Peter Clark: Organizational Innovations - Book Review

2002, London: Sage Publications. 226 pages 60 [pounds sterling], ISBN 0761958819 (hbk); 19.99 [pounds sterling], ISBN 0761958827 (pbk)

This book is laden with content. It examines organizational innovations from the perspective of both the currently dominant supplier and the potentially gullible, far more silent user, taking into consideration the broader global context of varying national innovation policies and large companies whose innovations span many countries. Viewing organizational innovations as part of a theoretical agenda provides most of the material. The agenda is shown to be moving from structural to processual solutions, held within an 'electronic embrace' (ICT), and part of a new political economy. Lost already? As 'icing on the cake', the book also embraces the concepts of power and knowledge in association with information technology. There is inevitably far more content than can be summarized here, or rather to summarize the content would do the book an injustice, so what follows is more of an indication of the type of content included in its pages.

As regards the 'old agenda' versus the 'new agenda', the book describes, analyses and comments upon the move away from the 'structure of technological innovation' to the 'processes of technological innovation'. This process orientation highlights meta-frameworks (issues and dilemmas to do with structure and agency as well as innovation and efficiency), and different rates of change, and downplays universal laws and deterministic theory. These processes are viewed in terms of political economy, which is characterized by global competition, multiple forms of capitalism, national systems of innovation and a trend towards mass customization. The new agenda is said to involve viewing the firm not only in context, but as part of a system created by it and which it creates, with a networked structure of clusters and webs.

The discussion of this new agenda is extended to include knowledge, power and technology. The notion of technology as an artefact and hence technological determinism, as well as innovation in terms of the duality of technology and social organization as artefacts of each other, are considered as passe. These views are replaced by a broader sphere of investigation which includes national systems of innovation and international transfer of innovations, change in the form of institutional theory and the role of fashions, social constructions as ever more durable, electronically embraced networks, and, last but not least, the question of what knowledge is. Power is seen as operating within organizations and between research programmes.

Associated with this trend towards a processual, knowledge-based agenda, the author includes chapters on space and time as well as multi-level analysis. Organizational innovations occupy space in terms of degree of adoption, and time in terms of duration of adoption. Space-time becomes commodified and colonized as innovations are adopted and are stretched or condensed according to cognitive factors, ICT and geographic dimensions. Thus a more complex view of innovation is promoted by advocating that the past, present and future, developments in terms of continuity, surprise and changing contingencies, and rate of change, are all taken into consideration.

As soon as time is taken into consideration, it seems logical to also work at multiple levels, examining stasis and transformation at each level and between these levels, considering organizational innovations as originating and operating within a system, rather than the innovation or individuals being separated from the system. As an extension of space-time, the analysis of organizational innovations is placed in the context of event cycles that implicate outcomes. Attention is directed towards pace, fundamental principles, and how those principles operate in certain instances, looking at adaptation and selection and analysing whether the system dynamics are sustainable.

The book then moves to the more specific area of national and global contexts of innovation. An analytical framework is developed which incorporates national systems composed of natural resources and ideas, the role of institutions in promoting isomorphism or not, and organizational choice within that context of institutions and nations. The emphasis is placed on organizations working within broader systems made up of other national systems and institutions and, in the case of global companies, becoming to some degree those broader systems.

The diffusion of innovations is then taken more overtly into the realms of market and consumption. Attention is drawn towards the conventions of markets such as the role of the media, knowledge as a foundation of capitalism, and theatres of consumption whereby markets are developed. Coordinating roles of markets with production are discussed in terms of risk, uncertainty, the basis for competition and quality. Coordination and consumption are linked to notions of efficiency, professional norms, mass customization and mass standardization.

Once again, in more specific terms, the diffusion of innovation is seen through the 'suppliers' gaze', thereby emphasizing the vested interests of the suppliers. Of particular interest is the commentary provided on the 'pro-innovation bias' where innovation is seen as positive, easy to adopt, a matter of best practice, linear, and suppliers as neutral. The use of rhetoric and seduction by suppliers is commented upon, as well as the role of the media in promoting such things as league tables of performance. Objectified templates and structured methodologies are seen as leading to black-boxing of innovation, whereby the innovation moves away from working principles to take on a form of symbolism, a promise to deliver.

Moving (back) to a more holistic view, the 'decision episode framework' (DEF) is used to place the pool of innovations in the context of users and suppliers. Users become firms with differential capacities to absorb innovation, and legitimate suppliers become much broader than universities. Specifically, the DEF shows how suppliers use structured toolkits to seduce users, whereas users bring uncertainty in the form of degrees of adoption, integration, customization and perceived levels of success. The process of adoption includes the stages of agenda selection, design and selection, installation, and usage.

Having examined the content, we now move to appraise and evaluate the content. I doubt if it will surprise you to bear that this book is far from easy to read. This is because it is packed with summaries of interwoven theories. That said, the reader cannot fail to have a mind enriched by the experience of listening to what this book has to say. In my case, however, the examples given did not serve to help in making the content come alive, but served to confuse me as to what the book was using as a working definition of organizational innovation.

In the opening section of the book, what might be considered to be conventional organizational innovations such as BPR, Value Chain, Corporate Culture and One Minute Manager are mentioned. Only BPR in the form of its current association with Enterprise Information Systems (CRM, SCM, ERP etc.), termed 'SCITS' by the author (Strategic Coordination Information Technology Systems), appears to be discussed in later chapters. The term 'organizational innovation' is never overtly defined. Nor are recent organizational structural innovations such as the boundaryless organization or the N-form considered as organizational innovations.

Furthermore, placing the book within a broader agenda, the implications of the term 'organizational innovation' mean everything from an airport hook purchase by a manager desperate to be 'educated' to the reflective interpretation and application of an article in a learned journal. Equally, the 'suppliers' gaze' is not evaluated in terms of the paradoxical dynamic between intellectualism and commercialism, as well as between ivory tower thinking and the reality of conducting research in association with practice. An example would be the contrast between 'Knowledge management' and the 'Knowledge-based view of the firm': in the case of the former, in terms of institutional theory's ability to explain the adoption of fads without thought; and in the case of the latter, in the form of the largely failed attempts within academia to create a definition of knowledge that is at the same time intellectual, related to sustainable performance and practically engaging.

The material is not easy to digest, and the structure of the book does not make the process of reading less difficult, given the bias towards theory which, by definition, makes for some heavy reading. There is a general flow from background theory to the more specific area of users and suppliers of innovations, but that flow is not smooth, for a number of reasons. First, the chapters finish abruptly without summary, conclusion, or lead into the next chapter. Second, areas of content seem to be discussed in more than one place without an obvious reason. For example, the chapter on 'Global contexts and national innovation design' is not followed by the chapter 'Global transfers and national specificities'--this follows after another four chapters. Also, these two chapters dealing with global issues are not perhaps as distinct as their rifles suggest. Third, the reader is sometimes faced with sentences which appear to contain insufficient information. Examples include: 'These are the social made durable' (p. 11), where the nature of 'these' is not too clear; 'The effects of modulation can be detected in the dress codes imposed by large accountancy firms' (p. 18), where the effects are not explained; and 'This path-breaking analysis of the multi-divisional form as organizational artefacts by Chandler (1962) was misunderstood' (p. 23) where there is no explanation of how it was misunderstood.

I end with the thought that this book is perhaps as much a review of organization theory as it is an analysis of organizational innovations. This makes for a challenging rather than accessible read. That said, the wide range of concepts and the juxtaposition of these concepts in such an intense format can intrigue and inform if the challenge is adopted with the spirit in which it is, I presume, meant to be confronted!

Jill Shepherd Graduate School of Business, University of Strathclyde, UK

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