– Patrick Edward O’Toole –

According to Michael Porter, Operational Effectiveness is “performing similar activities better than rivals. Firms can reduce waste, increase efficiency, employ better technology, develop superior personnel training, and operationalize best practices, which increase operational effectiveness and superior performance. Operational Effectiveness is about performing similar activities in similar ways- leading (according to Porter), to mimicry among companies that end up looking like each other. This creates a competitive convergence since competitors can quickly imitate new techniques. “Competitors can quickly imitate management techniques, best practices, etc.” It leads in effect to firm homogeneity. In this way operational effectiveness has a homogenizing effect similar to the isomorphic mechanisms described by DiMaggio and Powell; but from different, if not opposite, intentions.

DiMaggio and Powell explain firm homogeneity through the process of isomorphism, a process of convergence within organizational and institutional fields that happens for several key reasons, one of which is called Mimetic Isomorphism. This mimetic process is defined as a “standard response to uncertainty.” It occurs when organizational technologies are misunderstood, goals are ambiguous, or the environmental landscape is uncertain. In direct contrast to operational effectiveness– which is trying to increase performance and “outdo” the competition- the nature of mimeticism is to negotiate uncertainty through imitation, and to create legitimacy via similarity to other organizational players. This is not the deliberate attempt to increase performance, e.g. create a desired differentiation from competitors, which is the intention behind operational effectiveness. Mimetic

Isomorphism is about being similar, about organizational modeling in order to remove and avoid differentiation (which is viewed as dangerous and risky). “Modeling, as we use the term, is a response to uncertainty.” Operational Effectiveness occurs intentionally, fueled by hopes of strategic distinction through superior performance (the homogenizing effects are not intentional). Mimetic Isomorphism may or may not happen intentionally, and occurs to create legitimacy through similarity but is not the product of strategic performance enhancement or a desire to distinguish the firm from its competition. It is fair to say that both processes are forms of strategy for firm survival (don’t tell Porter), but are employed (or occur) for very different reasons and under highly differentiated circumstances.