Understanding Industrial And Corporate Change

'Understanding Industrial and Corporate Change' contains pioneering work on technological, organizational, and institutional change and explores three distinct themes: Markets and Organizations; Evolutionary Theory and Technological Change; and Strategy, Capabilities, and Knowledge Management.

The past two decades have seen a gradual but noticeable change in the economic organization of innovative activity. Most firms used to integrate research and development with activities such as production, marketing, and distribution. Today firms are forming joint ventures, research and development alliances, licensing deals, and a variety of other outsourcing arrangements with universities, technology-based start-ups, and other established firms. In many industries, a division of innovative labor is emerging, with a substantial increase in the licensing of existing and prospective technologies. In short, technology and knowledge are becoming definable and tradable commodities. Although researchers have made significant advances in understanding the determinants and consequences of innovation, until recently they have paid little attention to how innovation functions as an economic process. This book examines the nature and workings of markets for intermediate technological inputs. It looks first at how industry structure, the nature of knowledge, and intellectual property rights facilitate the development of technology markets. It then examines the impacts of these markets on firm boundaries, the division of labor within the economy, industry structure, and economic growth. Finally, it examines the implications of this framework for public policy and corporate strategy. Combining theoretical perspectives from economics and management with empirical analysis, the book also draws on historical evidence and case studies to flesh out its research results.

One of the major challenges facing organization studies has been for a long time to develop an operational content to the notion of routines . This book offers important advances in this direction, both conceptually and through illuminating case studies. Giovanni Dosi, Sant Anna School of Advanced Studies, Pisa, Italy This book showcases advanced empirical research that applies the concept of organizational routines to understanding organizations and how they change and evolve. The contributions gathered in the book cover qualitative, quantitative, and archival methods for empirical research applying the concept of organizational routines. Specific issues highlighted include the use of event-sequence methods in the analysis of organizational routines, the impact of standard operating procedures on recurrent behaviour patterns, and the stability, resilience, and change of organizational routines. The book thus provides an overview of different empirical methods applied to study organizational routines, and of their prerequisites, analytical power, and contribution. This comprehensive book will be of great interest to scholars and postgraduate students in the fields of organization theory, strategy, and organization behaviour. Researchers in organization, management and economic science, organizational change and evolutionary theories will also find this book invaluable.

Eschewing the hyperbole of many current management books Patrick Dawson uses the views and experiences of people from the shop floor to the upper reaches of executive management to further our understanding of complex organizational change processes.

This exciting new text fills the gap in the management literature on organizational change. It presents a balanced view, which raises questions about the imperative of change, who’s interests are being served, how change programmes impact on employees and why organizations continually engage in such programmes. It gives readers a comprehensive history of: change management literature types of change techniques over time (i.e. TQM, BPR, Balanced Scorecard, Six Sigma, etc.) the role of management gurus in the rise and fall of management fashions the impact of organizational change on organizational members. The authors provide case vignettes of companies from both sides of the Atlantic, which have undergone some of the better-known change techniques, and explore the reasons for their successes and failures. This is an innovative and important new text for students of organizational behaviour, organizational change, strategy and HRM.

The determinants of a firm's innovative capacity are rooted in organizational design, incentives, human resources, internal culture, and external linkages. Profiting from innovation is always a challenge and licensing is one of many options.

Co-winner of the 2006 Schumpeter Prize of the International Joseph A. Schumpeter SocietyExplaining the shift of the organizational landscape towards more specialized entities connected by markets and networks, this book places the work of Schumpeter and Chandler in a larger theoretical framework.

World-renowned economist Klaus Schwab, Founder and Executive Chairman of the World Economic Forum, explains that we have an opportunity to shape the fourth industrial revolu­tion, which will fundamentally alter how we live and work. Schwab argues that this revolution is different in scale, scope and complexity from any that have come before. Characterized by a range of new technologies that are fusing the physical, digital and biological worlds, the developments are affecting all disciplines, economies, industries and governments, and even challenging ideas about what it means to be human. Artificial intelligence is already all around us, from supercomputers, drones and virtual assistants to 3D printing, DNA sequencing, smart thermostats, wear­able sensors and microchips smaller than a grain of sand. But this is just the beginning: nanomaterials 200 times stronger than steel and a million times thinner than a strand of hair and the first transplant of a 3D printed liver are already in development. Imagine “smart factories” in which global systems of manu­facturing are coordinated virtually, or implantable mobile phones made of biosynthetic materials. The fourth industrial revolution, says Schwab, is more significant, and its ramifications more profound, than in any prior period of human history. He outlines the key technologies driving this revolution and discusses the major impacts expected on government, business, civil society and individu­als. Schwab also offers bold ideas on how to harness these changes and shape a better future—one in which technology empowers people rather than replaces them; progress serves society rather than disrupts it; and in which innovators respect moral and ethical boundaries rather than cross them. We all have the opportunity to contribute to developing new frame­works that advance progress.