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Siobhan O'Mahony and Karim R. Lakhani
The concept of a community form is drawn upon in many subfields of organizational theory. Although there is not much convergence on a level of analysis, there is convergence on a…
Abstract
The concept of a community form is drawn upon in many subfields of organizational theory. Although there is not much convergence on a level of analysis, there is convergence on a mode of action that is increasingly relevant to a knowledge-based economy marked by porous and shifting organizational boundaries. We argue that communities play an underappreciated role in organizational theory – critical not only to occupational identity, knowledge transfer, sense-making, social support, innovation, problem-solving, and collective action but also, enabled by information technology, increasingly providing socioeconomic value – in areas once inhabited by organizations alone. Hence, we posit that organizations may be in the shadow of communities. Rather than push for a common definition, we link communities to an organization's evolution: its birth, growth, and death. We show that communities represent both opportunities and threats to organizations and conclude with a research agenda that more fully accounts for the potential of community forms to be a creator (and a possible destroyer) of value for organizations.
Linus Dahlander, Lars Bo Jeppesen and Henning Piezunka
Crowdsourcing – a form of collaboration across organizational boundaries – provides access to knowledge beyond an organization’s local knowledge base. Integrating work on…
Abstract
Crowdsourcing – a form of collaboration across organizational boundaries – provides access to knowledge beyond an organization’s local knowledge base. Integrating work on organization theory and innovation, the authors first develop a framework that characterizes crowdsourcing into a main sequential process, through which organizations (1) define the task they wish to have completed; (2) broadcast to a pool of potential contributors; (3) attract a crowd of contributors; and (4) select among the inputs they receive. For each of these phases, the authors identify the key decisions organizations make, provide a basic explanation for each decision, discuss the trade-offs organizations face when choosing among decision alternatives, and explore how organizations may resolve these trade-offs. Using this decision-centric approach, the authors continue by showing that there are fundamental interdependencies in the process that makes the coordination of crowdsourcing challenging.
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Jialing Liu, Fangwei Zhu and Jiang Wei
This study aims to explore the different effects of inter-community group networks and intra-community group networks on group innovation.
Abstract
Purpose
This study aims to explore the different effects of inter-community group networks and intra-community group networks on group innovation.
Design/methodology/approach
The authors used a pooled panel dataset of 12,111 self-organizing innovation groups in 463 game product creative workshop communities from Steam support to test the hypothesis. The pooled ordinary least squares (OLS) model is used for analyzing the data.
Findings
The results show that network constraint is negatively associated with the innovation performance of online groups. The average path length of the inter-community group network negatively moderates the relationship between network constraint and group innovation, while the average path length of the intra-community group network positively moderates the relationship between network constraint and group innovation. In addition, both the network density of inter-community group networks and intra-community group networks can negatively moderate the negative relationship between network constraint and group innovation.
Originality/value
The findings of this study suggest that network structural characteristics of inter-community networks and intra-community networks have different effects on online groups’ product innovation, and therefore, group members should consider their inter- and intra-community connections when choosing other groups to form a collaborative innovation relationship.
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Scholars typically view cross-legacy boundary spanners – employees who develop and maintain social relationships with coworkers from both legacy organizations – as the key…
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Scholars typically view cross-legacy boundary spanners – employees who develop and maintain social relationships with coworkers from both legacy organizations – as the key integrators in mergers and acquisitions (M&As). Organizations even formally appoint employees with cross-legacy responsibilities to support the post-merger integration process. Recent research has started to emphasize, however, how difficult it can be to reap the benefits of a boundary-spanning position. Building and maintaining formal or informal boundary-spanning ties is costly because it requires time, attention, and political savviness. To better understand the perks and pitfalls of cross-legacy boundary-spanning, the authors identify and describe its structural and sociocultural dimensions and explain how they influence cross-legacy boundary-spanning in M&A contexts. The authors argue that the two dimensions can be seen as boundary conditions to the positive relationship between cross-legacy boundary spanning and post-merger integration. This chapter highlights the potential dark side of cross-legacy boundary-spanning and proposes a multi-dimensional model to explain how cross-legacy boundary spanners can avoid the pitfalls and promote the perks of their position in support of successful post-merger integration.
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Karl-Emanuel Dionne and Paul Carlile
Innovation challenges are increasingly complex, cutting across distributed actors from different disciplines, organizations, and fields. Solving such challenges requires creating…
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Innovation challenges are increasingly complex, cutting across distributed actors from different disciplines, organizations, and fields. Solving such challenges requires creating the capacities of opening up for innovation to access and develop a greater amount and variety of knowledge and resources. Perspectives on open source, open innovation, and interorganizational collaboration have explored such capacities, but from different origins and scopes of analysis. Our practice-based integrative framework of “opening innovation” helps highlight these differences and connect their relative strengths. Through a critical literature review paired with an analysis of different empirical cases from Hacking Health, a non-profit organization helping drive digital health innovation, the authors reveal the user-centric, firm-centric, and field-centric approaches to opening innovation that progressively connect a greater variety of actors and resources. The authors show how specific new relational practices they produce address the new relational dynamics these connections bring to accumulate more resources for innovation to keep progressing.
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Christine Moser, Peter Groenewegen and Julie E. Ferguson
In this essay, we argue that understanding of meaning in relation to organizational networks warrants a more prominent place in organizational theorizing, because it fulfils a…
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In this essay, we argue that understanding of meaning in relation to organizational networks warrants a more prominent place in organizational theorizing, because it fulfils a distinct role in the emergence and evolution of networks. Whereas prior studies have tended to address network structures or narrative structures, we suggest that organizational processes might be better understood when addressing the role of meaning and network structures simultaneously. We explain the implications of our argument in an online context, given the growing significance of digitally enabled networks on organizational sociality, and draw on examples in the context of organizational knowledge sharing to support our argument. We conclude by introducing a communication flow model to support the further development of research on organizational meaning networks.
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Researchers have shown increased interest in open innovation – that is, the inflow and outflow of ideas, or the collaborative efforts of innovating – while previous research on…
Abstract
Researchers have shown increased interest in open innovation – that is, the inflow and outflow of ideas, or the collaborative efforts of innovating – while previous research on acquisitions of innovative firms has foremost focused on the inflow only. Open innovation, however, introduces several new challenges related to acquisitions of such firms, not the least related to intellectual property rights and innovative skills that may be distributed among several parties. This paper explores what issues the literature on open innovation and acquisitions deals with related to acquisitions in open innovation environments.
A systematic literature review is conducted to achieve the purpose of the paper. Two main questions are addressed. First, how can acquisitions be understood in relation to open innovation? Second, what does the open innovation literature say on matters of distributed innovations in relation to acquisitions?
The paper concludes that there is a quite limited amount of research concerning itself with open innovation and acquisitions combined. Furthermore, acquisitions are for the most part seen as a means to reach innovation in transaction-based transfers between parties.
With acquisitions of innovative firms, in general, being seen as an important means to reach new ideas, while open innovation is on the rise, the juxtaposing of these phenomena would be of high practical and theoretical relevance to study further.
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Benjamin Schiemer, Elke Schüßler and Gernot Grabher
This chapter advances our understanding of collaborative innovation processes that span across organizational boundaries by providing an ethnographic account of idea generation…
Abstract
This chapter advances our understanding of collaborative innovation processes that span across organizational boundaries by providing an ethnographic account of idea generation dynamics in a member-initiated online songwriting community. Applying a science and technology studies perspective on processes “in the making,” the findings of this chapter reveal the generative entanglements of three processes of content-in-the-making, skill-in-the-making, and community-in-the-making that were triggered and maintained over time by temporary stabilizations of provisional, interim outcomes. These findings also elucidate interferences between these three processes, particularly when an increased focus on songs as products undermines the ongoing collaborative production of ideas. Regular interventions in the community design were necessary to simultaneously stimulate the three processes and counteract interfering tendencies that either prioritized content production, community building, or skill development, respectively. The authors conclude that firms seeking to tap into online communities’ innovative potential need to appreciate community and skill development as creative processes in their own right that have to be fostered and kept in sync with content production.
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The concept of novelty is central to questions of creativity, innovation, and discovery. Despite the prominence in scientific inquiry and everyday discourse, there is a chronic…
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The concept of novelty is central to questions of creativity, innovation, and discovery. Despite the prominence in scientific inquiry and everyday discourse, there is a chronic ambiguity over its meaning and a surprising variety of empirical measures, which muddle the interpretation of prior findings and frustrate the consolidation of knowledge. To help dispel some of the unclarity, this paper presents a survey and synthesis of conceptualizations and operationalizations of novelty scattered across social, cognitive, and organizational studies. From this analysis, I advance the argument that novelty is generally regarded as a function of frequency or proximity, and in these two complementary perspectives, it is commonly bounded its empirical study and theoretical understanding. I further argue that contextual and temporal aspects are integral to the specification of novelty and primary contributors to its multifaceted nature.