Alan Meyer | University of Oregon (original) (raw)
Alan D. Meyer, Professor Emeritus, Charles H. Lundquist College of Business, studies industry emergence, field configuring events, regional identities, corporate venturing, and technology entrepreneurship using organizational theory and sociology as theoretical frames. He is a field researcher who triangulates between archival data and primary data gathered through interviews and naturalistic observation. His early research explored the health care sector, with a focus on hospitals’ responses to “environmental jolts” – unexpected shocks that created natural experiments in organizational change.
Subsequent work has investigated the dot-com crash, Ebola and Covid epidemics, industry cluster emergence, and other major discontinuities. Nanotechnology and venture capital are recent research contexts, where the National Science Foundation has supported his work on corporations’ adoption of VCs’ investment practices, and the emergence of networks of scientists, entrepreneurs, and investors seeking to commercialize nanotechnology.
Meyer is a Fellow of the Academy of Management and a recipient of AOM’s Lifetime Career Achievement Award for Distinguished Service, OMT’s Distinguished Scholar Award, and UO’s Research Innovation Award. He has served as Associate-Editor-in-Chief for Organization Science; as Associate Editor for Academy of Management Journal; and on the editorial boards of Administrative Science Quarterly, Organization Science, Academy of Management Journal, and Strategic Management Journal.
Meyer has been awarded grants totaling over $2.2M US by the National Science Foundation, the National Center for Health Services Research, the U.S. Army Research Institute, the Australia Research Council, the Ewing Marion Kauffman Foundation, and the Oregon Nanoscience Institute.
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Papers by Alan Meyer
Organization Science, 1998
After discussing the nature of improvisation and the unique challenges and dangers implicit in th... more After discussing the nature of improvisation and the unique challenges and dangers implicit in the learning task that jazz improvisers create for themselves, the author broadly outlines seven characteristics that allow jazz bands to improvise coherently and maximize social innovation in a coordinated fashion. He also draws on his own experience as a jazz pianist. Finally, implications for organizational design and managing for learning are suggested.
Organization Science, 1998
Introduction to a special issue of Organization Science. It is based on a rather unique event, a ... more Introduction to a special issue of Organization Science. It is based on a rather unique event, a symposium, “Jazz as a Metaphor for Organizing in the 21st Century,” held at the 1995 Academy of Management National Conference in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. Symposiums at academic conferences usually feature panelists presenting their views and discussants critiquing the presentations and providing some synthesis, followed by a brief dialogue with the audience. This session on jazz improvisation and organizing included conventional scholarly presentations, but added a demonstration and discussion of jazz improvisation by panelists who were professional musicians, followed by a concert and social event during which these musicians regaled the audience with superb jazz.
Administrative Science Quarterly, 1978
We examine the contagion processes whereby practices originating in one organiza-tional populatio... more We examine the contagion processes whereby practices originating in one organiza-tional population spread into and diffuse within a second. We theorize that “endemic” innovations native to one population spread to other populations through two distinct forms of contagion. We test this argument by observing information technology firms’ adoption of corporate venture capital programs. Results suggest that geographic prox-imity triggers cross-population contagion, that within-population contagion arises from different causal mechanisms, and that firms maintaining close cross-population ties pay less attention to the actions taken and outcomes experienced by other firms within their own industry. Fueled by emerging technology and a robust econ-omy, corporate equity investing in start-up ventures exploded in the 1990s. The decade’s last five years alone saw a 3,800 percent increase, as corporate ven-ture capital investments grew from 172millionto172 million to 172millionto6.8 billion (Venture Economics, 2006)...
faced the challenge of “making organization design knowledge actionable. ” This essay
Organizational fields undergo upheavals. Shifting industry boundaries, new network forms, emergin... more Organizational fields undergo upheavals. Shifting industry boundaries, new network forms, emerging sectors, and volatileecosystems have become the stuff of everyday organizational life. Curiously, profound changes of this sort receive scant attention in organization theory and research. Researchers acknowledge fieldwide flux, emergence, convergence, and collapse, but sidestep direct investigations of the causes and dynamic processes, leaving these efforts to political scientists and institutional economists. We attribute this neglect to our field’s philosophical, theoretical, and methodological fealty to the precepts of equilibrium and linearity. We argue that ingrained assumptions and habituated methodologies dissuade organizational scientists from grappling with problems to which these ideas and tools do not apply. Nevertheless, equilibrium and linearity are assumptions of social theory, not facts of social life. Drawing on four empirical studies of organizational fields in flux, ...
Drawing on the resource-based view of the firm, we posited that environmental performance and eco... more Drawing on the resource-based view of the firm, we posited that environmental performance and economic performance are positively linked and that industry growth moderates the relationship, with the returns to environmental performance higher in high-growth industries. We tested these hypotheses with an analysis of 243 firms over two years, using independently developed environmental ratings. Results indicate that "it pays to be green " and that this relationship strengthens with industry growth. We conclude by highlighting the study's academic and managerial implications, making special reference to the social issues in management literature. We wish to express our appreciation to the Franklin Research and Development Corporation for allowing us to use their proprietary database and to Roger Chope and Steven Matsunaga for assistance with methodological issues. We also thank Thomas
SSRN Electronic Journal
As the COVID-19 pandemic stretches public health systems around the world, the role of hospital e... more As the COVID-19 pandemic stretches public health systems around the world, the role of hospital emergency departments has never been more important. Whether people are acutely ill with symptoms from coronavirus or from other illnesses and injuries – such as heart attacks, strokes, or trauma accidents – citizens expect that the emergency department will be open and offer care. In this way, emergency departments function both as a place of medicine and as an institution that society has entrusted to accomplish normative values of ensuring citizens have access to essential services. Emergency doctors and nurses can be conceptualized as institutional custodians because they are the caretakers whose job it is to preserve this institution of healthcare. They help protect the human welfare, order, and stability of society through their everyday work in local emergency departments. As the coronavirus pandemic accelerates, the work of these institutional custodians becomes increasingly difficult as demand threatens to outstrip health system resources, and as more patients pose infection risks to frontline responders. How can institutional custodians in emergency departments stay the course during the coronavirus pandemic?
Administrative Science Quarterly
We introduce the concept of places of social inclusion—institutions endowed by a society or a com... more We introduce the concept of places of social inclusion—institutions endowed by a society or a community with material resources, meaning, and values at geographic sites where citizens can access services for specific needs—as taken-for-granted, essential, and inherently precarious. Based on our study of an emergency department that was disrupted by the threat of the Ebola virus in 2014, we develop a process model to explain how a place of social inclusion can be maintained by custodians. We show how these custodians—in our fieldsite, doctors and nurses—experience and engage in institutional work to manage different levels of tension between the value of inclusion and the reality of finite resources, as well as tension between inclusion and the desire for safety. We also demonstrate how the interplay of custodians’ emotions is integral to maintaining the place of social inclusion. The primary contribution of our study is to shine light on places of social inclusion as important insti...
Academy of Management Proceedings
This study predicts outcomes of 300 organizational decision processes focusing on the evaluation,... more This study predicts outcomes of 300 organizational decision processes focusing on the evaluation, adoption and implementation of technological innovations. Findings imply that outcomes are mostly a...
Academy of Management Proceedings
This study investigates the adoption of technological innovations in community hospitals as a thr... more This study investigates the adoption of technological innovations in community hospitals as a three-stage process. To test the model, we track 300 innovation adoption proposals in 25 hospitals over...
Academy of Management Proceedings
ABSTRACT
Academy of Management Proceedings, 1999
The purpose of this study is to investigate how firms establish reputation with investors in the ... more The purpose of this study is to investigate how firms establish reputation with investors in the uncertain environment of an emerging economy. Following the work of Rao (1994), we treat reputation as the outgrowth of legitimation. We identify independent third parties as potential facilitators of the legitimation process. Specifically, we suggest that international brokers serve as "legitimating agents" on the Warsaw Stock Exchange by acting as a bridge between those seeking reputation (i.e., client firms) and those responsible for conferring reputation (i.e., investors). We find strong empirical evidence for the suggestion that international brokers serve as legitimating agents for client firms. Thus, we find that firms in emerging economies can enhance their reputation by employing the services of a reputable independent third party.
Publishing in the Organizational Sciences, 1995
Journal of Organization Design, 2013
Physical therapy, 1985
This article addresses the problem of documenting the outcomes of physical therapy. This is a tim... more This article addresses the problem of documenting the outcomes of physical therapy. This is a timely issue because new approaches to reimbursing health-care costs will favor those providers and professions able to demonstrate sufficient benefits to patients to justify prospective cost reimbursement. To assess the adequacy of existing outcome data, we conducted detailed longitudinal audits of 63 geriatric patients' medical records. For nearly half of these patients, the records contained insufficient data to document any improvement in physical functioning. The number of treatments administered correlated with functional improvements documented, but diagnostic related group classifications and patient demographics did not. We found practicing physical therapists overestimated the amount of outcome data recorded and documented some areas of physical functioning more frequently than others. A wider scope for functional assessment and greater standardization in record keeping are ad...
Organization Science, 1998
After discussing the nature of improvisation and the unique challenges and dangers implicit in th... more After discussing the nature of improvisation and the unique challenges and dangers implicit in the learning task that jazz improvisers create for themselves, the author broadly outlines seven characteristics that allow jazz bands to improvise coherently and maximize social innovation in a coordinated fashion. He also draws on his own experience as a jazz pianist. Finally, implications for organizational design and managing for learning are suggested.
Organization Science, 1998
Introduction to a special issue of Organization Science. It is based on a rather unique event, a ... more Introduction to a special issue of Organization Science. It is based on a rather unique event, a symposium, “Jazz as a Metaphor for Organizing in the 21st Century,” held at the 1995 Academy of Management National Conference in Vancouver, British Columbia, Canada. Symposiums at academic conferences usually feature panelists presenting their views and discussants critiquing the presentations and providing some synthesis, followed by a brief dialogue with the audience. This session on jazz improvisation and organizing included conventional scholarly presentations, but added a demonstration and discussion of jazz improvisation by panelists who were professional musicians, followed by a concert and social event during which these musicians regaled the audience with superb jazz.
Administrative Science Quarterly, 1978
We examine the contagion processes whereby practices originating in one organiza-tional populatio... more We examine the contagion processes whereby practices originating in one organiza-tional population spread into and diffuse within a second. We theorize that “endemic” innovations native to one population spread to other populations through two distinct forms of contagion. We test this argument by observing information technology firms’ adoption of corporate venture capital programs. Results suggest that geographic prox-imity triggers cross-population contagion, that within-population contagion arises from different causal mechanisms, and that firms maintaining close cross-population ties pay less attention to the actions taken and outcomes experienced by other firms within their own industry. Fueled by emerging technology and a robust econ-omy, corporate equity investing in start-up ventures exploded in the 1990s. The decade’s last five years alone saw a 3,800 percent increase, as corporate ven-ture capital investments grew from 172millionto172 million to 172millionto6.8 billion (Venture Economics, 2006)...
faced the challenge of “making organization design knowledge actionable. ” This essay
Organizational fields undergo upheavals. Shifting industry boundaries, new network forms, emergin... more Organizational fields undergo upheavals. Shifting industry boundaries, new network forms, emerging sectors, and volatileecosystems have become the stuff of everyday organizational life. Curiously, profound changes of this sort receive scant attention in organization theory and research. Researchers acknowledge fieldwide flux, emergence, convergence, and collapse, but sidestep direct investigations of the causes and dynamic processes, leaving these efforts to political scientists and institutional economists. We attribute this neglect to our field’s philosophical, theoretical, and methodological fealty to the precepts of equilibrium and linearity. We argue that ingrained assumptions and habituated methodologies dissuade organizational scientists from grappling with problems to which these ideas and tools do not apply. Nevertheless, equilibrium and linearity are assumptions of social theory, not facts of social life. Drawing on four empirical studies of organizational fields in flux, ...
Drawing on the resource-based view of the firm, we posited that environmental performance and eco... more Drawing on the resource-based view of the firm, we posited that environmental performance and economic performance are positively linked and that industry growth moderates the relationship, with the returns to environmental performance higher in high-growth industries. We tested these hypotheses with an analysis of 243 firms over two years, using independently developed environmental ratings. Results indicate that "it pays to be green " and that this relationship strengthens with industry growth. We conclude by highlighting the study's academic and managerial implications, making special reference to the social issues in management literature. We wish to express our appreciation to the Franklin Research and Development Corporation for allowing us to use their proprietary database and to Roger Chope and Steven Matsunaga for assistance with methodological issues. We also thank Thomas
SSRN Electronic Journal
As the COVID-19 pandemic stretches public health systems around the world, the role of hospital e... more As the COVID-19 pandemic stretches public health systems around the world, the role of hospital emergency departments has never been more important. Whether people are acutely ill with symptoms from coronavirus or from other illnesses and injuries – such as heart attacks, strokes, or trauma accidents – citizens expect that the emergency department will be open and offer care. In this way, emergency departments function both as a place of medicine and as an institution that society has entrusted to accomplish normative values of ensuring citizens have access to essential services. Emergency doctors and nurses can be conceptualized as institutional custodians because they are the caretakers whose job it is to preserve this institution of healthcare. They help protect the human welfare, order, and stability of society through their everyday work in local emergency departments. As the coronavirus pandemic accelerates, the work of these institutional custodians becomes increasingly difficult as demand threatens to outstrip health system resources, and as more patients pose infection risks to frontline responders. How can institutional custodians in emergency departments stay the course during the coronavirus pandemic?
Administrative Science Quarterly
We introduce the concept of places of social inclusion—institutions endowed by a society or a com... more We introduce the concept of places of social inclusion—institutions endowed by a society or a community with material resources, meaning, and values at geographic sites where citizens can access services for specific needs—as taken-for-granted, essential, and inherently precarious. Based on our study of an emergency department that was disrupted by the threat of the Ebola virus in 2014, we develop a process model to explain how a place of social inclusion can be maintained by custodians. We show how these custodians—in our fieldsite, doctors and nurses—experience and engage in institutional work to manage different levels of tension between the value of inclusion and the reality of finite resources, as well as tension between inclusion and the desire for safety. We also demonstrate how the interplay of custodians’ emotions is integral to maintaining the place of social inclusion. The primary contribution of our study is to shine light on places of social inclusion as important insti...
Academy of Management Proceedings
This study predicts outcomes of 300 organizational decision processes focusing on the evaluation,... more This study predicts outcomes of 300 organizational decision processes focusing on the evaluation, adoption and implementation of technological innovations. Findings imply that outcomes are mostly a...
Academy of Management Proceedings
This study investigates the adoption of technological innovations in community hospitals as a thr... more This study investigates the adoption of technological innovations in community hospitals as a three-stage process. To test the model, we track 300 innovation adoption proposals in 25 hospitals over...
Academy of Management Proceedings
ABSTRACT
Academy of Management Proceedings, 1999
The purpose of this study is to investigate how firms establish reputation with investors in the ... more The purpose of this study is to investigate how firms establish reputation with investors in the uncertain environment of an emerging economy. Following the work of Rao (1994), we treat reputation as the outgrowth of legitimation. We identify independent third parties as potential facilitators of the legitimation process. Specifically, we suggest that international brokers serve as "legitimating agents" on the Warsaw Stock Exchange by acting as a bridge between those seeking reputation (i.e., client firms) and those responsible for conferring reputation (i.e., investors). We find strong empirical evidence for the suggestion that international brokers serve as legitimating agents for client firms. Thus, we find that firms in emerging economies can enhance their reputation by employing the services of a reputable independent third party.
Publishing in the Organizational Sciences, 1995
Journal of Organization Design, 2013
Physical therapy, 1985
This article addresses the problem of documenting the outcomes of physical therapy. This is a tim... more This article addresses the problem of documenting the outcomes of physical therapy. This is a timely issue because new approaches to reimbursing health-care costs will favor those providers and professions able to demonstrate sufficient benefits to patients to justify prospective cost reimbursement. To assess the adequacy of existing outcome data, we conducted detailed longitudinal audits of 63 geriatric patients' medical records. For nearly half of these patients, the records contained insufficient data to document any improvement in physical functioning. The number of treatments administered correlated with functional improvements documented, but diagnostic related group classifications and patient demographics did not. We found practicing physical therapists overestimated the amount of outcome data recorded and documented some areas of physical functioning more frequently than others. A wider scope for functional assessment and greater standardization in record keeping are ad...