Organizations and Markets

EGOS 2012, “Self-reinforcing Processes in Organizations, Networks and Professions”

24 September 2011 at 5:03 pm Peter G. Klein 3 comments

| Peter Klein |

The European Group of Organizational Studies (EGOS) is having the 2012 annual conference in Helsinki, July 2-7. The overall theme is design, and one of the subthemes is “Self-reinforcing Processes in Organizations, Networks and Professions,” a subject sure to interest many O&Mers. See the links above for details. Blurb after the fold:

‘Self-reinforcement dynamics’ are defined as a process of positive feedback in which the increase of a particular variable leads to a further increase of this very variable. Examples of such intended and unintended processes, which bring about an action pattern which eventually gets deeply embedded in (inter-) organizational or professional practice, are self-justification, increasing returns, positive and negative network externalities, and adjusting expectations. The sub-theme particularly invites contributions that focus on one or more of the following issues:

• The role of triggering events and actions in self-reinforcing processes
• Organizational learning and self-reinforcing dynamics.
• The logic of self-reinforcing mechanisms and their development over time (network effects, economies of scale, complementarities, etc.)
• Surfacing self-reinforcing patterns in organizations and/or professions: making self-reinforcing dynamics reflexive
• Studying self-reinforcing processes and systemic practices in organizations and/or professions, e.g. the mutual institutionalization of professional roles and professional schools.
• Analyzing self-reinforcing processes in inter-organizational relations and practices, focusing, e.g., on science-industry relations, regional clusters, local and global financial markets, etc.
• The interaction between self-reinforcing processes at different levels (individual, group, organizational, network, field, profession) and the underlying linkages.
• Breaking the code: to stop self-reinforcement with the help of intentional and unintentional activities (e.g. stopping events, break outs, paradoxical interventions by third party, or designing unlearning patterns).
• Designing self-reinforcing mechanisms?
• Characteristics of “lock-in” stages and related events.

The sub-theme intends to foster an exchange of theoretical ideas and empirical research results across various substantive issues and theoretical traditions that are important for better understanding self-reinforcing dynamics. Papers that discuss such substantive issues, and possibly others, empirically or conceptually, comparatively or monographically, with regard to recent or more historical developments, are cordially invited.

Entry filed under: - Klein -, Conferences, Evolutionary Economics, Innovation, Institutions, Management Theory, Theory of the Firm.