Calls for papers

 

International Journal of Technology Management

 

Special Issue on: "People Create Your Innovative Technology – How Do You Manage Them"

Guest Editors:
Dr. Pia Hurmelinna-Laukkanen, University of Oulu, Finland
Dr. Heidi Olander, Lappeenranta University of Technology, Finland

At the end of the day, there are always people behind any new technology or innovation. Representatives of young generations and employees working in R&D and innovation find the atmosphere and content of work highly important (Romero and Pescosolido, 2008). This effects R&D and technology management. There is a lot of discussion on related aspects in technology management literature at the organisational level. However, as Rauffet et al. (2016) indicate, individual competences are important constituents of organisational capabilities. Therefore, people-related issues are rapidly gaining momentum in R&D, innovation, technology development (Frishammar et al., 2015; Hannah and Robertson, 2015; Järvenpää and Majchrzak, 2016; Rau et al., 2016; Ritala et al., 2015; Wendelken et al., 2014).

Technology-oriented organisations are more dependent on knowledgeable, competent employees than ever (Guthrie, 2001). People as employees and entrepreneurs are the initiators and originators of technological developments (e.g., Adler, 1995; Alegre et al., 2013; Camelo-Ordaz et al., 2011; Wright et al. 1994). They are invaluable in generating ideas, collecting and combining information and knowledge, pushing ideas forward, and in accepting suggestions regarding unconventional solutions to more and less surprising problems. At the same time, they present the issue of the "human factor". Individuals are, at the end of the day, unpredictable in many ways (Glaser et al., 2015; Olander et al., 2015). There are numerous motivational, social, cognitive, informative, and other factors that play a role in how innovation processes begin, develop and finally turn out (see, e.g., Hannah and Robertson, 2015; Nickerson et al., 2007). The dispersion of the responsibility of innovation generation (Stovel and Bontis, 2002) further increases complexity.

Many people-related aspects have been addressed in earlier innovation studies. However, in many cases these are addressed from one side only, seeing some activities or features as either positive or negative. There are not many studies examining why the not-invented-here syndrome (e.g., Michailova and Husted, 2003; Antons and Piller, 2015) would be good, why predisposed (biased) views or dominance by a single individual manager (Nickerson et al., 2007) would be beneficial for innovation and organisational developments, or why positive outcomes would stem from employees leaking confidential knowledge outside the organization, for example.

Yet many paradoxical aspects can be found in innovation, and some counterintuitive aspects related to the human factor have already been revealed. For example, in general when employees can make decisions related to innovation themselves, they can act faster when needed and catch chances that would be otherwise missed. However, Glaser et al. (2015) point towards proactivity and initiative of employees to be potentially detrimental for value creation. On the other hand, some contexts may pose challenges in establishing shared understanding between individuals, or differencing interests may impede knowledge sharing for example at newly emerging interfaces (Rau et al., 2016).

Bulgurcu et al. (2010) and Hannah and Robertson (2015) have discussed the issue of people trying to do a good job by bending and breaking their organisation's confidentiality rules, and by sharing knowledge despite the attempts of the firm managers to protect core knowledge. From the management-side, setting up rules and structures provides security and the idea is to increase clarity and ease working, but employees may perceive or interpret these completely differently. Courpasson et al. (2014) suggest that employee resistance - that could generally be seen as an unwanted behaviour - can foster unintended, innovative outcomes for both individuals and the organisation. Yet another example is that high commitment and low employee turnover is not always beneficial; there is a chance that there could be more and more "Lonely wolves" (Husted and Michailova, 2010) type of R&D workers emerging in the future. These and other examples raise questions regarding the role of various human factors, the nature of their relationships, as well as the contingencies that drive these connections.

Against the above described background, we wish to receive submissions that would take a fresh look at managing the people that generate innovative technologies. In particular, we would like to include papers discussing factors that are typically associated with either positive or negative outcomes regarding innovativeness but that can, depending on context, timing, etc., generate varying innovation outcomes - even in paradoxical and counterintuitive ways. In particular, examination of the patterns of when, how, and why specific human factors, management practices, and other such aspects turn out to be positive or negative are of interest.

Theoretical, conceptual and empirical studies utilising a variety of methods from qualitative case studies to quantitative approaches are welcome. We encourage work conducted on data collected from organisations of different sizes (small and medium-sized enterprises, multinational enterprises, individual experts as freelancers etc.), and from different organisational levels - including examination at micro level. We suspect that data from different market areas can provide different kinds of results, and therefore encourage studies comparing different cultural contexts and/or having one particular context of examination.

Subject Coverage
Suitable topics include, but are not limited to, the following:

• The role of people for competitiveness and cooperation in technology management
• Unconventional organisational tools for people management in technology management activities
• Organisational strategies for managing R&D employees
• Embracing cultural differences in technology management
• Contradictive issues in legal principles and organisational practices
• Employee turnover: cause of loss of knowledge assets or source of fresh new ideas?
• Innovation management from the viewpoint of strategy and management vs. R&D employees
• Downsides of intra-organisational knowledge sharing for technological developments
• Human factors promoting and/or declining productivity, efficiency, and quality of R&D
• (Over) enthusiastic employees as innovators and gatekeepers of core knowledge
• Complex linkages between external knowledge sharing and protection, and value capture
• Balancing intra-organisational knowledge sharing and protection
• Complexities of Inter-firmR&D and innovation activities
• Issues related to knowledge sharing and protection between individual experts
• The effects of voluntary and involuntary employee turnover for technology management
• Positive aspects of knowledge leakage in technology management
• Sense and emotions in technology management

Notes for Prospective Authors

Submitted papers should not have been previously published nor be currently under consideration for publication elsewhere. (N.B. Conference papers may only be submitted if the paper has been completely re-written and if appropriate written permissions have been obtained from any copyright holders of the original paper).

All papers are refereed through a peer review process.

All papers must be submitted online. To submit a paper, please read our Submitting articles page.

If you have any queries concerning this special issue, please email the Guest Editors Dr. Pia Hurmelinna-Laukkanen at pia.hurmelinna-laukkanen@oulu.fi and Dr. Heidi Olander at heidi.olander@lut.fi.

Important Dates

Manuscripts due by: 10 October, 2017

 

References

 

Adler P. (1995). Interdepartmental Interdependence and Coordination: The Case of the Design/Manufacturing Interface. Organization Science, 6,147-167.

 

Alegre J, Sengupta K, & Lapiedra R. (2013). Knowledge management and innovation performance in a high-tech SMEs industry. International Small Business Journal, 31, 454-470.

 

Antons, D., & Piller, F. T. (2015). Opening the black box of "Not Invented Here": attitudes, decision biases, and behavioral consequences. The Academy of Management Perspectives, 29, 193-217.

 

Bulgurcu B, Cavusoglu H & Benbasat I. (2010). Information security policy compliance: An empirical study of rationality-based beliefs and information security awareness. MIS Quarterly, 34, 523-548.

 

Camelo-Ordaz C, Garcia-Cruz J, Sousa-Ginel E, & Valle-Cabrera R. (2011). The influence of human resource management on knowledge sharing and innovation in Spain: the mediating role of affective commitment. The International Journal of Human Resource Management, 22, 1442-1463.

 

Courpasson, D., Dany, F., & Martí, I. (2014). Organizational entrepreneurship as active resistance: a struggle against outsourcing. Entrepreneurship Theory and Practice. DOI: 10.1111/etap.12109, 1-30.

 

Frishammar, J., Ericsson, K., Patel, P.C., 2015. The dark side of knowledge transfer: Exploring knowledge leakage in joint R&D projects. Technovation 41-42, 75-88.

 

Glaser, L., Stam, W., & Takeuchi, R. (2015). Managing the risks of proactivity: A multilevel study of initiative and performance in the middle management context. Academy of Management Journal. Published online before print June 25, 2015, doi: 10.5465/amj.2014.0177

 

Guthrie, J. (2000). Alternative pay practices and employee turnover. Group and Organization Management, 25(4), 419-39.

 

Hannah DR & Robertson K. (2015). Why and how do employees break and bend confidential information protection rules? Journal of Management Studies, 52, 381-413.

 

Husted, K. & Michailova, S. (2010). Dual allegiance and knowledge sharing in inter-firm R&D collaborations. Organizational Dynamics, 39(1), 37-47.

 

Järvenpää, S.L., Majchrzak, A., 2016. Interactive self-regulatory theory for sharing and protecting in interorganizational collaborations. Academy of Management Review 41(1): 9-27.

 

Michailova, S., & Husted, K. (2003). Knowledge-sharing hostility in Russian firms. California Management Review, 45(3), 59-77.

 

Nickerson, J.A., Silverman, B.S. & Zenger, T.R. (2007) The 'Problem' of Creating and Capturing Value. Strategic Organization, 5, 211 - 225.

 

Olander, H., Hurmelinna-Laukkanen, P. & Heilmann, P. (2015). Human resources - Strength and weakness in protection of intellectual capital. Journal of Intellectual Capital, 16, 742-762.

 

Rau, C. Möslein, K.M., and Neyer, A-K. (2016) Playing possum, hide-and-seek, and other behavioral patterns: knowledge boundaries at newly emerging interfaces, R&D Management, 46, 2, 341-353.

 

Rauffet, P., Cunha, C. D., & Bernard, A. (2016). Managing resource learning in distributed organisations with the organisational capability approach. International Journal of Technology Management, 70(4), 300-322.

 

Ritala, P., Olander, H., Michailova, S. and Husted, K. (2015) Knowledge sharing, knowledge leaking and relative innovation performance: An empirical study, Technovation, 35, 22-31.

 

Romero, E., Pescosolido, A. (2008). Humour and group effectiveness. Human Relations, 61(3), pp. 395-418.

 

Stovel, M, & Bontis, N. (2002). Voluntary turnover:knowledge management - friend or foe? Journal of Intellectual Capital, 3(3): 303-322.

 

Wendelken, A., Danzinger, F., Rau, C., and Moeslein, K.M. (2014). Innovation without me: why employees do (not) participate in organizational innovation communities, R&D Management, 44, 2, 217-236.

 

Wright PM, McMahan GC, & McWilliams A. (1994). Human resources and sustained competitive advantage: a resource-based perspective. International Journal of Human Resource Management, 5, 301-326.