Organizational Dynamics最新文献

Revolutionary innovations bring about drastically new ways of doing business that potentially challenge the dominance and even the survival of many powerful incumbent firms. The choice of the incumbent firms’ strategies in coping with a revolutionary innovation depends on the specific patterns of relationship between the revolutionary innovation and the incumbent firms’ core business, be it substitutive, complementary, or parallel. In the situation of a substitutive relationship, the incumbent firms could exit from the incumbent business through swift divesting or gradual harvesting before it is eventually displaced or eroded. In a complementary relationship, the incumbents could absorb the innovation into the incumbent business by embracing the innovation that enables them to add entirely new functions to their incumbent business or assimilating the innovation to enhance the value of the incumbent business. In a parallel relationship, the revolutionary innovation either results in the retrenchment of the incumbent business or leaves it undisturbed, which, respectively, calls for specializing in certain niches of the incumbent business or further solidifying the incumbent business. In addition to the above coping strategies focusing primarily on the incumbent business, the incumbent firms also need to deal simultaneously with the new businesses inspired and propelled by the revolutionary innovation. They could fend off the potential disruptions of the innovation by engaging in a competitive fight in the market domain or a nonmarket fight in the sociopolitical domain. They could also enter those new businesses through greenfield entry or merger and acquisition.

For years we have known that effective organizational culture is critical to ensuring revenue growth, employee retention, and even stock price acceleration. Yet, culture change is hard. Today, in the hybrid world, most employees still spend the majority of their time working within small work teams, but team members are often remote from one another. These employee interactions are essential to sharing and modeling the norms and behaviors necessary to cultivate the desired culture. Combining behavioral data with the use of organizational network analysis helps to overcome these limitations and provides a deeper understanding of the employee cultural experience—even in the hybrid context. In our research, we evaluated 10 attributes critical to an organization’s culture from more than 50,000 employees across three years. Using passive data, we also re-constructed the employee network based on primary interactions. Our research highlighted three critical cultural patterns that will help to more deeply evaluate culture in a hybrid context, but even more importantly,help target local solutions that can be quickly implemented. We call these the three“C’s” of cultivating culture. We show that organizational culture clusters in the employee network, is contagious among employees, and is contextually dependent.We discuss our key insights on the three C’s, concluding with practical applications for leaders applying these insights in their organization.

Organizations are currently struggling to attract and retain human capital. The Pandemic and economy have a fueled reduction in numbers of participants in the workforce. The effect has been many employers struggling with fewer employees then they would like and need to successfully execute their business strategy. Most observers believe that a combination of low pay, a lack of workplace flexibility, poor opportunities, and benefits, have led to this large-scale labor unrest. Understanding how organizations can earn employee loyalty is more critical than ever. This article presents practical ideas for how organizations can earn employee loyalty from reviewing responses from 54 working graduate students and a review of loyalty research to provide actions organizations can take within jobs, co-workers, supervisors, and organizational policy to earn employee loyalty. As well this article provides checklists that organizational leaders can use as starting points for thinking about what they might do to signal their loyalty to employees. These checklists can also be used to engage employees in conversations about what is most important to them and discover what employees expect from their organizations as a fair trade for their loyalty.

The whole notion of digital disruption, however insightful and informative, has simply been blown out of proportion. Too much emphasis has been placed on the potential threat and the disruptive side, causing many traditional business firms to unnecessarily worry and panic, engaging in either excessive reactions or inappropriate responses. In fact, to many traditional business firms, digital transformation might not be disruptive at all. The unique characteristics of many traditional firms enable them to better withstand the onslaught brought by digital transformation, which, on the other hand, may well be substantively and significantly enhancing their value propositions. Traditional firms should ask themselves two fundamental questions in dealing with digital transformation. First, what makes our business robust and resilient enough to withstand digital disruption? Second, what could we do to enhance our value proposition facing digital transformation? This article aims to help firms address these two questions. First, through a series of four tests (Product, Presence, Participation, and Privilege), it dissects the profile of the firms that will most likely withstand the disruption of digital transformation. Second, it outlines the courses of action (Conserve, Co-opt, Contrast, and Celebrate) through which the firms’ value could be enhanced.

What do Ray Ban sunglasses and Facebook have in common? Nike and Apple? Understanding complementarity as one of the key sources of new strategic opportunities is crucial for the performance of firms. While plenty of work has concentrated on the outcomes of strategic complementarity, the literature on its antecedents is still very scarce. So what, then, influences managers’ capability to recognize new strategic complementarities before they become common sense? We use recent insights from cognitive psychology to explore factors that influence the recognition of new strategic opportunities. Our theorizing builds on two different processes of categorization, taxonomic and thematic similarity (which are neurologically as well as behaviorally distinct). We outline how these types of similarity are related to the perception of complementarity, the conditions under which each type occurs, as well as their implications for opportunity recognition.

In today’s rapidly changing society, leaders have to constantly deal with multiple urgent demands interacting with others through various communication modalities - that can happen face to face, via video conferencing, phone calls, etc. - and guide diverse groups of individuals. Having empathic conversations is key for inclusive leadership. Leaders need to understand their emotions and others’ emotional state to build bonds for effective collaboration at work. Yet the reality is that it is challenging for leaders to be aware of their own empathic or non-empathic approach, especially given that hybrid communication is required in their daily lives. This paper introduces communication approaches for empathic conversations considering various modalities including face-to-face, video, or voice-only communication. We provide step-by-step instructions and guided questions to showcase how to develop empathic communication skills. With these strategies, leaders can practice their empathy ‘muscle’ considering various communication modalities with a focus on non-verbal and verbal cues.

Professional networks help employees accomplish work tasks, progress in their careers, and thrive personally. Decades of research suggest that achieving these outcomes requires more than simply amassing 'more' network contacts. Instead, networks with certain characteristics (e.g., networks that are open, diverse, and deep) enhance effectiveness. Network training teaches trainees about effective networks and helps trainees identify their network development needs by providing feedback on their current network. Once back on the job, trainees are assumed to take appropriate actions to develop their networks. However, our research and experience training MBA students, executives, and employees at all levels suggest that trainees often struggle to develop their networks after training. We studied 119 trainees engaged in network training and development to understand why. Our investigation revealed that many trainees fail to set network development goals that match their personalized feedback, identify strategies that match their goals, and take actions to develop networks that match their strategies. These mismatches create gaps in the bridge that trainees build to take themselves from network training to development. Further, even after building strong bridges by aligning their feedback, goals, strategies, and actions, many trainees encounter on-the-job barriers that prevent them from improving the effectiveness of their network. We offer a guide to help address translational gaps and mitigate on-the-job barriers, thereby enhancing the translation of network training insights into network development.