Do Network Structures Follow Innovation Strategy? Chandler Revisited with Learning as an Intermediary Variable

In the literature on learning and innovation, a substantial amount of theorizing on the combination of exploration and exploitation has been conducted (March, 1991; Nooteboom, 2001; Volberda & Lewin, 2002). Two observations can be derived from this literature. On the one hand, the conceptual and theoretical development outpaced the empirical research so far (e.g., the volume of Dierkes et al. (2001) on organizational learning). There is an old, but profound theoretical literature on innovation and structure (Hage, 1980, 1998; Alter & Hage, 1993; Damanpour & Gopalakrishnan, 1998). Until recently these literatures on learning and structuring have been rather detached. Only some researchers (Boisot, 1998; Nooteboom, 2001; Volberda, 1998; Volberda & Lewin, 2002) aimed at synthesis, nevertheless the empirical part remains underdeveloped. On the other hand, learning is considered too often as an exogenous variable. In the organizational learning literature, there is a tendency to consider learning as a process without a context, which implies that important related aspects remain underanalyzed. In this chapter, we want to combine learning with the Chandlerian (Chandler, 1962) notion of structure follows strategy, in which structure is not conceptualized as internal organizational structure but as external network structure.