No abstract

This paper explores executive succession as an important mechanism for organization learning and, thus, for organization adaptation. We argue that executive succession can fundamentally alter the knowledge, skills and interaction processes of the senior management team. These revised skills and communication processes improve the team's ability to recognize and act on changing environmental conditions. Especially in turbulent environments, succession may be critical for improving or sustaining the performance of the firm. We explore continuity and change of CEOs and their executive teams as associated with first- and second-order organization learning, which are differentially important under stable versus turbulent environmental conditions. We also link these organization learning ideas to the nature of organization evolution. A series of hypotheses link executive-team succession and strategic reorientation to subsequent organization performance. Results in a study of 59 minicomputer firms, all founded between 1968 and 1971, indicate that succession exerts a positive influence on organization performance. We also show that it is important to distinguish between CEO succession and executive-team change, which independently improve subsequent organization performance. The positive impact of succession is accentuated when it coincides with strategic reorientation. Finally we examined how longer term patterns in succession and reorientation affect organization performance. We discovered two modes of organization adaption in this turbulent industry. The most typical mode combines CEO succession, sweeping executive-team changes, and strategic reorientations. A more rare, and over the long-term more effective, adaptational mode involves strategic reorientation and executive-team change, but no succession of the CEO. Consistently high-performing organizations are managed to sustain a relatively high level of learning (through turnover of senior executives and strategic reorientation), and at the same time to maintain links with established organizational competencies (through retention of the CEO).

No abstract

No abstract

We explore the concept of regional industrial identity as an important missing component in our understanding of the development of metropolitan regions and the spatial arrangements of industries. While economists and sociologists have explained the location of industry clusters on the basis of unevenly distributed resources, and historians have provided rich descriptive insight into the developmental dynamics of particular metropolitan regions, little systematic theory has been advanced to explain cross-regional inflows and outflows of resources, especially with respect to patterns in cluster development. This paper examines the concept of regional industrial identity as a social code that (1) arises from the shared understandings of residents and external audiences about the suitability of a region for particular kinds of business activity and (2) influences decisions about where to locate investments. We argue that such understandings are principally informed by configurations of industry clusters that have already formed in a region. Clusters, which are the results of historical investments, are also important signals about the types of business that can thrive in the future. We develop theoretical propositions linking characteristics of regional industry cluster configurations, in particular cluster dominance and cluster interrelatedness, to the strength and focus of regional identity and, as a result, to the types and amounts of resources that will develop within and flow into and out of regions.