IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/bla/jemstr/v7y1998i2p237-263.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Influence Costs, Structural Inertia, and Organizational Change

Author

Listed:
  • Scott Schaefer

Abstract

This paper builds an economic model of the relationship between influence activity and resistance to change in organizations. I show that influence activity can create harmful barriers to change and that the influence costs of change are positively related to the firm's prospects. The model rationalizes the widely held view that firms often must endure a survival‐threatening crisis before meaningful change can be achieved. I show that employees' choices of whether to engage in influence activity can depend on their beliefs as to whether the firm will choose to change its organizational form. If employees expect change, their best response is to try to affect the form of the change in their favor.

Suggested Citation

  • Scott Schaefer, 1998. "Influence Costs, Structural Inertia, and Organizational Change," Journal of Economics & Management Strategy, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 7(2), pages 237-263, June.
    • Handle: RePEc:bla:jemstr:v:7:y:1998:i:2:p:237-263
    DOI: 10.1111/j.1430-9134.1998.00237.x
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: https://doi.org/10.1111/j.1430-9134.1998.00237.x
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1111/j.1430-9134.1998.00237.x?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Milgrom, Paul R, 1988. "Employment Contracts, Influence Activities, and Efficient Organization Design," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 96(1), pages 42-60, February.
    2. Meyer, Margaret & Milgrom, Paul & Roberts, John, 1992. "Organizational Prospects, Influence Costs, and Ownership Changes," Journal of Economics & Management Strategy, Wiley Blackwell, vol. 1(1), pages 9-35, Spring.
    3. Bulow, Jeremy I & Geanakoplos, John D & Klemperer, Paul D, 1985. "Multimarket Oligopoly: Strategic Substitutes and Complements," Journal of Political Economy, University of Chicago Press, vol. 93(3), pages 488-511, June.
    4. Julio J. Rotemberg & Garth Saloner, 1995. "Overt Interfunctional Conflict (and its Reduction Through Business Strategy)," RAND Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 26(4), pages 630-653, Winter.
    5. Wruck, Karen Hopper, 1994. "Financial policy, internal control, and performance Sealed Air Corporation's leveraged special dividend," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 36(2), pages 157-192, October.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. repec:eee:labchp:v:3:y:1999:i:pb:p:2373-2437 is not listed on IDEAS
    2. Andrea Fosfuri & Thomas Rønde, 2005. "Leveraging Resistance to Change and the Skunk Works Model of Innovation," CIE Discussion Papers 2007-10, University of Copenhagen. Department of Economics. Centre for Industrial Economics, revised Jun 2007.
    3. Andrea Fosfuri & Thomas Rønde, 2009. "Leveraging Resistance to Change and the Skunk Works Model of Innovation," Post-Print hal-00699208, HAL.
    4. Jeremy C. Stein, 2000. "Information Production and Capital Allocation: Decentralized vs. Hierarchical Firms," NBER Working Papers 7705, National Bureau of Economic Research, Inc.
    5. Fosfuri, Andrea & Rønde, Thomas, 2009. "Leveraging resistance to change and the skunk works model of innovation," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 72(1), pages 274-289, October.
    6. Nelson P. Repenning, 2000. "Drive out Fear (Unless You Can Drive It in): The Role of Agency and Job Security in Process Improvement," Management Science, INFORMS, vol. 46(11), pages 1385-1396, November.
    7. Ruckes, Martin & Rønde, Thomas, 2010. "Dynamic incentives in organizations: Success and inertia," Working Paper Series in Economics 7, Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT), Department of Economics and Management.
    8. Moriya, Fumitoshi & 森谷, 文利, 2006. "The Optimality of Power in Organizations: Power Acquisition Process and Evaluation," Working Paper Series 036, Center for Japanese Business Studies (HJBS), Graduate School of Commerce and Management Hitotsubashi University.
    9. Pietro ALESSANDRINI & Giorgio CALCAGNINI & Alberto ZAZZARO, 2006. "Asset Restructuring Strategies in Bank Acquisitions: Evidence from the Italian Banking Industry," Working Papers 264, Universita' Politecnica delle Marche (I), Dipartimento di Scienze Economiche e Sociali.
    10. Fabel, Oliver & Kolmar, Martin, 2012. "Do parachutes discipline managers? An analysis of takeover battles," International Review of Law and Economics, Elsevier, vol. 32(2), pages 224-232.
    11. Inderst, Roman & Muller, Holger M. & Warneryd, Karl, 2007. "Distributional conflict in organizations," European Economic Review, Elsevier, vol. 51(2), pages 385-402, February.
    12. Tan, Guofu & Yuan, Lasheng, 2003. "Strategic incentives of divestitures of competing conglomerates," International Journal of Industrial Organization, Elsevier, vol. 21(5), pages 673-697, May.
    13. Wulf, Julie, 2009. "Influence and inefficiency in the internal capital market," Journal of Economic Behavior & Organization, Elsevier, vol. 72(1), pages 305-321, October.
    14. Alain de Janvry & Guojun He & Elisabeth Sadoulet & Shaoda Wang & Qiong Zhang, 2020. "Performance Evaluation, Influence Activities, and Bureaucratic Work Behavior: Evidence from China," HKUST CEP Working Papers Series 202003, HKUST Center for Economic Policy.
    15. Giroud, Xavier & Dai, Min & Jiang, Wei & Wang, Neng, 2020. "A q Theory of Internal Capital Markets," CEPR Discussion Papers 15341, C.E.P.R. Discussion Papers.
    16. Baliga, Sandeep & Sjostrom, Tomas, 2001. "Optimal Design of Peer Review and Self-Assessment Schemes," RAND Journal of Economics, The RAND Corporation, vol. 32(1), pages 27-51, Spring.
    17. Andrew Zhou, 2022. "The role of integrity and ability in leadership," Managerial and Decision Economics, John Wiley & Sons, Ltd., vol. 43(5), pages 1290-1297, July.
    18. Robert A. Ritz, 2015. "Strategic investment and international spillovers in natural gas markets," Cambridge Working Papers in Economics 1510, Faculty of Economics, University of Cambridge.
    19. Michael Powell, 2015. "An Influence-Cost Model of Organizational Practices and Firm Boundaries," The Journal of Law, Economics, and Organization, Oxford University Press, vol. 31(suppl_1), pages 104-142.
    20. Hoang, Daniel & Gatzer, Sebastian & Ruckes, Martin E., 2018. "The economics of capital allocation in firms: Evidence from internal capital markets," Working Paper Series in Economics 115, Karlsruhe Institute of Technology (KIT), Department of Economics and Management.
    21. Evans, Jocelyn & Dadzie, Kofi, 1998. "Corporate governance and the fragility of banking systems in developing countries: An analysis of a credit market in Ghana," Global Finance Journal, Elsevier, vol. 9(1), pages 109-125.

    More about this item

    Statistics

    Access and download statistics

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:bla:jemstr:v:7:y:1998:i:2:p:237-263. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Wiley Content Delivery (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.kellogg.northwestern.edu/research/journals/JEMS/ .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.