Individual innovation behavior and firm-level exploration and exploitation: how family firms make the most of their managers

Abstract

This study investigates the influence of top managers' individual innovation behavior on firm-level innovation activities, specifically on exploration and exploitation. The influence of individual actions depends on managerial discretion, which is dependent on the ownership context of a business. Thus, this study explores how family ownership moderates the relationships between a top manager's individual innovation behavior and firm-level exploration and exploitation. Based on a sample of 195 firms, of which 120 are family firms, our findings depict highly significant relationships between managers' individual innovation behavior and firm-level exploration and exploitation innovation. Furthermore, we find differences regarding these relationships between family firms and their non-family counterparts. We contribute to literature showing that family firms provide a unique context for leveraging a top manager's individual innovation behavior into firm-level exploration activities.

Absorptive capacity, strategic flexibility, and business model innovation: Empirical evidence from Italian SMEs

“…As innovation activities and strategic flexibility depend on the organizational and environmental context, we included a set of control variables in our analysis. First, there is evidence that family firms, a dominant type of organization around the globe (De Massis, Frattini, Majocchi, & Piscitello, 2017), differ with respect to innovation (Matzler, Veider, Hautz, & Stadler, 2015;Strobl, Matzler, Nketia, & Veider, 2018) and strategic flexibility (Zahra, Hayton, Neubaum, Dibrell, & Craig, 2008). Thus, we controlled for family ownership measured as the percentage shares held by the focal family.…”

Radical innovations: Between established knowledge and future research opportunities

“…A radical innovation management “checklist” could name the intra- and extra-organizational aspects managers should pay attention to and how to best configure them. This overview would also help to identify research gaps as many organizational variables, such as agility ( Brand, Tiberius, Bican, & Brem, 2019 ), internal idea contest designs ( Hober, Schaarschmidt, & von Korflesch, 2019 ), entrepreneurial orientation ( Gupta, Mortal, & Yang, 2018 ), organizational innovation climate ( Liu, Chow, Zhang, & Huang, 2019 ), organizational justice ( Akram, Lei, Haider, & Hussain, 2020 ), or organizational wisdom practices ( Akgün, Keskin, & Kırçovalı, 2019 ), as well as human resource variables, such as emotional intelligence ( Açikgök & Latham, 2020 ), incentives ( Ritala, Vanhala, & Järveläinen, 2020 ), individual innovation behavior ( Strobl, Matzler, Nketia, & Veider, 2020 ), slack time ( Medase, 2020 ), and top management teams ( Sperber & Linder, 2018 ), and many more have been related to innovation performance but not yet been subject to in-depth analysis regarding specifically radical innovations. It would also be interesting to contrast findings about what radical innovation managers should do and what they really do ( Maier & Brem, 2018 ).…”

Financial managers and organizational ambidexterity in the German Mittelstand: the moderating role of strategy involvement

“…Upper echelons theory suggests that firms' organizational choices can be predicted from the firms' top managers and their characteristics (Abatecola and Cristofaro 2020;Carpenter et al 2004;Hambrick and Mason 1984;Hambrick 2007). In line with this notion, past research highlights the importance of top managers' characteristics when aiming for ambidexterity (e.g., Huang et al 2021;Kiss et al 2020;Li 2013;Lubatkin et al 2006;Mammassis and Kostopoulos 2019;Smith and Uman 2015;Strobl et al 2020;Wilms et al 2019). Such research often analyzes the role of CEOs as top managers and their impact on the level of OA.…”

“…Earlier research suggests that individual managers can play an important role in fostering exploration and exploitation simultaneously despite resource constraints (e.g., Cao et al 2010;Sinha 2019;Strobl et al 2020). Accordingly, the more recent ambidexterity research has increasingly focused on individual actors and their roles in reaching high levels of ambidexterity (e.g., Cao et al 2010;Huang et al 2021;Kiss et al 2020;Kortmann 2015;Mammassis and Kostopoulos 2019;Li 2013;Lubatkin et al 2006;Maine et al 2021;Mihalache et al 2014;Smith and Umans 2015;Uman 2013;Umans et al 2020).…”