Abstract
This chapter contributes to the understanding of the adoption of controversial innovations in the context of organizational change. In situations of controversy, organizational change is likely to be resisted. The authors argue that the management-induced diffusion of new conventions and behaviors related to communication and cooperation in an organization depends on informal and lateral rather than formal and hierarchical networks of communication. In their empirical study on corporate change from technology to market-orientation in a medium-sized ophthalmological engineering company in southern Germany, the degree of convergence toward market-orientation depends on the social proximity to the promoters of innovation in an informal knowledge network. They find that social proximity to promoters in the formal network has no effect. Hence, in situations of controversy innovations are more likely to diffuse through informal relations of conviction than through formal relations of command.
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Notes
- 1.
Katalux is a pseudonym.
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Glückler, J., Panitz, R. (2014). Command or Conviction? Informal Networks and the Diffusion of Controversial Innovations. In: Berthoin Antal, A., Meusburger, P., Suarsana, L. (eds) Learning Organizations. Knowledge and Space, vol 6. Springer, Dordrecht. https://doi.org/10.1007/978-94-007-7220-5_4
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