The power of imperfect imitation

Posen, Hart E.; Lee, Jeho; Yi, Sangyoon

doi:10.1002/smj.2007

Cited by 135 publications

(93 citation statements)

References 37 publications

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“…On the one hand, organizations seek to practice (Ansari et al, 2010). On the other hand, organizations strive to encourage effectiveness (Posen, Lee & Yi, 2013) or facilitate innovation (Canato et al, forthcoming). allowing for variation?…”

Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

How are Practices Made to Vary? Managing Practice Adaptation in a Multinational Corporation

Ansari

Reinecke

Spaan³

2014

Organization Studies

127

164

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Abstractthe specific context into which they are adopted. Less attention has been paid to how organizations anticipate and purposefully influence the adaptation process. How do organizations manage the tension between allowing local adaptation of a management practice and retaining control over the practice? By studying the adaptation of a specialized quality management practice ACE (Achieving Competitive Excellence) in a multinational corporation in the aerospace industry, we examine how the organization manages the adaptation process at the corporate and subsidiary levels. We identified three strategies through which an organization balances the tension between standardization and variation preserving the he subsidiary level;; 1) creating and certifying progressive achievement levels;; 2) setting discretionary and mandatory adaptation parameters;; and 3) differentially adapting to context -specific and systemic misfits. While previous studies have shown how and why practices vary as they diffuse, we show how practices may diffuse because they are engineered to vary for allowing a better fit with diverse contextual specificities.

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Section: Introductionmentioning

confidence: 99%

How are Practices Made to Vary? Managing Practice Adaptation in a Multinational Corporation

Ansari

Reinecke

Spaan³

2014

Organization Studies

127

164

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“…For Posen et al (2013), the perfect imitation represents the unilateral uptake of a flow of information from the innovative organization to the imitative organization. Only information and knowledge from an innovator are included in the process of a total imitation.…”

Section: Total Imitationmentioning

confidence: 99%

“…With a pure imitation, an organization can never achieve a competitive advantage (Posen & al., 2013). According to this author, the acquisition of a competitive advantage depends on the type imitation.…”

Section: Partial Imitationmentioning

confidence: 99%

Inter-organizational imitation: Definition and typology

Bourkha¹,

Belfellah²

2017

AFC

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The sustained idea of this article is that the concept of imitation has not been sufficiently developed in the field of strategic management and has often been confused with the notion of mimicry. Therefore, the objective of this research is to emphasize the distinction between different types of imitation unlike a lot of research on companies imitative behavior focused on one type as the perfect imitation. This will clarify ambiguities in the literature on imitation, and show that the mobilization of neo institutional theory is not sufficient to explain all the imitative behavior of organizations in a market.

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“…It is not difficult to see that changes in the technological environment that drive new product introductions are often central to the types of moves that drive Red Queen competition. For example, recent studies in the imitation and technology innovation literature (Argyres, Bigelow, & Nickerson, 2015;Giachetti & Lanzolla, 2016;Madhok, Li & Priem, 2010;Posen, Lee, & Yi, 2013) show that as industries evolve, changes in technologies and subsequently their diffusion can influence rates of imitation. Their observation complements prior work by authors such as Utterback and Suarez (1993), who point out that as the industries mature, they tend to transition from high to low levels of product technology heterogeneity, where low levels of product technology heterogeneity correspond to the emergence of design dominance.…”

Section: "Once We Become Self-consciously Aware That the Possibilitiementioning

confidence: 99%

“…Recent studies in the strategy and technology innovation literature (Argyres, Bigelow & Nickerson, 2015;Giachetti & Lanzolla, 2016;Madhok et al, 2010;Posen et al, 2013) suggest that evolving industry characteristics, in particular changes that are caused by the environment. This in turn constrains the firms' ability to learn from rivals, reducing effectiveness of imitation as a competitive weapon.…”

Section: The Moderating Effect Of Product Technology Heterogeneity Inmentioning

confidence: 99%

Red Queen Competitive Imitation in the UK Mobile Phone Industry

Giachetti

Lampel

Pira

2015

AMPROC

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RED QUEEN COMPETITIVE IMITATION IN THE UK MOBILE PHONE INDUSTRYThis paper uses Red Queen competition theory to examine competitive imitation. We conceptualize imitative actions by a focal firm and their rivals along two dimensions: imitation scope, which describes the extent to which a firm imitates a wide range (as opposed to a narrow range) of new product technologies introduced by rivals, and imitation speed, namely the pace at which it imitates these technologies. We argue that focal firm imitation scope and imitation speed drive performance, as well as imitation scope and speed decisions by rivals, which in turn influence the focal firm performance. We also argue that the impact of this self-reinforcing Red Queen process on firms' actions and performance is contingent on levels of product technology heterogeneitydefined as the extent to which the industry has multiple designs resulting in product variety. We test our hypotheses using imitative actions by mobile phone vendors and their sales performance in the UK from 1997 to 2008. (Levitt, 1966: 38). INTRODUCTION "Once we become self-consciously aware that the possibilities of innovation within any one company are in some important ways limited, we quickly see that each organization is compelled by competition to look to imitation as one of its survival and growth strategies"The emergence of what has often been referred to as the "new economy" has greatly expanded research on the power of technological innovation to create competitive dynamics that can reshape industries (Baumol, 2004;Teece, 1998). While the focus on innovation as the engine of industry evolution reflects both the potential gains that accrue to first-movers (Lieberman & Montgomery, 1988), and the dramatic impact of disruptive technologies on the competitive landscape (Christensen & Bower, 1996), it inadvertently tends to eclipse the importance of imitation as an agent of change. Researchers that take a broader perspective see imitation as the twin process to innovation that, arguably like innovation, also plays a role in industry evolution in all contexts (Cohen & Levinthal, 1989;Levitt, 1966;Semadeni & Anderson, 2010), but takes on even greater significance in the rapidly changing technologyintensive industries that constitute the new economy. As Baumol (2004) 1 2 3 4 5 6 7 8 9 10 11 12 13 14 15 16 17 18 19 20 21 22 23 24 25 26 27 28 29 30 31 32 33 34 35 36 37 38 39 40 41 42 43 44 45 46 47 48 49 50 51 52 53 54 55 56 57 58 59 60 technology -even if the technology is created by others -then its rivals can easily take the lead and make disastrous inroads into the slower firm's sales" (Baumol 2004: 246-247).Formulating an effective imitation strategy is a problem that confronts managers in any industry (Lieberman & Asaba, 2006), but in industries with rapid technological change the problem is compounded by higher levels of uncertainty about the market performance of new product technologies (Utterback & Suarez, 1993). This "technologic...

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The power of imperfect imitation

Cited by 135 publications

References 37 publications

How are Practices Made to Vary? Managing Practice Adaptation in a Multinational Corporation

How are Practices Made to Vary? Managing Practice Adaptation in a Multinational Corporation

Inter-organizational imitation: Definition and typology

Red Queen Competitive Imitation in the UK Mobile Phone Industry

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