IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/wsi/ijimxx/v26y2022i05ns1363919622400047.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

Sustainability-Oriented Technology Exploration: Managerial Values, Ambidextrous Design, And Separation Drift

Author

Listed:
  • ERIK G. HANSEN

    (Institute for Integrated Quality Design (IQD), Johannes Kepler University Linz (JKU), Altenberger Straße 69, 4040 Linz, Austria†Centre for Sustainability Management (CSM), Leuphana University Lüneburg, Universitätsallee 1, 21335 Lüneburg, Germany)

  • SAMUEL WICKI

    (��Centre for Sustainability Management (CSM), Leuphana University Lüneburg, Universitätsallee 1, 21335 Lüneburg, Germany‡Enterprise for Society Centre (E4S), UNIL-HEC, IMD, EPFL, Odyssea, EPFL Station 5, CH-1015 Lausanne, Switzerland)

  • STEFAN SCHALTEGGER

    (��Centre for Sustainability Management (CSM), Leuphana University Lüneburg, Universitätsallee 1, 21335 Lüneburg, Germany)

Abstract

Sustainability is a key societal challenge and has become an opportunity for innovation. While start-ups are prone to enter such new territories, established companies are more hesitant to leave current trajectories and embrace uncertainty linked to sustainability-oriented exploration. We present a case of a conventional high-tech firm of an owner-manager whose strong values of universalism led him to initialise a sustainability-oriented diversification by exploring renewable energy technologies. Our longitudinal study uncovers how changes in ambidextrous organisational design and represented managerial values ultimately resulted in failed exploration. Our contribution is threefold: First, we link individual-level managerial values of universalism with organisational-level phenomena of sustainability-oriented exploration and diversification. Second, we contribute to bridging hitherto mostly separate bodies of literature on sustainability-oriented innovation and ambidexterity to better understand how conventional firms can deploy their technological capabilities for sustainability. Third, we conceptualise the “separation drift†as fading organisational separation resulting in exploration failure.

Suggested Citation

  • Erik G. Hansen & Samuel Wicki & Stefan Schaltegger, 2022. "Sustainability-Oriented Technology Exploration: Managerial Values, Ambidextrous Design, And Separation Drift," International Journal of Innovation Management (ijim), World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd., vol. 26(05), pages 1-27, June.
  • Handle: RePEc:wsi:ijimxx:v:26:y:2022:i:05:n:s1363919622400047
    DOI: 10.1142/S1363919622400047
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://www.worldscientific.com/doi/abs/10.1142/S1363919622400047
    Download Restriction: Access to full text is restricted to subscribers

    File URL: https://libkey.io/10.1142/S1363919622400047?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    As the access to this document is restricted, you may want to search for a different version of it.

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Xi Zhang, 2022. "Incremental Innovation: Long-Term Impetus for Design Business Creativity," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 14(22), pages 1-24, November.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:wsi:ijimxx:v:26:y:2022:i:05:n:s1363919622400047. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    We have no bibliographic references for this item. You can help adding them by using this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Tai Tone Lim (email available below). General contact details of provider: http://www.worldscinet.com/ijim/ijim.shtml .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.