In this paper, we integrate the equilibrium predictions of transaction cost economics and the intertemporal predictions of structural inertia theory to derive content-based predictions of the direction, rate, and amount of organizational adaptation. Specifically, we predict that poorly aligned firms (according to transaction cost principles) realize lower survival rates and lower profits than t...

This commentary provides an overview of the organizational readiness for change (ORC) literature over the last decade, with respect to prevailing definitions, theories, and tools to guide assessment of ORC in preparation for implementation. The development of the OR4KT by Gagnon et al is an important contribution to this body of work. This commentary highlights the strengths of the OR4KT includ...

This paper studies organizational change following a shift in an industry environment, in the context of how a focused factory adapts to a change in its manufacturing objectives. We use the organizational nature of production operations to suggest that the effectiveness of adaptation will depend on how well the manufacturing requirements of the new objectives match manufacturing capabilities at...

The specificities of multinational corporations (MNCs) have to date not been a focus area of IS research. Extant literature mostly proposes IS configurations for specific types of MNCs, following a static and prescriptive approach. Our research seeks to explain the dynamics of global IS design. It suggests a new theoretical lens for studying global IS design by applying the structural adjustmen...

In this dissertation, I focus on the conceptualization and empirical investigation of organizational adaptation. Specifically, I intend to study how dynamic organizations evolve and under which conditions they successfully adapt to a changing environment. In essay 1 (with D. Levinthal), we develop a simulation model to clarify and explore some of the basic conceptual issues concerning the dynam...

In this chapter, flexibility and adaptation of collaborative processes occurring among organizations by applying the Service-Oriented Architecture (SOA) at the inter-organizational level are considered. First, an in-depth rationale for a service-oriented approach to inter-organizational collaboration is presented. The need for SOA at the inter-organizational level is explained by the ubiquity o...

Organizational environments today are characterized by differentiation and dynamics. To handle these environments successfully, organizations have to adapt their products, work processes and work practices permanently. Within these processes of organizational adaptation, the introduction of groupware can play an important role as an enabler for product innovation as well as a catalyzer for orga...

Peter Senge (1990) and others working at the MIT Center for Organizational Learning have provided insight on the foundational components of a “learning” organization. They have defined organizational learning as occurring when members have a shared vision and work together to achieve common goals in order to produce results that are important to them. In today’s technologically complex world, o...

A central theoretical problem in organizational evolution is how organizations acquire new capabilities. Organizational exploitation of current capabilities often reduces exploration of new capabilities, resulting in a short-term bias in organizational adaptation (March, 1991). In addition, problemistic search and slack search have different consequences for exploration and exploitation because...