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Advancing Management Innovation: Synthesizing Processes, Levels of

Analysis, and Change Agents

Article in Organization Studies · September 2014

DOI: 10.1177/0170840614546155

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OSS0010.1177/0170840614546155Organization StudiesVolberda et al.

Introduction to Special Themed Section

Organization Studies
2014, Vol. 35(9) 1245­–1264
Advancing Management Innovation: © The Author(s) 2014
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DOI: 10.1177/0170840614546155
Analysis, and Change Agents www.egosnet.org/os

Henk W. Volberda
Erasmus University Rotterdam, Netherlands

Frans A.J. Van Den Bosch

Erasmus University Rotterdam, Netherlands

Oli R. Mihalache
Wilfrid Laurier University, Canada
VU University Amsterdam, Netherlands

Abstract
Despite the mounting evidence that innovation in management can fuel competitive advantage, we still know
relatively little about how firms introduce new ways of managing. The goal of this introductory essay—and
the Themed Section it introduces—is to advance this knowledge. To this end, we first synthesize the main
developments in the field of management innovation and show that the field has branched into four main
theoretical perspectives (rational, institutional, international business, and theory development perspectives).
We then address the fragmentation issue that emerges from our review by proposing a co-evolutionary
framework of management innovation that takes into account the dynamic and multilevel nature of the
concept; we thus integrate the generation, diffusion, adoption, and adaptation phases of the management
innovation process at the organizational, inter-organizational and macro level. Our integrative framework
also addresses the role of human agency (managerial intentionality of internal and external change agents)
and makes a distinction between three types of management innovations (new to the world, new to the
organization and adapted to its context, and new to the organization without adaptation). Furthermore,
we discuss the contributions of the studies included in the Themed Section and identify several avenues for
future research that we consider priorities for driving the further development of the field.

Keywords
adaptation, adoption, change agents, diffusion, generation, management innovation, multilevel, process,
rational actor

Corresponding author:
Henk Wijtze Volberda, Department of Strategic Management & Entrepreneurship, Rotterdam School of Management,
Erasmus University Rotterdam, P.O.box 1738, 3000 DR Rotterdam, Rotterdam, 3000 DR, Netherlands.
Email: [email protected]

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1246 Organization Studies 35(9)

Introduction
Management scholars have long recognized innovation as an engine for growth (Schumpeter,
1983). Accordingly, it is not surprising that there is an abundance of research on innovation.
Interestingly, the past decade has seen a surge in scholarly attention to a particular type of innova-
tion: management innovation, which refers to the introduction of new management practices, pro-
cesses, and structures that are intended to further organizational goals (Birkinshaw, Hamel, & Mol,
2008; Mol & Birkinshaw, 2009). In other words, management innovation denotes significant
change in the way that managerial work is performed (Hamel, 2006).
The growing focus on management innovation may be due in part to the growing realization that
innovative approaches to management and organizing drive firm performance. For instance, Hamel
(2006) attributes the impressive rise of firms such as Toyota and Visa to the development of total
quality management and the adoption of a virtual-organization structure, respectively. Complementary
evidence from large-scale empirical tests supports the positive effects of management innovation on
performance outcomes (e.g., Camisón & Villar-López, 2014; Damanpour, Walker, & Avellaneda,
2009; Mol & Birkinshaw, 2009). Other studies push this relationship even further, and argue that
management innovation can provide long-term competitive advantage as it is a resource that is valu-
able, rare, inimitable, and firm-specific (Hamel, 2006; Mol & Birkinshaw, 2006).
However, despite the recent surge in scholarly attention and despite the key role that manage-
ment innovation plays in enhancing company performance, management innovation research is
still very much under-represented in the vast literature on innovation (Crossan & Apaydin, 2010;
Volberda, Van den Bosch, & Heij, 2013). Perhaps this is not totally surprising considering that
management innovation is more difficult to study than technological innovation; it is more tacit in
nature, its boundaries are more difficult to define and identify (Birkinshaw et al., 2008), and it also
tends to be more systemic (Hamel, 2006). Notwithstanding these challenges, advancing our under-
standing of how firms introduce new ways of managing will have substantial benefits in terms of
enhancing firm performance. Thus, the main goal of this introductory essay and Themed Section is
to answer the question: How can organizations improve and speed up the generation, adoption, and
diffusion of management innovation?
In this introductory essay, we make several contributions towards achieving a better understand-
ing of how to stimulate management innovation. Our first step towards this goal is to provide an
overview of the current state of management innovation research. Using bibliometric analysis, we
review existing research to map out main research streams and to synthesize important develop-
ments in the field. We find that while significant advances are being made, the field is fragmented,
with theory being developed for different types of management innovation, for different levels
of analysis, or for different stages of the innovation process. In addition, in many perspectives
the role of human agency is not articulated or spelled out. Our second contribution is to propose
a co-evolutionary framework that integrates existing research by considering the dynamic and
multilevel nature of the management innovation process. Our co-evolutionary framework helps to
explain the relationships between the different types of management innovation and the different
stages in the process of management innovation, and as such reduces the fragmentation of the field.
Third, we emphasize the importance of human agency by elucidating the role that internal change
agents (managers) and external change agents (including thought-leaders, academics, and consult-
ants) play in this process at different levels of analysis. Finally, we identify several major research
avenues that we believe hold great potential to advance research.
In the next section, we analyze the current state of research. We then propose a co-evolutionary
framework of management innovation. We conclude this introductory essay by discussing the con-
tributions of the studies included in this Themed Section and identifying avenues for future
research.
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Volberda et al. 1247

Where is the Field of Management Innovation Going?

In recent years, the management innovation field has seen a resurgence in conceptual work
(Ansari, Fiss, & Zajac, 2010; Volberda et al., 2013), historical outlines of various management
innovations (Mol & Birkinshaw, 2007), and empirical studies (Damanpour et al., 2009; Vaccaro,
Jansen, Van Den Bosch, & Volberda, 2012a; Vaccaro, Volberda, & Van Den Bosch, 2012b). It
is fair to say that Birkinshaw et al.’s (2008) article was the key basis of this development as it
defined the concept and provided a process framework on the invention and implementation of
management innovation at the organizational level of analysis. Since much of the subsequent
literature on management innovation builds on the Birkinshaw et al. (2008) article, this was
also the starting point for our review of the state-of-the-art research on management
innovation.
We used a bibliometric analysis to organize existing research on management innovation. The
bibliometric analysis (performed by the Centre for Science and Technology Studies, Leiden
University, and based on the Thomson Reuters Web of Science bibliographic database) maps the
structure of all Social Science Citation Index (SSCI) publications that cite Birkinshaw et al.’s
(2008) paper and all publications citing any of these publications—a set of 361 publications. A
visualization that included all these publications would be very difficult to interpret, so we include
in our analysis only the 51 publications that have been cited at least five times. To categorize these
publications, we use Waltman and Van Eck’s (2012) clustering technique that considers citation
relations between publications. Publications in the same cluster have strong connections to one
another, while those in different clusters are less strongly connected. Figure 1 presents the resulting
clusters. In order to simplify the map, non-essential citations are not shown. (A citation relation
from publication A to publication B is considered non-essential if there is also another citation path
from publication A to publication B, for instance if publication A also cites publication C and if
publication C cites publication B.) The symbol of a publication indicates the cluster to which it
belongs (circles, triangles, pentagons, or squares). Where publications do not have a symbol, this
indicates they do not have sufficiently strong citation relationships to other publications to be
assigned to a cluster.
It is clear from Figure 1 that four distinct areas of management innovation research have
emerged. For each area we can also see the leading publications.

Rational actor perspective

On the far left (the circles in Figure 1), the rational actor perspective builds primarily on the core
papers in management innovation—for example, Birkinshaw et al. (2008) on the process of man-
agement innovation, Damanpour et al. (2009) on the performance effects, and Mol and Birkinshaw
(2009) on the sources of management innovation.
The rational perspective of management innovation, which draws on Abrahamson’s (1991,
p. 590) “efficient-choice” perspective, centers on how management innovation and the individuals
driving it deliver improvements in organizational effectiveness (Birkinshaw et al., 2008, p. 825)
and focuses primarily on the generation stage of management innovation. The rational school is
closely associated with change agents and emphasizes human agency (Sturdy, 2004, p. 157) as a
means of furthering organizational performance (Birkinshaw et al., 2008). In this school, manage-
ment innovation follows a rational process of motivation, invention, implementation, and eventu-
ally theorization and labeling (Birkinshaw et al., 2008). It is a process in which external and internal
change agents are called in to ensure bottom-line impact and in which the organization, by means
of rational evaluation, resists transient fashions (Sturdy, 2004, p. 158). Decisions leading to a man-
agement innovation are made in a rational way, based on careful analysis of costs and benefits and
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1248 Organization Studies 35(9)

Figure 1. Citation Network: Four Main Perspectives on Management Innovation.

the prospects of greater efficiency (Strang & Macy, 2001). Generation and diffusion of manage-
ment innovations occurs when firms face externally induced performance gaps, while the elimina-
tion of management innovations occurs when the management innovation becomes less efficient at
closing the gap (Abrahamson, 1991, p. 593).
With its focus on rational decisions about introducing management innovation to improve organ-
izational performance, research in this area considers the antecedents of management innovation
(Vaccaro et al., 2012a; Moynihan, Pandey, & Wright, 2012), the outcomes of management innova-
tion (Walker, Damanpour, & Devece, 2011; Jimenez-Jimenez & Sanz-Valle, 2011) and the interac-
tion with other types of innovation such as technological innovation (Damanpour & Aravind, 2012).
Interestingly, we also find various papers on post-acquisition integration (Birkinshaw, Bresman, &
Nobel, 2010) that focus on how the dominant logic of the acquiring firm spreads through the newly
merged organization (Verbeke, 2010) and how to create a social community to transfer best practice
most effectively (Zander & Zander, 2010).

Institutional perspective
The institutional perspective in management innovation research (the triangles in Figure 1) repre-
sents a school of thought inspired by Ansari et al.’s (2010) paper, which focuses mainly on the
diffusion and variation of management innovations using a strong neo-institutional and fashion
theory perspective. In the neo-institutionalist view, a particular management innovation can
become established through imitative behavior regardless of whether there is any evidence that the
innovation actually enhances efficiency (Nicolai, Schulz, & Thomas, 2010). Internal and external
change agents give their blessing to specific management practices which are in turn “adopted for
symbolic reasons—seeking peer and stakeholder legitimacy” as opposed to immediate gains in
performance and profit (Sturdy, 2004, p. 164). Widespread adoption increases the legitimization of
a management innovation, ensuring its acceptability and therefore wider dissemination. Building
on institutional theory, management fashion theory focuses on the managerial discourse that
accompanies the institutionalization and de-institutionalization of management innovations. This
broader discourse is often shaped by external change agents such as management consultants,

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Volberda et al. 1249

management gurus, and the general business press. The mutual process of communication between
these external change agents and the organizations who adopt particular trends creates collective
beliefs that a fashion is rational and progressive (Abrahamson, 1996, p. 265).
Most of the papers belonging to this neo-institutional and fashion perspective are empirical
papers that focus on the diffusion stage of management innovation. Studies consider the variation
and diffusion of controversial practices such as the use of golden parachutes (Fiss, Kennedy, &
Davis, 2012), narrative dynamics in corporate responsibility standardization (Haack, Schoeneborn,
& Wickert, 2012), the emergence and deployment of a standard for responsible investment (Slager,
Gond, & Moon, 2012), or the role of security analysts in the diffusion of new management con-
cepts (Nicolai et al., 2010). Included with this perspective are also several theoretical papers that
aim to outline how organizations respond to institutional complexity (Greenwood, Raynard,
Kodeih, Micelotta, & Lounsbury, 2011) or disentangle diffusion and institutionalization processes
(Colyvas & Jonsson, 2011).

International business perspective

The pentagons in Figure 1 represent the international business perspective in management innova-
tion. Although the papers belonging to this school do not always explicitly use the words “manage-
ment innovation” or “management practices”, they clearly focus on the local generation,
cross-subsidiary and cross-border transfer and dissemination of management innovations, mostly
within multinational enterprises. Jensen and Pedersen (2011), for instance, focus on the generation
of variations in business processes such as offshoring business activities. Tallman and Chacar
(2011) provide a practice-based framework and discuss mechanisms for external capture and inter-
nal transfer of tacit practices in MNEs. These sticky, or geographically bound, practices can be
transmitted most efficiently through internal networks of practice. Moreover, several papers stress
barriers to cross-subsidiary and cross-border transfer of management practices, including cultural
distance (Hutzschenreuter, Voll, & Verbeke, 2011), institutional distance (Schwens, Eiche, &
Kabst, 2011) and multiple embeddedness (Meyer, Mudambi, & Narula, 2011).

Theory development perspective

Finally, we see a stream of papers on the far right of Figure 1 (squares) that stress the role of man-
agement scholars as external change agents in creating new management innovations. What unites
these papers is an increased frustration with the role played by scholars in theory development. Of
course, the seminal paper by Birkinshaw et al. (2008) did provide some initial thoughts on the role
academics can play in the process of management innovation. They see a clear role for academics
in the invention stage of management innovation and, to a lesser extent, in the implementation
stage; academics can come up with new ideas for management practice by speculating on new
ways of working that may provide new solutions (idea contextualization), by engaging in “thought
trials” (Weick, 1989) and disciplined imagination (idea refining), and by linking these to the con-
text-specific ideas of internal agents. However, they fear that this role for management scholars in
generating new theories and practices has been taken over by other external change agents such as
consultants and management gurus.
In fact, most of the new management ideas that have been put into practice come from the busi-
ness world itself, rather than from academia (Barley, Meyer, & Gash, 1988). Also, Oswick,
Fleming, and Hanlon (2011) have complained that almost all influential theories within manage-
ment and organization theory have been brought in from the outside, not developed within the
field. According to Alvesson and Sandberg (2013, p. 128), the primary reason for the “troubling

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1250 Organization Studies 35(9)

shortage of novel ideas” (Clark & Wright, 2009; Daft & Lewin, 2008) is the “total dominance of
incremental gap-spotting research” in management. To reclaim their previously influential role as
creators of management innovations, management scholars should take a more active role, rethink
their existing professional norms, cultivate a more “path-(up)setting scholarly” attitude, and con-
sider alternative methodologies (Alvesson & Sandberg, 2013, p. 143). Likewise, Corley and Gioia
(2011, p. 17) claim that theory development by management scholars should be directly applicable
to the problems faced by practicing managers (practical utility). Instead of performing the mainte-
nance role of disseminating tried-and-true ideas and practices, management scholars should take
on the role of questioning accepted management practices and developing fundamentally new
theories.
As can be seen in Figure 1, the rational and institutional perspectives in management innovation
are quite close to each other and strongly connected. The international business (IB) perspective
and the theory development perspective are quite detached from the two main perspectives in the
field, but might provide further useful advances in the field of management innovation.

Towards a Multilevel Co-evolutionary Framework of Generation,

Diffusion, Adoption, and Adaptation of Management Innovation
As we have shown, important advances are already being made in understanding the concept of
management innovation. However, the divergence of research into the four perspectives under-
scores fragmentation in the research field, thus confounding a comprehensive understanding of
management innovation. The different perspectives on management innovation give rise to four
area of fragmentation.
First of all, there is considerable segmentation because of the existing studies’ focus on one of
the three stages of the process of management innovation, namely generation, diffusion, and adop-
tion. Generation research concentrates on how a management practice is brought into being in a
particular organization and draws primarily from the rational perspective of management innova-
tion. Diffusion studies focus on the inter-organizational level of analysis by investigating, among
others, the rate of diffusion of an innovation in a population of adopters—this line of research is
based primarily on the institutional perspective. Adoption (with or without adaptation) studies
focus on the implementation in the adopting organization and draw on the institutional (e.g., Ansari
et al., 2010) and rational perspective to investigate enablers and inhibitors of the adoption process
(e.g., Vaccaro et al., 2012a). So far, these stages have predominantly been researched in isolation
from one another.
Fragmentation also occurs because most research tends to limit its focus to one particular type
of innovation. Based on the degree of newness of management innovation, there are three generic
types of management innovation: new to the world (type 1), new to the organization and adapted
to the setting (type 2), and new to the organization without adaptation (type 3). Table 1 depicts this
conceptual typology. While a single focus advances knowledge about a particular type, for a com-
prehensive understanding of management innovation it is important to integrate existing knowl-
edge by considering the relationship between the three types.
The third reason for fragmentation is that knowledge on management innovation is developed
independently for different levels of analysis. At the firm level, studies primarily adopt either a
rational perspective to consider intra-organizational variation, selection, and retention (VSR) (e.g.,
Moynihan et al., 2012; Vaccaro et al., 2012a) and consequences of introducing management inno-
vation (e.g., Camisón & Villar-López, 2014; Damanpour et al., 2009) or an IB perspective to study
primarily transfer of new management practices from the corporate head office to subsidiaries and

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Volberda et al. 1251

Table 1. Conceptual typology of degree of newness of management innovation.

Degree of newness Definition Degree of adaption Contribution to

to organization variation at inter-
organizational level
Type 1: New to the world Generation and adoption of High High
a new management practice
within an organization
Type 2: New to the Adaptation of an adopted Low–Medium Low–Medium
organization, implemented existing management practice
with adaptation within an organization
Type 3: New to the Adoption of an existing Low None
organization, implemented management practice within
without adaptation an organization

vice versa or from subsidiary to subsidiary (e.g., Tallman & Chacar, 2011). Studies at the inter-
organizational or field level of practice producers and practice adopters draw primarily on the
institutional perspective (e.g., Colyvas & Jonsson, 2011; Fiss et al., 2012).
A fourth area where fragmentation occurs is in the role of human agency and the theories used
to explain the roles of change agents. Internal change agents include firm managers and employees
who might play a decisive role in the generation, coercive adoption, or bottom-up adaptation of a
particular management innovation. External change agents can be consultants, academics, or other
stakeholders who might be a source of new management innovation or play a distinctive role in
adopting an innovation or adapting it for the firm concerned. The rational perspective most explic-
itly articulates the role of human agency by considering the various degrees of intentionality of
internal and/or external change agents (e.g., Birkinshaw et al., 2008). In the institutional perspec-
tive, the role of human agency is spelled out much less and is mostly that of a passive legitimizer
(e.g., Nicolai et al., 2010). In contrast, the theory development perspective focuses exclusively on
the role of academics and management scholars as creators and transmitters of management
innovations.
A critical step in gaining a clearer understanding of how firms introduce management innova-
tions is to bridge these research silos. To understand how the different pockets of knowledge are
interrelated, we ask the question: How are the three types of management innovation related to
each other over time in the dynamic and multilevel processes of generation, diffusion, adoption,
and adaptation? Building on our bibliometric analysis and the four studies in this Themed Section,
we develop a multilevel co-evolutionary framework that can increase our understanding of the
interplay between the three types and generic stages of management innovation and of the roles of
internal and external change agents.

Towards a co-evolutionary framework of management innovation

Co-evolutionary theory rests on the premise that organizations, industry, and the macro environ-
ment interact and shape one another over time (Volberda & Lewin, 2003). Change at any level can
trigger further change at other levels. Any organization, industry, or country is influenced by
changes in its environment, so adaptation does not happen in a vacuum (Gupta, Tesluk, & Taylor,
2007). That is, organizations within a population introduce change through direct interaction or
feedback from the system (Lewin & Volberda, 1999). Conversely, organizations not only respond
to changes in their environment, but also affect it through their actions and, as such, influence other

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1252 Organization Studies 35(9)

organizations’ evolutionary paths (Aldrich, 1999; Volberda & Lewin, 2003). In other words, man-
agers respond to the environment by changing their organizations and these actions, in turn, affect
the environment. Thus, several parts in a system could be simultaneously evolving—that is, “co-
evolving”. Several studies have drawn from co-evolutionary notions and applied them to manage-
ment through different perspectives (Barnett & Burgelman, 1996). Dijksterhuis, Van Den Bosch,
and Volberda (1999), for example, investigated how contextual application of management logics
may co-evolve with new organizational forms.
We propose a co-evolutionary framework of management innovation that takes into considera-
tion the interrelation between multiple levels of analysis and the role of change agents. In order to
do this, we employ the three-stage model of variation, selection, and retention (VSR) (Aldrich,
1999; Baum & Rao, 2004; Campbell, 1969). We investigate the VSR processes of management
innovation at the organizational, inter-organizational, and macro levels of analysis with special
attention on the role of human agency. Figure 2 presents our co-evolutionary framework of man-
agement innovation.
The process starts with key internal change agents such as top management teams and CEOs
(Vaccaro et al., 2012b) who decide whether to respond to a perceived problem such as environmen-
tal changes by developing new management practices (i.e., type 1), by adopting existing ones (i.e.,
type 2 or 3), or by ignoring it (see the lower part of Figure 2). At the organizational level all three
processes of VSR take place inside the organization. To explain the generation of new management
practices, i.e., type 1, Birkinshaw et al. (2008) propose a conceptual framework consisting of four
intra-organizational phases. Following the “motivation” phase, in which managers assess the need
for innovation based on perceived environmental change, the “invention” phase comprises the
generation of intra-organizational variation through experimentation with new practices proposed
by internal or external change agents. In the third phase, “implementation”, variation may give rise
to intra-organizational selection and subsequently to retention in the fourth phase, “theorization
and labeling”. In this last phase, both internal and external change agents aim to build legitimacy,
inside and outside the organization. External change agents such as management consultants and
academics are involved in contextualizing the new management practice “in terms of contempo-
rary business challenges” (Birkinshaw et al., 2008, p. 839). The extent to which they provide a
convincing rationale for the new management practice will affect the practice’s external legitimacy
(Greenwood, Suddaby, & Hinings, 2002). “Theorization and labeling” links the organizational, the
inter-organizational, and the macro levels of analysis because the organization’s response to per-
ceived environmental change contributes to the variation in management practices at the industry
level. The more successful external change agents are in legitimizing the new management prac-
tice, the better the chances that it will survive the subsequent selection and retention processes at
the inter-organizational level. However, type 1 management innovation is not the only source of
variation.
Instead of developing their own management innovations, managers may choose to adopt
existing practices from outside the organization (i.e., type 2 and type 3 management innovation).
In the case of type 2 management innovation, the adopted practice is adapted to the specific
organizational context during implementation (Ansari et al., 2010). The implementation of a new
management practice is an ongoing process that involves adaptation both of the management
practice itself and of the organization which is adopting it. Under normal circumstances, a poor
fit between the new practice and the adopting organization is likely to delay adoption of the new
practice, lead an organization to implement the practice ceremonially, or lead it to adapt the prac-
tice (type 2) to improve the fit to the local context (Canato, Ravasi, & Phillips, 2013). Managers
might also choose to adopt type 3 management innovations or “off-the-shelf” solutions (Ansari
et al., 2010). Since they are adopted and implemented without any significant adaptation to the

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Volberda et al. 1253

specific organizational context, they do not contribute to variation at the inter-organizational

level. Thus, as a result of managers’ exploration of new responses to environmental stimuli
through either type 1 or type 2 management innovation, there is increased variation in the
environment.
Further on, at the inter-organizational level of analysis, the selection and retention processes
of management practices take place. The new managerial practices go through selection, and,
depending on the selection criteria at the time, some management innovations will be eliminated,
while others will be selected. The selection criteria are set not only in terms of profitability, but
also include market forces, competitive pressures, and institutional norms (Alchian, 1950;
Aldrich, 1999). The retention stage is achieved when there is stability in the interdependencies
between organizations and the environment and successful variations are diffused and adopted
(Aldrich & Pfeffer, 1976). The retention of new management practices not only adds to the pool
of existing management practices, but also affects the value that change agents such as managers,
management consultants, and academics attribute to existing solutions. In this way, new manage-
ment practices may render old ones obsolete and precipitate their extinction (see the Exit arrow in
Figure 2).
At this point, new management practices enter the diffusion phase as other organizations begin
adopting them. The extent and speed of diffusion depends on the observability and complexity of
the practice in such a way that the former has a positive influence and the latter a negative impact on
diffusion and adoption (Damanpour, this issue). In addition to characteristics of the practice itself,
the institutional perspective (Barley & Kunda, 1992) and the management fashion perspective
(Abrahamson, 1991, 1996) also provide important insights into the diffusion stage. According to the
institutional perspective, institutional actors such as regulatory agencies and institutional forces—
regulative, normative, and cultural-cognitive (Scott, 2001; Vermeulen, Van Den Bosch, & Volberda,
2007)—influence the diffusion and adoption/adaptation process. The more a type 3 management
innovation is perceived as a legitimate means of coping with a particular organizational problem, the
more difficult it will be for a type 1 management innovation that aims to address the same or related
organizational problems to survive the selection and retention process. Supporting the role of human
agency in the inter-organizational diffusion process, Nicolai et al. (2010) find empirical evidence
that security analysts influenced the diffusion of management concepts through their estimations of
future performance of adopting firms in the US financial sector. The related management fashion
perspective, “with its roots in neo-institutional theory” (Damanpour, this issue), deals with how
management fashion-setters such as consultants, management academics, and high-profile top man-
agers offer management innovations that are perceived as legitimate by managers looking to cope
with external pressures, maintain reputation and avoid uncertainty. The fashion perspective is par-
ticularly suited for explaining the diffusion process of type 3 management innovation and to a lesser
extent that of type 2.
Both the organizational and inter-organizational levels are encompassed by the macro level. The
social, economic, technological, and political forces that compose the macro level affect both how
managers perceive the need for change and the selection and retention processes that management
innovations go through when moving from the organizational to the inter-organizational level
because these forces influence the desirability of new management practices (Damanpour &
Schneider, 2006). For instance, Fiss et al. (2012) find that media attention and court cases (i.e., the
regulative environment) influenced the spread of “golden parachute” contracts. Moreover, Chandler
(1962) showed through historical analysis how the emergence of the M-form co-evolved with the
advances in the transportation and communication industries, enabling business enterprises to
manage across time and space and to diversify their business interests (Lewin & Volberda, 1999,

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 Social, economic, political, and technological forces at macro level
1254

Macro level

Exit
Inter-organizational SELECTION RETENTION Pool and value
level of new and adapted of new and adapted perceptions of existing
management practices management practices management practices

VARIATION

Diffusion
of new

Human agency
Type 1 management innovation: Type 2 management innovation: Type 3 management innovation: management
Intra-organizational VSR, resulting Intra-organizational VSR, Adoption of management practice practices
Organizational
level in generation and adoption of new resulting in adaptation of adopted new to the organization
management practices new to the management practices new to the
state of the art organization

Perceived problem

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Ignore

Figure 2. A Multilevel Co-evolutionary Framework of the Generation, Diffusion, Adoption, and Adaptation Process of Management Innovation.
Organization Studies 35(9)
Volberda et al. 1255

p. 524). Also, as new management practices move through the VSR processes, they stand to effect
change in the macro environment through the emergence of new standards.
Our co-evolutionary framework contributes to the management innovation field as it bridges
different research camps. First, by considering the relationship between different types of manage-
ment innovation, we link research at the organizational, inter-organizational, and macro levels of
analysis. In doing so, we extend the Birkinshaw et al. (2008) model of generating type 1 manage-
ment innovation at the organizational level by connecting this framework with the next levels of
analysis, as we explain the VSR processes at the inter-organizational and macro levels. That is, we
integrate the rational perspective of managerial intentionality at the organizational level (Birkinshaw
et al., 2008) with insights on institutional change (Greenwood et al., 2002) to explain the
progression of management innovation from generation (type 1) to being retained at the inter-
organizational level, to being diffused and adapted (type 2), to becoming a standardized solution
(i.e., type 3), and eventually to its extinction. Second, our co-evolutionary framework enables vari-
ous theoretical perspectives on management innovation (including the rational, institutional, IB,
and theory development perspectives) to cross-fertilize each other both conceptually and empiri-
cally in order to provide an encompassing understanding of management innovation. Third, it
expands the understanding of the roles of internal and external agents at different levels of analysis
and at different stages of management innovation.

The Contributions of the Studies Included in the Themed Section

As mounting evidence indicates that management innovation has positive consequences for firm
performance (e.g., Camisón & Villar-López, 2014; Foss, Pedersen, Pyndt, & Schultz, 2012; Hamel,
2006; Mol & Birkinshaw, 2009), the goal of this Themed Section is to further our understanding of
how firms can stimulate the introduction of new management practices, processes, and structures.
To achieve this goal, we encouraged submissions that shed light on the introduction of manage-
ment innovation with a particular focus on the role of human agency. In order to promote the
Themed Section and to stimulate academic discussion, we first organized a two-day “EURAM
Mini-Conference on Management Innovation” centering on the topic of management innovation.
The conference was held at the Rotterdam School of Management, Erasmus University, on
November 24–25, 2011. For the conference, 38 of the 75 papers submitted were accepted for pres-
entation and, after a lengthy peer review of 15 remaining papers, four studies were selected for
publication.
Each of the four studies included in this Themed Section provide in-depth analysis of one of the
stages of generation, diffusion, adoption, and adaptation. They draw nicely upon one of the four
perspectives of management innovation: rational, institutional, international business, and theory
development perspectives. As such, they add important depth to different parts of our proposed
co-evolutionary framework.
In addition, the four studies contribute to knowledge on the role of human agency in driving
management innovation. Building on the core concept of managerial intentionality, which can be a
composite of idiosyncratic behavior, high aspiration levels, high absorptive capacity, stretch goals,
slack resources, and emergent behavior (Hutzschenreuter, Pedersen, & Volberda, 2007), the studies
included in this Themed Section elucidate the roles of internal and external change agents at differ-
ent stages of the process of management innovation. For the generation of management innovation,
internal and external change agents provide expertise and legitimize the new ideas (Mol &
Birkinshaw, this issue). In adopting and adapting existing management practices, top managers
determine the balance between variation and standardization that is needed for the new practices as
they are implemented throughout the organization (Ansari et al., this issue) and legitimize new

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1256 Organization Studies 35(9)

practices by drawing them to the attention of organizational members (Peeters et al., this issue).
Lower-level managers also influence adoption and adaptation of management innovation, but they
do so primarily by engaging in problemistic search (Peeters et al., this issue). Figure 3 presents the
contributions of the four studies to the understanding of how human agency drives management
innovation.
The main contributions of the studies included in this Themed Section are summarized in
Table 2. Below, we introduce each of the four papers and their contributions. Damanpour (this
issue) addresses core issues in management innovation research in an effort to provide a better
understanding of some contentious aspects of the concept. This study makes a great contribution to
the theory development perspective, but also draws upon the basic tenets of the rational actor per-
spective. In tackling central issues of management innovation, the study compares related con-
structs and the main typologies related to management innovation, discusses main attributes and
the theoretical explanations underlying the concept, addresses issues of measurement, and consid-
ers the implications of management innovation for performance outcomes. Thus, the study pro-
vides an in-depth discussion of the issues underlying the fragmentation problems that our
co-evolutionary framework aims to address.
Mol and Birkinshaw (this issue) analyze 23 major historical—new to the world—management
innovations (i.e., type 1 management innovations) in an effort to understand the role played by
external knowledge in generating these innovations. Classifying management innovation on two
dimensions—radical vs. incremental and systemic vs. discrete—the study considers the distinct
roles played by three types of external knowledge (i.e., involvement of external change agents,
external sources of knowledge, and external experience of internal change agents). Therefore, the
study advances the rational perspective of management innovation by spelling out more clearly the
role of internal and external change agents in generating management innovations.
Ansari, Reinecke, and Spaan (this issue) provide an account of the adoption and adaptation of a
management innovation (i.e., type 2 management innovation) at an aerospace organization with
multiple subsidiaries in different countries. To explain intra-firm diffusion of management innova-
tion across the firm’s international subsidiaries, the authors build upon the institutional

Internal change agents

I. Generation of management innovation
• Internal change agents contribute knowledge to the generation process and select promising
inventions; the absence of external experience of internal change agents is associated with the
generation of radical and systemic innovations (Mol & Birkinshaw)
II. Adoption and adaptation of management innovation
• Internal change agents need to balance the tensions between standardization and adaptability
to stimulate the intra-firm diffusion of management innovation (Ansari et al.)
• Internal change agents affect the efficiency of adoption of management innovation as they
drive the search processes and the configuration of AC routines; the higher in the hierarchy the
change agents are, the more efficient the adoption of management innovations (Peeters et al.)
External change agents
I. Generation of management innovation
• External change agents provide new knowledge and a different perspective – the presence
of external change agents is associated with systemic and incremental innovations (Mol &
Birkinshaw)

Figure 3. The Roles of Change Agents in Introducing Management Innovation as Presented by the
Articles in this Themed Section.

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 Table 2. Synthesis of the studies included in the Themed Section and their contributions to management innovation research.
Study Primary contributions Phase of management Methodology Context Management innovation Findings
innovation & theoretical type
perspective
Volberda et al.

Damanpour Identifies and discusses five key Generation, adoption, Theoretical n/a Types 1, 2, & 3. Several Provides guidelines for future
issues of management innovation and diffusion. examples: total quality research based on the discussion
research. Theory development management (TQM), of five key issues in extant
and the basics quality circle, and management innovation research
of rational actor business process re-
perspective engineering
Mol & Contributes to the under- Generation Empirical— Historical Type 1: 23 major External involvement—in the
Birkinshaw researched area of the generation Rational perspective multiple management historical management form of external change agents
of management innovations cases innovations from innovations; e.g. and external experience of
by considering the role played the 1800s until return on investment, internal change agents—is
by external knowledge in the present M-form organization, generally associated with less
generation process TQM, management radical and more systemic
by objectives, management innovations
benchmarking, scenario
planning, balanced
scorecard, Six Sigma
Ansari et al. In contrast to previous studies Adoption and Empirical— US multinational Type 2: ACE Identifies three strategies
that focus on inter-organizational adaptation single case corporation in the (Achieving Competitive through which organizations can
diffusion, considers intra- Institutional and basics study aerospace industry Excellence)—a practice balance the tension between
organizational diffusion by studying of the IB perspective with 18,000 for improving and standardization and variability
how a firm adopts and adapts a employees in 56 sustaining quality and in order to stimulate intra-
management innovation across its subsidiaries in 20 productivity firm diffusion of a management
international subsidiaries countries innovation
Peeters Moves beyond previous Adoption and Empirical— Two large (40,000+ Type 2: offshoring Differences in (i) absorptive
et al. research’s focus on successful adaptation comparative employees) US- capacity routines and (ii)

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versus unsuccessful adoption IB and basics of case study headquartered managerial attention and
of management innovations by institutional perspective multinationals organizational legitimacy affect the
considering the factors that efficiency of adopting management
enhance the efficiency of adoption innovations
and adaptation
1257
1258 Organization Studies 35(9)

perspective, but also use some elements of practices transfer of the IB perspective. In doing so,
their study complements previous research that considers adaptation at the field level (e.g., Ansari
et al., 2010; Fiss et al., 2012; Perez-Aleman, 2011; Zbaracki, 1998). They find that internal change
agents need to manage the tension between standardization and variability involved in the process
of intra-organizational diffusion of a new management practice and identify balancing strategies
that can be used to engineer variation in a management practice and to accommodate the needs of
specific contexts.
Peeters, Massini, and Lewin (this issue) analyze the factors that drive the efficiency of adoption
and adaptation of management innovations (i.e., type 2 management innovation) by studying the
adoption and adaptation of offshoring, the growing practice of reconfiguring value chains by locat-
ing business processes in foreign locations that provide particular comparative advantages (Lewin
& Peeters, 2006; Mihalache, Jansen, Van Den Bosch, & Volberda, 2012). The study builds heavily
on the IB perspective of management innovation, but it also applies crucial concepts from the
institutional perspective (e.g., the role of organizational legitimacy). They find that internal change
agents play a central role in the adoption of management innovations and that corporate-level man-
agers contribute more to implementation efficiency than low-level managers because the former
have more authority to direct organizational attention and to legitimize the new practice.
Furthermore, the study finds that the adequacy, interdependency, and sequence of the absorptive
capacity routines also affect the efficiency of adoption.
Together, the studies in this Themed Section make important inroads in clarifying the theoreti-
cal underpinnings of the concept of management innovation and in furthering understanding of
how to stimulate the generation, diffusion, adoption, and adaptation of management innovation.

Avenues for Future Research

Our review of the field indicates that management innovation research spans a number of areas,
such as institutional theory, fashion theory, rational perspectives on the antecedents and out-
comes of management innovation, and international business theories on knowledge transfer
across borders. However, the broad applicability of the management innovation construct is
also its weakness. For this reason, on the basis of our multilevel co-evolutionary framework on
management innovation, we highlight several research directions that may advance our field.

Research on the rise and fall of management innovations

Future studies could integrate existing insights about different stages of the process of manage-
ment innovation by exploring in its entirety the multilevel process of generation, diffusion, adap-
tation, adoption, and eventual exit. This would allow the filling of important gaps in our
understandings regarding the co-evolution between management innovations and the surround-
ing environment. For instance, while studies acknowledge that firms generate new management
innovations as a result of perceived problems in the environment (Birkinshaw et al., 2008),
research predominantly takes the environment as a given. So, how do changes in the meso and
macro environment motivate managers to respond with the development of new management
practices? What environmental conditions support the diffusion of new ways to manage? And
what environmental changes eventually render management innovations obsolete? Also, we
know that firms adopt and adapt practices to better fit their organizations (e.g., Ansari et al.,
2010; Birkinshaw, 2014), but we know much less about how the organizations themselves
change in order to adopt the new practice (Canato et al., 2013; Volberda et al., 2013). This call
is in line with our co-evolutionary theory of management innovation as previous studies have

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Volberda et al. 1259

shown the importance of longitudinal analysis when adopting a co-evolutionary perspective

(e.g., Flier, Van Den Bosch, & Volberda, 2003; Helfat & Raubitschek, 2000; Huygens, Baden-
Fuller, Van Den Bosch, & Volberda, 2001; Rodrigues & Child, 2003; Van Den Bosch, Volberda,
& De Boer, 1999). Considering the complete time-line of generation, diffusion, local adaptation
or adoption of a particular management innovation would require the unit of analysis to be
changed to a focal management innovation, rather than a firm or population of firms as has been
the case in most existing studies.

Research on the processes that link the organizational, inter-organizational, and

macro levels
Our proposed co-evolutionary framework highlights management innovation as a multilevel and
dynamic phenomenon. However, it is only a first step, and we call on future research to analyze in
greater detail the multilevel complexities of management innovation. In particular, future studies
could analyze the intersection of the rational and institutional perspectives. That is, future research
should consider the interfaces between the levels of analysis, both bottom-up and top-down pro-
cesses. For instance, existing research discusses the importance of ‘theorizing’ in gaining legiti-
macy for a new practice (Birkinshaw et al., 2008; Greenwood et al., 2002), but what are the
processes that link the organizational to the inter-organizational level? That is, what are the mecha-
nisms that help change agents—considered in the rational perspective—to navigate the institu-
tional environment to legitimize the new practice? Regarding top-down influences, it would be
important, for instance, to understand what industry and societal conditions stimulate adoption of
a new management practice, how different motivations to adopt influence intra-organizational
implementation, or how the performance of a new practice depends on the wider context and on its
interaction with organizational characteristics.

Research on the micro-foundations of management innovation

As our review indicates, most existing studies consider the firm or a population of firms as the unit
of analysis, while the micro-foundations of management innovation have been largely overlooked.
For a fuller understanding of the concept of management innovation, we must understand the indi-
viduals who identify problems, search for solutions, provide ideas, and make decisions. In other
words, to explain why and how organizations introduce management innovations, we must look at
the individuals who make up the organizations and their interactions. While we know about the
different roles of change agents (e.g., Birkinshaw et al., 2008) and that the diversity (Vaccaro et al.,
2012a) or aspirations (Gaba & Bhattacharya, 2012) of key decision-makers affect the introduction
of management innovation, we know less about how motivations or the personalities of change
agents affect their roles and actions. Also, we need to gain further understanding of the interrela-
tionship between these change agents.

Research on the contextual variation of management innovation

Future research needs to incorporate more contextual variation in order to check the robustness of
current knowledge and to address important new questions in an environment characterized by
increasing internationalization. For instance, how effective are known antecedents at stimulating
management innovation in different cultural and institutional contexts? How do differences in
national contexts affect the performance of particular management practices? Answering these
types of questions can help us to understand why some firms adopt a given management practice

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1260 Organization Studies 35(9)

in its entirety while others choose to adapt the practice to their firm-specific context (see also
Dijksterhuis et al., 1999). This type of research is particularly important for transferring manage-
ment concepts across borders, as often happens with multinationals who may wish to diffuse man-
agement practices from the headquarters to international subsidiaries or a best practice from a
foreign location to the rest of the organization (see Ansari et al., this issue; Peeters et al., this issue).
In this connection, qualitative studies have been undeniably valuable in enabling us to explore
theories and understand mechanisms. At the same time, they are necessarily limited in terms of
generalizability due to their heavy selection bias and small sample size. In response, we have
recently seen increased efforts to quantify management practices directly across firms, sectors, and
countries on the basis of high-quality firm-level data (Bloom & Van Reenen, 2007). For instance,
the Erasmus Competition and Innovation Monitor, developed by INSCOPE Research for
Innovation, measures the level of management innovation over time in various EU countries
(Belgium, Germany, Italy, the UK, and the Netherlands). The field of management innovation is in
need of panel studies as these could allow us to make empirical validations of causal relationships
and advance our understanding of the contextual factors that stimulate the introduction of new
ways to manage.

Conclusions
In this introductory essay, we provide a review of the most current developments in the manage-
ment innovation field. On the one hand, the contribution of our work is that we document the
diversity in the underlying theories and perspectives which have facilitated the rapid advance of
the management innovation field. On the other hand, we uncover the fragmentation of the field,
and conclude that there is a need for integration of the different research camps. In order to advance
the field of management innovation, we develop a multilevel co-evolutionary framework which
highlights the various types of management innovation, process stages, levels of analysis, and the
role of change agents, and we suggest avenues for future research. We hope the framework and the
directions for future research may help in overcoming the fragmentation of the field and will facili-
tate further accumulation of knowledge. In this way, we hope that through future management
innovation research, management scholars will regain their influential role as co-creators and dis-
seminators of new ways to manage organizations in changing environments.

Funding
We wish to thank INSCOPE Research for Innovation of the Erasmus University Rotterdam, the Erasmus
Trust Fund and the European Academy of Management (EURAM) for a grant supporting the initial
Management Innovation conference that took place at the Rotterdam School of Management, Erasmus
University, Rotterdam, The Netherlands, on 24–25 November 2011.

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Author biographies
Henk W. Volberda is Professor of Strategic Management and Business Policy and Director Knowledge
Transfer at the Rotterdam School of Management, Erasmus University. He is also Scientific Director of the top
institute INSCOPE: Research for Innovation. Henk Volberda has been a visiting scholar at the Wharton School
at the University of Pennsylvania and Cass Business School, London. His research on strategic flexibility and
renewal received many awards, including the Igor Ansoff Strategic Management Award and the SAP Strategy
Award 2005. His work on strategic renewal, coevolution of firms and industries, new organizational forms and
innovation has been published in many high-impact journals such as Academy of Management Journal,
Management Science, Organization Science, and Strategic Management Journal. He serves as a member of the
Editorial Review Board of Long Range Planning, Organization Studies, and Organization Science.
Frans A. J. Van Den Bosch is Professor of Management Interfaces between Organizations and Environment,
Rotterdam School of Management, Erasmus University. He has published several books and over 165 articles
in scientific journals and book chapters in the areas of strategy, international business, general management,
economics, and industry studies. His scientific papers have appeared in, among others, Academy of
Management Journal, Business and Society, Journal of Management Studies, Management Science and
Organization Science. He is a board member of several scientific journals, including Long Range Planning
and Organization Studies.
Oli Mihalache is an Assistant Professor of Strategic Management at the Wilfrid Laurier University, Canada and
VU University Amsterdam, Netherlands. He received his PhD from the Rotterdam School of Management,
Erasmus University, Netherlands, and was awarded with the ERIM Best PhD Award. His research on how firms
stimulate innovation is published in Strategic Management Journal and Strategic Entrepreneurship Journal.

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