A long way home: How an intra-organizational innovation network overcomes its political boundaries

Christiane Rau, Anne-Katrin Neyer, Agnes Schipanski and Fiona Schweitzer

management revue - Socio-Economic Studies, 2016, vol. 27, issue 3, 139-159

Abstract: This article focuses on the still understudied link among political boundaries and innovation practices and its inherent boundary-crossing mechanisms in intra-organizational innovation networks. Our single case study at the sports company adidas derives two particular combinations of boundaries and boundary-crossing mechanisms to overcome political boundaries in intra-organizational innovation networks. These are the ‘open-closed (minded) boundaries’ and ‘everybody-is-an-innovator boundaries’. They have been addressed with distinct innovation practices that comprise the boundary-crossing mechanisms ‘reframe interests’ and ‘negotiate interests’. We find that these boundary-crossing mechanisms to be crucial in the process of managing the intra-organizational innovation network. Our findings have implications for the organizational anchoring of innovation practices given its importance as enabler or barrier to overcome political boundaries in intra-organizational innovation networks.

Keywords: political boundaries; intra-organizational innovation networks; innovation practices; knowledge exchange; innovation management; boundary management; organizational practices (search for similar items in EconPapers)
JEL-codes: D83 M10 O30 O31 (search for similar items in EconPapers)
Date: 2016
References: Add references at CitEc
Citations:

Downloads: (external link)
https://www.nomos-elibrary.de/10.5771/0935-9915-2016-3-139 (application/pdf)

Related works:
This item may be available elsewhere in EconPapers: Search for items with the same title.

Export reference: BibTeX RIS (EndNote, ProCite, RefMan) HTML/Text

Persistent link: https://EconPapers.repec.org/RePEc:nms:mamere:mrev-2016-rau

Ordering information: This journal article can be ordered from
Nomos Verlagsgesellschaft mbH & Co. KG, Waldseestraße 3-5, 76530 Baden-Baden, Germany
https://www.nomos-sh ... w.aspx?product=29288

Access Statistics for this article

management revue - Socio-Economic Studies is currently edited by Simon Fietze, Wenzel Matiaske, Ina Aust, Matthias Baum, Susanne Gretzinger, Sylvia Rohlfer and Florian Schramm

More articles in management revue - Socio-Economic Studies from Nomos Verlagsgesellschaft mbH & Co. KG
Bibliographic data for series maintained by Nomos Verlagsgesellschaft mbH & Co. KG ().