Realising partial mirroring in a component specialised firm: evidence from the hard disk drive industry
Realising partial mirroring in a component specialised firm: evidence from the hard disk drive industry
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DOI：
10.1080/09537325.2021.1938999
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发表时间：
2021-06
影响因子：
3.4
通讯作者：
Genjiro Kosaka
中科院分区：
文献类型：
--
作者：
Genjiro Kosaka
摘要模块化文献提出了“镜像假设”：当企业的组织设计和知识范围与产品架构相对应时，企业会获得更好的产品开发绩效。对于组件公司来说，很难适应从模块化阶段到集成阶段的架构变化，因为他们专注于有限的组件领域。最近的研究表明，“部分镜像”或“雾化”可以有效地应对产品架构的变化，建议企业应该持有更广泛的知识边界超出其公司的边界。然而，R&D的组织结构，使组件公司获得广泛的知识基础，延伸到他们的组件业务是不清楚的。我们对硬盘驱动器行业进行了案例分析，调查了在架构变化中幸存下来的单一组件公司的R&D活动。我们使用的专利数据侧重于三个层面的分析：组织，团体和个人。结果表明，部分镜像组件企业可以实现基于边界跨越结构的R&D组织。集成工程师在协作网络中占据中心地位，并根据他们对组件之间具有共同基础的技术的理解来协调组件知识。
ABSTRACT Modularity literature proposes the ‘mirroring hypothesis’: firms achieve better product development performance when their organisational design and scope of knowledge at the firm level correspond to product architecture. For component firms, it is difficult to adapt architectural change from the modular phase to the integration phase because they specialise in a limited component area. Recent studies have suggested that ‘partial mirroring’ or ‘misting’ can be efficient for coping with a change in product architecture, proposing that firms should hold broader knowledge boundaries beyond their firm’s boundaries. However, the R&D organisational structure that enables component firms to acquire a broad knowledge base that extends beyond their component business is unclear. We conducted a case analysis of the hard disk drive industry, investigating the R&D activities of single-component firms that have survived architectural change. We used patent data focusing on three levels of analysis: organisation, group, and individual. The results showed that partial mirroring in component firms can be realised based on boundary spanning structures in R&D organisations. Integrating engineers occupy a central position in the collaboration network and coordinate component knowledge based on their understanding of technology that had a common foundation among components.