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The purpose of this paper is to identify sensing, seizing and reconfiguring routines of dynamic capabilities that enable digital transformation in firms.

A qualitative approach is used. Representatives from a firm going through digital transformations are interviewed, and focus groups have been carried out with a consultancy firm experienced in giving advice to firms going through digital transformation.

Six routines identified as relevant specifically for digital transformation are identified. These are cross-industrial digital sensing, inside-out digital infrastructure sensing, digital strategy development, determination of enterprise boundaries, decomposition of digital transformation into specified projects and creation of a unified digital infrastructure.

The authors provide direction for managers on how to approach digital transformation. In relation to previous research, the authors provide more specific guidance regarding how to reconfigure the organization in digital transformation.

The paper uses a novel context for digital transformation and complements the very few studies available using dynamic capabilities to understand digital transformation.

Many barriers prevent firms from changing their business models. Inertia, as it accumulates over time, transforms into organizational routines that doom change; however, it can also be a source of organizational flexibility. How does a business model evolve in interaction with organizational routines? This paper aims to study the interactions between forms of participative innovation (PI) and existing business models.

The exploratory approach includes interviews, participant and non-participant observations and archive analysis. It adapts an existing framework, based on the notion of scripts, to the evolutionary dynamic of organizational routines at the French railway company SNCF. The analysis of a set of contextual elements clarifies events over time and interactions between PI and the company’s business model.

The empirical insights indicate how existing routines can help reinvent business models. Business model components evolve along the transformation phases of PI. The case reveals co-evolutionary dynamics: evolution of the organizational routine from bureaucratic suggestion, to structured innovation, to PI leads to the transformation of the business model from functionalist, to customer-centric, to open business model.

Firm managers can think more proactively about how to reinvent established business models by innovating their existing routines, according to the position and role of routines, shifting from sources of rigidity and inertia to levers for innovation and change.

The business model concept serves as a prism of analysis for organizational routines. Organizational routines are sources of flexibility, strategic renewal and business model reinvention.

Post-acquisition integration matters for overall M&A outcome. However within this phase researchers have struggled to identify clear links between integration activities and post-acquisition outcome. This may be due to using organisational levels of analysis, where sub-organisational issues serve to confound findings. In order to unpack the post-acquisition phase, and to delve more deeply into organisations, this paper adopts a more granular perspective on integration activities by focusing upon the building blocks of organisations. Specifically we investigate ordinary routine amalgamation and their impact upon meta-routine outcome during acquisition integration. Drawing upon two longitudinal integration cases and using ‘retroductive’ analysis, two types of amalgamation are identified, namely ‘combination’ and ‘superimposition’. We find that, while the basic nature of routines, such as multiplicity and nestedness, inhibit routine amalgamation, external interference in the form of context, structural change or introduction of additional routines is needed to stabilise amalgamated routines. From our findings we are able to suggest a number of testable propositions about the factors that influence the amalgamation of routines. This empirical study contributes to the M&A literature by opening up the ‘black box’ of post-acquisition integration by providing details at a granular level of what actually happens during integrations.

The purpose of this paper is to examine whether alliance portfolio R&D intensity contributes to biopharmaceutical firms' number of new product approvals and whether alliance portfolio R&D intensity is more positively related to the number of new product approvals for pharmaceutical firms than for biotechnology firms.

The paper employs a random effects Poisson regression model using panel data of 821 firm year observations for 146 biopharmaceutical firms operating in the USA. The robustness of results is also checked with additional analysis, provided in an appendix.

The results of this study show that the R&D intensity of firms' alliance portfolios is positively related to their new product introductions. It is also found that alliance portfolio R&D intensity has a more positive impact on the pharmaceutical segment of the industry's new product introductions than those of the biotechnology segment.

The authors develop and test theory about how the combined effects of two dimensions of alliance portfolio configuration (size and relationship strength) positively impact new product development. The authors propose a two dimensional alliance portfolio configuration measure, alliance portfolio R&D intensity. They combine the number of R&D alliances relative to the total number of alliances in the portfolio with the differential strength of ties associated with resource commitments required to source information from upstream and downstream alliances.

This research explores perceptions of knowledge management processes held by managers and employees in a service industry. To date, empirical research on knowledge management in the service industry is sparse. This research seeks to examine absorptive capacity and its four capabilities of acquisition, assimilation, transformation and exploitation and their impact on effective knowledge management. All of these capabilities are strategies that enable external knowledge to be recognized, imported and integrated into, and further developed within the organization effectively. The research tests the relationships between absorptive capacity and effective knowledge management through analysis of quantitative data (n = 549) drawn from managers and employees in 35 residential aged care organizations in Western Australia. Responses were analysed using Partial Least Square-based Structural Equation Modelling. Additional analysis was conducted to assess if the job role (of manager or employee) and three industry context variables of profit motive, size of business and length of time the organization has been in business, impacted on the hypothesized relationships.

Structural model analysis examines the relationships between variables as hypothesized in the research framework. Analysis found that absorptive capacity and the four capabilities correlated significantly with effective knowledge management, with absorptive capacity explaining 56% of the total variability for effective knowledge management. Findings from this research also show that absorptive capacity and the four capabilities provide a useful framework for examining knowledge management in the service industry. Additionally, there were no significant differences in the perceptions held between managers and employees, nor between respondents in for-profit and not-for-profit organizations. Furthermore, the size of the organization and length of time the organization has been in business did not impact on absorptive capacity, the four capabilities and effective knowledge management.

The research considers implications for business in light of these findings. The role of managers in providing leadership across the knowledge management process was confirmed, as well as the importance of guiding routines and knowledge sharing throughout the organization. Further, the results indicate that within the participating organizations there are discernible differences in the way that some organizations manage their knowledge, compared to others. To achieve effective knowledge management, managers need to provide a supportive workplace culture, facilitate strong employee relationships, encourage employees to seek out new knowledge, continually engage in two-way communication with employees and provide up-to-date policies and procedures that guide employees in doing their work. The implementation of knowledge management strategies has also been shown in this research to enhance the delivery and quality of residential aged care.

The goal of this paper is to identify core IT value drivers in firms and to model them as an IT production function to help disclose and measure the IT value creation process and to guide managers in seeking adequate ways of employing the IT resource.

Based on a critical review of the literature on the resource‐based view, an IT value framework based on the constructs IT capability, resource, and routine is developed and then formalized as an IT production function.

Organizational routines are decisive for turning firm resources into an IT capability and in turn into better business process performance. Shows how the IT value creation process in general and routines in particular can be measured and formalized.

As the interaction between IT and business units is crucial for IT value generation, organizational routines provide for important knowledge flows that turn firm resources into value generating capabilities. Proposes a concrete method to measure and evaluate these routines and thereby contribute to making the IT resource controllable.

The main contribution is the identification and analytical formalization of the role of routines for IT value creation. Shows how insights from the resource‐based view, microeconomic theory (Cobb‐Douglas/CES production function), and Granovetter's strength of ties argument can be used to describe, measure, and guide IT value creation and to develop an IT production function.

The purpose of this paper is to examine the role of capacity building in reverse mentoring as an enabling routine in bringing about changes in cognitions and capabilities for strategy formulation/implementation and organisational change.

This paper is based on an action research case study of a reverse mentoring initiative for digital transformation in a large metal multinational based in India. The capacity-building action research was carried out during a consultancy project.

Top management team (TMT) change does not always provide the route to change in managerial cognition. Sometimes the TMT has to develop cognitive changes and new cognitions through learning and engage in way-finding to formulate/implement a strategy. Such learning requires routines, here digital reverse mentoring with capacity-building intervention, to enable development of personal knowledge (Eraut, 2000), along with cognitive changes, leading to development of capabilities. Such capacity-building routines serve as the enabling processes that facilitate learning and cognitive change.

This study demonstrates the value of enabling process routines to facilitate learning and cognition change in bridging strategy implementation and change. It also suggests the need to look at a strategy as way-finding in order to better understand the gap between strategy formulation, implementation and change.

The study suggests the need for development of learning and cognition change routines as enabling processes in firms and provides insights into how old economy firms may adapt to digital era.

This study documents the routine of digital reverse mentoring as an enabling process for strategy development/implementation.

The purpose of this paper is to discuss the compatibility of actor network theory (ANT) and new institutional sociology (NIS) in analysing a case study of accounting change.

This is an interpretive case study.

The Finnish case city experienced several path‐dependent changes concerning performance measurement (PM), financial reporting and the adoption of enterprise resource planning system (ERP). New tools such as the ERP have a potential to transform the actors and to change the agency of the actors. Furthermore, the concepts drawing on both ANT and NIS can together enrich analyses of accounting changes.

The case analysis suggests guidelines for using ANT and/or NIS in accounting studies.

Understanding accounting developments as an intentional and path‐dependent process affected and constrained by complex networks, pressures and actors should contribute to better management of accounting changes.

Being informed by both ANT and NIS improves our understanding of accounting change and stability, serendipity, practice variations, changes beyond the minimum required to satisfy external requirements, and of the continued use of some accounting tools despite their limited functionality. Furthermore, we introduce the concepts dynamic agency and constrained transformation for studies of accounting change.

Purpose – By analysing the experience of homelessness, this chapter aims to understand how individuals experience involuntary life changes in uncertain contexts and analyses the role of consumption, in terms of possessions and practices, along the process.

Methodology/approach – This study adopts a phenomenological approach, focusing on the homelessness experience. It involves an 18 month quasi-ethnography study in a charity that supports the homeless individuals, where interviews about their retrospective biographical accounts were performed. The data was analysed using existential phenomenological procedures.

Findings – Informants’ pathways to homelessness reveal a four-stage process of forced self-transformation (initial self, forced negotiation, transition, transformed self) which takes place across two stressful situational contexts: the triggering events for transformation (i.e. that led informants to lose their home) and the persisting state of uncertainty (i.e. further survival living in the streets).

Social implications – In the current postmodern times there is greater uncertainty surrounding individuals’ life changes. The consequences of the current economic crisis have threatened individuals to lose their homes. By having a better understanding of the way individuals experience this type of loss, the study brings new information about how to support them.

Originality/value of chapter – This study highlights contexts where Van Gennep's transformational routine may not be suitable in the current postmodern times, and provides an alternative transformational routine that takes into account the uncertainty that accompanies involuntary transformations.