This work analyzes the processes of innovation and change in economic-managerial studies, starting from the prevailing literature on the subject and subsequently providing an alternative interpretation key. The chapter focuses on the role that institutions have in organizational change and innovation and on isomorphic processes. If in management studies, on the topic of innovation and change, the processes of horizontal isomorphism are more analyzed, which lead organizations to imitate the behaviors of other organizations, considered as models, in this chapter the reflection is centered on vertical isomorphic processes, which are the result of regulatory and coercive pressures.
TopIntroduction
Innovation is an ever-current topic in the managerial, political, social, and economic debate and finds its natural place in the broader reflections on the theme of change. What are the processes through which it starts, develops, accelerates, or slows down? What are the links between innovation and those that precede/follow it? Research has proposed numerous hypotheses about the dynamics of innovative processes to provide “understanding” schemes—or “explaining” models—of the emergence and spread of the new (Davies, 1979; Rogers, 1983; Von Hippel, 1990; Rosenberg, 1991). From the literature analysis emerges an overall vision of enlightenment and neo-positivist matrix, which associates to the theme of innovation those of scientific discovery, technical efficiency, and social progress and reconnects these “values” to “strong” archetypes of individual and collective rationality.
This chapter aims, far from exhaustively reviewing the extensive literature produced in the economic-business disciplines, to represent a synoptic framework functional to understanding some central issues, a helpful premise for presenting a different interpretative framework. Among the different perspectives of investigation, this work focuses on institutional analysis in organizational studies, with particular reference to the neo-institutional, marking a clear epistemological distance from the settings of strong rationality, both individual and systemic, placing at the center the understanding of the institutional environment (norms, customs, organizations, institutions). Between the social atom—the individual, unicum of analysis in the micro perspective of methodological individualism—and society as a whole—object of the macro analysis of systemic-collectivist approaches—the institutional approach interposes a meso-level filter, an intermediate lens through which to unravel the tangle of “material and symbolic conditioning that institutions exercise on human behavior” (Bonazzi, 2000, p. VII). Archetypes based on pure forms of rationality and integrated, coherent visions of organizations give way to weaker visions, with fewer “claims of knowledge” (Hayek, 1997), focusing on the complex interactional dynamics between a multiplicity of actors operating in concrete fields of action. New elements—institutional processes and power dynamics—contribute to stage a different epistemological option, identifiable as situationist, of innovation and business (Mastroberardino, 2006, 2010).
This chapter, contributing to the debate on innovation and organizational change processes, aims to propose the “situationist” approach, an alternative view to the prevailing that considers these processes animated by systemic rationality aspiring to justify linearity that is, in practice, plentiful naive. This chapter compares two paradigms providing a different view of the innovation: the political and neo-micro-institutional. The idea is to revisit the concept of innovation from immanent and, too often, simplified, attended by some actors who do not always link it to internal efficiency of effectiveness logic. On the contrary, it may result from decisions to legitimize the organization within the institutions and other key players operating in an “organizational field.”
The situationist view can be seen as an element of originality since it suggests being aware of the political aspects (power) and the processes aiming to gain legitimation. Although this chapter is focused on a theoretical conceptualization, the lack of an empirical study can be seen as the main limitation of the work. The different insight into innovation processes allows us to increase the number of organizational and decision-making patterns with schemes and models focused on negotiation-based strategies. Moreover, acknowledging cognitive constructs, such as isomorphism and rationalizing myths, paves the way for a less naive approach to organizational dynamics that animate, in practice, innovation processes.
TopInnovation In Economic-Managerial Studies
Focusing on the theme of innovation, the chapter focuses on a) nature and forms of innovation; b) dynamics of innovation and its diffusion.