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Institutional entrepreneurship implicit in a firm's sponsorship of its technology as a common standard is beset by several challenges. These challenges arise from a standard's property to enable and constrain even as potential competitors agree to cooperate on its creation. Our exploration of Sun Microsystems's sponsorship of its Java technology suggests that standards-in-the-making generate seeds of selfdestruction.

The tacit assumption that increased product modularity is associated with advantageous increases in organizational modularity underlies much of the literature on modularity. Previous empirical investigations of this assumption, few in number, have faced numerous confounding factors and generated conflicting results. I build a causal model for the relationship between product and organizational modularity, which I test using a distinctive empirical setting that controls for confounding factors present in previous studies. I find support for only part of the assumed relationship, showing that modularity is a more multi−faceted concept than previously recognized. In particular, increased product modularity enhances reconfigurability of organizations more quickly than it allows firms to move activities out of hierarchy. The paper contributes to the emerging stream of research that focuses on the previously under−appreciated costs of designing and maintaining a modular organization.

The capitalist and socialist societies of the 20 th century assigned firms different roles within their economic systems. Enterprises transforming from socialist to market economies thus face fundamental organizational restructuring. Many former state-owned firms in the transition economies of Central and Eastern Europe have failed at this task. These firms have pursued primarily defensive downsizing, rather than strategic restructuring, as a result of both internal and external constraints on restructuring strategies. Building on the organizational learning and resource-based theories, we analyze strategies available to management in privatized, former state-owned enterprises in transition economies to restructure their organization. Both internal forces promoting or inhibiting the restructuring process, and external constraints arising in the transition context are examined. A model and testable propositions are developed that explain post-privatization performance. Implications of our research point to the ways in which firms should manage and develop their resource base to transform to competitive enterprises.

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Abstract We present the design of a service oriented architecture which facilitates flexible managerial decision making in dynamic business networks. We have implemented and tested this architecture in the MinneTAC trading agent, which is designed to compete in the Supply Chain Trading Agent Competition [4]. Our design enables managers to break out decision behaviors into separate, configurable components, and allows dynamic construction of analysis and modeling tools from small, single-purpose “evaluator ” services. The result of our design is that the network can easily be configured to test a new theory and analyze the impact of various approaches to different elements of the agent’s decision processes, such as procurement, sales, production, and inventory management. Additionally we describe visualizers that allow managers to see and manipulate the configuration of the network, and to construct economic dashboards that can display the current and historical state of any node in the network. 1

This study investigates the value of the strategic flexibility provided by firms ’ international investments during an economic crisis, defined here as an unanticipated significant downturn in the economy. To avoid below-par performance, firms need to adapt quickly to this significant change in their environment, making real options very valuable to them. Although firms ’ international investments can potentially provide such flexibility, this issue has not been empirically examined in a context of such dramatic negative change. We consider two types of international investments by firms in this regard, foreign direct investments and export-related international investments, developing two measures that directly assess the flexibility derived from each that are new to the literature. Based on these measures, we find evidence that both types of international investments provided valuable flexibility for Korean firms during the economic crisis conditions. This study contributes to the literature by showing that firms with real options investments in place have a greater ability to flexibly adapt their overall operations in line with unforeseen negative environmental change, in contrast to firms without such investments. Copyright © 2009 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.

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Abstract: The economic relevance of IT risk is increasing due to various operational, technical as well as regulatory reasons. Increasing flexibility of business processes and rising dependability on IT require continuous risk assessment, challenging current methods of risk management. Extending these methods by a business process-oriented view is a promising approach for taking the occurring dynamics and interlinks into consideration. In this contribution, a layer based approach for systematic modeling of relations between causes (threats) and effects (direct and indirect loss) is pursued. On the basis of these cause-effect relations, the presented IT Risk Indicator InTRIn measures changes in the IT support of business processes. It is discussed how InTRIn can provide accurate and real-time information on the IT risk situation and thus improve IT risk management. 1 Flexible Business Processes and IT Risk The flexibility to adapt business processes to customers ’ changing demands is regarded as an important instrument for companies in order to be able to distinguish themselves from their competitors (e.g. [Sa95; BG05; Mi07]). To create flexibility, information

Service Logistics presently are confronted with challenges like increasing environmental complexity and dynamics. On the one hand service demands of customers are rapidly changing and on the other hand there are multiple business partners, disposing of different competencies, involved in Global Service Supply Chains. To cope with these conditions, the need for flexibility as well as stability in global logistic planning processes becomes evident. Therefore this paper shall examine if competence building and leveraging can be improved by a management approach such as self-organization. Furthermore, it will be questioned if this approach offers any potential of application in international co-productions of the movie industry, focusing on logistics management.