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PATH CREATION
A PROCESS OF MINDFUL DEVIATION
A set of ideas to think about the role of human agency
in entrepreneurship and change
Raghu Garud & Peter Karnøe
PATH CREATION AS A PROCESS OF MINDFUL
DEVIATION
The living language is like a cowpath: it is the creation of the
cows themselves, who, having created it, follow it or depart
from it, or depart from it according to their whims or their
needs. From daily use, the path undergoes change. A cow is
under no obligation to stay in the narrow path she helped
make, following the contour of the land, but she often
profits by staying with it and she would be handicapped if
she didn't know where it was or where it led to.
E. B. White, 1957
PATH DEPENDENCE
A sequence of events constituting a self-reinforcing process
that has the potential to unfold into one of several potential
states based upon small differences in any of the events
constituting the sequence. (Lock-in - QWERTY)
Implication:
Markets are not efficient due to re-inforcement (‘best’ wins
out)
-dynamic learning effects- economies of scale –coordination
effects – expectations dominance – critical mass - first mover Beta max VHS, DK wind
MORE FORMALLY
A path dependent sequence of economic changes is one of
which important influences upon the eventual outcome can
be exerted by temporally remote events, including
happenings dominated by chance elements rather than
systematic forces. Stochastic processes like that do not
converge automatically to a fixed point distribution of
outcomes, and are called non-ergodic. In such
circumstances, "historical accidents" can neither be ignored
nor reality quarantined for the purpose of economic
analysis; the dynamic process itself takes on an essentially
historical character.
David, 1985: 332
Path dependence and Path creation as
different perspectives
The Path
dependence
‘outsider’
perspective
makes the
emergence of
novelty a black box
and there is no role
to human agency
-
Path creation
entertains an ‘insider’
perspective
– and tend to theorize
emergent paths and
actors and how their
possible actions are
constrained-andenabled from the path
where they are
embedded – and
resources they can
mobilize
Path dependence and Path creation as
different perspectives
The Path dependence
‘outsider’ perspective
- Tends to underscore the
constitutive character of
paths and the way different
part of the history become
re-assembled to make new
futures
History or the past become
often too homogenous a
force
Path creation
entertains an ‘insider’
perspective
– the micro-sociological
perspective combined with
emergent irreverbilization
(lock-ins) highligths the active
constitution of the ‘lock-in’ by
contributing actors, materials
and economic and symbolic
resources
Path dependence and Path creation do share
ideas of
BUT
Everything emerges
out of an essentially
historical dynamic
process
of contingent
ordering,
irreversibilization,
momentum and
possible lock-in
On what level does one
see lock-in?
Wind power as Path
Creation and
Transformative changes
in energy production
Any technology or
organization in the
present build upon
various fragments of
solutions from ‘old’
history
PATH DEPENDENCE OR CREATION as a
choice of ontology and epistemology (Garud
and Karnøe 2001:7-8)
• A shift from path dependence to creation occurs as
researchers theorize how embedded actors endogenize
objects, relevance structures and time (history as
experienced past, present, future) – irreversibility as
outcome
• As embedding dimensions become strategic variables,
there is a shift from "describing our past worlds" to
"shaping our current states" to create new futures.
• Entrepreneurship involves judgment and choice about
time, relevance structures and objects within which
entrepreneurs are embedded and from which they must
deviate mindfully to create new paths.
PATH CREATION
Entrepreneurship requires an ability to span boundaries of
relevance structures, translate objects and mobilize time as
a resource.
As entrepreneurs endogenize time, relevance structures and
objects, they generate power to manipulate and mobilize
these elements strategically.
Path creation is the binding of objects, relevance structures
and time into an overall co-evolutionary process.