Biomedical Engineering Reference
In-Depth Information
diverse instruments such as detailing, sampling and advertising. Consistent with its
premises, the economic framework asserts that managers can use the evidence of
market mix effects to make top-down decisions that set up incentives to structure
market exchanges in way that is favorable to the organization.
The open systems framework shifts inquiry and practice attention away from
ROI of market mix instruments and toward market action and its legitimacy impli-
cations. By using market action as the unit of analysis, the open systems approach
places more emphasis on strategies that underlie market action, and in understand-
ing how market action is interpreted to construct legitimacy judgments. Because
market action is centered on the actor and legitimacy on the partners and observers
who interact with or are exposed to the actor, the open systems adopts a more holis-
tic view in understanding how, when and why market action is effective.
Moreover, the open systems approach offers novel concepts for understanding
value chain system dynamics. For instance, consider the concepts of confl icted log-
ics and market dilemmas. The notion of contested logics focuses on system mecha-
nisms triggered by ongoing contests among market actors rooted in the confl icted
logics of the value chain. In some decisions, the contests may favor a consequential
logic while for others the logic of appropriateness may hold sway. Outcome patterns
of such contests over time and decisions shape the ebb and fl ow of system dynam-
ics. Patterns that are heavily weighed by consequential logic may erode moral legiti-
macy, just as patterns tilted heavily by logic of appropriateness may exact a price in
terms of pragmatic legitimacy. Although speculative, the notion of confl icted logics
as games of trust-value tradeoffs in micro-level managerial decisions provides a
novel way of examining system dynamics. When tradeoffs persist as interactional
routines that are reinforced over time, a market dilemma exists. Such dilemmas may
require policy intervention to set new ground rules for market exchanges that favor
resolution of confl icts through market self-regulation. Likewise, when actors are
sensitive to market dilemmas, they may be motivated to overcome path dependen-
cies to stem further legitimacy losses and avoid regulatory intervention. The sys-
tems theory notions of equifi nality—many different paths leading to the same
outcomes, and entropy—progressive mechanization can be mitigated by arresting
energy from the system, provide a foundation for understanding processes of con-
tested logics and the resultant market dilemmas that open new windows for future
research.
Recent work in coevolutionary game theory offers useful directions (Bergstrom
and Lachmann
2003
; Lewin and Volberda
1999
). Drawing on biological principles
of mutualistic interaction between two or more species that are embedded in a large
milieu of a biological system, evolutionary game theorists examine questions such
as what keeps the interaction from breaking down as individual species succumb to
their own consequential logic, disorderly movement toward less differentiated
structures and possible dissolution, how they allocate benefi ts of cooperation to
avoid interaction breeches (e.g., market failure), why certain routines get replicated
and reinforced and what makes certain species or systems to break away from their
path dependencies to be more fl exible and adaptable (Lewin and Volberda
1999
).
Search WWH ::
Custom Search