TY - JOUR

T1 - CEO characteristics and the Doing-Using-Interacting mode of innovation

T2 - a new upper echelons perspective

AU - Bennat, Tatjana

AU - Sternberg, Rolf

N1 - Funding Information: This work was funded by the German Federal Ministry of Education and Research (Bundesministerium für Bildung und Forschung) under Grant 16IFI005.The qualitative data are not publicly available due to restrictions. They contain information that could compromise the privacy of the research participants. Our special thanks goes to the research team of the InDUI project, as well as the interviewees, for taking their time for our interviews. Furthermore, we would like to thank all colleagues from the Institute of Economic and Cultural Geography for their valuable comments on earlier drafts of this manuscript.

PY - 2022

Y1 - 2022

N2 - Little is known about how, and through which characteristics, CEO effects DUI mode innovation activities in SMEs. Thus, we connect the DUI mode concept with business management research and use data from 40 qualitative interviews in German non-R&D-based, but innovative SMEs. Applying the upper echelon concept as an analytical framework our results show that the CEO acts as an important moderator and mediator between DUI learning mechanism and innovation performance. In particular CEO’s values and cognitive base may help to increase innovation activities of the employees. Our paper is the first that empirically applies CEO’s psychological attributes of the upper-echelons concept to DUI innovations in non-R&D SMEs. We have developed a new version of the upper echelons model as well as hypotheses gained from the qualitative data analysis that are ready to be tested with quantitative procedures to improve the upper echelons theory concerning DUI-led innovation processes in SMEs.

AB - Little is known about how, and through which characteristics, CEO effects DUI mode innovation activities in SMEs. Thus, we connect the DUI mode concept with business management research and use data from 40 qualitative interviews in German non-R&D-based, but innovative SMEs. Applying the upper echelon concept as an analytical framework our results show that the CEO acts as an important moderator and mediator between DUI learning mechanism and innovation performance. In particular CEO’s values and cognitive base may help to increase innovation activities of the employees. Our paper is the first that empirically applies CEO’s psychological attributes of the upper-echelons concept to DUI innovations in non-R&D SMEs. We have developed a new version of the upper echelons model as well as hypotheses gained from the qualitative data analysis that are ready to be tested with quantitative procedures to improve the upper echelons theory concerning DUI-led innovation processes in SMEs.

KW - CEO

KW - doing-using-interacting (DUI)

KW - Germany

KW - innovation culture

KW - Innovation mode

KW - upper echelons

UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85132705359&partnerID=8YFLogxK

U2 - 10.1080/13662716.2022.2090319

DO - 10.1080/13662716.2022.2090319

M3 - Article

AN - SCOPUS:85132705359

VL - 29

SP - 1202

EP - 1230

JO - Industry and innovation

JF - Industry and innovation

SN - 1366-2716

IS - 10

ER -