Sorensen and Stuart (2000)

Question 1

research question

Answer 1

this paper investigates the relationship between organisation aging and innovation processes to illuminate the dynamics of high-technology-industries, as well to resolve debates in organisational theory about the effects of aging on organisational functioning.

Question 2

hypotheses

Answer 2

H1: organisation age will be positively associated with the rate of innovation.
H2: when compared with young companies, older firms will show a greater tendency to build on their previous innovative activitiy.
H3: as firms age, their current-period innovations will elaborate and refine older areas of technology.
H4: in the broader industrial community, the innovations of older firms will be less influential on subsequent technology development than will those of their younger counterparts.

Question 3

local search

Answer 3

Markovian concept of adaptation, in which organisational change is seen as the product of searches for new practices in the neighbourhood of an organisation’s existing routines.

Question 4

obsolescence

Answer 4

due to changes in external circumstances over time; it is not caused by a decline in internal organisation efficiency.

Question 5

competency traps

Answer 5

trap organisations because prior innovative successes reinforce established routines even as the technological frontier shifts to new areas.

Question 6

research method

Answer 6

• research based on literature on organisational ecology, evolutionary theory, and learning theory.
• only literature of samples of firms (n=150) drawn from two high-technology industries (semiconductors and biotechnology).

Question 7

measures

Answer 7

patent-based measure of innovation with two types of patents; self-citing patents and non-self-citing patents.
- they controlled for CEO changes.

Question 8

self-citing patents

Answer 8

include one or more citations to the firm’s prior patents and are thus related to prior endeavours.

Question 9

non-self-citing patents

Answer 9

do not build on the firm’s earlier patented inventions and are thus a departure from a focal firm’s previous innovative activity.

Question 10

results

Answer 10

• on the one hand, experience with a set of organisational routines leads to gains in the efficiency with which these routines are executed.
• on the other hand, in rapidly changing environments, the fit between organisational capabilities and environmental demands declines with age.
• also, as organisations age they generate more innovations because the competence to produce new innovations improves.
• however, there is an increasing divergence between organisational competence and current environmental demands.
• results are consistent across diverse technological contexts, semiconductors, and biotechnology.

Question 11

contribution/further research

Answer 11

this paper sheds light on some of the competing mechanisms posited in ecological theories and contributes to scare empirical evidence to the debate over the behavioural changes associated with organisational aging.