This paper attempts to facilitate conversation among organization scientists by advancing a philosophical perspective (agnosticism) that has been ignored in the recent subjective-objective debate. As agnostics, we suggest that the controversy may not be resolvable and that organization science can carry on in the absence of such resolution. We propose a series of concepts to guide the “post-debate” field, emphasizing that mutual striving for a “sense of accurate reception” (SOAR) can provide a crossroads for conversation among students of organizations. Suggestions for achieving SOAR are proposed.
This study extends earlier empirical research into organizational decline which has found that substandard performance stimulates innovation in a wide range of manufacturing industries. Using data from 74 U.S. high technology firms, this research investigates the relationship between organizational performance and adoption of an organizational innovation, the decision to join an R&D consortium. The central premise of the study is that a firm's propensity to innovate fluctuates with organizational performance, rather than stemming solely from a firm's inherent characteristics (such as size, structure, leadership, etc.). The study found that substandard performance stimulated early joiners of R&D consortia. More risk-averse, high performing firms were found to be late adopters of R&D consortia. However, the relationship between performance and innovation was somewhat more complex than traditionally envisioned. First, a distinct institutionalization effect occurred as R&D consortia became a commonly accepted method of conducting certain types of R&D projects. While substandard performance was necessary to stimulate the early adopters, over time, institutionalization of R&D consortia occurred, risks associated with adoption were lowered, and later adopters were no longer stimulated solely by substandard performance. Second, an adoption decision was observed to involve more than a single, dichotomous organizational choice, but included both an initial adopt/nonadopt component and a related decision involving the timing of adoption (early/late). The relationship between organizational performance and innovation emerged only when the effects of the initial adoption decision (adopt/nonadopt) were separated from the effects of adoption timing (early/late). The results here point rather strongly to the need to expand inquiry into the decision-making processes of late adopting firms, which are essentially “imitators,” to complement the existing prodigious literature on early adopting, firms, perceived in the traditional literature as “innovators.”
How should we understand why firms exist? A prevailing view has been that they serve to keep in check the transaction costs arising from the self-interested motivations of individuals. We develop in this article the argument that what firms do better than markets is the sharing and transfer of the knowledge of individuals and groups within an organization. This knowledge consists of information (e.g., who knows what) and of know-how (e.g., how to organize a research team). What is central to our argument is that knowledge is held by individuals, but is also expressed in regularities by which members cooperate in a social community (i.e., group, organization, or network). If knowledge is only held at the individual level, then firms could change simply by employee turnover. Because we know that hiring new workers is not equivalent to changing the skills of a firm, an analysis of what firms can do must understand knowledge as embedded in the organizing principles by which people cooperate within organizations. Based on this discussion, a paradox is identified: efforts by a firm to grow by the replication of its technology enhances the potential for imitation. By considering how firms can deter imitation by innovation, we develop a more dynamic view of how firms create new knowledge. We build up this dynamic perspective by suggesting that firms learn new skills by recombining their current capabilities. Because new ways of cooperating cannot be easily acquired, growth occurs by building on the social relationships that currently exist in a firm. What a firm has done before tends to predict what it can do in the future. In this sense, the cumulative knowledge of the firm provides options to expand in new but uncertain markets in the future. We discuss at length the example of the make/buy decision and propose several testable hypotheses regarding the boundaries of the firm, without appealing to the notion of “opportunism.”
The dominant explanation for the spread of technological innovations emphasizes processes of influence and information flow. Firms which are closely connected to pre-existing users of an innovation learn about it and adopt it early on. Firms at the periphery of communication networks are slower to adopt. This paper develops an alternative model which emphasizes the role of know-how and organizational learning as potential barriers to adoption of innovations. Firms delay in-house adoption of complex technology until they obtain sufficient technical know-how to implement and operate it successfully. In response to knowledge barriers, new institutions come into existence which progressively lower those barriers, and make it easier for firms to adopt and use the technology without extensive in-house expertise. Service bureaus, consultants, and simplification of the technology are examples. As knowledge barriers are lowered, diffusion speeds up, and one observes a transition from an early pattern in which the new technology is typically obtained as a service to a later pattern of in-house provision of the technology. Thus the diffusion of technology is reconceptualized in terms of organizational learning, skill development, and knowledge barriers. The utility of this approach is shown through an empirical study of the diffusion of business computing in the United States, reporting survey and ethnographic data on the spread of business computing, on the learning processes and skills required, and on the changing institutional practices that facilitated diffusion.
Astley and Zammuto (Astley, W. Graham, Raymond F. Zammuto. 1992. Organization science, managers and language games. Organ. Sci. 3 (4) 443–460.) have contributed a provocative theoretical analysis of the present state of organizational science and suggest that the solution to current difficulties lies in a fuller realization of the concept of organizational science as a language game. They address contemporary criticisms that organizational research lacks applications and reject the view that renewed efforts should be made to create a body of organizational engineering knowledge which offers highly specific advice to managers. Instead Astley and Zammuto (Astley, W. Graham, Raymond F. Zammuto. 1992. Organization science, managers and language games. Organ. Sci. 3 (4) 443–460.) invoke the philosophical concept of a language game and see organization theory as primarily consisting of stories and myths to provide symbolic representation and legitimation for management. Far from being highly specific in terminology, preferred language games are seen as being stated in an abstract language, the better to widely generalize, and indeed as being ambiguous, so as to appeal broadly and to facilitate consensus in fraught situations.