Document Type
Article
Publication Date
2025
DOI
10.1177/01708406251357841
Publication Title
Organization Studies
Volume
Article in Press
Pages
49 pp.
Abstract
This study challenges the intuitive assumption in much of the organizational learning literature that greater implementation experience inherently promotes convergence in how an innovation is implemented by a population of organizations. We follow up on early conceptual arguments in the population-learning literature, speculating that such convergence may not always occur. To substantiate these claims, we engaged in an abductive investigation to assess the plausibility of this outcome using empirical data from the U.S. professional baseball industry (1923-1940) and applying visual descriptive, anecdotal qualitative, and quantitative regression analyses. Results revealed increased variation in a key innovation feature across organizations. However, the innovation's performance impact across organizations became more similar over time, creating an unexpected pattern of innovation-feature divergence and performance convergence. Additional phenomenological mapping generated a novel conceptual framework that explicates four alternative scenarios of how industry-level experience can affect variability in innovation features and performance impact over time. This framework and the reported empirical support for one of the four divergence-convergence patterns advance population-learning theory with important implications for industry-level adaptation.
Rights
© 2025 by European Group for Organizational Studies. All rights reserved.
Schwab, A., Miner, A. S. & O'Toole, J. Innovation Learning-Outcome Variability: A Convergence-Divergence Model for Population-Level Learning. Advance online publication. 49 pp. © 2025 European Group for Organizational Studies. DOI: 10.1177/01708406251357841.
Included in accordance with Sage author archiving and re-use guidelines.
ORCID
0000-0001-6205-5523 (O'Toole)
Original Publication Citation
chwab, A., Miner, A. S., & O'Toole, J. (2025). Innovation learning-outcome variability: A convergence-divergence model for population-level learning. Organization Studies. Advance online publication. https://doi.org/10.1177/01708406251357841
Repository Citation
Schwab, Andreas; Miner, Anne S.; and O'Toole, Jay, "Innovation Learning-Outcome Variability: A Convergence-Divergence Model for Population-Level Learning" (2025). Management Faculty Publications. 86.
https://digitalcommons.odu.edu/management_fac_pubs/86
Included in
Education Commons, Management Sciences and Quantitative Methods Commons, Technology and Innovation Commons