We discuss the assumptions that underlie path dependence, as defined by Vergne and Durand, and then provide the outlines of an alternative perspective which we label as path creation. Path creation entertains a notion of agency that is distributed and emergent through relational processes that...

Market liberalization in emerging-market economies and the entry of multinational firms spur significant changes to the industry/institutional environment faced by domestic firms. Prior studies have described how such changes tend to be disruptive to the relatively backward domestic firms, and...

Analysis of 45 rapidly growing, profitable firms reveals five strategies: (1) product proliferation, (2) mass market development, (3) increasing value to select customers, (4) distribution innovation, and (5) acquisition and consolidation. These five strategies are not restricted to high-growth...

In this paper, we highlight the pervasive influence of information technologies on multinational enterprise (MNE) operations, strategies and structures. The democratization of information technologies has diminished geographic distance and compressed response times for MNEs. In turn, this has...

This paper employs path creation as a lens to follow the emergence of the Danish wind turbine cluster. Supplier competencies, regulations, user preferences and a market for wind power did not pre-exist; all had to emerge in a tranformative manner involving multiple actors and artefacts....

Innovation in a product's design can have significant implications for the organization of competencies across a production network. Currently, discussions on product designs and the distribution of competencies across production networks are based on transaction costs considerations. However,...

In this paper we explore the mechanisms that allow securities analysts to value companies in contexts of Knightian uncertainty, that is, in the face of information that is unclear, subject to unforeseeable contingencies or to multiple interpretations. We address this question with a...

I examine how conferences can be occasions for the configuration of emerging organizational fields by describing three that I attended during the development and commercialization of cochlear implants. These conferences served as venues for a variety of activities to unfold, ranging from the...