Cognitive Framing and Incumbent Inertia in Response to Technological Discontinuities

Few topics in strategy research have attracted more attention than the faltering of established organizations, so-called incumbents, when faced with discontinuous technological change. In this dissertation, Andreas König focuses on the cognitive processes that drive incumbent response to technological discontinuities. Using longitudinal data from the book retailing industry's reaction to online retailing, he shows that managerial perceptions of gain, loss, and control determine the degree to which organizations allocate resources to discontinuous technologies, and the way in which decision makers use these resources. He also elaborates on the roles that trust, mimetic isomorphism, ambiguity aversion and structural design play in the context of organizational adaptation. This book is of relevance particularly to four groups of readers: first, scholars in the fleld of strategy and innovation interested in cognitive sense making and managerial behavior in times of radical environmental change; second, scholars interested in the use of replication studies as a research strategy; third, managers of organizations seeking to survive and prosper through the dynamics of creative destruction; and, finally, all interested in recent developments in the book industry.