Unbundling dynamic capabilities: An exploratory study of continuous product innovation

In order to understand better the organizational sources of continuous innovation, this paper provides an in‐depth analysis of Oticon A/S, a leading company in the hearing‐aid industry, which showed an impressive ability to develop new products in the nineties. Findings highlight that dynamic capabilities are made up of: knowledge creation and absorption, knowledge integration and knowledge reconfiguration. Discussion links the findings to previous literature and shows how these knowledge‐based processes are all based on a coherent mix of organizational resources

Visualizing Our Way through Theory Building

Visualization is fundamental to how we experience and understand the world. Although we make ample use of visual tools in our role of educators, we tend to overlook the potential use of visualization techniques in our research. In this essay, I illustrate how visualization can be fundamental to analysing and making sense of qualitative data

Organizational Identity, Culture, and Image

The concept of organizational identity is often confused with similar concepts such as organizational culture or organizational image. This confusion depends in part on the inconsistent use that scholars have made of these terms in the past. This chapter reviews the literature that has discussed how these concepts differ and how they are interrelated, and proposes an integrative framework that summarizes the most widely accepted definitions. It focuses in particular on research on dynamic interrelations between organizational identity and culture. It argues that apparently contradictory perspectives—conceiving of culture as a referent for identity vs. identity as facilitating contextual understanding for cultural norms—can be reconciled by acknowledging the dual nature of organizational identity as being constituted by social categories and organization-specific features, and the temporal dynamism that characterizes the relationship between culture and identity

Mediating Identity: A Study of Media Influence on Organizational Identity Construction in a Celebrity Firm

This paper reports a longitudinal field study on the effects of positive media coverage on the reconstruction of organizational identity. The study highlights how intense positive coverage – to the point of turning an organization into a ‘celebrity’– influences both the way members understand their organization (sensemaking effect) and the gratification they derive from its positive representation (self-enhancement effect). Our findings suggest that positive media representations foster members' alignment around an emergent new understanding of what their organization is. Over time, however, celebrity may ‘captivate’ members' organizational identity beliefs and understandings, and impede further identity work as media persist in the replication of representations that differ from members' experienced reality, but are too appealing to them to be publicly contradicted

Going Public and the Enrichment of a Supportive Network

Past research on initial public offerings suggests that the reputation of a company positively affects the success of the offering. Success is usually measured in financial terms as if the essence of the operation lay only in the short-term inflow of money. In this paper, we investigate important albeit often neglected implications of going public by combining evidence from a series of preliminary case studies taken from the results of a survey of 57 Italian initial public offerings. Evidence from our research suggests that, besides providing an important inflow of capital, going public may actually improve the reputational and social capital of a company, by increasing its visibility, prestige and perceived trustworthiness. Therefore, going public may be an important way to support entrepreneurial activity, as it may expand and reinforce the network of relationships that offer access to external resources, complementary skills and investment opportunities

Strategies of alignment: Organizational identity management and strategic change at Bang & Olufsen

During periods of strategic change, maintaining the congruence between new configurations of resources and activities (strategic investments) and how these new configurations are communicated to external organizational constituents (strategic projections) is an important task facing organizational leaders. One part of this activity is to manage organizational identity to ensure that the various strategic projections produced by organizational members are coherent and support the new strategic investments. Little is known, however, about how organizational leaders accomplish this crucial task. This study of strategic change at Bang & Olufsen highlights the different strategies available to organizational leaders to ensure members’ identity beliefs are aligned with their own beliefs about the distinctive and appealing organizational features that result from the new strategic investments and result in appropriate strategic projections. The study’s findings highlight the internal identity work – or identity management – that organizational leaders engage in to preserve this congruence. The findings also complement the current emphasis in the literature on the social validation of organizational identities by pointing to the importance of a connection between identity claims and beliefs, strategic projections and the material reality of organizational products, practices and structures

Where strategy meets culture: The neglected role of cultural and symbolic resources in strategy research

In this paper, we discuss how “cultural capital” and “symbolic capital,” understood as specialized subsets of intangible resources and capabilities, enable firms to achieve valuable strategic positions in ways that are currently underexplored by mainstream strategy literature. We articulate the similarities and differences between cultural and symbolic capitals and the intangible capitals that have been the focus of mainstream strategy researchers, such as intellectual, social, and reputational capital. Our theoretical arguments build on insights from a number of studies conducted primarily in non-North American settings that have highlighted how symbolic properties of products create value. We conclude by delineating future avenues of research that strategy scholarship should consider in order to develop a more comprehensive understanding of the relationships between intangible resources and capabilities, and value creation

Using tables to enhance trustworthiness in qualitative research

In this essay, we discuss how tables can be used to ensure—and reassure about—trustworthiness in qualitative research. We posit that in qualitative research, tables help not only increase transparency about data collection, analysis, and findings, but also—and no less importantly—organize and analyze data effectively. We present some of the tables most frequently used by qualitative researchers, explain their uses, discuss how they enhance trustworthiness, and provide illustrative examples to inspire readers in their use of tables in their own research