Learning and Innovation in Hybrid Organizations

Strategic and Organizational Insights

Paolo Boccardelli, Maria Carmela Annosi, Federica Brunetta, Mats Magnusson, Paolo Boccardelli, Maria Carmela Annosi, Federica Brunetta, Mats Magnusson

• Publisher: Palgrave Macmillan
• Year: 2017
• Print ISBN:
  9783319624662
• eBook ISBN:
  9783319624679
• Topic: Business
• Subtopic: Business General
• Index: Business

Reflecting the emergence of new organizational forms and hybrid organizations, this edited collection explores the processes of exchange, collaboration and technological management that have changed organizational structures. By investigating the impact that inter-organizational collaboration can have on the production and implementation of ideas within new firms, this study contributes to the growing field of innovation and responds to the need for a greater understanding of renewed processes. The authors argue that collaborations need to go beyond existing practices to create emerging paths such as bricolage, experimentation, effectuation and learning. Drawing together a diverse body of literature on the internal dynamics that drive organizational change, Learning and Innovation in Hybrid Organizations presents multiple perspectives on combining organizational flexibility with learning and innovation, and provides implications for future practice.

© The Author(s) 2018

Paolo Boccardelli, Maria Carmela Annosi, Federica Brunetta and Mats Magnusson (eds.)Learning and Innovation in Hybrid Organizationshttps://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-319-62467-9_1

Begin Abstract

1. Strategic and Organizational Insights into Learning and Innovation in Hybrids and “New” Organizations

Maria Carmela Annosi¹ , Federica Brunetta² , Mats Magnusson³ and Paolo Boccardelli²

(1)

Department of Social Sciences and Management Studies, Wageningen University and Research, Wageningen, The Netherlands

(2)

Department of Business and Management and LUISS Business School, LUISS Guido Carli University, Rome, Italy

(3)

KTH Royal Institute of Technology, Stockholm, Sweden

Maria Carmela Annosi (Corresponding author)

Email: [email protected]

Federica Brunetta

Email: [email protected]

Mats Magnusson

Email: [email protected]

Paolo Boccardelli

Email: [email protected]

End Abstract

1.1 Motivation

Megatrends, such as technological breakthrough, climate change and resource scarcity, rapid urbanization, shifts in global economic powers, and demographic and social changes (Pwc 2016), as well as collisions between them, are reshaping the economic and commercial landscape.

These new forces of change are leading to hypercompetition and characterizing the new competitive landscape worldwide. Hypercompetition has also imposed shorter periods of advantage punctuated by recurrent disruptions (D’Aveni 1994). Jointly with changes in digitization of industries (e.g., IoT and Industry 4.0) and economics of automation, companies are rethinking organizational structures, influence, and control. New organizational challenges arise while companies work on the destabilization of roles, tasks, and identities; thus, they move more quickly and experiment using means new to the traditional approach to embrace organizational changes.

New organizational forms have been adopted by many firms in order to cope with the higher rate of change whereas in a low-intense and moderate-intense competition, companies have relied on unique and difficult to transfer routines as part of their core competence. In this environment, changes cannot be forecasted but only answered with more or less efficiency ex post (Volberda 1996). This dynamic process demands new organizational forms that could be able to “explore new opportunities effectively as well as exploit those opportunities efficiently, to change their strategic focus easily as well as develop some strategic direction and to change their dominating norms and values” (Volberda 1996).

The idea of “Hybrid organizing ” has emerged in literature, prompting a call for understanding the renewed process of exchange, collaboration, and technological management that has changed organizational structures. Hybrid organizations combine multiple organizational forms that constitute a deviation from the traditional templates, and thus experience unique organizing challenges, in terms of activities, structures, processes, and meanings (Battilana and Lee 2014).

These socially complex settings can be thought as layered as any activity requires the collaboration and integration of different practices and entities across and within organizations (Carlile 2002), despite the lack of traditional hierarchical structures or routines. Thus, moving beyond existing organizational arrangements, firms face the need to engage in new ways to experiment, learn, or do bricolage, with actors interacting differently and organizing being reconceptualized.

Substantial further research is still needed on how to design and manage organizations that can respond to the uncertainties and demands of hypercompetitive environments (Ilinitch et al. 1996). Thus, the purpose of this book is to discuss processes and practices of learning and innovating across hybrids and “new” organizations. In order to maintain multiple perspectives, the editors have invited scholars from different disciplinary backgrounds and with different theoretical lenses to analyze these issues.

The intent of this book is to provide some strategic and organizational insights into hybrid organizations and their learning and innovation capabilities. As these dimensions stand at the core of the hybrid organization design, this book analyzes the dynamic relationship between organization and innovation from three different interdependent perspectives: (i) management of innovation, learning, and value creation; (ii) structural and strategic issues arising while innovating in hybrids and “new” organizations; and finally (iii) how hybrids and new organizations can respond and adapt to strategic and organizational change.

The concept of hybrid organization and, more generally, a new organizational form relying on flattened structures are presented in this book, with practice in mind. Hybrid and “new” organizations can be quite different and present different degrees of complexity in comparison with traditional organizations. The different contributions contained in the book detail structures, processes, layouts, and activities by which firms use and match elements of diverse organizational forms.

The definition of hybrid and “new” organization design will be provided by using some qualitative and quantitative research results which will be presented first by means of some examples then by theorizing about the research results analyzed within the chapters.

Hybrid and “new” organizations’ innovation activities create unique challenges, given that these firms combine multiple organizational forms, and are subject to internal and external tensions. Therefore, hybrids are by nature arenas of contradictions, and it is possible to identify the presences of inconsistencies in the explained models. After giving a small summary of the various chapters in the next section, an introduction to the definition of hybrids and its known relation with innovation will be proposed.

The book is organized around examples. Most chapters include a new example together with the needed introduction to allow readers to understand the embedded concepts. Of course, such concepts are not recurrent from one chapter to the other despite they are, from time to time, more refined. As a matter of fact, each chapter is an almost independent essay.

1.2 Presentation of the Chapters

The chapters in this book are grouped into three sections, recalling the three different interdependent perspectives underlined above:

• Innovation, learning, and value creation;
• Innovating: structural and strategic issues; and
• Adapting innovation and learning to strategic and organizational change.

1.2.1 Innovation, Learning, and Value Creation

The first section of the book groups four studies related to the management of innovation, learning, and value creation. The first contribution, by Sherwani and Tee, is related to “Innovation and Value Creation in Business Ecosystems.” The aim of this chapter is to focus on how firms manage knowledge integration in business ecosystems, and how the strategic management of various interdependencies affects innovation and value creation in business ecosystems. Chapter 3, by Vicentini and Nasta, entitled “Team and Time within Project-Based Organizations: Insights from Creative Industries,” analyzes the performance of project-based organizations by focusing on temporary organizational forms. The authors use the theoretical perspective of the integrative framework of Bakker (2010) which relies on four main themes (task, team, time, and context) and analyze to what extent these four themes affect the performance of Project-Based Organizations (PBOs) that play in TV drama series industry and music industry. Chapter 4, “Collaborative Spaces and Coworking as Hybrids Workspaces: Friends or Foes of Learning and Innovation?” written by Marchegiani and Arcese, aims to analyze coworking as a promising new model of work. Coworking allows interactions potentially leading to an innovative outcome, both in terms of business development and organizational innovations, which are instrumental to business growth.

Finally, the last contribution of this section is Chap. 5, “Investigating the Impact of Agile Methods on Learning and Innovation” written by Annosi, Hemphälä, and Brunetta, which investigates the impact of Agile methods on the process and product innovation and on the process and product learning of self-managing teams operating in new product development setting.

1.2.2 Innovating: Structural and Strategic Issues

The second set of studies is dedicated to the understanding of structural and strategic issues that may arise in the quest for innovation. The three proposed contributions are framed within network studies, confirming how networks have become loci of innovation (Powell et al. 2005).

Chapter 6, a theoretical contribution from Brunetta, Boccardelli, and Lipparini “The Role of Networks for Innovation in Temporary and Project-Based Organizations”, addresses some of the critical issues related to a better understanding of how diverse network structures impact on scientific performance. It builds on the results of a 5-year research project in which the authors have analyzed several different R&D networks. By discussing about “optimal” network structures for temporary and project-based organizations, it prepares the ground for Chap. 7, by Magnusson, Mascia, and Di Vicenzo “Project Social Capital in Biotech R&D:...

Table of contents

• Cover
• Frontmatter
• 1. Strategic and Organizational Insights into Learning and Innovation in Hybrids and “New” Organizations
• 1. Innovation, Learning and Value Creation
• 2. Innovating: Structural and Strategic Issues
• 3. Adapting Innovation and Learning to Strategic and Organizational Change
• Backmatter