戰(zhàn)略與企業(yè)家綜合概述(英文版)-資料下載頁

　　

【正文】 erentiation Emphasizing effectuation rather than causationWhy are firms different? Or, what sustains the heterogeneity in resources and performance among close petitors despite petition and imitative attempts?Differentiating between generalized aspirations and specific goalsThe issue of differentiation is even an issue only if we assume homogeneity of goals, especially goals that are determined prior to choice. In reality, however, human beings do not begin with specific goals – only with vague and generalized aspirations, that are themselves contingent upon a host of situational and temporal factors. This intrinsically pluralizing role of contingent aspirations affects both demandside and supplyside choices. For example, on the demand side, most hungry customers do not start with the “need” for a specific food such as hamburgers. Instead they start with a generalized hunger for something to eat. The entrepreneur induces the customer to transform that generalized aspiration into a concrete demand for a specific product such as the hamburgers manufactured by a particular pany. There are two types of choice here. The first one involves the transformation of a vague aspiration such as hunger into the specific desire for a hamburger. The second one involves the choice between possible hamburger joints, given the desire for a hamburger. As proponents of the resourcebased theory of the firm have pointed out, in mainstream economics and management, we tend to model the latter type of choice (., choice between means to achieve a particular goal) rather than the earlier one – ., the choice between possible ends, given particular means and very generalized aspirations (Ulrich amp。 Barney, 1984). Similarly, on the supply side, most entrepreneurs do not set out to build a particular pany for a particular product within a particular market (Ex: to create a profitable pany for manufacturing and selling razor blades). Instead, when setting out, the entrepreneur only has some very general aim, such as the desire to make lots of money, or to create a lasting institution, or more monly, just an interesting idea that seems worth pursuing. For example, Gillette started with the idea of making some product that would need to be repurchased repeatedly. Moving from that relatively vague starting point to actually designing and manufacturing the disposable razor involved a very different set of choices than after he had determined the particular product that he wanted to make and sell. The type of reasoning involved when specific goals have to be created from contingent aspirations is necessarily different from the type of reasoning involved in attaining that specific goal once it is finalized. Given a specific goal, selecting between alternative means involves causal reasoning. Transforming contingent aspirations into possible specific goals and choosing between them involves effectuation. Effectuation finds its theoretical antecedents in researchers such as March who investigated exploration and exploitation in organizational learning. Organizational learning involves decisions that allocate scarce resources (including attention) between the exploration of new possibilities and the exploitation of old certainties. These decisions are plicated by the fact that their costs and benefits may be dispersed over time and space, and that they are subject to the effects of ecological interaction. Yet, balancing the allocation between exploration and exploitation is crucial to the survival and sustenance of the organization. March argues that understanding the relationship between these two horns of a continuing dilemma in organizational evolution leads us away from a linear approach to concepts such as “success” and “sustainable petitive advantage”. For example, introducing a new technology such as puterized decision support systems, while improving the organization’s chance of avoiding being the worst petitor, may reduce it’s chance to be the overall winner in the game (March 1991: 84). But effectuation goes beyond the dichotomies of exploration and exploitation, or the distinction between linear and nonlinear thinking. Effectuation is useful in domains where there is no preexistent universe of possibilities to explore – instead, such a universe gets created, often unintentionally, by acts of human imagination. These acts of the imagination may occur in the normal course of human activity in a wide variety of domains, most of which may not be driven by any immediate economic goal. For example, the theory of effectuation would argue that no exploration of any relevant economic domains could have led to the “discovery” of the internet and its emerce possibilities. Instead, an artifact created to solve a particular problem in an unrelated domain (in the internet example, the munication problem for defense scientists) was eventually transformed into a universe of possible economic opportunities by internet entrepreneurs. This transformation did not happen overnight. The mere existence of the internet did not inevitably imply the creation of emerce. Instead, that creation had to await several fortuitous inventions (such as the web browser), serendipitous insights (such as Netscape’s marketing strategy), and arduous institutional developments (such as security procedures, privacy laws, etc, that continue even as this chapter is being written). It is this transformation process that involves entrepreneurial effectuation and is ignored in many economic and management theories of strategic management and socalled opportunity recognition.Causation and effectuationJust as exploration and exploitation are both essential to the continuing sustenance of firms, both causation and effectuation are important aspects of entrepreneurial and strategic decision making in individuals. To generalize the ideas illustrated in the Gillette example earlier into a theory of effectuat