Program Session #: 829 | Scheduled: Monday, Aug 6 2007 12:50PM -
2:10PM at Philadelphia Marriott in Room 402

Strategic Adaptation and Change in Organizations: Alternative Theories
and Evidence

Chair: Tracy A Thompson; U. of Washington, Tacoma;

Revisiting the Change/Performance Relationship: The Moderating Role of
Strategic Alignment

Authors: Christopher D. Zatzick; Simon Fraser U., Tony Fang; School of
Administrative Studies, York U.; Thomas P. Moliterno; U. of South Carolina

This study examines whether the performance outcomes of
efficiency-oriented change (e.g., reengineering, outsourcing, TQM) are
affected by an organization's business strategy. Drawing on the
Value-Price-Cost (VPC) framework as a means of understanding the
sources and components of competitive advantage, we predict that
performance improvements from efficiency-oriented change will be
greatest for organizations that compete on cost rather than value.
Using longitudinal data from over 2,700 Canadian workplaces we find
support for this relationship, demonstrating the need for strategic
fit when implementing efficiency-oriented change. Internal process
changes improve performance more for workplaces seeking a cost-based
competitive advantage, as compared to when they are implemented in the
context of workplaces seeking a value-based advantage. Furthermore,
organizations pursuing both cost and value advantages were not more
successful at implementing efficiency-oriented change with respect to
subsequent performance as compared to workplaces pursuing a primarily
cost-based advantage. This paper advances our understanding of the
change/performance relationship, as well as provides an empirical test
of the VPC framework.


Knowledge Deployment Responses to Organizational Surprises in Startups

Author: Yan Gong; U. of Wisconsin, Madison;
Author: Ted Baker; North Carolina State U.
Author: Dale T. Eesley; U. of Toledo;
Author: Anne S Miner; U. of Wisconsin, Madison;

This paper offers a knowledge-deployment framework regarding outcomes
of organizational responses to surprises. We propose that three key
factors related to organizational knowledge use will shape whether a
specific response to a surprise will have value to the organization.
First, the organization's direct and indirect memory represents a
reservoir of potential activities and interpretive schemes, which in
turn enhances the chances that its surprise response will have a
valued outcome. Second, we propose that the more a surprise is
negative or affects the survival or long-term prosperity of the firm,
the more it presents challenges to the existing knowledge base and
internal knowledge exchange in the firm. This makes the response
outcomes less likely to have value. Finally, we argue that
intermediate levels of improvisation during responses create conflicts
on knowledge deployment that reduce the chances of an effective
response. In contrast, both lower and higher levels of improvisation
will have a relatively more positive impact on organizational
outcomes. We test these ideas using a sample of 141 surprise events
identified from 1,725 pages of interview transcripts, over 1,000 pages
of informant self-rating reports, and rater assessments of these
materials. Our study implies that knowledge-related factors can shape
organizational fates indirectly through their impact on the outcomes
of organizational responses to surprises. It contributes to emerging
theories of the role of organizational surprise.

An Integrative Model of Organizations' Responsiveness to Innovations:
Theory and Empirical Test
Author: Jean Baptiste K. Dodor; Jackson State U.

Organizations researchers have been investigating the determinants of
organizations' responsiveness to innovations for decades. However,
much of the research has been conducted in isolation (Wejnert, 2002:
298). Prior studies have been barely devoted to integrate different
perspectives, although the interplay of different theoretical
perspectives is largely believed to help gain more holistic
understanding of organizational life (Astley & Van de Ven, 1983;
Bourgeois, 1984; Hrebiniak & Joyce, 1985; Hitt & Tyler, 1991; Mahoney,
1993; Van de Ven & Poole, 1995). To contribute to filling the gap, we
have proposed and tested an Integrative Model of Organizations'
Responsiveness to Innovations (IMORI). The IMORI postulates that
organizations' responsiveness to innovation is a function of not only
intra-organizations behavioral factors or inter-organizations
environmental conditions alone, but rather of the combination of both.
Behavioral factors (organizations' attitudes, subjective norms and
perceived behavioral controls) are posited to determine
"organizations' behavioral readiness for innovation", which is in turn
expected to lead to "organizations' behavioral intentions about
innovation." Similarly, environmental pressures (institutional
pressures, competitive pressures, and resource dependence) are
hypothesized to determine "organizations' environmental conditions",
expected to influence "organizations' strategy orientations."
Moreover, behavioral intentions and strategy orientations are
conjointly postulated to directly predict "organizations'
responsiveness to innovation." The empirical test was conducted using
the specific case of American Business Schools' responsiveness to
E-Commerce Education product-innovation. The results suggest that the
postulated model is more useful statistically and more informative
than the alternative reduced sub-models (behavioral and environmental)
taken separately.

Agility, Resilience & Organization Performance During Environmental
Change
Author: Joseph E McCann; U. of Tampa
Author: John W Selsky; U. of South Florida
Author: James M Lee; U. of Tampa;

We utilize a sample of 1,365 organizations to explore how the concepts
of agility and resilience at four levels of analysis (individual,
team, organization, and industry) contribute to adaptive capacity and
three measures of organization performance. The pace and
disruptiveness of organization environments are also used as core
elements of environmental change and we examine how turbulence – the
relative pace and disruptiveness of environmental change – impact the
adaptive capacity-performance relationship. Organization adaptive
capacity and organization performance are strongly related, and
turbulence moderates this relationship in several complex ways. The
study provides a foundation for further research using the agility and
resilience constructs.
Search Terms: Agility , Resilience , Environmental Change