Building Dynamic Capabilities through Digital Innovation Units? - An analysis of their contribution and the spill-over effects to the main organization

To meet the challenge of digital transformation and remain competitive in an increasingly volatile business environment, many incumbent companies have set up digital innovation units (DIUs). Despite a steadily growing body of knowledge, research explaining the value contribution of such units is still at an early stage. Drawing on empirical data from a multiple case study, we adopt a dynamic capabilities perspective to better understand how DIUs also contribute to building dynamic capabilities as part of their role in the digital transformation of the main organization. To this end, we examined the DIUs of six manufacturing companies and were able to identify several DIU activities and skills that feed into the development and expansion of dynamic capabilities. Moreover, with respect to these activities and skills, we also uncovered positive spillover effects from the DIU to the main organization

How intelligence interviewees mentally identify relevant information

This research explored how intelligence interviewees mentally identify the relevant information at their disposal. We theorized that interviewees estimate the interviewer's objectives based on how they frame any attempt to solicit information. Then interviewees organize the information they possess into item designations that pragmatically correspond to the perceived interviewer-objective. The more an interviewer specifies what they want to know, the more the interviewee will mentally designate information items corresponding with that objective. To examine the theory, we conducted two identical experiments wherein participants assumed the role of an informant with one of two dispositions. They were to be cooperative or resistant when undergoing an interview. The interviewer posed specific or ambiguous questions. In Study 1 (N = 210), interviewees identified applicable information items based on their interviewer's questions. And interviewees answered their interviewer's questions in Study 2 (N = 199). We aimed to demonstrate that question type influences mental designations and disposition affects disclosures. Disposition had a stronger influence on interviewees' disclosure than when reasoning about what the interviewer wants to know. But contrary to our expectations, mental designation preferences indicated that interviewees generally assume interviewers want to know complete details, irrespective of question specificity. We suggest avenues for future research

Building Adaptive Capacity for Volatile Business Environments: A Longitudinal Study of the Establishment of a Digital Innovation Unit

To meet the challenge of digital transformation and remain competitive in an increasingly volatile business environment many incumbent companies have set up digital innovation units (DIU). Despite a steady increase in the body of knowledge, current research paints a rather static picture of DIUs due to a lack of studies that have collected data over an extended period of time to examine DIU-related processes. Based on empirical data from an in-depth, longitudinal case study with an incumbent machine manufacturer we examine the process of building a DIU and how the main organization can develop and expand its adaptive capacity (AC) in the process. We identify three mechanisms that positively impact the expansion of AC as well as five disturbing factors. Furthermore, we give first implications and point at the research avenue of the relationship between AC and trust

Epistemicity and communicative strategies

When communicating, interlocutors negotiate knowledge by proposing propositional content to be added to their shared common ground. The way in which speakers put forward propositional content – expressing more or less confidence in its truthfulness – may affect the way in which other interlocutors react to such content. This article examines speakers’ production choices and hearers’ interpretations of the formulations believe/know/bare assertion to test how (maximal) certainty is expressed and inferred, whether speakers adjust their production choices depending on their communicative goals and whether hearers are able to adjust their interpretations correspondingly. For this purpose, we created two scenarios – one with a cooperative interlocutor and one with a potentially uncooperative interlocutor. The results suggest that know is epistemically the most powerful formulation – stronger than the bare assertion – but that the bare assertion may still be preferred over know for expressing maximal certainty in cooperative scenarios. Our findings also suggest that believe is used to hedge the assertive strength of statements in cooperative settings. Whereas speakers and hearers agree in the relative epistemic ordering of the formulations (believe < bare assertion < know), when inferring the speakers’ degrees of belief hearers to not appear to consistently take into account that speakers’ communicative goals may shift as a function of context

The discursive function of additives in interaction

The insertion of additives such as too has been argued to be obligatory (in affirmative sentences) if the immediate context contains a suitable antecedent such that the presupposition triggered by additives is satisfied. However, the obligatoriness of additives has been found to be gradient and their insertion to depend on contextual factors. While most research has focused on comprehension, the present study examines the production of additives and the extent to which they are obligatory by manipulating the factors Similarity and Turn Distance. We furthermore explored whether not using additives even in obligatory environments could be an instance of diverging (i.e. socially distancing) from the antecedent speaker. For this purpose we investigated whether speakers would omit additives when interacting with an impolite antecedent speaker. Overall, the results of our two experiments suggest that (i) in line with previous results on similarity, speakers tend to utter additives more frequently when their utterance’s content more closely matches the content of a previously formulated utterance; and (ii) speakers use additives more frequently when the matching utterance directly precedes their utterance. Furthermore, the results of experiment II suggest that (iii) speakers deliberately drop the use of additives when doing so would allow them to signal divergence from an impolite speaker. Our findings lend support to models in which speakers use additives as a discourse managing tool to organise the discourse and maintain discourse coherence

Evolution of Digital Innovation Units for Digital Transformation – The Convergence of Motors of Change

To face the challenge of digital transformation as well as to implement digital innovation many incumbent companies have set up digital innovation units (DIUs). Despite a steadily growing body of knowledge, there is a rather static picture of DIUs in the literature to date, and we have little knowledge of how these units evolve over time to continuously contribute to digital transformation and innovation. To lay the foundation for an understanding of DIUs as dynamically evolving entities, we conduct a multiple-case study with DIUs of five manufacturing companies and identify DIU evolution as a process driven by an interplay of life-cycle and dialectic motor of change. In the course of this, we also outline specific triggers, sequences, and the nature of change. We generalize our findings with a conceptual process model of DIU evolution and three propositions on their current and future development to inform the existing and forthcoming literature