How Commitment to Craftsmanship Leads to Unique Value: Steinway & Sons’ Differentiation Strategy

The positioning perspective in strategic management suggests that successful differentiation results from a firm’s deliberate efforts to create something that is perceived as being unique. This usually involves looking beyond the proximate to pursue distant opportunities. However, a firm that pursues local opportunities eventually may be perceived as being unique especially when competitors decide to follow other strategic paths within the same industry. In the language of the NK modeling approach, a firm can attain successful differentiation by choosing to move to a different peak (i.e., pursue distant opportunities), or to stay on the same peak in which it is currently located (i.e., pursue local opportunities). While extant strategy research has expounded the first path to differentiation, the second path has remained underexplored. Relying on a data set that combines primary and secondary sources, we use an historical case study research design to explore how and why, over time, Steinway & Sons adhere...

[1]  Louis E. Yelle.  THE LEARNING CURVE: HISTORICAL REVIEW AND COMPREHENSIVE SURVEY , 1979 .

[2]  R. Garud,et al.  TRANSFORMATIVE CAPACITY: CONTINUAL STRUCTURING BY INTERTEMPORAL TECHNOLOGY TRANSFER , 1994 .

[3]  Murray S. Davis.  'That's Classic!' The Phenomenology and Rhetoric of Successful Social Theories , 1986 .

[4]  B. Kogut,et al.  Knowledge and the Speed of the Transfer and Imitation of Organizational Capabilities: An Empirical Test , 1995 .

[5]  J. S. Long,et al.  DEPARTMENTAL EFFECTS ON SCIENTIFIC PRODUCTIVITY , 1990 .

[6]  M. Hannan,et al.  Structural Inertia and Organizational Change , 1984 .

[7]  P. Hirsch.  Processing Fads and Fashions: An Organization-Set Analysis of Cultural Industry Systems , 1972, American Journal of Sociology.

[8]  Anthony A. Braga,et al.  The Corner and the Crew: The Influence of Geography and Social Networks on Gang Violence , 2013 .

[9]  Brian Moeran.  Tricks of the Trade: The Performance and Interpretation of Authenticity , 2005 .

[10]  L. Argote,et al.  The persistence and transfer of learning in industrial settings , 1990 .

[11]  T. Lant,et al.  Balancing Act: Learning from Organizing Practices in Cultural Industries , 2000 .

[12]  Gabriel Szulanski.  Exploring internal stickiness: Impediments to the transfer of best practice within the firm , 1996 .

[13]  M. Lamont.  Toward a Comparative Sociology of Valuation and Evaluation , 2012 .

[14]  Glenn R. Carroll,et al.  The Organizational Construction of Authenticity: An Examination of Contemporary Food and Dining in the U.S. , 2008 .

[15]  Leigh Thompson,et al.  Learning Negotiation Skills: Four Models of Knowledge Creation and Transfer , 2003, Manag. Sci..

[16]  Daniel A. Levinthal.  Adaptation on rugged landscapes , 1997 .

[17]  Andrew Hargadon,et al.  When Innovations Meet Institutions: Edison and the Design of the Electric Light , 2001 .

[18]  John L. Ward,et al.  The Special Role of Strategic Planning for Family Businesses , 1988 .

[19]  Giovanni Gavetti,et al.  PERSPECTIVE - Toward a Behavioral Theory of Strategy , 2012, Organ. Sci..

[20]  Paul A. David,et al.  The explicit economics of knowledge codification and tacitness , 2000 .

[21]  Linda Argote,et al.  Managing Knowledge in Organizations: An Integrative Framework and Review of Emerging Themes , 2003, Manag. Sci..

[22]  Baruch Fischhoff,et al.  Judgment under uncertainty: For those condemned to study the past: Heuristics and biases in hindsight , 1982 .

[23]  D. Crane.  Scientists at major and minor universities: a study of productivity and recognition. , 1965, American sociological review.

[24]  Alfred Kieser,et al.  Why Organization Theory Needs Historical Analyses-And How This Should Be Performed , 1994 .

[25]  Linda Argote,et al.  Organizational Learning and Forgetting: The Effects of Turnover and Structure , 2006 .

[26]  D. MacKenzie,et al.  Tacit Knowledge, Weapons Design, and the Uninvention of Nuclear Weapons , 1995, American Journal of Sociology.

[27]  Henry Mintzberg.  Musings on management. Ten ideas designed to rile everyone who cares about management. , 1996, Harvard business review.

[28]  Blake E. Ashforth,et al.  Identification in Organizations: An Examination of Four Fundamental Questions , 2008 .

[29]  David A. Whetten,et al.  Albert and Whetten Revisited: Strengthening the Concept of Organizational Identity , 2006 .

[30]  G. Cattani.  Technological Pre-Adaptation, Speciation, and Emergence of New Technologies: How Corning Invented and Developed Fiber Optics , 2006 .

[31]  Gerald F. Davis,et al.  After the Corporation* , 2013 .

[32]  Michael Beverland,et al.  Crafting Brand Authenticity: The Case of Luxury Wines , 2005 .

[33]  L. Gómez-Mejia,et al.  Socioemotional Wealth and Business Risks in Family-controlled Firms: Evidence from Spanish Olive Oil Mills , 2007 .

[34]  Gino Cattani,et al.  A Core/Periphery Perspective on Individual Creative Performance: Social Networks and Cinematic Achievements in the Hollywood Film Industry , 2008, Organ. Sci..

[35]  Henry Mintzberg,et al.  Of strategies, deliberate and emergent , 1985, Strategic Management Journal.

[36]  Roger L. M. Dunbar,et al.  Value Creation and Knowledge Loss: The Case of Cremonese Stringed Instruments , 2013, Organ. Sci..

[37]  J. Gans,et al.  Value Capture Theory: A Strategic Management Review , 2016 .

[38]  Victoria Johnson,et al.  What Is Organizational Imprinting? Cultural Entrepreneurship in the Founding of the Paris Opera1 , 2007, American Journal of Sociology.

[39]  Ezra W. Zuckerman,et al.  The Categorical Imperative: Securities Analysts and the Illegitimacy Discount , 1999, American Journal of Sociology.

[40]  A. Rafferty,et al.  Promoting Family: A Contingency Model of Family Business Succession , 2008 .

[41]  S. Winter,et al.  Replication as Strategy , 2001 .

[42]  I. Nonaka.  A Dynamic Theory of Organizational Knowledge Creation , 1994 .

[43]  Andrew D. Brown,et al.  Organizational Identity and Organizational Identification , 2013 .

[44]  Balázs Kovács,et al.  Authenticity and Consumer Value Ratings: Empirical Tests from the Restaurant Domain , 2014, Organ. Sci..

[45]  H. Becker.  Notes on the Concept of Commitment , 1960, American Journal of Sociology.

[46]  Jan W. Rivkin.  Imitation of Complex Strategies , 2000 .

[47]  R. Amit,et al.  Family Control of Firms and Industries , 2009 .

[48]  Ray Reagans,et al.  Network Structure and Knowledge Transfer: The Effects of Cohesion and Range , 2003 .

[49]  J. Gans,et al.  Value Capture Theory: A Strategic Management Review , 2016 .

[50]  Dawn Harris,et al.  Is Strategy Different for the Family-Owned Business? , 1994 .

[51]  R. Merton.  The Matthew Effect in Science , 1968, Science.