Doctoral Dissertation Research: Short-term Network Organizations: The Emergence and Institutionalization of Flexible Production Practices in the U.S. Movie Industry, 1930-1950

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Doctoral Dissertation ResearchShort-Term Network Organizations: The Emergence and Institutionalization of Flexible Production Practicesin the U.S. Movie Industry, 1930-1950AbstractScholars and practitioners report that mass production and large, integrated firms are giving way to more flexible and fragmented organizational forms. However, research has focused on long-term relationships (e.g., strategic alliances) and neglected the equally important short-term relationships (e.g., single project collaborations). Consequently, today's implementations of short-term flexible relationships suffer from a lack of understanding of how they work and when they should be applied.As a starting point for the investigation of flexible production relationships, this work will examine the U.S. movie industry which has utilized short-term single project collaborations over many decades. Focussing on the period when this flexible production regime emerged in Hollywood, this study will examine factors which enhanced participants' performance on several hundred movie projects over a twenty year period.For example, theory implies that making the names of mid-level participants visible to the broader community should enhance overall project performance; disclosure of names makes it more likely others in the community will judge project participants on the basis of the focal project's success, affecting the reputations of all participants. This in turn motivates participants to provide their best efforts. Preliminary results support this prediction, with early data suggesting this effect becomes stronger the more the project is a 'stand-alone' project with little or no prior contact between participants. The dissertation also argues that short term collaboration performance will be higher when there are taken-for-granted practices in a whole industry about how things should work (e.g. standardized coordination practices or sanctions for opportunistic behavior). Projects can save the cost and time needed to develop organization-specific coordination devices by using these standardized practices. As paradoxical as it may sound, this implies stability and continuity on the industry level is needed in order to enable flexibility on the organizational level.This dissertation contributes to theory by conceptualizing short-term collaboration projects/networks and impediments to their success. It tests predictions from theories of opportunism and psychological contracts about how to enhance performance in short term collaboration. It considers strategies used by the movie industry to make short term collaboration effective. This dissertation will provide practitioners with useful guidance on how to enhance performance in short-term network projects, an increasingly important organizational form.