The funeral industry and the Internet: on the historical emergence and destabilization of strategic paths

Abstract

Although IS research acknowledges the importance of path dependence with the generalized response that “history matters,” this broad understanding does not substitute for a more systematic historical analysis of how paths emerge and how technological change breaks them. In this context, we draw on the theory of strategic path dependence from organization and management research to develop a more nuanced understanding of path dependence and then explore how technological change breaks these strategic paths. Based on a narrative analysis of the strategic development of incumbents in the funeral industry, we reconstruct the core components of strategic paths – strategic patterns and self-reinforcing mechanisms – and scrutinize the Internet’s role in breaking these paths. We suggest that technological change helps break strategic paths by destabilizing the very self-reinforcing mechanisms that led to their emergence and reproduction in the first place. Furthermore, by showing that breaking strategic paths involves a subsequent critical event that destabilizes the strategic pattern, we advance a process understanding of how strategic paths are broken. This paper thus provides much-needed historical analyses of IS-related phenomena, offers a more precise and systematic understanding of path dependence in IS research, and yields insights into the process of how strategic paths are broken.

Keywords:

• path dependence
• history
• technological change
• self-reinforcing mechanisms
• strategic pattern
• narrative

The online version of this article is available Open Access.

Editor: Prof. Frantz Rowe

Associate Editor: Dr. Brian Pentland

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in the credit line; if the material is not included under the Creative Commons license, users will need to obtain permission from the license holder to reproduce the material. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/.

The online version of this article is available Open Access.

Editor: Prof. Frantz Rowe

Associate Editor: Dr. Brian Pentland

This work is licensed under a Creative Commons Attribution-NonCommercial-NoDerivs 3.0 Unported License. The images or other third party material in this article are included in the article’s Creative Commons license, unless indicated otherwise in the credit line; if the material is not included under the Creative Commons license, users will need to obtain permission from the license holder to reproduce the material. To view a copy of this license, visit http://creativecommons.org/licenses/by-nc-nd/3.0/.

Acknowledgements

The authors are indebted to the responsible editors as well as to three anonymous reviewers for their thoughtful guidance. Furthermore, the authors thank participants at the 23rd European Conference on Information Systems (ECIS) in Münster, Germany, for their helpful comments. An earlier and less-developed version of the manuscript was published in the ECIS 2015 Proceedings.

Additional information

Notes on contributors

Matthias Wenzel

About the Authors

Matthias Wenzel is a postdoctoral researcher at the European University Viadrina in Frankfurt (Oder), Germany. His current research centers on the strategic and organizational challenges imposed by technological change, demand side innovation strategies, and research methods.

Heinz-Theo Wagner

Heinz-Theo Wagner is a Professor of Management and Innovation at the German Graduate School of Management and Law (GGS), Heilbronn, Germany. His research interests include innovation management, the role of digital technologies and their impact on organizations, and the IT business value creation process.

Jochen Koch

Jochen Koch is a Professor of Management and Organization at the European University Viadrina in Frankfurt (Oder), Germany. His research interests include organizational creativity, organizational routines and practices, and the theory of strategic and organizational path dependence.