Business model innovations emerge over time and are influenced by managerial interaction with stakeholders. Especially with regard to business model innovation for sustainability, manager-stakeholder interaction can radically change a company’s business model and underlying logic. However, the majority of the literature shows how manager–stakeholder interaction may limit business model innovation when stakeholders reinforce existing managerial cognitions. In this chapter we study how stakeholders can also stimulate business model innovation by affecting managerial cognitive change. Through three case studies, we find that this can occur through three shaping processes: market approach shaping, product/service offering shaping, and credibility shaping. We also find that the impact of new or latent stakeholders is greater than that of existing stakeholders. We end the chapter by sketching a research agenda to further unravel the role of stakeholders affecting managerial cognition around business model innovation for sustainability.
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Purpose – The purpose of this paper is to develop a model on how business managers perceive that an employee’s psychological contract influences his or her attitude toward an organizational change. More specifically, it aims to provide insight into the managerial views on: first, the affective, behavioral and cognitive responses of employees toward organizational change; second, the pre-change and change antecedents of these responses; and third, the role of the psychological contract as a pre-change antecedent. Design/methodology/approach – Data were collected from in-depth interviews with 39 human resource directors, change managers and management consultants in eight European countries. Based on detailed grounded theory-driven analyses of the qualitative data, a conceptual model was developed. Findings – Based on the grounded theory analysis, a model emerged that positions the individual change perception and individual answer to the “what’s in it for me?” question as central determinants of an employee’s attitude toward change. Moreover, the model distinguishes between “influencing” variables that shape the employees’ change perception, and “overruling” variables that can potentially reverse the change perceptions. Practical implications – A strong emphasis on managing the employment relationship by fulfilling mutual obligations and by creating trust will yield more constructive responses to organizational change than focussing on managing an organizational change as an independent event. Originality/value – As one of the first in its field, this study provides insight in the sense-making processes during organizational change, while adopting a managerial perspective. A grounded theory approach by means of interviewing, serves as a first step toward better understanding of the development of employees’ affective, behavioral and cognitive responses to organizational change.
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The literature on how organizations respond to institutional pressure has shown that the individual decision-makers’ interpretation of institutional pressure played an important role in developing organizational responses. However, it has paid less attention to how this interpretation ultimately contributes to their range of organizational decisions when responding to the same institutional pressure. We address this gap by interviewing board members of U.S. and Dutch hospitals involved in adopting best practices regarding board evaluation. We found four qualitatively different cognitive frames that board members relied on to interpret institutional pressure, and which shaped their organizational response. We contribute to the literature on organizational response to institutional pressure by empirically investigating how decision-makers interpret institutional pressure, by suggesting prior experience and role definition as moderating factors of multidimensional cognitive frames, and by showing how these cognitive frames influence board members’ response to the same institutional pressure.
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