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This study of the emergence of the film industry in the U.S. between 1893 and 1920 contributes to the growing literature linking legal environments and population dynamics. This was an era characterized by a shift to active anti-trust policy, which manifested itself in legal action to disband a trust that had dominated the industry, the Motion Pictures Patents Corporation (MPPC). We use archival data to show that mortality was reduced by trust membership and increased with the market share of the trust members. The effects of litigation are varied, with litigation filed by trust members enhancing mortality and litigation filed against trust members decreasing mortality. Analysis of coded headlines from media reports on the emerging industry shows that a shift in the view of the trust in the normative environment toward a more negative view was also associated with decreased mortality. Results also show that learning and the compensatory fitness enjoyed before anti-trust law was enforced prevented the MPPC members from recognizing changes in the marketplace; as a result, they were less likely to move from making short films to making increasingly popular feature-length films. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We examine the decision process of a public policy task force that plays a role in establishing financial reporting standards to determine what affects the kinds of decisions made. The task force is charged with resolving emerging problems in the design of rules that govern the reporting of information provided to the public by firms that sell securities in U.S. markets. Drawing on traditions of garbage can and institutional theory, we model this decision process as an organized anarchy embedded in an institutional context. The garbage can process gives shape to and is simultaneously shaped by the larger institutional context of accounting. As a result, some aspects of the decision process are associated with disorder and make the resolution of financial reporting problems less likely; others are associated with order and make the resolution of financial reporting problems more likely. We propose specific hypotheses to test these conjectures and examine actual decisions by the task force as our empirical context. The results generally support our model of the process by which financial reporting problems are resolved. The research stands as a case study of how garbage can and institutional forces intersect to bring about change in the institutional environment of accounting. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study examines the impact of localized competition on rates of failure in the Manhattan hotel industry from 1898 to 1990. The study investigates whether the organizations in a population with more similar resource requirements compete more intensely. This approach builds on existing density-based models of interorganizational competition by including variation at the organizational level directly in both the model and measures of competition. A dynamic analysis shows that hotels located in densely populated regions of the distributions of organizational size, geographic location, and price experienced significantly higher failure rates. The findings show how an ecological approach to competition that incorporates intrapopulation variation can provide a more detailed understanding of the competitive dynamics and evolution of organizational populations. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This paper compares applied economic models and an institutional model in an empirical study of financial reporting practice at the Fortune 200 between 1962 and 1984. The findings indicate that the institutional model adds significant explanatory power over and above the models that currently dominate the applied economics literature. Thus, the primacy of organizational level rationality implicit in existing models is shown to be overly narrow and inadequate, in discussing the conclusions of the study and their implication for future research, particular emphasis is placed on the question of how institutional environments change over time. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

We examine corporate renewal by taking a structural approach and focusing on the routines and rules that are part of large, established, bureaucratic organizations. We characterize approaches to the management of innovation in terms of three different themes--institutional, revolutional, and evolutional strategies. The first two approaches involve intentional efforts to encourage innovation, either within the current organizational paradigm (institutionalizing innovation) or moving away from it (revolutionary innovation), while the evolutional approach involves less conscious efforts to manage what is viewed as a random, probabilistic process. This paper uses simulation methodology to explore the effectiveness of these strategies on organizational innovation, performance, and resources. The behavior of the simulated organizational units is guided by assumptions of a learning model. Results indicate that innovation strategies sometimes have unintended effects that are both positive and negative in nature. Several lessons on managing innovation are offered. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Established firms face the challenge of managing entrepreneurial strategies in order to respond effectively to major environmental changes. This paper uses a simulation methodology to explore the effectiveness of several entrepreneurial strategies in established organizations when they are faced with a fundamental restructuring of their environment. The simulated organizations are characterized by high and low levels of entrepreneurial activity and three types of entrepreneurial strategies: fixed, imitative, and adaptive. The behavior of these organizations is guided by the assumptions of an organizational learning model. The results of the simulation indicate that, given the assumptions of a learning model, there are several lessons that established organizations should consider in managing entrepreneurial strategy. First, there are important organizational implications under different levels of ambiguity. Second, lessons learned from past experience can often result in learning traps when the environment changes. Finally, conceptualizing organizations as characterized by different entrepreneurial strategies and different levels of entrepreneurship provides a theoretically useful description of differential outcomes in terms of performance, growth, and the probability of failure. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

During industry emergence, what we call the proto-industry phase, the lack of agreement about legitimate organizational forms between audiences and firms is a key problem. We develop an ecological model of emerging institutional pressures among audiences and firms during the emergence of new industries to understand these challenges. We develop a theoretical framework that includes mimetic, normative, and coercive pressures, deriving propositions linking them with survival and growth. We use simulation methodology to test these propositions, finding strong support for these predictions. We close by exploring some conclusions and implications of our model for both theory and practice. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A burgeoning private equity (PE) industry provides investment capital to build the capacity of an economy for innovation and entrepreneurial growth. We argue that for PE to contribute to this, capacity building requires effective systems for allocation of financial capital to the private sector and an ecosystem of supportive organizations. To illustrate these claims, we review the recent history of PE in the Middle East-North Africa region to contrast the PE industry in Middle East-North Africa, which stagnated after the financial crisis, with the industry in Turkey, which recovered quickly from a brief pause after the crisis and has thrived since 2008. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Despite the importance of the processes by which legitimacy barriers to the emergence of new industries are overcome, direct study of them has been largely absent from the literature. We develop and test a model of how capacities for social action are created and deployed to overcome cultural barriers to new industries. Specifically, we argue that the experience that firms gain in field-relevant activity as well as the development and concentration of ties among those firms generate capacities to overcome the barriers of cognitive and sociopolitical legitimacy. We support this argument empirically by linking measures of these factors with attention to and favorability assessments of the new industry. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This article describes the replication and the normal science paradigm in strategic management research. One factor affecting the quantity of replication is perceived prestige. Contributing to dim views of replication is the failure to recognize replication as a valuable part of theory development. Several policies were also recommended that may be adopted by strategic management journals, including "Strategic Organization."

Using field data from an American financial services organization, we examined the effects of three important variables in Cyert and March's (1963) initial conceptualization of the aspiration-level adaptation process: The previous aspiration level, performance feedback, and social comparison. Past findings obtained in controlled contexts (Glynn et al. 1991; Lant 1992) have provided empirical support for the attainment discrepancy model (Lewin et al. 1944), which includes variables of the previous aspiration level and attainment discrepancy (i.e., performance feedback). We replicated these findings in the field: The effects of the previous aspiration level and attainment discrepancy on the current aspiration levels were significant and positive. In addition, we investigated the effect of social comparison using a variable based on the difference between the performance of the focal unit and the performance of comparable others (Greve 1998). Based on the assumption that decision makers in organizations will expect to observe similar performance levels among those in the same comparison group (Wood 1989), we posited that the effect of social comparison would be negative, reflecting managerial efforts to reduce performance discrepancies among similar units. The empirical results supported the prediction from this reasoning. We conclude by discussing implications of our findings for theory and research in organizational learning and the behavioral theory of the firm. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Past research has established that large bureaucratic firms are less innovative than other firms. This reduced innovativeness is likely to be exacerbated when large firms engage in market control. In cultural industries, the effects can be especially pernicious, resulting in the failure to provide audiences with artistic quality or product diversity. We investigate the population dynamics of one cultural industry: the early American feature film industry. Specifically, we examine the hypothesis that concentration among large generalist firms will be associated with higher rates of foundings of specialist producers and specialist distributors. We also investigate the question of whether these specialists are more innovative. Specifically, we examine the hypothesis that specialists were more active than were generalists in the creation of new film genres in the early years of the American film industry. We find that increased concentration among generalists had a positive effect on foundings of specialist producers and specialist distributors, and that the specialists were more active in the creation of new film genres. Implications of these findings for future research, both on cultural industries and on the population dynamics of the founding of specialist firms, are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Narrates experience on project undertaken to explore the process of doing cross-cultural research. How the project began; Lessons learned from the project.

The article offers an interpretation of the historical contrast between incremental and radical models of learning than that are offered by Chris Argyris in his essay on learning research in the January-February 1996 issue of "Organizational Science". It supports Argyris' reminders about the dangers of defensiveness, but it argues that defensiveness is difficult to assess. And, in the case of learning research, the authors suggest that the early advocacy of both incremental and radical models of learning may have helped advance understanding.

This analysis starts with models of the diffusion of due process protections in organizations that emphasize the role of the state, especially those from the institutional perspective. The case of equal pay for work of comparable value is used to develop propositions concerning important additions to current models of the expansion of due process protections in the workplace. First, we suggest that models of the nation-state should include an explicit recognition that the progressiveness of public policy varies over time. Second, we suggest that models of the nation-state should include explicit recognition of the fact that state authority is fragmented by the separation of powers and the partition of federal and local authority. Implications for future theory and empirical study that follow from these additions to current models are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

A critical challenge facing organizations is the dilemma of maintaining the capabilities of both efficiency and flexibility. Recent evolutionary perspectives have suggested that patterns of organizational stability and change can be characterized as punctuated equilibria (Tushman and Romanelli 1985). This paper argues that a learning model of organizational change can account for a pattern of punctuated equilibria and uses a learning framework to model the tension between organizational stability and change. A simulation methodology is used to create a population of organizations whose activities are governed by a process of experiential learning. A set of propositions is examined that predict how patterns of organizational change are affected by environmental conditions, levels of ambiguity, organizational size, search rules, and organizational performance. Implications of this learning model of convergence and reorientation for theory and research are discussed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]