BOLTON, MICHELE KREMEN; PHD

                        UNIVERSITY OF CALIFORNIA, LOS ANGELES, 1990
 
                        BUSINESS ADMINISTRATION, GENERAL (0310); BUSINESS ADMINISTRATION, MANAGEMENT (0454)
 

                         Casual observation of many industries indicates pervasive imitative behavior among competitors. In
                         contrast to the widespread belief that innovators outperform imitators, this research borrows insights from
                         agency and institutional theory to argue that imitation is a risk-shifting strategy in which early adopting
                         pioneers absorb uncertainty for followers. Thus, imitation, rather than innovation, may be an effective
                         organizational strategy. This imitative response to uncertainty is termed 'organizational miming' to reflect
                         the difficulty of copying practices of other organizations. The study's hypotheses test (1) the value of
                         imitation strategies (as opposed to pioneering strategies) for organizational performance, contingent
                         upon type of innovation; (2) whether early adoption of new practices by elite organizations stimulates
                         imitation by other firms and (3) whether more imitation is observed in manager-controlled organizations
                         than in owner-controlled organizations, due to poor incentive alignments for decision-makers. A survey
                         of northern California radio stations provides data to test these hypotheses. The results suggest that
                         first-mover-advantages accompany marketing and technological leaders, but that administrative pioneers
                         underperform laggards who 'wait and watch', allowing other organizations to absorb the risks associated
                         with administrative pioneering. On average, the early adoption of new practices by consensually agreed
                         upon elite organizations helps to stimulate the diffusion rate of innovations. Manager-controlled
                         organizations in this sample are generally earlier adopters of technological innovations than are
                         owner-controlled firms. No statistically different differences in adoption rates of marketing and
                         administrative innovations were found between owner and manager-controlled stations.

Social Systems Simulation Group P.O. Box 6904 San Diego, CA  92166-0904 Roland Werner, Principal Phone/FAX  (619) 660-1603