Adaptation or Persistence? Emergence and Revision of Organization Designs in New Ventures

Author(s)

Oliver Alexy, Katharina Anna Pötz, Phanish Puranam, Markus Georg Reitzig

Abstract

How organization designs evolve between adaptation to changing conditions and the pressures toward persistence of the designs adopted at founding remains an understudied phenomenon. To fill this lacuna, we conducted a longitudinal, multicase study of eight young ventures. We find that, in these ventures, specific organization design solutions changed frequently, triggered by various internal and external developments, although the changes were typically incremental and myopic. However, the more abstract principles of design, captured in the founders’ logics of organizing, were less amenable to change. This explains why observations of imprinting effects in logics of organizing may be consistent with observations of dynamic change to organization designs.

Organisation(s)

Department of Accounting, Innovation and Strategy

External organisation(s)

INSEAD Asia Campus, Technische Universität München, Österreichisches Parlament

Journal

Organization Science

Volume

32

Pages

1391-1596

ISSN

1047-7039

DOI

https://doi.org/10.1287/orsc.2021.1431

Publication date

2020

Peer reviewed

Yes

Austrian Fields of Science 2012

502052 Business administration

Keywords

ASJC Scopus subject areas

Strategy and Management, Management of Technology and Innovation, Organizational Behavior and Human Resource Management

Portal url

https://ucrisportal.univie.ac.at/en/publications/8b3e5510-eb7d-4dc5-b119-c2807046d4cb