We have benefited from our discussions with Kristian Kreiner, Paul Hirsch and Roger Dunbar. We have also benefited from inputs that were offered by participants at the Path Dependence and Creation workshop,

The names of the authors are in alphabetical order and do not reflect an unequal contribution to the paper. D/2001/7012/16

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Research can be a source of competitive advantage if the competitors cannot readily acquire research capabilities by market transactions or imitation. If research capability is based on idiosyncratic search routines or tacit knowledge, not only is it hard to transfer capability across firm boundaries but also the identification and nurturing of capabilities within firms are problematic. Earlier research suggests that research organizations need processes both for exploitation of existing as well as exploration of emerging research capabilities. This theoretical dichotomy is elaborated by examining technology-based corporate venturing practices in industrial research environments. The results are presented in an evolutionary model in which boundary operations, including corporate research, are central to the renewal of the organization.

It still disturbs us. The thought that human behavior can be explained in the same terms as systems of flora and fauna—i.e., in the language of ecology still provokes incredulity and irritation. The organizational ecologist is liable to be labeled reductionist, a victim of physics envy—or at least biology envy--and presumed to be incapable of, or uninterested in, understanding the more subtle complexities of human behavior and culture. Human organization, we are told, is obviously different. A review of recent thinking in intraorganizational ecology, however, reveals such complaints as at once overestimating the rigidity and determinism of ecological theories and underestimating the degree to which the central concepts of ecology (i.e., survival of the fittest and mechanisms of variation, selection, and retention) offer a plausible and useful way to interpret the internal workings of human organizations. Rather than reducing our understanding to mechanistic laws of blind chance and Panglossian optimization, they simply suggest for our attention some important constructs (particularly organizational routines) and provide testable ideas for how these may behave (through birth, competition, complementarity, adaptation, and death). To our minds, the language of ecology is not a substitute for or retreat from the language of psychology, sociology, and the other disciplines of organization theory, but rather a companion, a platform on which organizational theorists can attempt

Abstract In this article the failure of a competence-based management development programme in a hospital trust to achieve organizational objectives is illustrated. The approach and content of the management development programme is resisted by participants despite the facilitators drawing upon management theory to legitimate it. The question posed in this paper, building upon earlier studies, is whether the generic approach of competencebased management development is appropriate in the UK National Health Service. The theoretical inspiration for the research is what may be termed a ‘processual ’ or ‘contextualist’

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Beyond Sensegiving: Sensemaking patterns by management groups in strategic innovation and change: an exploration, framework and process model. This paper is an exploration of how sensemaking patterns amongst management groups influence the actual practices of strategising over extended periods of time. Using an eight-year longitudinal case study of a single strategic issue, (a strategic marketing innovation in a division of a global financial services company), the paper aims to advance the work of Gioia and Chittipeddi (1991) by exploring the micro-processes of sensegiving and other sensemaking patterns amongst management groups. In the first order analysis, four different patterns of sensemaking are identified: sensegiving, fragmented sensemaking, polarised sensegiving and communal sensemaking. In the second order analysis the paper explores deeper explanations for each of the patterns of the sensemaking processes by examining contextual variables and triggers for each sensemaking pattern. Finally, a phased model is presented for discussion which links the four sensemaking patterns together over time and in so doing, identifies a number of theoretical issues in the strategising process such as the dynamic patterns of actions and interactions between senior and middle managers, the integration of micro-politics and sensegiving patterns, the study of social action in sensemaking beyond strategic conversations and communications, and the dynamic nature of consensus and diversity.

Emerging organizational research has proposed increasingly nuanced links between capabilities and routines, which in turn play vital roles in organizational survival and prosperity. We draw on prior work to define capabilities as involving some consistency in potential outcomes in a particular domain. This contrasts with routines, which involve consistency in processes. We report results of an inductive study of patterns linking capabilities and routines in 60 young firms, drawing on 1,725 transcript pages. Many capabilities arose through deliberate design or combinations of existing routines. In rare cases organizations repeatedly improvised in a particular area and thereby sustained capabilities that did not rely on consistent routines in the relevant action domain. We also found several ways in which organizational capabilities sometimes harmed overall organizational performance, although in some cases the organizations learned from harmful capabilities. Routines arose from multiple sources. We highlight three forms of “making do ” with routines available from varied sources, all forms of bricolage. Finally, routines played several roles in organizational transformation in addition to their contribution to inertia. The paper suggests that we can theoretically distinguish capabilities from routines even as they are intertwined over time in organizations, and that improvisation and bricolage play roles in organizational entrepreneurial learning.

The purpose of this paper is to put forward a theoretical framework and research agenda on the phenomenon of competition inside organisations. We argue that this phenomenon has not received due attention from academic researchers or indeed from practising managers. We undertake a review of the literature to show that it is more widespread than usually realized. Then we put forward a research model based on evolutionary theory (Campbell, 1965). We argue that intra-organizational competition emerges through a process of internal variation in the face of environmental uncertainty, and that it endures until internal selection processes terminate it. Propositions are developed relating the level of environmental uncertainty, the costs of duplication and the level of decentralization of decision making in the organization to