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KILLING MUSHROOMS: THE REALPOLITIK OF TERMINATING INNOVATION PROJECTS

Department of Communication Studies and Management, University of Texas, Austin, 2504A Whitis Avenue, Austin, TX 78712-0115, USA

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ALF STEINAR SÆTRE

Department of Industrial Economics and Technology Management, Norwegian University of Science and Technology, Alfred Getzv. 1, 7491 Trondheim, Norway

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, and

ERIC BRUN

UiS Business School, University of Stavanger, 4036 Stavanger, Norway

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https://doi.org/10.1142/S1363919612003861Cited by:7 (Source: Crossref)

Abstract

Successful organizations depend not only on highly successful ideas and projects, but also on terminating poorer projects so that they do not drain their intellectual and other resources. There is, however, evidence that organizations let many projects go on for too long before terminating them. This paper investigates managers' termination behaviors in the energy industry along two dimensions — termination and accommodation. Managers have two main concerns when terminating innovative ideas and projects. One is that the idea is actually abandoned (termination) and the other is that whoever came up with the idea does not become de-motivated when a project is terminated (accommodation). We explore the variance in the data to generate categories of termination and accommodation behaviors. We group our findings into seven major categories of termination strategies that vary with respect to accommodation. We then discuss three major features of accommodation strategies.

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