The purpose of this paper is to discuss the problems posed to platform (PF) firms by the myopic pursuit of scale in the PF business from the perspective of the inertia that acts on PF firms in response to changes in the external environment, such as the shift in generic technology and the emergence of substitute products. Specifically, this paper examines the question of why and by what process PF firms in the information market, once having secured a sufficient number of users and complements (content) in the market, eventually end up losing users and revenue. In this paper, a case study is conducted to analyze Cookpad, a consumer-generated media (CGM)-type PF business, and a video recipe service provider that is new to the market in the online cooking recipe service market.

 The case analysis pointed out the existence of the following two types of inertia as problems that arise when PF firms try to expand their scale of business in response to the environmental change of increasing demand for video recipe services brought about by changes in generic technology. In other words, this paper suggests that two types of inertia, (1) the cognitive inertia of management and (2) inertia due to accumulated capabilities, may have worked against Cookpad and prevented the company from adapting to the changing environment. This indicates that the inertia created by the myopic pursuit of business scale by PF firms with market positions may delay adaptation to any changes in the environment and actually create a gap in the market that allows other parties to take advantage. For PFs with a market position, complements to their strengths can be a cognitive constraint for new business development. In particular, it is difficult to manage the content contribution activities of complements in the information market PF. Therefore, problems may occur in PF when scale is expanded.

 There is a case to be made for organizations adopting ethical norms; it has been shown to be seen as legitimate even when it is symbolic. Institutional isomorphism means that the organization type is the same; it does not necessarily mean that the organizational activities are also homogeneous. In this study, I conduct a comparative analysis of the impact of institutional isomorphism and the diversity of organizational activities using the compliance system.

 The eight companies that were selected vary in size and industry and are isomorphic in terms of their type, but their organizational activities are diverse; these are divided into first-stage activities such as regulations, second-stage activities such as education and training, and third-stage small-group activities conducted at site. Five of the eight companies have brought about changes in their organizational activities in response to past scandals, which are of three types: (1) systems improvement, (2) elimination of misconduct, and (3) company-wide response. However, two of the five companies that had implemented systems development and elimination of misconduct reported yet another incident. The behavior that was reported was not a clear-cut deviation from the norm, and it is highly likely that the individuals involved do not consider their behavior to be deviant or errant.

 While some corrupt practices are clear violations of the norm, there are others that are difficult to categorize as such and fall into a grey area. Hence, there should be diversification of activities within the organization to prevent a range of corrupt practices, which is possible even in an isomorphic system.

 Innovation starts with creative ideas. While creativity and innovation have been separately studied, a growing body of work examines the process of creativity leading to innovation. There are a variety of problems in that process. One of them is the selection of creative ideas. Some experimental studies have shown that idea selection is a difficult task due to the cognitive tendency of individuals. This difficulty is exacerbated for managers since their cognitive resources are limited. If managers fail to correctly perceive and select highly creative ideas among many alternatives, creativity does not lead to innovations. Thus, as prior literature does, idea selection by managers is worth examining. However, idea selection by idea generators matters as well. Since the pool of ideas that managers evaluate consists of ones that idea generators propose, organizations cannot enjoy their employees' creativity if idea generators fail to select highly creative ideas among those they generate. Although this possibility has been mentioned in existing studies, little attention has been paid to idea selection by idea generators, in particular teams, that generated those ideas. In this paper, we develop a theoretical model of team idea selection, focusing on the diversity of members, psychological safety, and psychological ownership. While the former two concepts have been shown to contribute to idea generation (creativity), we argue that those can impede effective idea selection. Moreover, psychological ownership can lead teams away from proper evaluation and selection of creative ideas. Our model implies the potential difficulties and paradoxes in selecting ideas that idea generator teams can face.

 It often is assumed that cognition of decision makers mediates influences of organizational slack on various phenomena observed at organizations, including innovation, risk taking, and organizational growth. However, the mediating role played by managerial cognition per se is rarely examined empirically. Accordingly, irrespective of rich empirical support for associations between organizational slack and various organizational phenomena, we have yet fully understood underlying mechanisms of influences of organizational slack. Furthermore, it also is left underexamined whether the association between organizational slack and organizational phenomena is an indication of causal relationships in that the former is an antecedent of the latter. We aim to address this dearth of research by empirically examining whether managerial attention mediates influences of organizational slack on organizational growth. Our empirical analysis of the Japanese textile industry between 2004 and 2020 shows that attention of decision makers on external issues mediates the relationship between organizational slack and organizational growth. Specifically, we show that organizational slack is negatively associated with external attention of decision makers, while the external attention is positively associated with organizational growth. Our analyses address potential endogeneity of organizational slack to provide robust support for the hitherto unvalidated rationale employed by the prior work. The competitive mediation uncovered by our analysis may also help us to explain contradictory influences of organizational slack, or one of the unresolved questions in the research of organizational slack.

 This study focuses on the direction of “exploration” and “exploitation” of ambidextrous management to improve business performance under limited business resources in a market that requires policy-oriented “exploration” efforts, and set the research question as “What is the direction of firms' ambidextrous management efforts under limited business resources in the policy-oriented market?”.

 By focusing on Stadtwerke, small and medium-sized energy companies in Germany, which are precedent cases in a market-oriented toward full liberalization of energy retailing and the exploration of renewable energy, this study examines how to tackle “exploration” and “exploitation” to improve business performance.

 The analysis of the derived hypotheses shows that the company's performance can be improved by “exploration” and “exploitation”. The following conclusions (1) to (4) were obtained from the analysis of the derived hypotheses.

 (1) In a market that requires exploration despite limited management resources, the less effort is made into exploration, the lower the performance of the company is.

 (2) In a market that requires exploration despite limited management resources, the more imitatively a company follows the business efforts of a large-scale predecessor that is in the practical stage of successful exploration, the less likely it is to improve its performance.

 (3) In a market that requires exploration despite limited management resources, the more exploration efforts are made using technologies in the practical stage, the better the performance of the company in question is.

 (4) In a market that requires exploration despite limited management resources, efforts are made to explore advanced technologies, and the performance of the company in question becomes low.

 The contribution of this research is that by adding the perspective of “under the certain directional market environment” to the previous research on “ambidextrous management”, it is possible to show that even businesses with limited management resources can improve their performance by not only pursuing “exploitation” through the framework of their existing business but also by engaging in “exploration” using technologies that are in the practical stage.