Enabling Technological Process Innovation through Management Innovation

Abstract

For sustained competitive advantage of established process manufacturing firms, technological process innovation to improve resource productivity and environmental performance has become of pivotal importance. These firms, however, often face intraorganizational tensions to reconcile pressures for exploration and exploitation across subsequent phases of technological process innovation. Firms may, therefore, need to perform the development phase – being the most sensitive to these tensions – in the interorganizational context of an external dedicated development facility, requiring new-to-the-firm management activities, i.e. management innovation. However, the role of management innovation in enabling technological process innovation in an interorganizational context remains largely unexplored in the literature. To address this gap, we develop propositions and use illustrative examples from the research context of an external dedicated development facility for sustainable process technology, located in on...