Organization Studies

Deinstitutionalization refers here to the erosion or discontinuity of an institution alized organizational activity or practice. This paper identifies a set of organiza tional and environmental factors that are hypothesized to determine the likelihood that institutionalized organizational behaviours will be vulnerable to erosion or rejection over time. Contrary to the emphasis in institutional theory on the cultural persistence and endurance of institutionalized organizational behaviours, it is suggested that, under a variety of conditions, these behaviours will be highly susceptible to dissipation, rejection or replacement.

While the subject of interruptions has received considerable attention among organizational researchers, the pervasive presence of information and communication technologies has not been adequately conceptualized. Here we consider the way knowledge workers interact with these technologies. We present fine-grained data that reveal the crucial role of mediated communication in the fragmentation of the working day. These mediated interactions, which are both frequent and short, have been commonly viewed as interruptions — as if the issue is the frequency of these single, isolated events. In contrast, we argue that knowledge workers inhabit an environment where communication technologies are ubiquitous, presenting simultaneous, multiple and ever-present calls on their attention. Such a framing employs a sociomaterial approach which reveals how contemporary knowledge work is itself a complex entanglement of social practices and the materiality of technical artefacts. Our findings show that employees engage in new work strategies as they negotiate the constant connectivity of communication media.

Searching for knowledge to solve non-routine problems allows middle managers not only to design new solutions but also to develop organizational capabilities. We focus on knowledge search to develop our understanding of how individuals engage with organizational knowledge in practice, how they acquire and use knowledge, and the implications for organizational knowledge development. Investigating middle managers’ knowledge search practices in response to non-routine events, we uncover four practices: isolating; overcoming knowledge distribution challenges; socializing; and mastering solution development. From these, we identify two aspects of knowledge search: not only can it produce new solutions but it can also have different effects in terms of developing organizational capabilities, either modifying existing routines or creating new ones. We argue that organizations with a knowledge use advantage, namely, an ability to mobilize accessible knowledge by organizing for knowledge circulation and a socialized search that deals with the organization’s challenges of knowledge distribution in order to master solution development – especially at mid-level – can pursue capability development. We discuss the implications of our findings for the literature on organizational knowledge and middle managers’ roles in organizational knowledge processes.

This paper presents a model of project capability-building consisting of two interacting levels of learning. First, it describes the bottom-up, ‘project-led’ phases of learning that occur when a firm moves into a new technology/market base: an exploratory ‘vanguard project’ phase; a ‘project-to-project’ phase to capture lessons learned; and a ‘project-to-organization’ phase when an organization increases its capabilities to deliver many projects. Second, it addresses the ‘business-led’ learning (within which the project-led learning is embedded) that occurs when ‘top-down’ strategic decisions are taken to create and exploit the company-wide resources and capabilities required to perform increasingly predictable and routine project activities.

This paper builds upon current research into the organizational implications of ‘modularity’. Advocates of modularity argue that the ‘invisible hand’ of markets is reaching activities previously controlled through the visible hand of hierarchies. This paper argues that there are cognitive limits to the extent of division of labour: what kinds of problems firms solve, and how they solve them, set limits to the extent of division of labour, irrespective of the extent of the market. This paper analyses the cognitive limits to the division of labour, relying on an in-depth case study of engineering design activities. On this basis, it explains why coordinating increasingly specialized bodies of knowledge, and increasingly distributed learning processes, requires the presence of knowledge-integrating firms even in the presence of modular products. Such firms, relying on their wide in-house scientific and technological capabilities, have the ‘authority’ to identify, propose and implement solutions to complex problems. In so doing, they coordinate networks of suppliers of both components and specialized competencies.

A barter economy is operated by the Danish biotech community. This barter economy is significant as an 'interactional infra-structure' for the emergence and discovery of collaborative R&D venues. Norms of liberally sharing information on the frontier of research greatly enhance the efficiency of the network forma tion process. Our study documents the whole process of informally forming collaborative relations amongst companies and universities in biotech R&D. A model is developed which serves as an interpretive scheme for case studies.

The patterns of collaboration depicted in this paper appear to be anarchistic and random, but we argue that these traits are somewhat 'domesticated' by com munity norms. Furthermore, in spite of its strategic importance, networking appears to be totally out of managerial purview and control. However, we suggest that these collaborative relations may in certain, often paradoxical, ways be channelled and conditioned by managerial fiat.

Given the recent accumulation of research on inter-organizational relations and networks and the current fragmentation of the field, it is time to take stock and explore the achievements of, and future challenges for, this field of study. On the basis of a network analysis of the 158 articles on inter-organizational relations and networks that were published in four leading journals from 1980 to 1996, this paper empirically explores the linkages among, and configurations of, core theories and concepts underlying earlier empirical research on inter-organizational relations and networks. We identify core, as well as peripheral, areas of research interest in the field and point out areas of overlap and consolidation. Moreover, our empirical analysis shows that the field segments into four substantive research perspectives, namely social network, power and control, institutional, and institutional economics and strategy clusters. In sum, we suggest an innovative, empirically grounded approach towards a literature review that aims at a synopsis of a field of study and highlights possibly fruitful avenues for future research.

There is current interest in the competitive advantage that knowledge may provide for organizations and in the significance of knowledge workers, organ izational competencies and knowledge-intensive firms. Yet the concept of knowledge is complex and its relevance to organization theory has been insuf ficiently developed. The paper offers a review and critique of current approaches, and outlines an alternative. First, common images of knowledge in the organizational literature as embodied, embedded, embrained, encultured and encoded are identified and, to summarize popular writings on knowledge work, a typology of organizations and knowledge types is constructed. How ever, traditional assumptions about knowledge, upon which most current speculation about organizational knowledge is based, offer a compartmental ized and static approach to the subject. Drawing from recent studies of the impact of new technologies and from debates in philosophy, linguistics, social theory and cognitive science, the second part of the paper introduces an altern ative. Knowledge (or, more appropriately, knowing) is analyzed as an active process that is mediated, situated, provisional, pragmatic and contested. Rather than documenting the types of knowledge that capitalism currently demands the approach suggests that attention should be focused on the (culturally located) systems through which people achieve their knowing, on the changes that are occurring within such systems, and on the processes through which new knowledge may be generated.

In recent years, the topic of trust has become the focus of renewed attention in organizational theory and research and, in particular, where electronic distribution and associated `virtual' forms of organizing are prevalent. The question of trust, always an issue in financial transactions, is exacerbated the more the physical element is removed. The paper focuses on the issue of trust as it currently appears in the newest of these distribution channels, online and Internet financial services, and smart cards. In both theory and practice, notions of trust are often opposed to concepts such as power or control, and are deployed as part of a dualistic either/or proposition. Drawing on ongoing research in the financial services sector, the paper attempts a more nuanced exploration by focusing on attempts to `manage' trust, the problems such attempts encounter, the various techniques employed in their resolution and the power relations in which they are embedded