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This paper aims to address how organizational routines paradoxically affect the process of organizational innovation based on a new construct of routines or to investigate the coexistence of both hindering and promoting effects from routines and their differentiated affecting paths.

This paper adopts an interpretive and exploratory case study on the business model innovation of Yimu Technology Company Limited (Yimu Tech) from product standardization to customization. Considering that this innovation reflects a successful down-up rather than traditional up-down innovation, this paper focuses on it to explore how the most micro routines affect the whole process of innovation. Almost two years were spent in collecting data from Yimu Tech and in following the innovation through approaches of semi-structured interviews, archival data and observation; the data were analyzed through a five-step process before a framework showing the paradoxical effects was finally set up.

This research specifies the construct of organizational routines and promotes a five-dimensional concept covering the organizational, collective and individual levels of an organization. It confirms the interaction between the performative and ostensive aspects of routines, by showing that the ostensive aspect may not only guide tasks performing but also allow multiple changes, and the performative aspect may affect the ostensive aspect through the down-up or up-down path. Also, it finds that routines may paradoxically affect all three phases of innovation, with a strong up-down hindering effect but a weak down-up promoting effect in the preparation phase, a strong down-up promoting effect but a weak hindering effect in the emergence phase and both significant effects in the consolidation phase.

This research is constrained by several limitations. The set up framework of routines and their paradoxical effects on innovation need a further confirmation in more contexts or organizations; more elements should be considered in exploring the evolution of routines and their effects on innovations; little attention has been paid to the relationship between these two types of effects, conflicting with each other, joining together or working independently.

The findings offered some valuable insights for further research on organizational routines and organizational innovation and hold important implications for management practices. This research enriched the two-aspect view of routines by constructing a five-dimensional framework; further research studies on routine dynamics by showing the interaction between the performative and ostensive aspects can contribute to the study on effects of organizational routines on innovations by showing how routines promote and hinder innovation simultaneously throughout the whole process. It reminds managers of the strong power from the microlevel of an organization in innovation.

The purpose of this paper is to address how management innovations are implemented deeply at the most micro level of organizations, namely, organizational routines, or to investigate the process through which organizational routines evolve in implementing management innovations, with existing routines overturned and new routines created and solidified.

This paper adopts an interpretive and exploratory case study on the case of Day-Definite (DD) innovation which has successfully brought Arima World Group Company Limited (HOAU) into a new value-added arena, in terms of timing, security and high service quality. Considering that DD innovation reflects a systematic innovation of the whole organization, this paper focuses on it to explore the complex implementation mechanism of management innovation. Multiple approaches were utilized during data collection to meet criteria for trustworthiness, including semi-structured interviews, archival data and observation; and the data analysis went through a five-step process.

The results confirm management innovation as a complex project concerning organizational routines which represent a central and fundamental element of organizations. Also, it finds that organizational routines evolve in innovation implementation through a three-phase process consisting of the existing-routine-domination phase, the new-routine-creation phase and -solidification phases, each exhibiting different innovation activities and characteristics of participants’ cognition and behaviors; recreation of new routines is the key for routine evolution, thus for success of management innovations.

This research is constrained by several limitations. The set-up framework of organizational routine evolution in innovation implementation needs a further confirmation in more organizations; other elements, such as cognition of managers, resource orchestration, environmental elements or organizational culture, should be considered for the success of innovation implementation; and more attention should be paid to the potential power asymmetries among participants and its potential influence on forming shared schemata and subsequent new routines, besides interactions and role taking.

The findings offer some valuable insights for further research on management innovation and organizational routines and hold important implications for management practices. This research extends research on management innovation and the Kurt Lewin Change Theory and Change Model to explore innovation implementation at a most micro level; furthers research on organizational routines, especially routine dynamic theory, by holding the two-component view and exploring the process through which organizational routines evolve; and contributes to research on the relationship between organizational routines and innovations by taking an organizational routines’ perspective. It reminds managers of the depth and complication of innovation implementation.

This paper aims to address how an organization's multiple-dominant-logic system evolves as it grows and how does this evolution affect the way managers choose to balance ambidextrous innovation.

This paper adopts an interpretive and exploratory case study on the mechanism of how the multiple-dominant-logic system influences the decision of balanced ambidextrous innovation. Considering that the multiple-dominant-logic system will change with the development of a firm, this paper focuses on exploring how the evolution of multiple-dominant-logic system affects the way managers choose to balance ambidextrous innovation. The authors spent almost two years collecting data from M-grass Ecology and following the evolution and innovation through semi-structured interviews, archival data and observation. Then they set up a framework showing the influence mechanism by analyzing the data through a four-step process.

This research points out that an organization's multiple-dominant-logic system may change for several times in its growth. It provides a model for the evolution of a multiple-dominant-logic system. It confirms that firms' multiple-dominant-logic system is not immutable, but evolves with the change of the firm's internal resources and external environment. Also, it finds that under the influence of different multiple-dominant-logic architectures, mangers choose different ways to balance ambidextrous innovation. In this process, appropriate entrepreneurial bricolage plays a significant role in balancing ambidextrous innovation.

The findings offer some valuable insights for further research on dominant logics and ambidextrous innovation and hold important implications for managers making a decision.

The traditional dualism view regards stability and change as opposites and separate, two essential but largely incompatible and mutually exclusive elements in an organization, and it advocates contingency theories to handle the paradox situation; more recent research has adopted the paradoxical lens to highlight both the contradiction and the interdependence between the two elements. This paper aims to address how an organization pursues stability and change simultaneously, i.e., how stability and change contradictorily enable each other to promote the development of an organization.

By adopting a case study on the strategic and structural change of Signcomplex in China, this paper attempts to explore the paradoxical relationship between stability and change, especially their interdependence. Multiple approaches were used during data collection to meet the criteria for trustworthiness, and the data analysis went through a five-step process. Through this analysis, the main mechanisms of stability and change were identified. An analysis was also conducted on how these stable and variable mechanisms enable each other, and finally, a framework was set up to show this paradoxical relationship.

The results confirm the paradox of stability and change: stability enables change by supplying security and consistency, offering reserved knowledge and skills and enabling commitment and the provision of resources for a better realization of the change. Change enables a firm to set up a new state of stability through variable mechanisms such as trial-and-error and exploration activities. The results also indicate that the nature of organizational change is to help an organization reach a new stable stage with higher efficiency and that organizational development relies on the paradoxical effects of both stability and change.

This research is constrained by several limitations. The findings need to be further confirmed through the investigation of more organizations; other stable mechanisms, such as habits, tight coupling, commitments, control and low variance, and variable mechanisms, such as search, mindfulness, redundancy and openness, should be considered. As an organization may experience many cross-level or cross-department changes which struggle with each other for resources and with stable mechanisms, to explore the paradox, future research may need to conduct a more in-depth examination of the system of change.

The findings offer some valuable insights for further research and hold important implications for management practices, especially management practices in a Chinese context. The findings extend the existing paradox theory by further revealing how stability and change enable each other and offer a paradoxical perspective to look into the nature of organizational change and organizational development. The results remind managers to rethink the relationship between stability and change, to factor these coexisting concepts into their decision-making and to accept, understand and use this paradoxical relationship to realize synergistic effects for the firm.

Owing to dual constraints including liability of foreignness and liability of origin when emerging multinationals internationalize, they inevitably face the challenge of overseas legitimation. However, few studies have explored how latecomers cross the threshold of legitimacy in the dynamic context of transnational operation. The purpose of this paper is to unravel the evolution process, triggers and specific strategies of overseas legitimacy threshold crossing of emerging multinationals.

Through the longitudinal case study of Haier Group and Goldwind Sci & Tech Co., Ltd, this study investigates the periodical characteristics of overseas legitimacy threshold crossings and the co-evolution among critical factors influencing the legitimation process in the host country.

First, it summarizes that the legitimacy threshold in the host country experiences a sequential process from pragmatic legitimacy to normative legitimacy, and finally cognitive legitimacy. It is an inevitable choice for emerging multinational enterprises to realize and sustain legitimation from passive adaptation to active creation. Second, it reveals that the triggers for crossing the threshold of overseas legitimacy include periodically dynamic factors – international network linkage and resource system reconfiguration, as well as cross-stage spiral interaction effects. Third, it determines the specific strategies for crossing the threshold of overseas legitimacy, namely, replacement, upgrading and reconstruction of organizational identity, and reveals the important role of insisting on the country-of-origin Facebook in promoting the legitimation.

This study enriches the legitimacy threshold crossing literature from an evolutional perspective, especially the traditional static legitimacy research. This study also reveals the key impacting factors – international network linkage and resource system reconfiguration – and their evolution process interacted with the legitimation process.

The emerging multinationals should break the stereotypes from developed markets in that only creating new cognitive patterns through active legitimate strategies can they truly cross the legitimacy threshold in the host country. The emerging multinationals also need to retain their own home country legitimacy traits – Facebook and balance the relation between the image of the home country and the image of host country.

This paper investigates the process of overseas legitimacy threshold crossing for emerging multinationals in a dynamic context of transnational operation, particularly with respect to the evolutionary role played by international network linkage and resource system reconfiguration.

This paper aims to investigate the innovation pathway of gerontechnological enterprises under the market-organization-technology (MOT) perspective through configuration analysis.

Based on the analytical framework of technology, organization and market, this paper conducts configuration analysis on the cases of 55 elderly-friendly enterprises in China combined with fuzzy-set qualitative comparative analysis (fsQCA).

First, this study identifies the three first-level preconditions affecting innovation performance: organization's architectural innovation, technology adapting to aging and market environment attention on the innovation pathway of gerontechnological enterprises. These three first-level conditions include six sub-conditions. Second, this study investigates three innovation pathways by analyzing the configuration effects of preconditions: Configuration 1, technology-balanced type; Configuration 2, organization-market linkage type and Configuration, 3 balanced type. Third, there are differences in the distribution of different configuration types in subdivided industries. The technology-balanced configuration is mainly concentrated in design-driven innovative enterprises, the organization-market linkage configuration is mainly concentrated in medical auxiliary equipment enterprises and the balanced configuration is mainly concentrated in smart elderly care service platform enterprises empowered by digital technology. Fourth, there are differences in the innovation impact paths of the same configuration type. However, the essence lies in the high-level innovation performance formed by the coordinated evolution of technology, organization and market factors, reflecting the characteristics of the same goal through different routes.

The authors' study generates new insights for innovation managers of gerontechnological enterprises about the innovation pathway.

This research enriches innovation management by integrating the linkage adaptation relationship among market, organization and technology factors; further research studies on the different configuration types suitable for different types of enterprises, as well as differentiated innovation pathways under the same configuration type, could contribute to the study on the innovation pathway under a premise of MOT.

The purpose of this paper is to expand the understanding of the process by which organizational routines emerge in entrepreneurial ventures. The emphasis is on the role of management and interaction in shaping shared schemata among members of the enterprise.

This paper uses a longitudinal interpretive and exploratory case study based on semi-structured interviews, archival material and naturalistic observation at a startup enterprise in China.

Focusing on the process through which shared schemata emerge to lay the foundation for routines in new firms, the authors find shared schemata emerge through a three-stage process: individual schemata emergence, partially shared schemata emergence and organizationally shared schemata emergence. Analogical transfer, strong foundational leadership and horizontal interaction among employees facilitate the development of individual schemata and their evolution into the shared schemata underlying organizational routines.

This paper contributes to the understanding of routine formation in entrepreneurial ventures by creating a framework of the stages of development of organizational routines, as well as the role management plays in each stage. This contribution fits within the emergent field of microfoundations, linking individual actions and cognition to organizational outcomes and adding to this the contribution of social interaction.

Managers in new Chinese enterprises could benefit from understanding the importance of routinization and the managerial approaches which facilitate routine formation. This will increase the likelihood of firm survival as well as the competitive strength of the firm.

To date, there has been little research on how routines arise in entrepreneurial ventures, and none on explicitly the role for management and interaction in fostering routinization.

This paper aims to address why some managers in China pursue innovative opportunities by introducing new management practices while others do not and what characteristics of managers affect their decision of introducing new practices and how.

Three major activities of managers referring to innovation intention, knowledge acquirement, and risk perception are extracted, a three‐dimension decision figure is established by further combining relevant literature with decision practices. Data on 237 managers from different firms were collected to further examine the model by adopting structural equation modeling, with the purpose of showing affecting paths and internal mechanisms of complex decision making.

The results indicate that: innovation intention, knowledge acquirement, and risk perception directly affect management innovation decision levels; innovation intention, knowledge acquirement, and risk perception are influenced by entrepreneurial orientation, social networking, and cognitive biases of managers, respectively; besides, the three relevantly independent affecting paths, interrelations also exist across paths; and the three main factors produce both direct and indirect effects, simultaneously.

The research does not investigate other variables that may affect innovation decision, such as contextual elements like competitive intensity, internal elements like organizational structure and culture, and top management teams.

The findings form a basis for further research into how to explore the black box of complex‐decision processes in the specific context of China and holds important implications for management practices.

This paper aims to address how management practices successfully implemented somewhere else, namely adoptive management innovation, have been introduced into Chinese firms and then effectively implemented, or to investigate key activities of the generative mechanism through which an adoptive management innovation occurs.

Since the purpose of management innovation is to utilize organizational resources more efficiently and further their goals, with little intention to pursue differentiation and without any protection from patent, adoptive management innovation has been prevailing around China and even the whole world. Based on the conception of what makes adoptive management innovation unique, this paper attempts to investigate the case of the Organizational Efficiency Management of Jiangxi Mobile in China to identify key activities of adoptive management innovation and develop a two-interlinked-subprocess framework of adoption decision and implementation, aiming to offer suggestions for firms in adopting new management practices.

The results indicate that adoption of existing management practices or methods from somewhere else is a more complex and logical process rather than a simple one of knowledge transferring. It needs to integrate existing practices into new organizational context and establish their innovative value during implementation. One core element of the process framework is the emphasis on activities of problem diagnoses and realization of the fitness between management practices adopted and the new organizational context, and another one is the sequence of activities in the whole process.

This research is constrained by at least three limitations. First, the authors' findings for the two-subprocess framework of adoptive management innovation need to be further confirmed for more organizations. Second, little attention has been paid to relative advantages of different sequence of activities. Third, when focusing on adoptive management innovation from a process perspective, this research does not address problems such as why some managers pursue innovative opportunities by introducing new practices, how contextual elements, internal elements, and top management teams affect management innovation, or how the performance of adoptive management innovation could be improved in China.

The findings offer some valuable insights for further research in how to explore the generative mechanism of organizational changes or innovations in China and hold important implications for management practices.

This paper aims to review the latest management developments across the globe and pinpoint practical implications from cutting-edge research and case studies.

This briefing is prepared by an independent writer who adds their own impartial comments and places the articles in context.

The results confirm management innovation as a complex project concerning organizational routines which represent a central and fundamental element of organizations. Also, it finds that organizational routines evolve in innovation implementation through a three-phase process consisting of the existing-routine-domination phase, the new-routine-creation phase, and solidification phase, each exhibiting different innovation activities and characteristics of participants’ cognition and behaviors; recreation of new routines is the key for routine evolution and, thus, for success of management innovations.

The paper provides strategic insights and practical thinking that have influenced some of the world’s leading organizations.

The briefing saves busy executives and researchers hours of reading time by selecting only the very best, most pertinent information and presenting it in a condensed and easy-to-digest format.