Designing Organizational Capabilities: From Aggregation to Emergence
Thursday 20 May 2010, 13:00
LT9
Teppo Felin
Assistant Professor & Lee Perry Fellow
Department of Organizational Leadership and Strategy
Marriott School, Brigham Young University
Designing Organizational Capabilities: From Aggregation to Emergence
In this paper we argue that capabilities are designed. Specifically, we focus on the role of design and structure in the emergence (or not) of organizational capabilities. While an aggregational view of organizational capabilities focuses on the individuals that compose the organization, we emphasize that capabilities may remain dormant (and thus unrealized) if structures are inappropriately designed. In other words, we argue that organizational design choices — associated with information processing and decision rights — can either enable or constrain the full realization of the capabilities that exist in the organization (in the form of individuals). Furthermore, we highlight individual and design capability interaction effects and find, somewhat surprisingly, that design plays a comparatively more important role than individual capability in shaping organizational outcomes. Overall, the purpose of this paper is to explicate the role that the design of appropriate information processing and decision-making structures plays in the emergence of capabilities.
Tea & Coffee provided.
All staff and doctoral students welcome.
For further info
email Kathryn Fahy at For catering purposes please confirm attendance with Fran Riley at f.riley@lancaster.ac.uk.k.fahy@lancaster.ac.uk. Details and abstracts for this and forthcoming seminars will be posted once confirmed at http://www.lums.lancs.ac.uk/events/strategy/.
