How do we educate future innovation managers? Insights on innovation education in MBA syllabi

© 2016 Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group. Innovation education is regarded as a critical area in most business schools. This growing importance is partly a strategic response to managing in a knowledge-driven competitive environment. Given the expansion in popularity of innovation courses, it is surprising that little is known about the content and process of innovation education. This paper reports on the results of an exploratory study aiming to establish what is taught and how it is taught in innovation courses. This involves analysis of course syllabi of 29 innovation courses at 20 top-ranked business schools. Results revealed that although there is a consensus on the process of innovation education, shying away from traditional didactic approaches toward a more explorative and experiential mode, there exists substantial variation in course content. While this is not indicative of the quality of individual courses, it suggests that members of the innovation community run very dissimilar courses in their teaching practices. A common motif was found around multidisciplinarity and balanced coverage of static and dynamic components of innovation. Implications of findings for innovation teaching, pedagogy and curriculum development are discussed and benchmarks developed for evaluating existing curricula by instructors

Organisational learning and capability development in mature medium-sized firms:an exploration from an enactment perspective

This thesis uses an enactment perspective to critique and develop the concept of organisational capability. It approaches organisational capability from an interpretivist angle and inquires how organisations actually develop and renew their capabilities for sustainable competitive advantage. As a consequence of adopting the enactment perspective, the thesis reveals that organisational capabilities are much more context based and variable than the positivist and predictive representation of the concept in the extant literature. It also proposes that organizational design and learning processes play a key role in the development of organisational capabilities. The research uses qualitative interviews within a case study research design. It studies six medium-sized, mature organisations operating successfully in a variety of industries with diverse market dynamism. In order to move away from a linear representation of organisational capability, the study particularly focuses on the organisational antecedents of capability development in these organisations by relying on participants’ accounts to describe how the firm coped with external environmental changes throughout its history. Based on inductive theorising from intra- and cross-industry analysis, the study observes certain discrepancies in the way existing theories conceptualise organisational capabilities as well as confirms some of their suppositions. Regarding the antecedents of organisational capabilities, the empirical evidence concludes that the development and evolution of organisational capabilities are not only determined by the level of industry dynamism (Eisenhardt and Martin, 2000; Zollo and Winter, 2002); on the contrary, internal endogenous factors seem to matter as much as exogenous shocks. In terms of endogenous antecedents the study reveals a broad contrast between two distinct organisational learning mindsets – learning to innovate and innovating to learn – that influence how external industry factors are interpreted and translated into internal actions. The thesis confirms existing theories which claim that it is possible to decompose organisational capabilities into distinct, sequenced, hierarchically-ordered levels. But contrary to the literature which claims that only firms with higher-order ‘dynamic’ capabilities can succeed in changing environments, the thesis shows that multiple levels of capabilities can yield successful competitive performance for many years. Lastly, the thesis applies the concept of organisational learning mechanisms (Popper and Lipshitz, 2000) to investigate the process of capability development and argues that the structural and social facets, such as agent participation patterns and valuation of knowledge, are of particular importance in producing higher-levels of capabilities and more extensive organisational learning. The thesis contributes to the literature by showing that organisational capabilities are context-bound and idiosyncratic. They are a by-product of organisational life which comes not only through external factors and internal resources, but more importantly through managerial enactment, organisational mindset and learning mechanisms. It critiques existing theories based on the idea of organisation-environment alignment and proposes to introduce the idea of ‘envelopment’ which redefines the relationship between the organisation and its environment. The key idea is that within the same external environment, it is possible to have varying levels of firm dynamism and still to be able to maintain competitive advantage, without necessarily aiming for organisation-environment fit. This thesis contributes to the debates about the development and evolution of organisational capabilities by providing empirical support for the proposition of Zollo and Winter (2002) that there is a relationship between learning mechanisms and capabilities. As a result, it provides alternative insights into the genesis of organisational capabilities and the consequences of learning processes

Emotional foundations of capability development: An exploration in the SME context

Research uncovering the behavioural and cognitive foundations of capability development has gained traction in recent years. However, the emotional foundations of capability development have not been adequately addressed. This is an important gap; if emotions impact decisions and actions of key organisational actors, this suggests an influence on capability development processes in organisations, with implications for their survival and evolution. In this paper, we therefore explore 'how do the emotions of key strategists enable and/or hinder capability development?' Our in-depth qualitative research, based on five small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs), shows that emotions of key strategists, including emotional tensions and ambivalence, have multi-faceted effects on capability development depending on the activation level of pleasant and unpleasant emotions experienced. This adds to extant understanding of idiosyncratic foundations of capability development and extends conversations regarding the internal dynamics behind organisational survival and evolution

Dynamic managerial capabilities in micro-enterprises: Stability, vulnerability and the role of managerial time allocation

This article analyses how dynamic capabilities are enacted in micro-enterprises and what role different parties and managerial time allocation play in this enactment. Drawing upon three in-depth case studies of micro-enterprises, we make three theoretical contributions. First, after arguing that micro-enterprises are likely to enact individual- or group-level dynamic managerial capabilities rather than organisation-level dynamic capabilities, we counter Teece’s warnings about the vulnerable nature of dynamic managerial capabilities. Second, we identify that how managers allocate their own time, is a core micro-foundation of dynamic managerial capabilities; we illustrate that failure to allocate time to capability enactment can lead to capability vulnerability. Finally, we introduce the notion of ‘self-damaging dynamic managerial capabilities’ – these being capabilities that damage established micro-foundations

In praise of holistic scholarship: A collective essay in memory of Mark Easterby-Smith

This collective essay was born out of a desire to honor and remember Professor Mark Easterby-Smith, a founder of the Management Learning community. To do this, we invited community members to share their experiences of working with Mark. The resulting narratives remember Mark as a co-author, co-researcher, project manager, conference organizer, research leader, PhD supervisor, and much more. The memories cover many different aspects of Mark’s academic spectrum: from evaluation to research methods to cross-cultural management, to dynamic capabilities, naming but a few. This space for remembrance however developed into a space of reflection and conceptualization. Inspired by the range and extent of Mark’s interests, skills, experiences, and personal qualities, this essay became conceptual as well as personal as we turned the spotlight on academic careers and consider alternative paths for Management Learning scholarship today. Using the collective representations of Mark’s career as a starting point, we develop, the concept of holistic scholarship, which embraces certain attitudes and orientations in navigating the dialectical spaces and transcending tensions in academic life. We reflect on how such holistic scholarship can be practised in our contemporary and challenging times and what inspiration and lessons we can draw from Mark’s legacy

Functional spaces for team working

With an increased focus on flexible working practices, employers need to be conscious of creating an environment which enhances learning, creativity and knowledge transfer so when teams do come together, they are in the best environment to achieve maximum results. In the latest of our articles with academic leaders, we talk to Dr Harriet Shortt, Associate Professor and Dr Selen Kars, Senior Lecturer from Bristol Business School, at the University of the West of England, about how an organisation structures it’s work, breakout and functional spaces and how these can positively impact knowledge transfer and idea generation

“That was a pretty serious jump”: Feelings of ambivalence and complexity of arts-based educators in online environments

Arts-based methods which traditionally rely on engagement with material artefacts (e.g. LEGO® bricks, finger puppets, craft materials) have been on the rise in management learning and teaching. However, COVID-19 has challenged educators to adapt these methods to online teaching environments with an impact on learning development. This blog post reports on the results of a piece of qualitative research that sought to deepen our understanding of the pedagogy of arts-methods with an aim to explore the effective transferability to online teaching environments. Drawing on participant observation of six teaching sessions, which employed arts-based teaching online, and 13 story-elicitation interviews conducted with the educators in these sessions, this paper explores the lived experience of art-based teaching in the virtual world of teaching and learning. The analysis indicated that the technical limitations and the physical separation posed challenges in terms of transference of activities to virtual setting, inability to “read the room” caused by the lack of micro-social interactions in these settings. These limitations got in the way of the “embodied” experience of learning which has implications for learner development. The blog post concludes by surfacing questions and reflections into the future of arts-based methods for virtual world of learning development

Unleadership: The Remarkable Power of Unremarkable Acts

Leaderly acts and practices from unexpected places are often overlooked and yet have remarkable power. These spontaneous acts are in sharp contrast to those of formal leaders in governments and leading corporations. Global events like the Covid-19 pandemic and the climate crisis light up these differences. This book delves deeper, exploring these leaderly acts and practices more fully and beyond extraordinary events. The authors describe these as "unleadership", a term defined in this book as a set of acts and practices that are undertaken in a spirit of spontaneity and generosity for social good.Four dimensions of unleadership are identified in this book: paying it forward, living with the unknown, catching the wave, and confident connecting and collaborating. Unleadership exposes the potential that is unleashed when members of the community discover their own power to act and reclaim what they have delegated to their leaders.Based on extensive research, the authors highlight the flourishing of alternative forms of leading that encourage rethinking ideas of leadership and followership. They provide practical guidance to organisations and practitioners for enriching their leaderly capacity and cultivating unleadership practices to co-exist with and complement leadership practices.Unleadership is an invaluable resource for leaders and managers in public and private organisations as well as students of leadership and organisational development