Driving Factors of Corporate Responsible Innovation: An Exploratory Multiple-Case Study of Technological Enterprises

Responsible innovation originated from concerns about the responsibilities of technological innovation from a strategic and policy perspective in European and American countries in the early 21st century and has expanded to developing countries in recent years, becoming an essential path for global innovation transformation and sustainable development. However, with the deepening of enterprises’ positioning as the “main body of technological innovation”, theoretical research focusing on corporate responsible innovation (CRI) remains inadequate, and its driving mechanisms have yet to be clarified. Addressing this gap, we adopt an exploratory multiple-case study method, selecting three Chinese technology-innovative enterprises for grounded theory analysis, constructing a driving factor model through three-level coding. The findings reveal that instrumental motivation, relational motivation, and moral motivation constitute the internal driving factors of CRI; market pressure, policy pressure, and normative pressure constitute the external driving factors. When external pressure levels are high, they significantly enhance the effectiveness of internal motivations in driving responsible innovation. This study unveils the synergistic mechanism of multi-dimensional motivations and pressures, providing a theoretical framework and practical implications for guiding and driving enterprises to practice responsible innovation.