| This research project examines the role of inertia in explaining the innovative behavior of organizations. While the inertia lens has played a key role in our understanding of organizational change, the literature has neglected an important dimension of inertia: the consistency of change. Consistency of change refers to the principle that a body in motion remains in uniform motion unless acted upon by external forces (Newton, 1995/1687).; In this study, I develop a consistency of change theoretical perspective by integrating temporal pacing research (Brown and Eisenhardt, 1997) and routines-based theory from evolutionary economics (Nelson and Winter, 1982). This theoretical perspective focuses on the introduction and retention of temporal routines for incremental change, which are procedures for introducing incremental changes in organizations at consistent intervals across time.; This study applies the theoretical perspective in a context of generational product innovation and tests two core hypotheses. A generational product innovation represents a significant advance in the technical performance of an existing product (Lawless and Anderson, 1996). While scholars have devoted significant attention to innovation, relatively little research focuses on generational product innovation. Yet, in many high technology industries, like computer software and semiconductors, organizations compete on this basis.; By conducting this study, I intend to make three contributions. First, developing the temporal routines for incremental change theoretical perspective enhances our understanding of the dynamics of inertia. Second, with an emphasis on endogenous demand, the theoretical perspective provides an inter-organizational explanation for the introduction and retention of temporal routines for incremental change. Last, the study provides empirical evidence to support a temporal routines-based perspective of generational product innovation.; The empirical context is business productivity application segments of the U.S. microcomputer software industry from 1994 to 1998, including computer-aided design (CAD), desktop publishing, spreadsheets, and word-processing. To test the hypotheses, I use discrete-time event history analysis. In particular, the analytic technique is a probit model with sample selection.; My results indicate that, in a developed stage of the computer software industry, organizations employ temporal routines for generational product innovation. Further, with increasing organizational size, organizations have a greater tendency to employ these routines. |
