Management Innovation and Adoption of Emerging Technologies: The Case of Cloud Computing

Abstract

This paper examines the effect of management innovation on a firm's ability to effectively adopt an emerging core technology. Organizing for technological change is often associated with structural dilemmas for incumbents: while structural contingent solutions such as spatially separated units and parallel organizations have been frequently discussed as enablers of handling contradictory requirements of existing and emerging technologies, there is empirical evidence that such solutions are likely to be either unfeasible or unsustainable in the cases of core technologies. Our analysis on the adoption process of a new core technology by a large telecommunication firm reveals the role of management innovation in fulfilling seemingly paradoxical structural requirements of knowledge accumulation in a dynamic knowledge environment. We discuss how a novel structural approach enabled the organization to overcome rigidities in the existing routines and foster a favorable environment for adoption of cloud technology and to overcome organizational challenges, with which the firm's conventional practices failed to commensurate.

Disentangling antecedents and performance effects of family SME innovation: A knowledge-based perspective

“…First, in line with previous propositions that managerial and technological innovations serve as complements rather than substitutes (Damanpour et al 2009;Camisón and Villar-López 2014;Walker et al 2015), the results of the analysis show that within the surveyed family SMEs, simultaneous engagement in MI increases the positive effect of TI on financial performance. Second, the results provide confirming evidence (e.g., Damanpour and Gopalakrishnan 2001;Khanagha et al 2013;Mol and Birkinshaw 2012) that in family firms novel management practices can also serve as enablers for product and process innovations. This occurs in such a way that MI provides an organizational structure, which fosters collaboration for new product development or a change toward more suitable organizational practices to support TI.…”

“…Based on reasoning from the RBV, research also finds that organizational innovation favors TI primarily through process innovations because Binnovations in business practices, workplace organization or new organizational methods in external relations can favour a more efficient organization and the use of innovative manufacturing and technological processes^ (Camisón andVillar-López 2014, p. 2893). In agreement with this argument, further research shows that through the implementation of MI, management must ensure that organizational structures and routines are adapted in a manner that enables technological advancement as well as the technological process innovation of a firm (Khanagha et al 2013;Hollen et al 2013). Since MI corresponds and significantly overlaps in terms of definition and use with the concepts of administrative, organizational or managerial innovation (Damanpour and Aravind 2012), the following hypothesis is proposed for family firms:…”

Risks and rewards of cloud computing in the UK public sector: A reflection on three Organisational case studies

“…The reason for this is that G-Cloud is seen as a shared service, with resultant shared costs, which would lead to reduced individual costs for each organisation and create a level playing field for suppliers who wanted access to Government contracts (Donnelly 2015). There is also increasing recognition that efficiencies and shared risks and rewards will come from common information technology systems and business processes in the public sector (Khanagha et al 2013;Simpson 2011). It has also been asserted that the G-Cloud will improve IT resilience, deliver more agile IT responses to changing business requirements and enable organisations to become more innovative (Cabinet Office 2011a).…”

Impact of cloud services to the economic growth

“…This opens up new paradigm avenues for research in the field. It is true that the present studies includes extensive coverage of system innovations [13] the diffusion of innovations [14] and acceptance of technology modernizations [15] however, there has been no detailed elaboration of how firms detected these novelties. This is important for the scholars who wants to develop a theoretic understanding of opportunities related to cloud computing, and whether existing opportunity concepts hold factual in the framework.…”