Summary
This study empirically examines how a firm's strategic orientation impacts its management of innovative activities. Drawing on the strategic management and innovation literatures, we develop and empirically test hypotheses arguing that a firm's strategic orientation will impact its perception of barriers to innovation, its sources of ideas for innovation, and its targets for innovation. The data, from over 244 firms, generally support the hypotheses. The study's findings suggest that a firm's strategic management and its management of innovation are highly integrated.
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Business Strategy Types and Innovative Practices
This study explores how firms with different strategic orientations manage innovative practices. Specifically, we examine differences in how firms with contrasting strategic orientations view the environmental and organizational factors that influence their management of innovation. Although there are many dimensions of strategic behavior, our focus on innovation is driven by a substantial body of empirical and theoretical work that highlights its increasingly critical role as a source of sustainable competitive advantage (Eisenhardt and Martin, 2000; Fiol, 1996; Storey, 2000; Teece et al, 1997).
This article contributes to the integration of the strategic management and innovation perspectives by empirically examining how innovative practices vary among firms with different strategic orientations, thereby achieving tighter integration between these two important theoretical perspectives. In doing this, we begin to address some important questions which are likely to be of crucial interest to both scholars and practicing managers. For example, how do innovative behaviors in strategically conservative firms differ from those in firms that are less conservative? Are the former less innovative than the latter, or do they simply target their innovative activities to different areas of the value chain? Likewise, what are the most important sources of knowledge and innovation for such firms and how do they differ? By exploring these and related questions we provide new insights into organizational strategies and related innovative behaviors.The article proceeds as follows. We first establish a foundation for our study by examining the literatures on strategy and innovation, especially concentrating on the Miles and Snow (1978) strategy typology. We then develop hypotheses on relatio...See the full content of this document
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