Research On Organizational Modularity And Firm's Adaptability

In the context of the current business environment becoming increasingly complex and dynamic, the research on the firm's adaptability makes important practical and theoretical significance. For the issue of how to better adapt to the complexity and dynamism, the researchers in fields of organizational design and strategic management have made complementary and valuable explorations, respectively from the approaches of organizational modularity (OM) and dynamic capabilities (DC). However, there is no effective research to integrate them and a lack of a clear and in-depth analysis on the mechanism of how OM and DC affect firm's adaptability. As a result, in the knowledge-based view of the firm, this thesis took the slightly immature relationship between OM and adaptability as the main line of analysis, and then conducted a series of theoretical and empirical studies on OM, DC and firm's adaptability.Study 1 reflected on the relationship between modularity and near decomposability (ND), developed a framework for comparing the level of modularity, and used a simulation experiment to support related arguments. For the contradiction between the results of existing simulation studies and empirical observation due to the failure in distinguish modularity from ND in extant studies, the author argued that, the modular structure is a special case of nearly decomposable structures where the interactions between modules are specified by design rules, and the level of modularity is determined by the level of ND and design rules together. A new simulation experiments show that, while creating design rules, organization should raise its level of ND, so that there would be less restriction effects of design rules on local search and module diversity and more option values for module substitution.Study 2 revealed that the cognitive base of DC is an accommodation process of schema dominated by active processing and assisted by automatic processing, which solved the puzzlement about the nature of DC in existing studies. We argued that OC are characterized by automatic processing which helps to runing ordinary activities speedily and reliability, while DC are characterized by active processing which helps to changeing the current schema and routines to adapt to dynamic environment. Integrating the architecture theory of complexity, the thesis further divided organizational capabilities into OC and DC in component levels and OC and DC in architectural level. An expended simulation experiment illustrated the different roles of these for types of organizational capabilities, and founded the more important roles of architectural DC in organizational adaptation.Study 3 discovered the positive effect of OM on DC, based on an exploratory case study on GiantKONE Elevator Company (GK). The author firstly took the tools of organigraphs and structure matrix to describe the modularity in GK; then, by clarifying the development process of DCs in GK, we discovered a potential causal tie of the fact that "OM increased first and DC increased later"; finally, with further analysis on this causal ties, the thesis put forward the proposition on the positive effect of MO on DC.Study 4 verified a causal model consisted of OM, DC and organizational adaptability (OA). First, following the connotation of above core concepts, the thesis defined all of them as formative multidimensional constructs, that is OM is formed by ND and design rules, DC is formed by sensing, seizing and reconfiguring capacity and OA is formed by exploratory and exploitative innovation. Then, in the level of first-level dimensions, we explained the influence paths between second-order construct and developed some hypotheses. The empirical result of PLS-based SEM supported the mediating role of DC between MO and OA, but denied the immediate effect of MO on OA and the moderating role of environmental dynamism on the relationship between DC and OA. Meanwhile, the results of PLS-based SEM also verified the internal structures of OM, DC and OA, and interestingly showed that exploratory innovation makes more contribution to its higher order construct, organizational adaptability (OA), than the other dimension, exploitive innovation.