Reference no: EM131375736

Create a good response to this blog post contanining arguments for and against parts of the following statement and using ideas from basic organisational structure:

Where product and service innovations are created from the internal and targeted at the external environment of business organisations, process innovations are targeted at the internal environment but influenced by perceived appropriateness to the (often desired/anticipated) external environment. In considering the ‘value chain system’ (Porter, 1985), process innovations either take form as ‘reconfiguring a set of activities based on an existing boundary of predefined acceptable implementations (akin to single-loop by Argyris: incremental), or take for as ‘redefinition of the entire activity system thus creating a new set of boundaries for acceptable implementations (akin to double-loop by Argyris: radical). And, a firm’s propensity to lean toward a radical or incremental approach to process innovation is greatly influenced by it governing pattern of assumptions (organisational culture), and the type of organisational structure (mechanistic or organismic) which supports the culture.     Upon further reflection, the above sphere of reasoning enabled me better understand why Sony experienced though times. Prior to the early 2000’s, it was a firm with a strong mechanistic structure which was backed by a pattern of assumptions that placed emphasis on pursuing excellence via means of premium product innovation. That is likely to have given rise to a preference for ‘single-loop learning’, as employees could continually explore potential for improvements to techniques for premium product outputs, without much cause to question the underlying goals and values that gave rise to those techniques or the actual products (as is the case with double-loop learning). That explains why the CEO admitted that ‘change has never come easy at Sony’; perhaps he realised that his attempts to change the company’s strategic direction was, in part, being impaired by some divisions (such as ‘the CD guys’) who had become so accustomed to single-loop learning through years of reinforcement by the organisation’s culture. In all, there was a great need and opportunity for a service innovation within the music industry, and Sony was well positioned to capitalize on that potential. But, at the time, it was reluctant to embrace the possibility of service innovation due to the fact that such pursuit required for a major redesign to the firm's value chain activities (radical process innovation) of a number of its divisions; and some of its senior employees are likely to have had strong 'defensive routines' (beliefs) which had allegiance to aspects of the existing (incompatible) organisational culture.