Achieving strategic renewal: the multi-level influences of top and middle managers’ boundary-spanning

Lotte Glaser,Sebastian P L Fourné,Tom Elfring

doi:10.1007/s11187-015-9633-5

Lotte Glaser, Sebastian P L Fourné + Show 1 more

Open Access

https://doi.org/10.1007/s11187-015-9633-5

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Abstract

Drawing on corporate entrepreneurship (CE) and social network research, this study focuses on strategic renewal as a form of CE and examines the impact of boundary-spanning at top and middle management levels on business units’ exploratory innovation. Analyses of multi-source and multi-level data, collected from 72 top managers (TMs) and 397 middle managers (MMs) operating in 34 units of a multi-national organization, indicate that TMs’ boundary-spanning is positively related to units’ exploratory innovation, but also has a cascading effect on MMs by increasing their perceived role conflict. MMs’ role conflict is negatively related to units’ exploratory innovation and thus offsets some of the benefits gained through TMs’ boundary-spanning activities. Taking a configurational perspective on social exchanges at multiple levels, we show that role conflict is reduced by overlapping boundary-spanning ties among TMs and MMs. Surprisingly, MMs’ boundary-spanning does not relate to exploratory innovation. Our study shows that with regard to boundary-spanning, a top-down approach to CE as strategic renewal may be most effective because TMs play a key role in driving exploratory innovation. However, TMs need to be aware of the cascading social liabilities of their boundary-spanning behavior and ensure MMs develop similar networks. We advance ongoing debates in studies about CE and social networks by providing empirically validated insights into who drives strategic renewal and by uncovering the benefits and costs of social exchanges for strategic renewal. Furthermore, we uncover potential causes of mixed findings in network theory research and highlight a remedy to social liabilities.

Highlights

Research has emphasized that large organizations have to embrace corporate entrepreneurship (CE) to cope with today’s competitive and uncertain business environments (Dess et al 2003; Ireland et al 2009; Morris et al 2010)
Drawing on corporate entrepreneurship (CE) and social network research, this study focuses on strategic renewal as a form of CE and examines the impact of boundary-spanning at top and middle management levels on business units’ exploratory innovation
We found that top management team (TMT) boundary-spanning correlated positively with exploratory innovation (r = .36, p \ .01) and with middle managers (MMs)’ role conflict (r = .14, p \ .01)

Summary

Introduction

Research has emphasized that large organizations have to embrace corporate entrepreneurship (CE) to cope with today’s competitive and uncertain business environments (Dess et al 2003; Ireland et al 2009; Morris et al 2010). Promoting CE is important because it helps organizations to regenerate competitive advantages through product and process innovations, developing markets, and fostering strategic renewal (Ireland et al 2006). Despite the importance of strategic renewal, scholars have noted that achieving it presents a challenge as business unit managers struggle in the shift from deploying existing competencies to developing new ones (Floyd and Lane 2000). It is challenging for organizational units and their managers ‘‘to abandon past successful behaviors and explore’’ (McNamara and Baden-Fuller 1999: 292). Taking the notion of social exchanges of TMs and MMs a step further, we make the argument and show why a multi-level perspective on network configurations in CE research is even more insightful—especially when considering social liabilities and associated remedies—than single-level perspectives

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