Disequilibrium and complexity across scales: a patch-dynamics framework for organizational ecology

Based on equilibrium assumptions, traditional ecological models have been widely applied in the fields of management and organization studies. While research using these models is still ongoing, studies have nonetheless struggled with ways to address multiple levels of analysis, uncertainty, and complexity in their analyses. This paper conceptualizes the dynamic co-evolution mechanisms that operate in an ecosystem across multiple organizational scales. Specifically, informed by recent advances in modelling in biology, a general 'patch-dynamics' framework that is theoretically and methodologically able to capture disequilibrium, uncertainty, disturbances, and changes in organizational populations or ecosystems, as complex and dynamically evolving resource environments are introduced. Simulation models are built to show the patch-dynamics framework's functioning and test its robustness. The patch-dynamics framework and modelling methodology integrates equilibrium and disequilibrium perspectives, co-evolutions across multiple organization levels, uncertainties, and random disturbances into a single framework, opening new avenues for future research on topics in the field of management and organization studies, as well as on the mechanisms that shape ecosystems. Such a framework has the potential to help analyse the sustainability and healthiness of the business environment, and deserves more attention in future research on management and organization theory, particularly in the context of significant uncertainty and disturbances in business and management practice. Overall, the paper offers a distinct theoretical perspective and methodology for modelling population and ecosystem dynamics across different scales.

Microfoundations of Adaptive Search in Complex Tasks: The Role of Cognitive Abilities and Styles

Problem-solving in complex environments requires a cognitively demanding search for task solutions. Managing this search process presents a major challenge in organizations. We contribute to the literature on this topic by providing new evidence on the cognitive antecedents that shape how individuals search when engaged in complex problem-solving tasks. We present results from three laboratory studies, wherein 335 individuals solved a complex task. In doing so, they generated behavioral data coupled with survey-based measurements of the individuals’ cognitive styles and performance-based tests of their cognitive abilities. Our data analysis contributes to the current literature by documenting systematic heterogeneity in the persistence and distance of search that can be explained by the participants’ level of creativity, attention to detail, and executive functions. We extend the research on the microfoundations of adaptive search by linking cognitive antecedents with a complex search task, widening our insight into what search behavior certain cognitive microfoundations lead to, and showing how managers can more effectively shape organizational search.

History: This paper has been accepted for the Organization Science Special Issue on Experiments in Organizational Theory.

Supplemental Material: The online appendix is available at https://doi.org/10.1287/orsc.2023.1654 .

Chaining and the temporal dynamics of scientists' publishing behaviour

Scientific progress, or scientific change, has been an important topic in the philosophy and history of science. Previous work has developed quantitative approaches to characterize the progression of science in different fields, but how individual scientists make progress through their careers is not well understood at a comprehensive scale. We characterize the regularity in the temporal dynamics of scientists' publishing behavior with computational algorithms that predict the historical emerging order of publications from individual scientists. We discover that scientists publish in ways following the processes of chaining that mirror those observed in historical word meaning extension, whereby novel ideas emerge by connecting to existing ideas that are proximal in semantic space. We report findings for predominant exemplar-based chaining that reconstructs the emerging order in the publications of 1,164 award-winning and random-sampled scientists from the fields of Physics, Chemistry, Medicine, Economics, and Computer Science over the past century. Our work provides large-scale evidence that scientists across different fields tend to share similar publishing behavior over time by taking incremental steps that build on their past research outputs.

DISTANCE MAKES THE HEART GROW FONDER: SEARCHING COMBINATORIAL POTENTIAL THROUGH KNOWLEDGE NETWORKS

This study conceptualises inventors as agents that connect knowledge elements within a knowledge network. Inventors’ searches thus focus on a knowledge element’s combinatorial potential–its suitability for combination with other knowledge elements to generate innovation. Using a survey-based network approach with scientists in the R&D department of a leading US oil and gas company, we find that internal search on combinatorial potential in a knowledge network has an inverted U-shaped relationship with innovation but external search on combinatorial potential has a positive relationship with individual innovation performance. No reinforcement effect between internal and external search was found. Instead, our study reveals the search strategy through knowledge networks that inventors are likely to reduce their effort on internal search but maintain external search to identify the combinatorial potential of knowledge elements, making them more likely to create fruitful knowledge combinations for innovation.

The Power of Sustainability in the “Black Swan” Event: Entrepreneurial Cognition of Top Management Team and Dual Business Model Innovation

In the dynamic environment where “Black Swan” events occur frequently, the dual business model innovation (DBMI) which has both proactive and reactive characteristics is the core force for the enterprises to turn crises into opportunities and achieve their survival and sustainability. However, prevailing views do not clearly explain how to drive dual business model innovation. Based on the upper echelon theory, this study developed a multiple mediation model, which links entrepreneurial cognition of the top management team (TMT), knowledge search with dual business model innovation. By taking the data of 217 TMTs, the hypotheses are verified. The results show that TMT’s configuration cognition, willing cognition, and ability cognition all have a positive effect on both proactive and reactive business model innovation. Knowledge search acts as a “bridge” between TMT’s entrepreneurial cognition and DBMI. Greater entrepreneurial cognition can guide exploratory and exploitative knowledge searches and promote the DBMI. The results also show the mediating effect between different entrepreneurial cognition and DBMI is not completely consistent, and a partial mediation effect exists associating configuration cognition with DBMI, but a full mediation effect is present between other cognitions and DBMI. These results provide more understanding to the formation of dual business model innovation under the impact of COVID-19.

Detrimental Collaborations in Creative Work: Evidence from Economics

Prior research on collaboration and creativity often assumes that individuals choose to collaborate to improve the quality of their output. Given the growing role of collaboration and autonomous teams in creative work, the validity of this assumption has important implications for organizations. We argue that in the presence of a collaboration credit premium—when the sum of fractional credit allocated to each collaborator exceeds 100%—individuals may choose to work together even when the project output is of low quality or when its prospects are diminished by collaborating. We test our argument on a sample of economists in academia using the norm of alphabetical ordering of authors’ surnames on academic articles as an instrument for selection into collaboration. This norm means that economists whose family name begins with a letter from the beginning of the alphabet receive systematically more credit for collaborative work than economists whose family name begins with a letter from the end of the alphabet. We show that, in the presence of a credit premium, individuals may choose to collaborate, even if this choice decreases output quality. Thus, collaboration can create a misalignment between the incentives of creative workers and the prospects of the project.

Ambidextrous leadership and organizational innovation: the importance of knowledge search and strategic flexibility

Purpose

The purpose of this study is to examine the potential process through which leadership exerts impacts on organizational innovation. A thorough analysis was conducted by highlighting the contribution of ambidextrous leadership to organizational innovation.

Design/methodology/approach

Data were collected from companies located in mainland China. A total of 200 cases were included in the final sample. Hierarchical regression analysis was adopted to test the hypotheses in this study.

Findings

The results showed that exploitation knowledge search and exploration knowledge search partly mediated the relationship between ambidextrous leadership and organizational innovation, respectively. Strategic flexibility could positively moderate the relationship between exploitation knowledge search and organizational innovation and had no significant impacts on moderating the relationship between exploration knowledge search and organizational innovation.

Research limitations/implications

In this study, not only were managers provided with a sophisticated understanding of how and when ambidextrous leadership could influence organizational innovation but also concrete strategies were given for enhancing organizational innovation.

Originality/value

In this study, the interaction among ambidextrous leadership, knowledge search and organizational innovation were elucidated and the moderating impacts of strategic flexibility on the relationship between knowledge search and organizational innovation were explored. The findings of this study enriched the literature on leadership, knowledge management and innovation.

Corporate Investment Relationships and the Search for Innovations: An Examination of Startups’ Search Shift Toward Incumbents

Existing literature shows that corporate investment relationships play an important role in the development of startups. Although startups are relevant sources of innovations, especially those that radically depart from existing technologies, they often have limited access to resources. Corporate investment relationships are relevant to startups because they help them access resources of their corporate partners, especially those that are necessary for innovations to eventually achieve commercial success. This study examines the possibility that these relationships might also affect how startups search for innovations, producing greater alignment with the technologies of incumbents. Investigating this possibility is important because it can partly offset startups’ distinctiveness in technological domains of search and accordingly undercut learning opportunities available to incumbents. We argue that, following the formation of a corporate investment relationship, considerations related to capabilities and incentives result in a startup shifting the search for innovations toward technological domains of its corporate partner. We also argue that the radicalness of a startup’s innovations and the corporate partner’s commercial success exacerbate this search shift. We test these propositions in the context of biotech startups. Our difference-in-differences analysis shows that startups forming corporate investment relationships increase search in the domains of their corporate partners relative to analogous change observed among matching counterfactual startups without such relationships. We discuss implications for understanding of the influences of interorganizational relationships on startups’ technological trajectories and on incumbents’ learning and adaptation.

Attention to Exploration: The Effect of Academic Entrepreneurship on the Production of Scientific Knowledge

We study how becoming an entrepreneur affects academic scientists’ research. We propose that entrepreneurship will shift scientists’ attention away from intradisciplinary research questions and toward new bodies of knowledge relevant for downstream technology development. This will propel scientists to engage in exploration, meaning they work on topics new to them. In turn, this shift toward exploration will enhance the impact of the entrepreneurial scientist’s subsequent research, as concepts and models from other bodies of knowledge are combined in novel ways. Entrepreneurship leads to more impactful research, mediated by exploration. Using panel data on the full population of scientists at a large research university, we find support for this argument. Our study is novel in that it identifies a shift of attention as the mechanism underpinning the beneficial spillover effects from founding a venture on the production of public science. A key implication of our study is that commercial work by academics can drive fundamental advances in science.

Cross-border knowledge search and integration mechanism – a case study of Haier open partnership ecosystem (HOPE)

Purpose

Because of the complexity of technological innovation and the dynamics of the technological environment, it is impossible for a single firm to have all knowledge needed for technological innovation, making it essential for firms to conduct cross-border knowledge search and integration. However, it is very difficult for firms to acquire and assimilate cross-border knowledge. The purpose of this paper is to explore how an open innovation platform (OIP) helps firms to effectively search and integrate cross-border knowledge, and to understand the key roles that OIP plays during the cross-border knowledge search and integration processes.

Design/methodology/approach

This paper takes the case analysis method, which provides a comprehensively understanding on the complex process of cross-border knowledge search and integration as well as the internal mechanism. Drawing on the research paradigm of Eisenhardt (1989), Bakker and Akkerman (2014), this paper analyzes and verifies the mechanism of OIP cross-border knowledge search and integration based on extensive interviews.

Findings

First, this paper analyzes the process of cross-border knowledge search and integration through Haier open partnership ecosystem (HOPE), which is theoretically divided into three stages, including motivation formation, cross-border knowledge search and integration. These three stages have been further decomposed into the following seven steps: demands discovery, problems definition, problems decomposition, resource search, resource evaluation, technology redevelopment and test. In addition, this study investigates the manifestation of interrelationships among these stages and steps, depicting the pathways through which HOPE facilitates the firm’s cross-border knowledge search and integration. The conclusions indicate that OIP timely discovers the consumer demands during the motivation formation stage, effectively decomposes problems and find related technology resources during the search stage and improves the efficacy of integration stage.

Research limitations/implications

This study reveals the mechanism of OIP cross-border knowledge search and integration and draws some valuable conclusions, which contribute to the literature on cross-border knowledge search, enrich the research on problem-solving and also propose a new perspective to study the roles of OIP on innovation. However, there are still some limitations. First, this study is built on a single platform (HOPE), further studies may focus on more platforms to ensure the conclusions of this paper. Second, this study conducts data analysis using a simple encoding analysis, so it is possible that some critical information is emitted while collating and analyzing data. Meanwhile, for the research methods, qualitative and quantitative methods can be combined to analyze related issues, then the correlation and corresponding mechanism can be incorporated into the same framework to further verify the conclusions and generalize the results.

Practical implications

This paper theoretically analyzes how and why HOPE helps firms search and integrate cross-border knowledge. It provides not only a reference for OIP but also a proven and effective way for companies’ acquiring and integrating cross-border knowledge. Then it will further improve firms’ innovative abilities, especially disruptive innovation abilities.

Social implications

Technological innovation, especially disruptive innovation is not only a driving force of firms’ sustainable development but also a vital driver of national development. This paper clarified that OIP can help firms conduct successful disruptive innovation through cross-border knowledge search and integration, which will further increase national innovative competence and improve social welfare.

Originality/value

This paper extends the literature on the process of cross-border knowledge search and integration, as well as the roles of OIP. From a managerial standpoint, the conclusions have practical implications for firms to successfully acquire and integrate cross-border knowledge.