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Abstract

In this essay, we discuss how collective identity shapes and constrains innovation in organizations and argue that this phenomenon deserves more attention from innovation scholars. Drawing on the existing literature, we distinguish three mechanisms through which a collective identity affects innovation – top management team cognition and emotion, organizational member resistance, and external stakeholder resistance – and illustrate these mechanisms by drawing on the example of symphony orchestras. Orchestras have faced shrinking audiences and significant declines in revenue for decades, yet their ability to innovate in response has been constrained by the very traditional collective identity of the “symphony orchestra”. We go on to argue that innovation researchers need to pay more attention to the mechanisms through which collective identity limits and shapes innovation, to investigate potential strategies that organizations can use to manage the tension between collective identity and innovation, and to better understand how collective identity can be used as a resource in innovation. (Published version available on IOM site: 10.1080/14479338.2020.1742127).

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... Juggling innovation, experimenting and protecting core values are associated with numerous tensions, as organisations often introduce new and economically viable business models but fail to abandon old and economically problematic ones (Cozzolino et al., 2018;Kavanagh, 2018;Rothmann & Koch, 2014). Although digital transformation may threaten an industry's collective identity, the identity itself also shapes and constrains innovative responses, a subject that has received 'remarkably little attention' to date (Kavanagh et al., 2021). ...
... Battilana and Lee (2014) study of social enterprises highlighted how they combine business and charity so as to defend the core activities that are perceived as irreplaceable. Art and heritage institutions similarly adapt their business models by expanding their core activities to include new types of experiences in an attempt to attract users (Alshawaaf & Lee, 2021;Coblence & Sabatier, 2014;Kavanagh, 2018;Kavanagh et al., 2021). ...
... Cozzolino et al. (2018Cozzolino et al. ( , p. 1195 suggested three potential explanations for the willingness to defend the incumbent business model and core activities: difficulties in exploring new options, perceiving value (as worth) in the incumbent business model and unexpected setbacks in the market. Kavanagh et al. (2021) argued that further research is needed, particularly in terms of the second of these explanations. They stated that defensive or limited innovation can be tied to collective identity, which can limit innovation through top management cognition and emotion, organisational member resistance and wider stakeholder resistance. ...
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This paper discusses how established industries adapt to digital transformation. While digitalisation is perceived as an impetus for change, either due to the opportunities or threats it brings about, not all industries are able to change unlimitedly. We seek to understand digital transformation concerning products and services perceived to have a wider public value. Our empirical case is the newspaper industry in Norway, which has a strong collective identity tied to the societal function of independent journalism. We find that an industry with a resilient identity leaning towards preservation can learn how to use the digital space to adapt and innovate effectively. The adaptation and innovation processes are shaped by the interplay between the collective identity and the nature of digital work and innovation. The outcome is a continued emphasis on retaining the core mission but with an increasingly pragmatic approach to how and in what form it is safeguarded. Continuous collaborative experimentation and deliberation on the fit between innovations and the collective identity is a key change mechanism. Our study contributes to a better understanding of collective identities and their interplay with innovation.
... This motivation of historical argumentation is associated with the most traditional perspective applied to heritage, the commemorative [27], which, while recognizing the role of heritage in shaping collective identities, is frequently related to a single narrative and a hard, objective identity defined as closed [12]. However, heritage must be understood in a process of construction and reconstruction, not static, from contemporaneity with new meanings [28,29]. Indeed, every transmission process entails reinterpreting the past giving it new meanings from the present, in a retrospective and prospective sense, based on interests to legitimize a collective identity, because memory preserves from the past what is capable of being alive in the present of a group defined on a territorial scale [30]. ...
... Thus, heritage is presented as useful, not only from its economic profitability, but also as a historical source for the construction and reconstruction of the various existing memories around the same heritage element [31,32]. This utility perspective makes even more sense if we pay attention to the spatial, considering, on the one hand, the diverse interpretations to which a heritage element is exposed according to the scale; and, on the other hand, the multiple, hybrid identities in permanent transformation [12,28,29] resulting from the exchange of people and ideas throughout the world. ...
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... Thus, SV collectives require a form of legitimacy for effective operation within a crisis context. Legitimacy can be increased by having a collective identity and being recognizable as an organization (Kavanagh et al., 2020). Still, our understanding of how SV collectives establish their authority, and how others, such as relief forces, legitimate them without being perceived as an organization, is 3 ACCEPTED MANUSCRIPT limited (Nissen et al., 2022). ...
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... How should fuzziness in NPD be reduced? Authors proposed to reduce fuzziness by implementing mainstream/legacy methods such as customer and competitor analysis, fusing customer needs into products, integrating upper management, studying rivals and their products [32], customer participation [33], and customer relationship [34,35], regular direct contact with customers [6], the knowledge about competitors and likely competitive moves [36], integrating the customer regarding the company's products, services, and technologies, and the firm's employees [37][38][39][40][41][42], competitors' and technologies' limits and keeping the value of crucial variables within predetermined limits [21], firms' in-house capability and expertise [43], matching the customer needs with a firm's fabricating potential [44], using a diverse assessment group [45], experiments and corporate entrepreneurship [46], and collective identity [47]. ...
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... Managers generate a cognitive schema that integrates their understanding of organizational and exogenous information with a set of outcome expectations (Martins et al., 2015). Often, collective identity affects innovation within firms through management team cognition, member and stakeholder resistance (e.g., Kavanagh, Perkmann & Phillips, 2020). Consistent with theories of strategic choice and planned behavior, managers make business model choices intended to bring about preferred outcomes that balance issues of shared cognition, identity, and goals. ...
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There is empirical evidence that established firms often have difficulty adapting to radical technological change. Although prior work in the evolutionary tradition emphasizes the inertial forces associated with the local nature of learning processes, little theoretical attention has been devoted in this tradition to understanding how managerial cognition affects the adaptive intelligence of organizations. Through an in-depth case study of the response of the Polaroid Corporation to the ongoing shift from analog to digital imaging, we expand upon this work by examining the relationship between managers' understanding of the world and the accumu- lation of organizational capabilities. The Polaroid story clearly illustrates the importance of managerial cognitive representations in directing search processes in a new learning environ- ment, the evolutionary trajectory of organizational capabilities, and ultimately processes of organizational adaptation. Copyright © 2000 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.
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This article explores the social processes that produce penalties for illegitimate role performance. It is proposed that such penalties are illuminated in markets that are significantly mediated by product critics. In particular, it is argued that failure to gain reviews by the critics who specialize in a product's intended category reflects confusion over the product's identity and that such illegitimacy should depress demand. The validity of this assertion is tested among public American firms in the stock market over the years 1985-94. It is shown that the stock price of an American firm was discounted to the extent that the firm was not covered by the securities analysts who specialized in its industries. This analysis holds implications for the study of role conformity in both market and nonmarket settings and adds sociological insight to the recent "behavioral" critique of the prevailing "efficient-market" perspective on capital markets.
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This paper considers the role of design, as the emergent arrangement of concrete details that embodies a new idea, in mediating between innovations and established institutional fields as entrepreneurs attempt to introduce change. Analysis of Thomas Edison's system of electric lighting offers insights into how the grounded details of an innovation's design shape its acceptance and ultimate impact. The notion of robust design is introduced to explain how Edison's design strategy enabled his organization to gain acceptance for an innovation that would ultimately displace the existing institutions of the gas industry. By examining the principles through which design allows entrepreneurs to exploit the established institutions while simultaneously retaining the flexibility to displace them, this analysis highlights the value of robust design strategies in innovation efforts, including the phonograph, the online service provider, and the digital video recorder.
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I work to unbundle the structure of inertia into two distinct categories: resource rigidity (failure to change resource investment patterns) and routine rigidity (failure to change organizational processes that use those resources). Given discontinuous change, a researcher's failure to recognize these distinctions can generate conflicting findings regarding effects of threat perception on inertia. Using field data on the response of newspaper organizations to the rise of digital media, I show that a strong perception of threat helps overcome resource rigidity but simultaneously amplifies routine rigidity. I develop an interpretive model exploring mechanisms for overcoming these divergent behaviors.
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The purpose of this paper is to analyze how a firm responds to a challenge from a transformational technology that poses a threat to its historical business model. We extend Christensen’s theory of disruptive technologies to undertake this analysis. The paper makes two contributions: the first is to extend theory and the second is to learn from the example of Kodak’s response to digital photography. Our extensions to existing theory include considerations of organizational change, and the culture of the organization. Information technology has the potential to transform industries through the creation of new digital products and services. Kodak’s middle managers, culture and rigid, bureaucratic structure hindered a fast response to new technology which dramatically changed the process of capturing and sharing images. Film is a physical, chemical product, and despite a succession of new CEOs, Kodak’s middle managers were unable to make a transition to think digitally. Kodak has experienced a nearly 80% decline in its workforce, loss of market share, a tumbling stock price, and significant internal turmoil as a result of its failure to take advantage of this new technology.
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Organizations in an emerging organizational population face an identity problem. Collectively, organizations cannot yet rely on a coherent and stable definition of what membership in that new industry means. Individually, each organization must also establish its own distinctive identity to differentiate itself from competitors and secure resources. To explore the relationship between differentiation and the consolidation of recognizable identity element clusters, we examine the emergence of organizational form in the early years of the Arizona charter school industry. This industry is particularly interesting for scholars studying institutional processes because the legislative mandate of the new industry was for schools to experiment and provide education in an unconventional manner. Thus, the legislative definition of the organizational form or template for the charter school identity was intentionally underspecified. Using inductive analysis and regression models, we examine the process of identity realization occurring among charter schools and assess how the local institutional context of charter schools affected the realization process. The analyses demonstrate that new industries may come to be characterized by multiple element clusters; a single label for an organizational form may be linked to different combinations of identity elements. Our results also demonstrate that identity realization at the organizational level occurs through mimicry and differentiation processes and is facilitated by the local institutional context. In particular, the diversity of organizational resources available to industry entrepreneurs enables identity differentiation from one's peers.
Survive and thrive: Winning against strategic threats to your business
  • J Gans
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Gans, J., & Kaplan, S. (2017). Survive and thrive: Winning against strategic threats to your business. Dog Ear Publishing.
The other disruption: When innovations threaten the organizational model
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Reality of the historical past (Aquinas Lecture)
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