Research On Performance Architecture Of Organizational Inertia: Origins, Dimensions, Function Path

Fortune magazine's Fortune 500 companies'average life expectancy is less than 50 years, and those who remain alive are lucky ones, but at least 45% percent of them suffered a devastating blow every 10 years. Since the 21st century, companies achieved brilliant success, such as Enron, WorldCom, Polaroid etc., finally ended in failure. These companies should achieve further development based on the existing achievements, but often backfire. The main reason for this phenomenon is organizational inertia. As companies face growing uncertainty of contexts, organizational inertia impact on companies attracted academic attention. More and more scholars have realized that the organizational inertia is very common in companies, especially in the companies once made brilliant achievements. In the process of adapting to the dynamic contexts, the companies'existing organizational inertia will hinder its change and development. Some scholars believe that the lack of differentiating the aspects of performance and origins of inertia can also lead to failure to overcome organizational inertia to realize change. Because the different research aspect, the origins and dimensions of organizational inertia is fuzzy. And the research about the mechanism of organizational inertia is lack of consistent foundation. Therefore, comprehensive and deep understanding of the performance and origins of organizational inertia become key process to finish organizational change in the dynamic contexts.Based on the history of Kodak group in the film industry, SONY group in the consumer electronics industry, Nokia in the mobile phone industry during the end of the 20th century and the beginning of the 21st century, the paper conducts the multi-case study method to explore the origins, dimensions, and the function path of organizational inertia in the organizational inertia performance architecture. First of all, we learn about the multidimensional characteristics of origins and performance of the organizational inertia based on research review on the concept, origins and performance of organizational inertia; And then, we identify the origins and performance dimensions of organizational inertia by using content analysis and the typical events analysis; Finally, based on the origins and performance of organizational inertia, we explore the performance architecture and function path of organizational inertia.The study found that:(1) Organizational inertia only emerges when the organization changes at different hierarchies. The origins of organizational inertia are carriers of the hierarchy of decision-making, resource, execution, network and culture. (2) Organizational inertia presents 9 kinds of concrete manifestations on these five hierarchies:cognitive inertia and strategy inertia on decision-making hierarchy; resource inertia on resource hierarchy; institution inertia, process inertia and routine inertia on execution hierarchy; structure inertia and relationship inertia on network hierarchy; culture inertia on culture hierarchy. (3) Organizational inertia shows cognitive inertia, strategy inertia, resource inertia, institution inertia, process inertia, routine inertia, structure inertia and relationship inertia in turn along the function path of "decision-making hierarchy?resource hierarchy?execution hierarchy?network hierarchy". Moreover, the function of culture inertia goes through the full path of organizational inertia.