How dynamic can organizational capabilities be?: Towards a dual-process model of capability dynamization

• 成果类型: Review
• 署名作者: Schreyoegg, Georg; Kliesch-Eberl, Martina
• 署名单位: Free University of Berlin
• 刊物名称: STRATEGIC MANAGEMENT JOURNAL
• ISSN/ISSBN: 0143-2095
• DOI: 10.1002/smj.613
• 发表日期: 2007
• 页码: 913-933
• 关键词: RESOURCE-BASED VIEW; evolutionary economics; ORGANIZATIONAL CAPABILITIES; DYNAMIC CAPABILITIES; organizational rigidities; COMMITMENT; monitoring

摘要

The recent discussion in the field of strategic management broadly favors the idea of dynamic capabilities in order to overcome potential rigidities of organizational capability building. The major question addressed in this paper is whether capabilities can actually be conceived as being in flux-and if so, to what extent and in which way? After briefly recapitulating the distinguishing features of organizational capabilities, path dependency, structural inertia, and commitment are identified as the main capability-rigidity drivers causing a managerial dilemma. In the search for a resolution of this dilemma different approaches of dynamic capabilities are identified and discussed. The analysis shows that the approaches suffer from inherent conceptual contradictions: the dynamization runs the risk of dissolving the original idea and strength of organizational capability building. Ultimately, capabilities would lose the strategic power attributed to them in the resource-based view. The last section of this paper therefore aims to develop an alternative approach, which aims at preserving the original merits of organizational capability and solving the rigidity issue not by integrating a dynamic dimension into the capability construct but rather by establishing a separate function ('capability monitoring'). The suggestions mount up to a tier solution. Its logic builds on the dynamics of countervailing processes and second-level observation. Copyright (C) 2007 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.