive feedback mechanisms that form paths can take path dependence beyond this state of being overdetermined, but under-specified. Reviewing three well-described cases of path-dependent dynamics in technology markets, regional clustering, and organizations, we define a core set of positive feedback mechanisms that constitute path dependence at different analysis levels and clarify the relationship between positive feedback and increasing returns. We show that path-dependent processes, that is, processes driven by positive feedback that veer toward rigidity or lock-in, can be (but do not have to be) found under many labels, including structural inertia, coevolution, or institutional persistence. We conclude that a precise definition of path dependence does not need to be at odds with the concept’s widespread use in understanding organizational and industrial development processes

Copyright reform and business model innovation: regulatory propaganda at German music industry conferences

Inspired by new digital technologies, diverse actors in cultural and creative industries propagate conflicting visions of how to adequately innovate – or rather preserve and strictly enforce – copyright-related business models, which has resulted in substantial amounts of regulatory uncertainty. Looking at a decade of regulatory discourse at industry events in the popular music industry in Germany, we investigate how these actors make sense of and strategically shape this uncertainty in the process of industry transformation. Our longitudinal argumentative discourse analysis reveals cycles of regulatory propaganda of two discourse coalitions that do not engage in debate, but aim to find support for competing business models among regulators and the public. Organizing, canceling, and participating in industry events are discursive strategies used effectively to transport their claims by both industry lobbyists and challenging actors, but industry incumbents are failing to use these sites for testing out and introducing new business models. We conclude that regulatory struggles, not least at industry events, mediate between disruptive technologies and business model innovation

Capability Development in Interorganizational Projects

We examine how capabilities emerge in repeated interorganizational projects and how they affect project development. A multifaceted understanding of project capabilities in interorganizational projects is important, because project management research emphasizes capabilities’ contribution to project performance, but has also stressed their tendency to grow rigid. We review the literature on interorganizational project collaboration to identify the foundations and drivers of project capabilities in project networks and to outline their potentially ambiguous consequences. Our systematic overview of these studies provides a basis for further empirical research and project management practice

Changing Responses to Global Framework Agreements

Corporate elites are increasingly held responsible for issues of sustainability including working conditions and workers’ rights in global production networks. We still know relatively little about how they respond to concrete stakeholder initiatives aiming to restrict corporate voluntarism through transnational regulation. In this chapter we report comparative findings on corporate legitimation strategies in response to requests by labor representatives to sign Global Framework Agreements (GFAs). These agreements are intended to hold multinational corporations (MNCs) accountable for the implementation of core labor standards across their supply chains. We propose to broaden management-focused analyses of corporate legitimation strategies by applying a field-oriented perspective that considers the embeddedness of management in a broader web of strategic activity and variable opportunity structures. Our findings suggest that legitimation strategies are developed dynamically along with the rules, positions, and understandings developing around specific regulatory issues in sequences of interactions between elites and challenging groups

Can solidarity be organized "from below" in global supply chains? The case of ExChains

Global supply chains in the garment industry are marked by labour standard violations in factories as well as retail stores. Against this background it is important to strengthen the bargaining power of workers along the supply chain. Establishing direct relationships among workers along the supply chain could be one way to achieve this aim. This paper builds on extant literature on transnational solidarity and highlights the specific challenges of understanding solidarity in a transnational social space by looking at the empirical context of global garment supply chains. It hereby seeks to go beyond treating "solidarity" as a mere metaphor for any form of transnational union or worker cooperation, and instead engages with the cultural-normative dimensions of the concept as referring to mutual bonds among groups of workers. By looking at the case of the ExChains network, this paper examines some of the opportunities and challenges involved in establishing and maintaining transnational worker solidarity. The paper concludes by discussing the transformative potential, but also the limits of transnational labour solidarity regarding substandard working conditions in global supply chains.Globale Lieferketten in der Bekleidungsindustrie sind durch Arbeitsstandardverletzungen in ihren Produktionsbetrieben, aber auch zunehmend im Einzelhandel gekennzeichnet. Vor diesem Hintergrund ist es wichtig, die Verhandlungsmacht von Arbeitnehmerinnen und Arbeitnehmern entlang der Lieferkette zu stärken. Ein Weg, dies zu erreichen, ist die Schaffung von transnationalen Beziehungen zwischen Arbeiterinnen und Arbeitern. Basierend auf der bestehenden Literatur zu transnationaler Solidarität hebt dieser Artikel die spezifischen Herausforderungen des Verständnisses von Solidarität im transnationalen Raum am Beispiel der globalen Bekleidungskette hervor. Dabei wird versucht, über "Solidarität" als bloße Metapher für jegliche Form der transnationalen Zusammenarbeit zwischen Gewerkschaften und Arbeitnehmerinnen und Arbeitnehmern hinauszugehen und stattdessen die kulturell-normativen Dimensionen des Solidaritätsbegriffs als gegenseitige Bindung von Arbeiterinnen und Arbeitern zu verstehen. Am Fall des ExChains Netzwerks werden die Möglichkeiten und Herausforderungen der Schaffung und Aufrechterhaltung transnationaler Solidaritätsbeziehungen beispielhaft untersucht. Abschließend werden das transformative Potential, aber auch die Grenzen transnationaler Arbeiterinnen- und Arbeiter-Solidarität hinsichtlich der Arbeitsbedingungen in globalen Lieferketten diskutiert

Disassembly and reassembly: an introduction to the special issue on digital technology and creative industries

This paper analyses the dynamics of disassembly and reassembly unfolding in selected creative industries through the advent of digital technology. It argues that a full understanding of the much-observed organizational or sectoral lock-in effects on the one hand, and the possibilities for transformation and innovation on the other is only gained by analyzing jointly how institutional logics, business models and creative processes are affected by digital technology and how they interrelate in producing stability or change. These three dimensions provide a framework for reviewing the findings of the papers comprised in the Special Issue and for integrating their insights towards a research agenda. This introduction starts with a reflection on creative industries classification systems and related possibilities for generalization and discusses how digital technology acts as a driver for disassembly and reassembly. It concludes by highlighting three avenues for further research

Can business collaborate to save the planet?

In a world fractured by conflict, the difficulty in intergovernmental coordination to avoid climate catastrophe is apparent. Can business step in and help speed up collaboration? Sarah Ashwin, Nora Lohmeyer, and Elke Schüßler consider a mechanism enabling firms to cooperate with each other to address systemic problems: the creation of market-protected spaces through collective regulation

Regulating Nimbus and Focus: Organizing Copresence for Creative Collaboration

Creative collaboration often takes place in collaborative spaces that increasingly use virtual modes of interaction. To better understand the organizational conditions and organizing practices that facilitate collaboration in such spaces, we compare ethnographies of an online platform for collaborative songwriting and a physical songwriting camp, with each of these spatial settings coming with distinct advantages and disadvantages for creative collaboration. We identify the emergence of copresence – an active mutual orientation toward one another – as a common organizational condition for collaboration. Copresence was fostered by practices of regulating nimbus (i.e. making people more or less visible) and focus (i.e. directing attention to others) that not only stimulated moments of converging copresence marked by collaborative problem-solving, but also enabled diverging copresence marked by undirected attention and more serendipitous interactions. Our comparison reveals the challenges of negotiating between converging and diverging copresence to counteract tendencies towards excessive, or conversely, insufficient nimbus and focus of the participants, both of which are barriers to copresence. These insights contribute to ongoing debates about the organization of online and offline collaborative spaces by shifting the focus away from co-location towards copresence, highlighting the oscillation between converging and diverging copresence as important for a collaborative atmosphere and identifying practices by which copresence can be organized in different spatial settings

Translating European Labor Relations Practices to the United States Through Global Framework Agreements? German and Swedish Multinationals Compared

Extensive research has shown that European multinational enterprises (MNEs) have a propensity to avoid collective employee representation when going abroad. This study investigates whether Global Framework Agreements (GFAs) can reverse this pattern by comparing how four European MNEs—two from Germany and two from Sweden—implement GFAs in the United States, a country with weak collective representation rights. The authors find that an MNE’s home country labor relations (LR) system mediates whether GFAs support collective representation in the United States. Sweden’s monistic LR system, in which unions are the dominant organizations legally representing workers, gives unions the power to directly influence the negotiation and implementation of GFAs. By contrast, Germany’s dualistic LR system, in which unions and works councils share worker representation, weakens the influence of unions on implementing the GFA. MNEs’ home country LR systems thus influence how transnational instruments are used to improve collective representation in host countries