This study examines the antecedents of explorative and exploitative learning of technological knowledge from external corporate ventures. We compare different forms of external corporate venturing, namely corporate venture capital investments, alliances, joint ventures, and acquisitions, as alternative avenues for interorganizational learning. Furthermore, we test the effects of multiple relational characteristics on the type of learning outcomes. Our empirical analysis is based on citations in patents filed by a sample of 110 largest U.S. public information and communications technology companies during the years 1992–2000. We find that corporate venturing mode and technological relatedness have significant effects on the likelihood of explorative learning.
The high failure rate among new business ventures is usually chalked up to the fundamental uncertainty of the process. In actuality, say McGrath and Keil, flawed ways of assessing and managing ventures may account for the disappointing amount of value they generate. Instead of taking the go/no-go approach, whereby a project either advances toward launch or is killed, decision makers should consider a range of alternatives: recycling the venture by aiming it at a new target market; spinning it off to other owners or a joint venture; spinning it in to an established business unit; or salvaging useful elements such as technologies, capabilities, knowledge, and patents. Firms that excel in value extraction, the "value captors," whose practices and mind-set this article explores have created formal processes to systematically mine successes, failures, and everything in between. They know that a venture should be treated like a scientific experiment, in which learning plays a critical role. They are ready to seize new opportunities if a venture falters on its original course. They foster networks to promote cooperation and collaboration between established business leaders and venture teams and involve people from throughout the company in the venture review process. They don't allow financial criteria to dominate the reviews, and they recognize that the best people to launch a business may not be the ones who developed the idea. If your innovation pipeline is dry, your promising projects are being strangled for lack of a speedy payback, or someone else has made a fabulous business out of a slightly altered idea that you abandoned, consider the value captor's path. INSETS: Ten Telltale Signs of a Flawed Venturing Process;The Value Captor's Process;How Texas Instruments Discovered a Promising Business.
In this thesis, I examine the diffusion process for a complex medical technology, the PET scanner, in two different health care systems, one of which is more marketoriented (Switzerland) and the other more centrally managed by a public agency (Quebec). The research draws on institutional and socio-political theories of the diffusion of innovations to examine how institutional contexts affect processes of diffusion. I find that diffusion proceeds more rapidly in Switzerland than in Quebec, but that processes in both jurisdictions are characterized by intense struggles among providers and between providers and public agencies. I show that the institutional environment influences these processes by determining the patterns of material resources and authority available to actors in their struggles to strategically control the technology, and by constituting the discursive resources or institutional logics on which actors may legitimately draw in their struggles to give meaning to the technology in line with their interests and values. This thesis illustrates how institutional structures and meanings manifest themselves in the context of specific decisions within an organizational field, and reveals the ways in which governance structures may be contested and realigned when they conflict with interests that are legitimized by dominant institutional logics. It is argued that this form of contestation and readjustment at the margins constitutes one mechanism by which institutional frameworks are tested, stretched and reproduced or redefined.
Der Einsatz Sozialer Medien zur Erreichung marketingpolitischer Ziele ist bei KMU inzwischen weit verbreitet. Viele dieser Unternehmen gehen dabei allerdings eher intuitiv denn zielgerichtet vor – selten mit Erfolg. Gleichzeitig liefert der aktuelle Stand der Forschung nur wenig fundiertes Wissen im Hinblick auf die kritischen Erfolgsfaktoren einer mittelständischen Social Media-Kommunikation. Diesbezüglich gewonnene Erkenntnisse fußen größtenteils auf einzelfallbasierten, qualitativen oder empirisch-deskriptiven Untersuchungen. Sie lassen sich damit zwar als Orientierungsmaßstäbe heranziehen, empirisch gültige Kausalaussagen liefern sie jedoch nicht. Vor diesem Hintergrund zielt der vorliegende Beitrag darauf ab, diese mehr oder weniger fragmentiert vorliegenden, erfolgsbezogenen Informationen zu sammeln und mittels quantitativ-explorativer Faktoren- und Regressionsanalyse einige wenige, erfolgsentscheidende Variablen aufzudecken. Der dazu verwendete Datensatz besteht aus den Angaben von 135 KMU zu Social Media-Marketing-Rahmenbedingungen, Handlungen und -Erfolg.
Die Relevanz von Interaktion, Kommunikation und unsichtbaren, sozialen Beziehungen im Unternehmensalltag ist seit geraumer Zeit bekannt. Mit der sozialen Netzwerkanalyse verfügt die Wissenschaft über eine elaborierte Methode zur Analyse solcher Phänomene. Trotz ihrer weiten Verbreitung in der Wissenschaft und ihres breiten praktischen Anwendungspotenzials kommt der Netzwerkanalyse in der Praxis bisher jedoch lediglich ein Pionierstatus zu. Ein wesentlicher Grund dafür ist, dass es bisher nicht ausreichend gelungen ist, diese quantitative Analysemethode mit den für Praktiker relevanten qualitativen, einzelfallspezifischen Aspekten von Problemen zu kombinieren. Im Rahmen eines mehrjährigen, fallstudienbasierten Forschungsprojektes haben wir ein Verfahren entwickelt, welches eine solche Kombination ermöglicht. In diesem Artikel stellen wir das Verfahren vor und illustrieren seine Stärken und Schwächen anhand zweier konkreter Fallbeispiele.
This paper suggests that when the phenomenon of standards and standardization is examined from the perspective of organization studies, three aspects stand out: the standardization of organizations, standardization by organizations and standardization as (a form of) organization. Following a comprehensive overview of existing research in these three areas, we argue that the dynamic aspects of standardization are under-represented in the scholarly discourse. Furthermore, we identify the main types of tension associated with standardization and the dynamics they generate in each of those three areas, and show that, while standards and standardization are typically associated with stability and sameness, they are essentially a dynamic phenomenon. The paper highlights the contributions of this special issue to the topic of standards as a dynamic phenomenon in organization studies and makes suggestions for future research.
The aim of this study is to investigate whether trust in one’s employer and also perceived employability are able to reduce employees’ perceived post-restructuring job insecurity. Both, quantitative job insecurity (insecurity over the continuity of a job) and qualitative job insecurity (insecurity over the continuity of valued aspects of the job) are examined. Based on Lazarus’ theory of stress, we predict that employees’ trust in their employer, perceived levels of employability and the combination effect impacts employees’ perceived post-restructuring quantitative and qualitative job insecurity. Results taken from a sample of 377 employees working in Switzerland who survived restructuring mostly support these hypotheses. In general, employees with a high level of trust in their employer and high level of perceived employability show lower post-restructuring quantitative and qualitative job insecurity. Moreover, results suggest a potentially important role for the multiplicative effects of trust in one’s employer and perceived employability regarding the perception of qualitative job insecurity. Implications for both research and practice are discussed.
