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This paper asks a basic question of organizational evolution: When and where will a new organizational form emerge? Contemporary organization theory proposes two answers. The first holds that formal institutions such as industry associations and standard-setting bodies will result in a taken-for-granted organizational form. The second answer contends that increasing organizational density (number of organizations in a population) will generate a legitimated organizational form.Our detailed historical case study of the disk array market and its associated technologies suggests each of these theoretical arguments is limited. Although we find significant collective activity in association-building and standard-setting among disk array producers, these have not yet led to an organizational form. Similarly, an observed trajectory of organizational density showing rapid growth followed by stabilization has not yet generated an organizational form. In our view, the diversity of origins and other activities of those organizations operating in this market contribute to the lack of institutionalization of the disk array organizational form. We reason that if firms in the market derive their primary identities from other activities (implying that there are few highly focused firms deriving their primary identity from disk arrays), then the disk array producer identity cannot cohere into a code or form. This observation suggests a respecification of the legitimation component of the density-dependent model of organizational evolution. *This research was supported by assistance from the Alfred P. Sloan Foundation and the Institute of Industrial Relations, U.C. Berkeley. We appreciate the helpful comments of Michael T. Hannan on an earlier draft and the research assistance of Yuko Kasuya. 4 Organizational theorists and researchers use the organizational form concept in many ways, often without precise definition. This paper builds on a recent attempt to define and theorize about organizational forms in rigorous fashion, using the tools of logical formalization (Polos et al., 1998a;1998b;Carroll and Hannan 2000). It does so by tracing the possible emergence and development of a potentially new organizational form.The goal is to gain insight into the processes that generate and establish organizational forms and, ultimately, to develop systematic theory about those processes. We also hope to sharpen understanding of differences among various uses of the form concept.Our research strategy is unconventional. It involves identifying and documenting a product--disk drive arrays--for which there is a large market but which may or may not spawn an institutionalized organizational form by our definition. In other words, we chose a potential organizational form in midstream. We did so to catch the form-generating processes in action and to minimize retrospective bias problems that would arise by choosing an established form. Whether the product and its market will eventually produce an organizational form or not is beside th...

Abstract-Understanding the communication process in product development organizations has been recognized as a key element to improve product development performance. It is particularly interesting to study information exchanges in geographically distributed product development teams because of the highly interdependent nature of design organizations. Additionally, the use of electronic-based communication media has changed how development teams communicate. By studying the way product development teams use various communication media (face-to-face, telephone, and e-mail), we assess how the process of exchanging technical information is influenced by factors such as geographic dispersion, organizational bonds, and degree of team interdependence. We present a model that allows us to formulate several hypotheses about how these factors influence both communication frequency and media choice. We use empirical evidence from the telecommunications industry to test our hypotheses. We confirm previous results about the obstructive influence of distance on technical communication. However, we found that such negative effects may be mitigated by other factors such as the recognizing of highly interdependent team members, the existence of strong organizational bonds, and the use of electronic communication media.

The full-text may be used and/or reproduced, and given to third parties in any format or medium, without prior permission or charge, for personal research or study, educational, or not-for-pro t purposes provided that:• a full bibliographic reference is made to the original source • a link is made to the metadata record in DRO • the full-text is not changed in any way The full-text must not be sold in any format or medium without the formal permission of the copyright holders.Please consult the full DRO policy for further details.

How do spin-offs—new ventures created by former employees of an incumbent firm—affect the technological performance of their parents? Conventional wisdom holds that spin-offs hurt parent firms: the parent loses key staff, routines are disrupted, and performance declines. Although having some basis in fact, we think the negative effects are overstated. We argue that spin-offs can enable parent firms to realign with their environment, thereby avoiding the oncoming obsolescence arising from the combination of organizational inertia and environmental drift. Using data from the hard disk drive industry, we find evidence that although the main effect of having a spin-off on a parent firm's technological performance is positive, the overall impact of a spin-off depends upon the technological sophistication of the spin-off and the time since the spin-off occurred. Indeed, parent firms of technologically sophisticated (successful) spin-offs initially suffer poorer technological performance, but over time they outperform firms that had no spin-offs. Both effects are amplified to the extent that the spin-off is more successful, which we attribute to both increased environmental realignment and the positive signal that successful spin-offs transmit to the broader labor market about the parent organization's reputation as an incubator of entrepreneurs and a desirable place to work.