Institutional Logics and Interorganizational Learning in Technological Arenas: Evidence from Standard-Setting Organizations in the Mobile Handset Industry

Abstract

Institutional logics and inter-organizational learning in technological arenas: Evidence from standard setting organizations in the mobile handset industry. Organization Science, 26 (3). pp. 830-846. ISSN 1047-7039 Available from: http://eprints.uwe.ac.uk/25399We recommend you cite the published version. The publisher's URL is: http://dx.doi.org/10.1287/orsc.2014.0940Refereed: No (no note) Disclaimer UWE has obtained warranties from all depositors as to their title in the material deposited and as to their right to deposit such material. UWE makes no representation or warranties of commercial utility, title, or fitness for a particular purpose or any other warranty, express or implied in respect of any material deposited. UWE makes no representation that the use of the materials will not infringe any patent, copyright, trademark or other property or proprietary rights. UWE accepts no liability for any infringement of intellectual property rights in any material deposited but will remove such material from public view pending investigation in the event of an allegation of any such infringement. We would like to express our sincere gratitude to the three anonymous reviewers and Senior Editor William Ocasio for providing us with excellent guidance throughout the review process. We greatly benefited from the feedback provided by the seminar participants at the University of Minnesota, University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign, the Ohio State University and the University of Alberta. We are indebted to our interviewees from various telecommunications standard setting organizations for sharing their valuable insights with us. Timothy Simcoe, Andrew Van de Ven, Joel Waldfogel and Akbar Zaheer provided helpful comments. All errors remain our own. PLEASE SCROLL DOWN FOR TEXT. 2 AbstractConceptualizing standard setting organizations (SSOs) as technological arenas within which firms from different countries interact and learn, we offer insights into the interplay between firms' institutional logics and their inter-organizational learning outcomes. We suggest that firms' inter-organizational learning is embedded in their macro-level country contexts, characterized by more corporatist versus less corporatist (pluralist) institutional logics. Whereas corporatism spurs coordinated approaches, pluralism engenders competitive interactions that affect the extent to which firms span organizational and technological boundaries and learn from each other. We test our theory using longitudinal analysis of 181 dyads involving 26 firms participating in 17 SSOs in the global mobile handset industry. We find that inter-organizational learning, measured by patent citations, involving corporatist firm dyads significantly increases when the dominant logic within the arena is also corporatist. By making cooperative schemas more accessible a dominant corporatist logic also enhances inter-organizational learning across technologically distant dyads. When a pluralist logic dominates the arena, corporatist dyads learn less because firms in the...

Drivers for Companies’ Entry Into Standard-Setting Organizations

“…Internationally active companies represented in the SSO include big players such as Bosch, Siemens, and IBM, which are multinational companies. Since Vasudeva et al [98] find that firms' interorganizational learning within standardization is embedded in their macro-level country context, a replication of the study for other national SSOs, like DIN in Germany, would allow a further confirmation of the identified firm-level characteristics as drivers of firms' entry decisions. Furthermore, the firms' competitive environment is not included in the analysis, which certainly has a strong influence on entering coopetition-like setting firms find themselves in when entering formal standardization committees.…”

“…Wiegmann [104] show that companies often simultaneously engage in markets, SSOs and lobbying. Moreover, Leiponen [65] and Bar and Leiponen [8] and recently Vasudeva et al [98] have begun to investigate companies' contributions to activities within SSOs. At the same time, SSOs are growing in importance due to the globalization of innovation [27].…”

Corporate Governance Deviance

“…Ample research demonstrates that nation-state institutional logics strongly affect organizational outcomes and their legitimation. Examples include the organization of railroads (Dobbin, 1994) and inter-organizational learning effectiveness across technological areas (Vasudeva, Alexander, & Jones, 2015). These studies demonstrate the non-trivial role of national institutional logics, illustrating that organizations tend to adopt nationally-scripted practices and operate within an acceptable zone of conformity 1 (Bundy & Pfarrer, 2015:353).…”

Managed Ecosystems and Translucent Institutional Logics: Engaging Communities

“…Foundational institutional theory research asserts that firm structures take the characteristics of their environments rather than of their activities (Meyer and Rowan, 1977). Newer institutional logics research reflects the increasing complexity of modern organizations and their interactions with their environment (Marquis and Lounsbury, 2007;Vasudeva, Alexander, Jones, 2015), and challenges associated with plural, blended, and sometimes competing logics (Geng, Yoshikawa, Colpan, 2016;Lounsbury, 2007;Ramus, Vaccaro, Brusoni, 2016). Thornton, Ocasio, and Lounsbury (2012) highlight that the institutional logics perspective is "a new approach to culture, structure, and process" (p.iii).…”