| 1. |
- Reitsma, Ewout
(författare)
-
Sourcing strategising in the new product development process : Insights from the strategy-as-practice lens and engineer-to-order context
- 2022
-
Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- In many cases, manufacturers have changed from sourcing only a few, simple, and separate components from local suppliers to sourcing a high variety of modules from globally dispersed suppliers. This has resulted in the implementation of a wide variety of sourcing strategies, including, for example, multiple sourcing and supplier integration. All these and other sourcing strategies are aimed at achieving a certain level of supply chain (SC) responsiveness. The level of SC responsiveness ideally matches the characteristics of a product. For example, highly innovative products typically require highly responsive SCs.In order to match products with their SCs, manufacturers are advised to engage in sourcing strategy in their new product development (NPD) process. However, there are at least two knowledge gaps in the literature on this topic: (1) the lack of a widely accepted, comprehensive conceptualisation of how manufacturers can engage in sourcing strategy in NPD, and (2) the lack of empirical insights into manufacturers operating in the engineer-to-order (ETO) context. This dissertation focuses on filling these knowledge gaps.Addressing the first gap, the dissertation uses the theoretical lens of ‘strategy-as-practice’ (SAP) and the literature to conceptualise the ‘doing of sourcing strategy’ in NPD as three interrelated dimensions: (1) practitioners, (2) activities, and (3) practices. Through discussing these dimensions and their potential interplay throughout NPD, the dissertation demonstrates the potential of the SAP lens in providing a common framework and reducing the fragmented nature of the literature. By using the SAP lens, the dissertation also contributes to practice. Despite not being ‘actionable’ in the sense of constituting detailed guidelines for acting, the SAP lens produces insights that can help practitioners to become more reflective. For example, they can learn to see sourcing strategising as a multidimensional, dynamic concept and the place it can occupy in the NPD process.The second knowledge gap in the literature regards the lack of empirical research focusing on the ETO context. Therefore, the dissertation includes a case study focusing on practitioners’ sourcing strategising activities and practices in this context. First, five approaches to performing sourcing strategising activities in NPD are explored in terms of their conditions and intended outcomes. Secondly, four practices that can support sourcing strategising in NPD are identified. These practices – referred to as ‘Design for Supply Chain’ (DFSC) practices – are also examined in terms of their interrelations. Practitioners can use the case study findings to compare the advantages of the five sourcing strategising approaches when sourcing items or services. Furthermore, the findings allow practitioners to assess how the four interrelated DFSC practices can support their sourcing strategising efforts in NPD.
|
|
| 2. |
- Cestino, Joaquín
(författare)
-
Written news at the crossroads : Entrepreneurial processes of reproduction and novelty in an institutional field in crisis
- 2019
-
Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- This dissertation explores entrepreneurial processes in an institutional field incrisis. It is based on the inductive reinterpretation of four original papers that, combined, study activities of individuals searching for solutions to organizational problems in incumbent and startup newspapers. Building on an integrative framework of compatible concepts in entrepreneurship and institutional theory, and foregrounding the role of Bourdieu’s notion of capital, this thesis provides answers to how actors’ capitals mediate mechanisms of reproduction and novelty. Based on the analysis of multiple cases situated in a macro-level shift characterized by the transformation of the material environment, this work finds how—despite the aleatory and materialistic origins of written news norms and concepts, and their failing economic traction—entrepreneurial processes in all types of newspapers reproduce structural templates. In relatively affluent incumbents, reproduction happens because, in their search for solutions to losses of capital, actors interpret imported ideas within the meaning structure provided by existing norms and concepts, and day-to-day activities—“decoupled from innovation”—do not change significantly. Also, at the moment that these new activities generate short-term (albeit small) relative capital gains, as problems seem to wane, individuals unravel their search for solutions, reinforcing reproduction. In particularly deprived newcomers, the importation of innovative ideas can even be averted upfront by the organization of unrelated-to-the-venture supportive activities that generate unrelated-to-the-venture economic capital—a condition that shields these ventures from market demands and avoids exit scenarios. The “sheltered conformity” of daily activities in these organizations also results in reproduction. Yet, not all the entrepreneurial processes this thesis identifies contribute to the reproduction of existing institutional arrangements. Instances of significant difference in organizational structures can be forged in a distinct experience of constraints resulting from severe capital scarcity. A combination of absence of economic capital and moderate-to-low levels of cultural and social capital, as they are defined by the field, inhibits common solutions to problems. When actors find that freely available inputs accumulated in their personal biographies work, these inputs become “situated new forms of capital”. As they work, significantly different activities, partly decoupled from templates in the field, are incorporated in the structure of these organizations. Because it is existing ideals in the field that fuel resource-deprived entrepreneurs to sustain efforts, institutional arrangements do play a role in their own change.By offering empirical support to the central role of the personal experience of capital constraints and situated redefinitions of capital in processes of institutional reproduction and divergence, this thesis complements interpretations of institutional contradictions: Rather than starting from the coexistence of different templates that actors can alternatively employ at intersections of structures, this study explores early endogenous processes by which new norms and concepts enter existing fields, reinterpreting resources in them. These findings provide additional insights into questions related to the origin of ideas, emergent processes of decoupling and to definitions of an institutionalized field in crisis and organizational novelty. This research also contributes to entrepreneurship within sights into how alertness and discovery transpire. When focusing on institutional templates and problem-solving activities of ordinary actors, entrepreneurial action—even in an institutional field in crisis—can contribute to the reproduction of the status quo. And when significant differences happen, because they can result from a distinct experience of resource constraints, they may appear in humble beginnings that contrast those chronicled in later stages of change by institutional entrepreneurship theory. Additionally, this thesis adds to entrepreneurial resourcefulness by unbundling the process by which bricolage produces outcomes that depart from its institutional environment. In my findings, bricoleurs do not blatantly violate norms and concepts, and yet they can bring divergent organizational novelty to their working solutions. In fact, the efforts of entrepreneurial bricoleurs are largely sustained by the predetermined meaning of inputs and institutionally conforming ideals in ways that, I suggest, bring the concept of bricolage closer to its original definition by Lévi-Strauss.
|
|
| 3. |
- Van Helvert-Beugels, Judith
(författare)
-
The emerging role of advisory boards in strategizing in family firms : A sensemaking perspective
- 2018
-
Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- This thesis addresses the emerging role of advisory boards in strategizing in privately held family firms. The thesis focuses on the period in which family firms start considering to work with an advisory board through the board’s first several years of existence. A micro-level strategy perspective is combined with insights from sensemaking theory to understand how the practitioners involved make sense of this new arena involved in strategizing. Empirically, the study is based on four real-time case studies that primarily use observations along with interviews and secondary documents. The within- and cross case interpretations are integrated into a conceptual model that explains how the roles of advisory boards in strategizing emerge over time.The most important finding of this study is that advisory boards emerge into unique configurations through the sensemaking activities of the practitioners involved. Moreover, this study shows that practitioners make sense of both the content that should be addressed and the role and tasks of the advisory board. This sensemaking is achieved in different ways and in different forms (individual versus mediated versus collective sensemaking), which explains the substantial differences between the advisory boards in different situations. It is suggested that the lack of an institutional frame or institutional norms provides considerable freedom in interpreting the role of the advisory boards, through which such boards largely become a contextualized practice. Two underlying causal mechanisms have been identified that drive the sensemaking processes of the practitioners involved in advisory board meetings: the learning orientation of the practitioners involved and the (a)symmetry between the advisory board members on the one hand and the family firm decision makers on the other hand.This dissertation contributes to our current understanding of advisory boards using a micro-level strategy lens instead of a governance lens to understand the emerging role of the advisory board in strategizing in the family firm context. This approach has helped to characterize the advising and sensemaking processes at play and how advisory boards emerge into unique configurations over time. Second, this dissertation contributes to the strategy as practice literature by devoting attention to a new arena involved in strategizing that emerges over time and the elements that play a role in this process. Instead of studying how an existing arena is performed, this study focuses on the emergence of a new strategy arena along with the practices used, the praxis performed and the practitioners involved. Thus I show how such a new arena is contextualized and becomes situated over time, attending to the processual dimensions, the content dimensions, the outcomes of the process and the outcomes generated by strategizing.
|
|
| 4. |
- Wielsma, Albertha
(författare)
-
To be or not to be a family firm : An exploration of identity management in business families
- 2023
-
Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- This dissertation comprises of a cover and four separate articles, which, together, aim to advance understanding of identity processes in family firms, specifically regarding the connection of family and firm identity. This connection can have advantages and disadvantages for both the family and the firm. However, identities, whether on individual, group or organizational level, are not static, so there is no reason to assume that the connection between the identities in family firms is static.With the goal to explore how and why business families manage the identity connection between family and firm, a longitudinal case study was conducted in which 13 family firms in the hospitality sector in the Netherlands participated. The analysis is anchored in the related theoretical concepts of identity and reputation and literature from the field of psychology.The review of the family firm literature in paper 1 shows that reputation can be seen as a key construct from various perspectives and that it is strongly connected to family firm literature about identity, goal setting, and the behavior of family firms. The empirical findings in paper 2, 3, and 4 show that a family firm identity, and the maintenance of the connection between family and firm, can have a profound effect on identity processes on individual, family and firm level. Perceived incongruences within and between these levels are incentives for owners to renegotiate how these levels are connected, although this does not have to be a conscious process. This renegotiation can include a change in identity to restore congruence. Perceptions about both external and internal stakeholders play a very important part in the degree to which and the way in which owners connect the family identity to the firm identity. Six interrelated dimensions of identity connection management were identified.The dissertation contributes to the family firm literature by offering explanations for the management of the identity connection on the level of firm, family and individual family members and to the corporate communications literature by highlighting the influence of the family on communication decisions and vice versa.
|
|
| 5. |
- Ekberg, Sara
(författare)
-
The role of organizational integrity in responses to pressures : A case study of Australian newspapers
- 2017
-
Doktorsavhandling (övrigt vetenskapligt/konstnärligt)abstract
- The purpose of the dissertation is to explore the role of organizational integrity in responses to pressures. Organizational integrity is a concept from old institutional theory; its definition is the fidelity to the organization’s core values, distinctive competence, guiding principles, and mission. Studying this concept empirically will answer calls in institutional theory to focus more on the internal dynamics in terms of the responses to pressures, especially how the people in the organization balance the act to conform or resist pressures while striving for legitimacy. These calls have remained largely unanswered, and the question of how organizations adapt while remaining true to core values and competences remains something of a mystery. Joining the recent resurgence of Selznick’s research, the aim of this dissertation is to contribute to the calls to focus on change and inertia together, and the role of values as the organization responds to pressures. Thus, change can be a threat to the organizational integrity and prompts members of the organization to preserve their familiar environment. However, this behavior creates a dilemma, since the maintenance of organizational integrity can be taken too far, to the point that the organization becomes rigid and unable to survive. Thus, it includes the organization finding a balance of staying true to its proclaimed mission and values without being too rigid and losing track of the changes in its environment. Therefore, by giving emphasis to the role of values, organizational integrity adds a new perspective and extends the understanding of how organizations respond to pressures.To fulfil this aim, this dissertation followed two newspaper organizations, an industry that is marked by a state of flux and disruptive change. The two organizations are The Courier-Mail and The West Australian. By using methods such as interviews, documentation, and observations, I got a first-hand understanding of the perceived pressures the organizational members are facing, the issues that were perceived in the organization, and how the organizational members worked to resolve them. Through these cases, the organizations either conformed and/or resisted pressures, thus allowing this study to explore the role of organizational integrity in this process. The findings suggest that the organization’s values, distinctiveness, and mission were used to evaluate experiments to solve issues rather than solely guiding the strategies to overcome the pressures. Thus, the study highlights the perceived pressures, how organizational members construct issues based on these pressures, and how the organizational members work to resolve them.This dissertation extends the understanding of organizational behavior in terms of balancing change and inertia. Organizational integrity works as a normative rationality, and to uphold legitimacy the role of organizational integrity is either to maintain, defend, or repair the character of the organization. More specifically, this adds to the scholarly discussion of the importance of values in organizational behavior, and this dissertation expands the understanding of responses to pressures by explicating the role of organizational integrity.
|
|
