The duality of practices and its organizational implications: Adoption of new HR practices and consequences on innovation in Korean firms following the 1997 Asian financial crisis

Lee, Seung Hoon

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https://hdl.handle.net/2142/105863 Copy

Description

Title

The duality of practices and its organizational implications: Adoption of new HR practices and consequences on innovation in Korean firms following the 1997 Asian financial crisis

Author(s)

Lee, Seung Hoon

Issue Date

2019-06-19

Director of Research (if dissertation) or Advisor (if thesis)

Love, E. Geoffrey

Doctoral Committee Chair(s)

Kraatz, Matthew S.

Committee Member(s)

• Somaya, Deepak
• Schijven, Mario

Department of Study

Business Administration

Discipline

Business Administration

Degree Granting Institution

University of Illinois at Urbana-Champaign

Degree Name

Ph.D.

Degree Level

Dissertation

Keyword(s)

• Organizations' Practice Adoption
• Institutional Theory

Abstract

Organizations face normative pressures from institutional actors to adopt various practices. Much institutional research has offered insights about diffusion processes, decoupling, and adoptions’ implication for organizational legitimacy. However, this vast literature appears to have largely overlooked a parallel set of questions about whether and when institutionally prescribed practices deliver the intended outcomes. The questions are important given the dual nature of practices: They have both technical and institutional characteristics and serve as both tools and symbols. Such dual nature of practices has also been recognized to be accountable for unintended negative consequences of technically sound practices. Chapter 2 of my dissertation has two objectives. First, it provides needed empirical evidence about the intended consequences of institutional prescriptions in the context of Korean manufacturing firms. Following the 1997 Asian Financial Crisis, Korean firms faced normative pressure to adopt a comprehensive set of new market-oriented HR practices, where the practices were intended to facilitate innovation. Based on the positive effect of the prescription found in this context, I build more general theory about the conditions under which prescriptions deliver intended outcomes. The second objective of Chapter 2 is to develop and test theory about the types of practices more or less likely to deliver intended effects. Consistent with the theory’s predictions, the results show that the prescribed practices have divergent effects on innovation. Chapter 3, which is a qualitative add-on to Chapter 2, examines the practices’ organizational ramifications and innovation outcomes through a comparative case study of four major conglomerates in Korea. By doing so, the chapter aims to provide a deeper understanding of the mechanism behind the divergent effects of the prescribed HR practices.

Graduation Semester

2019-08

Type of Resource

text

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http://hdl.handle.net/2142/105863

Copyright and License Information

Copyright 2019 Seung Hoon Lee

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