Dynamic Capabilities: Inside the Black Box

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Dynamic Capabilities Inside the Black Box

• Mark Easterby-Smith

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Dynamic Capability

• Key features of dynamic capability
• ability to change operating routines and
  practices
• changes result from learning processes
• structured and persistent nature
• embedded in everyday practice.

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Whats Wrong with Current Views of DCs?

• Despite the rhetoric, the bulk of papers about
  DCs focus on strategic levels.
• There are few empirical studies which focus on
  operational aspects.
• Most of the research is based on post hoc
  examples of US and Japanese companies.
• The concept of DCs is normally underpinned by a
  step model of organizational change.

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Research Design

• Focus cases of innovation and new projects
  (compare more/less successful ones).
• Data mainly interviews, plus some observation.
• Access visits for 3-4 days, plus follow-ups.
• Contact periodic meetings with sponsor.
• Theory pre-ordinate and emergent.

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Perspectives on Dynamic Capabilities (after about
75 interviews)

• Strategic vs. operational views
• Path-dependency and signatures
• HR recruitment, training, PM, careers
• Making sense of the environment
• Top team relationships
• Employee identification
• Changing core competencies
• Role and nature of innovation
• Endogenous organizational learning
• Exogenous OL - absorptive capacity (and politics)

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Early Similarities between Companies

• Open and enquiring top management
• Strategy driven by small top team, but
• Internal debates on performance (mgt)
• Tension between specialisation and labour
  flexibility.
• Under constant external (internal) threat.
• Critical need to manage external relations

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Company Differences
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Collaboration and Feedback

• Local spotlight
• What are you doing to help/ hinder learning?
• How well do you manage innovation? (DCs).
• External comparisons
• Context and environment
• Best practices
• Implications/ outcomes
• Identify 1 or 2 priority areas for local actions.
• Identify best practices for (potential)
  dissemination.