ABSTRACT
IntroductionThe study of innovation has proved of substantial interest to scholars in management and organizational studies (MOS) with work ranging from the macro level (economy/industry/market) through organizational level (firm/enterprise) to the micro level (group/team/individual). In addition to the substantial amount of research on the organization of innovation (Crossan & Apaydin, 2010), management practitioners and policy makers continue making substantial investments in this area in order to increase business competitiveness (Kao, 2009). Our contribution to this book’s exploration of life cycle perspectives is to adopt an organizational level of analysis in order to present the process dynamics of
innovation. We are explicitly interested in how organizations whose purposes are served by the development of new technologies are influenced by life cycle considerations. In seeking to address this question, we will explore an organizational-level life cycle perspective based on the concept of capabilities and illustrate this discussion with a contemporary context by relating our interest in the management of emerging technology with the policy discourse on responsible innovation (RI). Organizational capabilities are a well-established construct in the field of strategic management (Dosi et al., 2000) and have been defined as collectively held and action-oriented knowledge that enables organizations to get things done (Pandza & Thorpe, 2010). The management of emerging technology in order to develop new products would be an example of an organizational capability (Eisenhardt & Martin, 2000). Because of the fluid nature of new technology markets, any capability associated with their applications is likely to be ineffective if it remains stationary and unresponsive to the changing pressures of the business environment. Therefore, it becomes important to understand how organizational capabilities might evolve through their own life cycles (Helfat & Peteraf, 2003). However recognizing that such a life cycle process might be subjected simultaneously to different influences, we find it instructive to decompose such cycles into more basic process theories of change (Van de Ven & Poole, 1995); not least to facilitate their empirical study. The first section opens with a core issue for emerging technologies; that of how the inherent uncertainty in their reception and impact might be managed. This theme is given a particular resonance with the introduction of a contemporary context for the management of emerging technologies in terms of the policy discourse on responsible innovation (RI). Organizational capabilities for innovation and their evolution will be presented in the hope of offering fresh insights on how the aspiration of RI policy discourse may be met by innovative enterprises. On the basis of our research, ideas will be proffered on the micro-foundational practices that constitute an emerging organizational capability for RI. Finally a typology of process theories of change is introduced as a means of achieving a more granular perspective on the progression of organizational capability life cycles.
