IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/p/ecl/stabus/1734.html
   My bibliography  Save this paper

Structural Inertia and Organizational Change Revisited III: The Evolution of Organizational Inertia

Author

Listed:
  • Hannan, Michael T.

    (Stanford U)

  • Polos, Laszlo

    (Lorand Eotvos U and Erasmus U Rotterdam)

  • Carroll, Glenn R.

    (Stanford U)

Abstract

Building on a formal theory of the structural aspects of organizational change initiated in Hannan, Polos, and Carroll (2002a, 2002b), this paper focuses on structural inertia. We define inertia as a persistent organizational resistance to changing architectural features. We examine the evolutionary consequences of architectural inertia. The main theorem holds that selection favors architectural inertia in the sense that the median level of inertia in cohort of organizations presumably increases over time. A second theorem holds that the selection intensity favoring architectural inertia is greater when foresight about the consequences of changes is more limited. According to the prior theory of Hannan, Polos, and Carroll (2002a, 2002b), foresight is limited by complexity and opacity. Thus it follows that the selection intensity favoring architectural inertia is stronger in populations composed of complex and opaque organizations that in those composed of simple and transparent ones.

Suggested Citation

  • Hannan, Michael T. & Polos, Laszlo & Carroll, Glenn R., 2002. "Structural Inertia and Organizational Change Revisited III: The Evolution of Organizational Inertia," Research Papers 1734, Stanford University, Graduate School of Business.
    • Handle: RePEc:ecl:stabus:1734
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://gsbapps.stanford.edu/researchpapers/library/RP1734.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    ---><---

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Watanabe, Chihiro & Yong Hur, Jae & Lei, Shanyu, 2006. "Converging trend of innovation efforts in high technology firms under paradigm shift--a case of Japan's electrical machinery," Omega, Elsevier, vol. 34(2), pages 178-188, April.
    2. Joonho Shin & Xavier Mendoza & Changbum Choi, 2022. "Do internationalizing business group affiliates perform better after promarket reforms? Evidence from Korean SMEs," Asia Pacific Journal of Management, Springer, vol. 39(2), pages 805-841, June.
    3. Paola Criscuolo & Rajneesh Narula, 2007. "Using multi-hub structures for international R&D: Organisational inertia and the challenges of implementation," Management International Review, Springer, vol. 47(5), pages 639-660, September.
    4. Narula, Rajneesh, 2013. "Using a 'Systems' Perspective to Explain the Limits of 'New' Multinational Enterprises: the role of 'members-only' location advantages," MERIT Working Papers 2013-033, United Nations University - Maastricht Economic and Social Research Institute on Innovation and Technology (MERIT).

    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:ecl:stabus:1734. 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.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using 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: the person in charge (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/gsstaus.html .

    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.