Abstract
This paper conceptualizes the process of innovation implementation in high technology manufacturing, a natural setting of multiple and ongoing innovation implementation. Building on the developments in organizational learning theory, we frame the process of innovation implementation in high technology manufacturing as a problem of balancing between exploitation and exploration. Through the application of a logistic difference equation, we provide insights into the dynamics of balancing between exploitation and exploration, and show that innovation implementation in high technology manufacturing can be conceptualized as a chaotic process, in a scientific sense. Using time series data from a wafer fabrication plant, the high technology manufacturing plant that served as our research site over a period of 125 weeks, we test this conceptualization. We find empirical support for the conceptualization of innovation implementation in high technology manufacturing as a chaotic process. We discuss the managerial implications of our study's findings, and the directions for the future research.
Original language | English (US) |
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Pages (from-to) | 471-494 |
Number of pages | 24 |
Journal | Journal of Operations Management |
Volume | 16 |
Issue number | 4 |
DOIs | |
State | Published - Jul 1998 |
Bibliographical note
Funding Information:This study is supported by a grant from Advanced Micro Devices and the Grant-in-Aid of research from the University of Minnesota. We acknowledge the assistance of Warren Hastings, Jim Macek, Jack Smith and Paul Steele in collecting the data and related information for this study. We thank Alan Wolf and Tse-Min Lin for providing us with the softwares used to analyze the data. We are grateful to Rajiv D. Banker, Kim Bates, Kevin J. Dooley, Joy M. Field, Paul E. Johnson, Inder S. Khosla, James G. March, Christopher J. Nachtsheim, Douglas Polley, Claudia B. Schoonhoven, Roger G. Schroeder, Michael J. Stutzer and Andrew H. Van de Ven for their help and advice during the study, comments on earlier versions of the paper, or both.
Keywords
- Chaos theory
- High technology manufacturing
- Innovation implementation