Course Theme: Emergence of New Social Units

Organizations: Life course issues: nascent entrepreneurs, hiring, selection, reward systems, community of practice, organizational culture, transformation, disbanding.

Population: New populations, legitimacy, learning, population reproduction. Questions relevant to this level include "how are we doing relative to our competition?"

Community: The most general level, the realm of public policy.

Sub-theme

The importance of intentions: intentional variation, choice and control

VS.

Luck and uncertainty.

How far can we see in the future?

Why are the majority of bio-technological firms so small?

Bureaucratic firms are not efficient in terms of communication and innovation. Bureaucracy works best under conditions of stability. This industry is fast-paced and firms need to make adjustments quickly.

Because the field is so technical, firms need to specialize and have expert knowledge.

Why are most major bio-technological firms in the United States?

A characteristic that does NOT differentiate the US from Europe is government support. Many firms receive support from the government, but this is also true of European countries. Not an advantage for the US.

We learned that it is important for people to have diverse networks so you know people in different sectors of society. U.S. society has more diversity in terms of organizational forms than do European countries.

The United States does not have as many constraints on organizational entry as do other countries. This means that The United States has more small firms (and small firms make up the majority of bio-technological firms.

Team Exercise: Discuss papers using three questions

What did you find? How does your organization fit with our course concepts? Why?

Was founding difficult or easy? Why? Use course concepts?

Most of the time, founding was easy. It was easy because people knew what they wanted to do; they were familiar with the business concept. In addition, most of the businesses did not require much money. Most people used savings or borrowed from fami ly and friends.

Was your organization transformed? How? Why?

Many organizations did go through transformation.

1. A trucking company introduced computers into the organization. It was difficult integrating the computers into the company because the community of practice was already established. Many of the employees were initially resistant.
2. An insurance company purchased a printing company and a marketing company initially because it was spending too much money on these services. However, each of the businesses became independently successful.

Who wants to be an entrepreneur?

Yes: 22

No: 9

Don’t Know: 10

-rather work for someone else

-own business requires too much time and energy (long hours)

-has never been appealing, does not fit personality

-too uncertain