Organizational Learning under Organizational Impermanence: Collaborative Ties in Film Project Firms

Simone Ferriani (), Raffaele Corrado and Carlo Boschetti

Journal of Management & Governance, 2005, vol. 9, issue 3, 257-285

Abstract: In the last two decades a lot of research has been devoted to unveiling the processes through which organizations learn and store knowledge. This research is typically concerned with organizations lastingly engaged in the provision of goods or services. Permanency is usually presumed in order for the encoding of inferences from history to take place. But what if organizational permanency cannot be assumed ex-ante? Project firms represent an interesting case in point. A project firm is a transient form of organization that ceases to exist as soon as its single target is achieved, as such it does not exhibit stable structures nor does it exhibit ostensible history-based paths upon which to build its choices and nurture its organizational knowledge. This apparent paradox can be resolved, in part, by extending the view from the isolated project to the relational context in which project firms operate. Using longitudinal data from the U.S. feature film industry, we show that the process of organizational formation and dissolution that characterizes this context is underpinned by patterns of enduring collaborations among interdependent industry participants. We build on these findings to speculate on processes of learning and remembering that interpenetrate project firms’ boundaries, by being embedded within a texture of stable interpersonal ties. Copyright Springer 2005

Keywords: film industry; organizational impermanence; organizational learning; project firms; repeated collaborations (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2005
References: View complete reference list from CitEc
Citations: View citations in EconPapers (13)

Downloads: (external link)
http://hdl.handle.net/10.1007/s10997-005-7422-2 (text/html)
Access to full text is restricted to subscribers.

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:kap:jmgtgv:v:9:y:2005:i:3:p:257-285

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
http://www.springer. ... 29/journal/10997/PS2

DOI: 10.1007/s10997-005-7422-2

Access Statistics for this article

Journal of Management & Governance is currently edited by Lino Cinquini

More articles in Journal of Management & Governance from Springer, Accademia Italiana di Economia Aziendale (AIDEA) Contact information at EDIRC.
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Sonal Shukla () and Springer Nature Abstracting and Indexing ().