European Journal of Innovation Management最新文献

Purpose

This study aims to explore how firms can enhance their innovation processes by effectively utilizing external knowledge and employing digital technologies. Specifically, it emphasizes the role of absorptive capacity (ACAP) in external knowledge acquisition and assimilation (potential ACAP), as well as transformation and exploitation (realized ACAP), highlighting the necessity of equipping firms with digital technologies to support ACAP activities.

Design/methodology/approach

To achieve the research purpose, we conducted a structured literature review of academic papers sourced from Scopus-Elsevier.

Findings

The key findings encompass the identification of common digital technologies supporting ACAP and explore how these technologies contribute to knowledge acquisition, assimilation, transformation and exploitation. The main results show that social media and online communities are the most studied technologies in relation to ACAP activities. Research predominantly centres on potential ACAP – with acquisition activity more studied than assimilation – rather than realized ACAP – with only social media and online communities demonstrating full support for transformation and exploitation activities.

Research limitations/implications

This research represents a pioneering joint study of ACAP and digital technologies, advancing understanding beyond organizational perspectives and expanding open innovation literature by integrating ACAP role in technology collaborations. A call for qualitative investigations into the relationship between digital technologies and ACAP emerged.

Practical implications

The findings offer valuable guidance to innovation managers, aiding them in selecting appropriate digital technologies to strengthen ACAP activities.

Originality/value

This work’s uniqueness lies in bridging the gaps between open innovation, ACAP and digital technologies, which are often studied in isolation.

Purpose

The proliferation of industry platforms has disrupted several industries. Firms adopting a platform business model have experienced a substantial expansion in size and scale, positioning themselves as the foremost valuable entities in market capitalization. Over the past two decades, there has been a substantial expansion in the body of literature dedicated to platforms, and different streams of research have emerged. Despite considerable efforts and the significant progress made in recent years toward a comprehensive understanding of industry platforms, there is still room for further harnessing the field’s diversity. As a result, the aim of this article is to examine the field’s structure, identify research concerns and provide suggestions for future research, thereby enhancing the overall understanding of industry platforms.

Design/methodology/approach

We conducted a thorough examination of 458 articles on the topic using bibliometric methods and systematic review techniques.

Findings

Through co-citation analysis, we identified five distinct clusters rooted in various bodies of literature: two-sided markets, industry platforms, digital platforms, innovation platforms and two-sided networks. Furthermore, the examination of these five clusters has revealed three key areas that demand further consideration: (1) terminologies, (2) classifications and (3) perspectives.

Originality/value

While previous reviews have provided valuable insights into the topic of industry platforms, none have explored the structure of the field so far. Consequently, as a first step toward advancing the field, we uncover the structure of the literature, identifying three major areas of concern. By addressing these concerns, our goal is to converge different clusters, thereby harnessing the diversity in the field and enhancing the overall understanding of industry platforms.

Purpose

This paper examines open innovation (OI) based on sustainability principles within the agri-food sector. The study aims to understand the interplay between different actors and develop a typology of their roles in fostering sustainability. Three key research questions guided our inquiry: “WHY” sustainability is driving the OI initiatives as presented by companies, “WHO” participates in OI interactions and “HOW” these interactions are structured among diverse agri-food actors.

Design/methodology/approach

Through a theoretical prism encompassing OI modes, types, practices, sustainability dimensions and multilevel perspectives, we analyzed 78 agri-food sustainable OI initiatives, as described by the companies, to identify and explain why, who and how they engage in OI to drive sustainability shifts.

Findings

The results reveal typical patterns of transaction and cooperation between actors and confirm the collaborative nature of sustainable OI in the agri-food sector when actors must transcend traditional economic boundaries and reshape both the internal performance culture and the broader industrial or community mindset. The paper also conceptualizes the roles of actors in co-creating value in the context of sustainable food transitions.

Originality/value

This study brings the theoretical lenses of OI to conceptualize the collaborative nature of sustainability transitions in the agri-food system. The focus on sustainability transitions is dominantly placed on innovators at the niche level, while incumbents tend to be depicted as protecting the status quo. Thus, the focus on the collaborative interplay among different actors engaged in OI for sustainability contributes to offering a more nuanced view of innovation in sustainability transitions. In turn, the development of a typology of actors, motivations and configurations of OI from sustainability transition perspectives contributes to strengthening the conceptualization of sustainable value co-creation in the OI realm.

Purpose

To augment sales revenue, B2B digital start-ups aim to create and sustain commercial relationships with industry incumbents. However, since these incumbents have traditionally struggled with implementing disruptive digital artifacts, most studies have almost exclusively concentrated on their challenges, leaving the digital start-ups' side underexplored. Therefore, this study seeks to understand how digital start-ups navigate digital implementation (DI) hardships to ultimately achieve digital entrepreneurship success.

Design/methodology/approach

An abductive explanatory multi-case study of four industries that pose a variety of implementation challenges for B2B digital start-ups (agriculture, insurance, real estate and construction, and healthcare) was conducted using data collected from 40 interviews with Israeli experts and relevant digital data observations.

Findings

This study articulates two main observations. (1) Throughout their journeys, digital start-ups have utilized newly created and/or refined dynamic capabilities (DC) to successfully implement their digital artifacts. Simultaneously, successful DI has enabled digital start-ups to create new DC or sustain and evolve current DC. (2) We provide empirical evidence outlining how digital start-ups using continuous learning have combined causation and effectuation logic throughout their DI journeys.

Originality/value

This study answers a call to explore more explicit digital-related drivers (i.e. DI) for digital entrepreneurship success by studying a highly-ranked country on the Global Entrepreneurship Index (GEI) to achieve this. Moreover, it illustrates how digital start-ups evolve throughout their commercial relationships with industry incumbents, thereby enabling an effective approach for successful DI. Such an approach can be considered very valuable for both practitioners and policymakers. Consequently, it advances digital entrepreneurship as an independent research topic.

Purpose

The paper investigates how visibility, information technology and innovation management impact sustainability performance. It proposes a framework explaining the role of visibility in driving firms' sustainable performance and the relevance of innovation management and information technologies in enhancing organisational visibility. This study intends to add to the discussion within the management literature about the potential of innovation management to drive sustainability. It seeks to provide insight into the practices that small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) can adopt to improve their sustainable performance.

Design/methodology/approach

Using empirical methods, the study investigates SMEs in central Mexico. The demographic information in the dataset includes 15 years as an average length of service from firms. Of the surveyed firms, 70% were from the manufacturing sector and 30% were from the service sector, as these are the most representative sectors of the productive region. A variance-based structural equation model approach was used to test the hypotheses, processed with the partial least squares (PLS) regression method.

Findings

The research results show that visibility significantly impacts sustainability performance. Innovation management has a higher influence on visibility than information technologies, emphasising the need to improve the quality of information in firms, not just the tools. The findings support managers in comprehending the crucial importance of visibility in aiding firms to achieve higher sustainability performance.

Research limitations/implications

The study only examined a sample of Mexican SMEs; therefore, the findings' generalizability must be considered within this context. Secondly, the survey only focused on services and manufacturing firms and a more detailed analysis of the sector could provide further clarity on the relationships between variables. As a result, future research should consider these limitations and explore additional contexts to improve the overall understanding of the topic. Moreover, the scale used to measure the variables was adapted from other researchers with similar context research and reflective variables.

Practical implications

The results provide helpful information for SME managers about the importance of focusing on innovation management processes and employing information technologies as crucial managerial strategies. This will aid in increasing visibility and supporting the development of sustainability performance in firms.

Social implications

The world red-code, among others, with climate change and social gaps, has generated the need to contribute to sustainable development, and it has mobilised people on all levels all over the world for the si

Purpose

This study aims to provide a systemic and integrated view of how Industry 4.0 and its enabling technologies affect companies' internal and external environments. It offers a comprehensive view of the contribution about ten years after the start of the Fourth Industrial Revolution.

Design/methodology/approach

The study performs a systematic literature review based on Industry 4.0 management literature. Analyzing the results of the 308 final papers in the sample made it possible to build a theoretical model to explain the contribution of Industry 4.0 to the internal and external environment of the company.

Findings

The results highlight the contribution of Industry 4.0 to the processes and environment of the company by providing a systemic and integrated view, highlighting the most applied enabling technologies and their internal, external, and combined usefulness in business processes.

Research limitations/implications

Finally, the paper provides a broad view of the Industry 4.0 topic ten years after its origin through an extensive literature analysis that allows us to highlight the significant studies and the areas still under-researched by researchers and opens the debate on the Industry 5.0 scenario.

Originality/value

The model makes it possible to appreciate the role of Industry 4.0 and its enabling technologies in companies in a broad and systemic view and to understand, from a managerial point of view, the interactions, synergies, and possibilities within processes and the reflection on the external environment.

Purpose

This study reveals the trigger of innovative behavior from the perspective of intrinsic and extrinsic spiritual inspiration and provides a new research idea for the formation mechanism of innovative behavior. The purpose of this study is to provide certain guidance and implications for enterprises to cultivate and enhance employees’ innovative behavior.

Design/methodology/approach

We conducted three studies, collected multi-source data (N = 1,175) from different countries longitudinally, as well as used hierarchical regression analysis and fuzzy-set quantitative comparative analysis to verify the theoretical model.

Findings

According to the findings, both spiritual leadership and career calling have a positive impact on employees’ innovative behavior through the mediating effect of autonomous motivation and the moderating effect of person-vocation fit.

Originality/value

Innovative behavior is the positive professional pursuit of employees, which is difficult to form without the motivation of spiritual factors. Spirituality is a complex concept that contains intrinsic and extrinsic spiritual factors, both of which could stimulate employees’ innovative behavior. Although many discussions have been held on this topic in recent years, little attention has been paid simultaneously to the motivating effects of the two perspectives. Drawn from self-determination theory, this study explores the mechanisms of two spiritual motivation paths (i.e. the intrinsic and extrinsic spiritual motivation paths) in the improvement of employees’ innovative behavior.

Purpose

The purpose of this paper is to fill a gap in the literature regarding the open innovation management approaches that small and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) can use to access digital technologies and incorporate them into their organizational processes. The research question is: What organizational and process-level managerial actions do SMEs take to successfully access and implement digital technologies within their organizational processes?

Design/methodology/approach

Using Guertler et al.'s (2020) Action Innovation Management Research (AIM-R) framework, this study examines the digital transformation experiences of 10 European SMEs to gain insights into the managerial actions that foster successful digital transformation.

Findings

The findings of the paper reveal two major contributions. First, a digital transformation roadmap for SMEs is proposed, with a focus on accessing external resources and reconfiguring internal ones to ease their digital transformation journey. Second, three distinct paradoxes that influence the digital transformation process in SMEs are highlighted, providing useful insights into the challenges and tensions SMEs face during this journey.

Originality/value

This paper provides a unique perspective on the digital transformation of SMEs by examining the managerial actions required for successful technology adoption and revealing the paradoxes that may emerge during this transformative process. The findings form the basis for future research, deepening our understanding of digital transformation in SMEs and providing actionable advice to managers and practitioners navigating this journey.

Purpose

Against the background of the I50 paradigm, this paper queries in what ways blockchain and blockchain-based applications deployed in the smart city context facilitate the integration of the I50 paradigm in smart urban contexts.

Design/methodology/approach

A mixed methods approach is applied. First, by means of desk research and thematic literature review, a conceptual model integrating the I50 paradigm, smart city and blockchain-based solutions is built. Second, science mapping bibliometric analysis (SciMat) based on keywords’ co-occurrence is applied to a sample of 491 research articles to identify key domains of blockchain-based applications’ use in smart city. Third, a semi-systematic literature review complements insights gained through SciMat. Fourth, the findings are interpreted through the precepts of the conceptual model devised earlier.

Findings

The key blockchain-based applications in smart cities pertain to two domains, i.e. the foundational, service facilitation-oriented domain, including security (and safety), networks, computing, resource management and the service delivery-oriented domain, including mobility, energy and healthcare. Blockchain serves as the key building block for applications developed to deliver functions specific to each of the thus identified domains. A substantial layering of blockchain-based tools and applications is necessary to advance from the less to the more complex functional domains of the smart city.

Originality/value

At the conceptual level, the intricacies of the (making of the) I50 paradigm are discussed and a case for I50 – smart city – blockchain nexus is made. Easton’s input–output model as well as constructivism is referenced. At the empirical level, the key major domains of blockchain-based applications are discussed; those that bear the prospect of integrating the I50 paradigm in the smart city are highlighted. At the methodological level, a strategic move is made aimed at restoring the literature review’s role as subservient to the key line of exploration, to justify and ultimately support it, rather than to showcase the literature review as the ultimate purpose for itself.

Purpose

This study aims to investigate the effect of organizational ambidexterity (OA) and organizational green culture (OGC) on corporate sustainability (CS) while incorporating the mediating role of green innovation (GI) to provide a detailed insight into CS. The study also presents a research framework based on the Organizational Ambidexterity theory and Natural Resource-based view to explain the factors contributing to CS.

Design/methodology/approach

Using stratified sampling, the study collected data through survey-based empirical research from 307 textile companies registered with the Securities and Exchange Commission of Pakistan (SECP) or the All-Pakistan Textile Mills Association (APTMA). The collected data were analysed using path analysis, mediation analysis and moderation analysis through smart PLS-SEM version 4.0 to assess the composition and causal association of factors.

Findings

The study found a significant relationship between OA and OGC with CS. Furthermore, the study revealed that green innovation partially mediates the relationship between OGC and CS. The proposed research framework can be valuable for promoting and recommending actions to enhance CS.

Research limitations/implications

The study on CS in the textile sector of Pakistan has limitations such as a narrow focus, cross-sectional design and reliance on self-reported data. Future research should explore additional factors, conduct longitudinal research, investigate contextual factors, scrutinize specific green innovation practices and broaden the scope of the study to include SMEs and other textile organizations.

Practical implications

The research framework can help senior executives to foster CS by promoting OGC, OA and GI. Practitioners and academicians can also utilize or further investigate the proposed framework for validation and to foster CS.

Originality/value

This study fills gaps in the existing literature by investigating the mediating effect of GI between OGC and CS. The proposed research framework provides a comprehensive understanding of the factors contributing to CS based on the Organizational Ambidexterity theory and Natural Resource-based view.