Critical Journal Article Review OB

7/30/2019 Critical Journal Article Review OB

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A CRITICAL REVIEW OF A JOURNAL ARTICLE ON

ORGANIZATIONAL BEHAVIOUR


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TABLE OF CONTENTS

Introduction..............................................................................................1

Summary of the Article..............................................................................2

Critical Comments about the Article............................................................3

Conclusion and Discussion..........................................................................6

References................................................................................................8


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Introduction

Organizational change is inevitable in any organization and is important for

overall strategy for success. Organization goes through various life cycles, just

like people and for organizations to develop; they must often undergo

significant change at various points in their development (McNamara, 1997).

However, change is not something that is readily accepted by the people in

the organization. According to Recklies (2001), change is the continuous

adoption of corporate adoption of corporate strategies and structures to

changing external conditions. Change management means to plan, initiate,

realize, control and finally stabilize change process on both, corporate and

personal level.

Innovation is a new way of doing something. It refers to incremental and

emergent or radical and revolutionary changes in thinking, products,

processes or organizations (Davila et al, 2006). Valikangas et al (2009)

stressed that continuous innovation is important to ensure competitiveness of

organizations.

This assignment is a critical review of a journal article on organizational

change, specifically focusing on innovation management. The critical review of

this article is based on the critical article review method proposed by

University of Alberta (2001) and the University of New South Wales (2004). A

critical review of a journal article is an evaluation of an articles strengths,

weakness and validity. It is used to inform readers of an articles value through

explanation, interpretation and analysis (University of Alberta, 2001).

The article is published by European Management Journal, written bythree authors, Liisa Valikangas, Martin Hoegl and Michael Gibbert (2009). The

title of the article is Why learning from failure isnt easy (and what to do

about it): Innovation trauma at Sun Microsystems. Valikangas is a professor

of Innovation Management at Helsinki School of Economics, Finland, whereas

Hoegl holds the Chair of Leadership and Human Resource Management at

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WHU Otto Beisheim School of Management, Burgplatz, Germany. Gibbert is

an Associate Professor at Bocconi University, Italy.

The article focused primarily on innovation management in

organizations, stressing particularly on innovation failure and its incapability of

providing learning effectively as it should be, drawn from the famed proverb

that we learn more from mistakes (failures) rather than success. The authors

of the article argued that previous innovation failures can lead to innovation

trauma, a term that originated from a psychological perspective to that of an

organizational change context, which departs from the original understanding

that failures are valued learning. In the case of innovation trauma, previous

innovation failure can lead to further failure in innovation rather than success.

The research conducted by Valikangas and associates (2009) in this

article presents a fresh yet arguably convincing outlook on innovation failures

and their consequent effect on future innovation undertakings. In their

research finding presentations, there seemed to be some truth about this

issue, but as they have admitted in their introduction section, previous

literatures have concentrated researches and studies on different aspects of

innovation management and organizational change but the antecedents and

consequences of innovation failures have not been extensively researched.

Therefore, in my opinion, this article presents a strong argument about

innovation failure and the impact of innovation trauma but further studies are

necessary to substantiate their findings.

Summary of the Article

The article is a case study using Sun Microsystems as the organization of

study and their innovation in product called Sun Ray, which is a thin-client

computing innovation produced by their Sun Labs. Sun Ray was closely

associated with a previous product, JavaStation which was an innovation that

failed and this failure was highly publicized. The failure of JavaStation has lead

to innovation trauma which greatly affected the success of Sun Ray. Thus, this

article focused on the importance of overcoming innovation trauma as the

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researchers believed that this is an underappreciated aspect of innovation

management in companies.

Continuous innovation is important to ensure competitiveness of

companies such as Sun Microsystems. Specifically, this study focused on the

role emotions play in innovation failure and to the need for managers to

mediate such potentially traumatic experience in order to sustain innovation

after serious failures.

Critical Comments about the Article

The article is organized in a systematic manner, starting with a brief

introduction, then the research methodology and followed by the case study

on how innovation trauma came about at Sun Microsystems. Lastly, the

discussion section draws on the organizational learning, innovation and the

team literatures to suggest strategies for treating trauma. The methodical

presentation of information in this article is clear, easy to follow and provides

a lot of insight about innovation trauma and its roles in innovation failures.

The Introduction section presents arguments about the importance of

innovation, failures and reasons for failures in innovation, and also the usual

scopes of interest on innovation and innovation failure in past researches. The

authors stressed in this section that the proverb we learned more from failure

than success, seemed not true all the time in the case of innovations in

organizations. They also defined the meaning of innovation trauma, first by

providing its definition from the medical and psychological perspective and

then to relate the terms to organizational context. According to Valikangas et

al (2009), innovation trauma is the inability to commit to a new innovationdue to severe disappointment from previous innovation failures. Thus, rather

than learning from failure and using such knowledge in subsequent projects,

as normally is the practice, innovation trauma inhibits the personal and

emotional investment necessary to achieve high innovation performance.

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By presenting the psychological definition of individual trauma and

development of the definition of innovation trauma in the organizational

context, the authors were able to give a strong conceptual definition to the

term innovation trauma and gives a clear understanding on what is means in

relation to the case study presented.

In this section, Valikangas et al (2009) further presents the rationale

and importance of their study, which mainly stemmed from the lack of study

or focus on innovation trauma, its antecedents and consequences although

there are substantial amount of literature on change management, innovation

management and innovation failures and its relationship with learning and

future performance.

Two research questions were posed after the lengthy description and

rationale of innovation trauma study which are: (a) what does it take to learn

more from our failure rather than letting them drag down subsequent

innovation endeavors?; and (b) How can innovation trauma be treated so as to

enable organizations to learn from, or at least, overcome inevitable failures?

The authors clearly explained how these two research questions are to

be answered in their case study and article report. The research questions

which were stated after reasoning the need for focus on innovation trauma,

the detachment from the usual norm that we learn from failure rather than

success acclamation, and the importance of learning from failure provided a

strong argument to the significance of this research.

The authors explained explicitly about the research methodology, first

by describing the sampling method, then the data collection and data analysis.

These explanations presented the validity and reliability of the findings of the

study. Since most of the information was gathered from opinions, comparison

with facts derived from various documents, cross-checking with multiple

interviews with the same respondents and determining that the key people

involved in the Sun Ray innovation project indicated the reliability and validity

of the findings. Avoidance of bias in analyzing the data were also discretely

explained which further heighten the reliability and validity of findings.

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The next three sections in the article described the outcome of the case

study, which presented the innovation trauma at Sun Microsystems, the

emergence of post-traumatic disorders and the early warning signals. In

presenting the innovation trauma, the authors used a process-based approach

starting from the emergence of post-traumatic disorders, early warning signals

of trauma that were missed at Sun.

The authors presented a clear picture on the relationship between the

failure of JavaStation and the subsequent failure to market Sun Ray.

Explanation regarding the potentials of Sun Ray as an innovative product; the

failure of JavaStation as an engineering disaster, and the subsequent disorders

caused by JavaStations failure to the failed market launch of Sun Ray

presented a clear picture of the emergence of innovation trauma at Sun and

its consequences to Sun Ray product.

The authors also stated three missed early warning signals for

innovation trauma with Sun Ray which is: (a) Trauma breeds disillusionment;

(b) Trauma causes cynicism; and (c) Demotivation is contagious. In presenting

these signals, Valikangas and associates (2009) stated that innovation has

always been associated with failure and this is a traumatic experience for

entrepreneurs. They also noted that the failed JavaStation had created a team

who were embarrassed on their undelivered promise and the Sales people

losing their credibility with their clients. Also, the JavaStation team who

experienced failure was demotivated and their low morale affected the Sun

Ray team.

The presentation of these early warning signals showed that Valikangas

and associates (2009) explored the incidence of innovation trauma at Sun

Microsystems at length and clearly indicated their understanding of the issues.

Thus, their recommendations on treating innovation trauma stemmed from

their in-depth knowledge about the innovation trauma at Sun.

Valikangas et al (2009) presented five strategies to treat innovation

trauma which are: (a) Provision of time and opportunity for those involved in

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innovation failure to disengage from past experiences; (b) Organizing post-

mortem workshops on the underlying causes to help create a common

understanding of the course of events that led to failure so individual

rationalization of what happened and why can occur; (c) Do a collaborative

case writing to maximize learning from failure; (d) Manage the excitement for

a new project to ensure ambitious goals are avoided; and (e) More stability in

the management structure to ensure sense of being in control to the team.

The strategies presented by Valikangas et al (2009) are well-proven

strategies to combat crises and change in organization, which are frequently

prescribed in organizational behaviour books (Robbins and Judge, 2008).

Conclusion and Discussion

Valikangas et al (2009) presented a very insightful piece of information

regarding innovation trauma through this article whereby they explained at

length, the events or situation that causes trauma that led to the failure of Sun

Ray market launch. Although, the team of researchers presented a clear

explanation of innovation trauma, used a highly reliable and valid research

methodology, and presented the case in a clear and concise manner, I have

doubts that innovation trauma was the main cause of Sun Rays failure. With

due respect, the presentation of the case study showed clearly that the failure

of JavaStation had resulted in disorder or change in the organization in the

form of various events such as (a) cancellation of JavaStation production (b)

laying off people (c) deployment of the JavaStation team to Sun Ray team

resulting in reorganization of Sun Rays team (d) changes in sponsorship; and

(e) restructuring of Sun Rays team.

Valikangas and associates (2009) suggested that these disorders havecaused emotional conflicts in both team the JavaStation and the Sun Ray

team but have led to innovation trauma. JavaStation failed because of

engineering faults whereas Sun Ray failed in its market launch. The Sales

people lost their credibility with their clients due to the failed JavaStation, thus

the consequence was, inability to reach the target sales in the first and

subsequent years.

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There are some truths in the findings presented by Valikangas and

associates although blaming the failure of JavaStation as the reason behind

the failure of Sun Ray is highly arguable. This is because; there are other

factors, as indicated in the article itself that may have contributed to the

failure of Sun Ray. For example, exogenous factors such as the

competitiveness of rival companies such as Microsoft and Intel and indigenous

factors such as managements competencies to manage change may have

contributed largely to the failure of Sun Ray.

Nonetheless, this article presented a good argument to consider

innovation trauma or the impact of previous failures to future undertakings. It

also highlighted the need for management to give more emphasis on

effectively managing change caused by failed innovation with some focus on

the emotional perspective of the effect of such failure.

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References

Davilla, T., Epstein, M. J. and Shelton, R. (2006). Making Innovation Work: Howto Manage It, Measure It, and Profit from It. Upper Saddle: Wharton

School Publishing

McNamara, C. (1997). Organizational Change and Development, internetarticle downloaded on September 20, 2009 from:http://managementhelp.org/org_chng/org_chng.htm#anchor515854

Recklies, O. (2001). Managing Change Definition and Phases in ChangeProcesses, internet article downloaded on September 20, 2009 from:http://www.themanager.org/strategy/change_phases.htm

Robbins, S. and Judge, T. (2008). Organizational Behaviours, InternationalVersion, 13th Edition, New Jersey: Prentice-Hall

The University of New South Wales (2004). Writing a Critical Review, Sydney:UNSW Learning Centre

University of Alberta (2001). Critical Review of Journal Articles, Herbert T.Coutts Education and Physical Library, downloaded on September 20,2009 from:http://www.library.ualberta.ca/guides/criticalreviews/index.cfm

Valikangas, L., Hoegl, M. and Gibbert, M. (2009). Why learning from failureisnt easy (and what to do about it): Innovation trauma at SunMicrosystems, European Management Journal, 27, 225-233

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http://managementhelp.org/org_chng/org_chng.htm#anchor515854http://www.themanager.org/strategy/change_phases.htmhttp://www.library.ualberta.ca/guides/criticalreviews/index.cfmhttp://www.themanager.org/strategy/change_phases.htmhttp://www.library.ualberta.ca/guides/criticalreviews/index.cfmhttp://managementhelp.org/org_chng/org_chng.htm#anchor515854

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