Content uploaded by Michael Hannan
Author content
All content in this area was uploaded by Michael Hannan on Jan 09, 2014
Content may be subject to copyright.
Structural Inertia And Organizational Change
Abstract
Considers structural inertia in organizational populations as an outcome of an ecological-evolutionary process. Structural inertia is considered to be a consequence of selection as opposed to a precondition. The focus of this analysis is on the timing of organizational change. Structural inertia is defined to be a correspondence between a class of organizations and their environments. Reliably producing collective action and accounting rationally for their activities are identified as important organizational competencies. This reliability and accountability are achieved when the organization has the capacity to reproduce structure with high fidelity. Organizations are composed of various hierarchical layers that vary in their ability to respond and change. Organizational goals, forms of authority, core technology, and marketing strategy are the four organizational properties used to classify organizations in the proposed theory. Older organizations are found to have more inertia than younger ones. The effect of size on inertia is more difficult to determine. The variance in inertia with respect to the complexity of organizational arrangements is also explored. (SRD)
... Indeed, organizational practices are constructed through routines and habits that inform behavior, work routines and practices. Over a period of time, inertia can become attached to work routines, leading to them becoming rigid, bound by past experience, internally resistant to change, and as a result, inertia reinforces the status quo [74][75][76]. ...
... Organizational inertia theory does not position that organizational change never occurs, but rather that the changes that are made reinforce inertia [76]. Indeed, organizations can have high levels of inertia either in the routines employed, in the defined rules used to transition between routines, or within their organizational memory [74]. Organizational inertia has characteristics of sluggishness [77], stickiness [76,78]; or viscosity where information and innovations fail to flow [79]. ...
... More widely across the literature, structural inertia, a form of lock-in, has been described as either internal within organizations or external within the wider environment [74]. Structural inertia has two main aspects, namely that the factors that may have the benefit of driving resilience and survival advantage can also make the organizations resistant to change. ...
The current geopolitical and socioeconomic landscape creates a difficult and uncertain operating environment for farming and agri-food businesses. Technological innovation has not been suggested to be a “silver bullet” but is one of the ways organizations can seek to reduce environmental impact, deliver net zero, address the rural skills and labor deficit and produce more output from fewer resources and as a result, make space for nature. But what barriers limit this promissory narrative from delivering in practice? The purpose of the paper is to firstly explore the reported social, technical and systemic barriers to agri-technology adoption in an increasingly uncertain world and then secondly identify potential research gaps that highlight areas for future research and inform key research questions. Socio-technical and infrastructural barriers have been identified within the context of the complex hollowing out and infilling of rural communities across the world. These barriers include seventeen factors that emerge, firstly those external to the farm (economic conditions, external conditions including bureaucracy, market conditions, weather uncertainty and the narratives about farmers), those internal to the farm business (farming conditions, employee relations, general finance, technology and time pressures) and then personal factors (living conditions, personal finances, physical health, role conflict, social isolation and social pressure). Adaptive resilience strategies at personal, organizational and community levels are essential to address these barriers and to navigate agri-technology adoption in an uncertain and dynamic world.
... Routine dynamics, a branch of routine scholarship, considers routines as actions with 'internal dynamics that contribute to both stability and change in organizations' (Feldman et al., 2016: 505). This branch has grown since the turn of the millennium (Feldman & Pentland, 2022) and distances itself from earlier understandings of routines as stable entities leading to organizational inertia (Hannan & Freeman, 1983). The routine dynamics perspective is thus grounded in a distinctly processual understanding studying the situated dynamics of routines (Dionysiou & Tsoukas, 2013;Parmigiani & Howard-Grenville, 2011) by exploring how recognizable patterns of actions change, emerge, replicate, and reproduce . ...
Programs are frequently highlighted for their ability to enable the implementation of strategic transformation amidst rapidly changing and unpredictable business environments. This study explores the creation of routines within a strategic program in the Danish construction industry and the subsequent transfer of these routines to the parent organizations. It identifies three sequential patterns of action: entrenching, dis-embedding, and re-embedding routines. Through an interpretive case study, the study reveals how these routines emerge and adapt in alignment with diverse organizational capabilities and relations. The findings highlight the importance of routine transfer and integration in parent organizations, emphasizing their adaptability to distinct needs and their significance for achieving strategic objectives. The discussion presents a process model and elaborates on the three sequential patterns of action. The paper contributes to the program literature by exploring the dynamics of how routines emerge through their own enactment and in relation to other actions at the program level.
Now in its second edition, this extended and thoroughly updated handbook introduces researchers and students to the growing range of theoretical and methodological perspectives being developed in the vibrant field of strategy as practice. With new authors and additional chapters, it shows how the strategy-as-practice approach in strategic management moves away from disembodied and asocial studies of firm assets, technologies and practices to explore and explain the contribution that strategizing makes to people working at all levels of an organization. It breaks down many of the traditional paradigmatic barriers in strategy to investigate who the strategists are, what they do, how they do it, and what the consequences or outcomes of their actions are. This essential work summarizes recent developments in the field while presenting a clear agenda for future research.
Now in its second edition, this extended and thoroughly updated handbook introduces researchers and students to the growing range of theoretical and methodological perspectives being developed in the vibrant field of strategy as practice. With new authors and additional chapters, it shows how the strategy-as-practice approach in strategic management moves away from disembodied and asocial studies of firm assets, technologies and practices to explore and explain the contribution that strategizing makes to people working at all levels of an organization. It breaks down many of the traditional paradigmatic barriers in strategy to investigate who the strategists are, what they do, how they do it, and what the consequences or outcomes of their actions are. This essential work summarizes recent developments in the field while presenting a clear agenda for future research.
This study has the objective to analyze the implications of the organizational ecology on organizational ecological innovation, from the assumption that the theoretical and conceptual framework of organizational ecology is positively associates with ecological innovation in organizations. The method employed is analytical and reflective based on the theoretical and conceptual literature review. It is concluded that major organizational ecological innovations leading to technical changes are pioneered by entrepreneurial organizations shedding lights on the positive relationships between the concepts and theories of organizational ecology and the competing mechanisms posited in the results of the organizational innovative ecology.
Platformisation has greatly affected the operations of the media industry, forcing media corporations to undergo major changes. Under such circumstances, public service media (PSM) corporations have found themselves engaged in a process of rethinking their economics, structures and ways of working. However, the latter is rarely established without resistance. Through 60 in-depth interviews with Spanish PSM managers, this study analyses how resistance to change operates in the ongoing platformisation process. The results confirm the existence of a problem of obsolescence in Spanish PSM, which is motivated by four elements: legislation, financial means, technological capacity, and workforce. Furthermore, three possible strategies to address this challenge are identified: communication, training, and renewal of professional profiles.
ResearchGate has not been able to resolve any references for this publication.