Uncovering Covert Innovation: Bootlegging, Illegitimacy, and Management’s Attitude

236 Pages·2021·4.139 MB·English

by  Stephan Eicher

Stephan Eicher
Uncovering
Covert Innovation
Bootlegging, Illegitimacy, and
Management’s Attitude
Markt- und Unternehmensentwicklung
Markets and Organisations
Series Editors
Arnold Picot, München, Germany
Ralf Reichwald, Leipzig, Germany
Egon Franck, Zürich, Switzerland
Kathrin M. Möslein, Erlangen-Nürnberg, Germany
Change of institutions, technology and competition drives the interplay of
markets and organisations. The scientific series ‘Markets and Organisations’
addresses a magnitude of related questions, presents theoretic and empirical find-
ings and discusses related concepts and models.
Edited by
Professor Dr. Dres. h. c. Arnold Picot Professor Dr. Professor h. c. Dr. h. c.
Ludwig-Maximilians-Universität Ralf Reichwald
München, Germany HHL Leipzig Graduate School of
Management, Leipzig, Germany
Professor Dr. Egon Franck
Universität Zürich, Switzerland Professorin Dr. Kathrin M. Möslein
Friedrich-Alexander-Universität
Erlangen-Nürnberg & HHL
Leipzig, Germany
More information about this series at http://www.springer.com/series/12561
Stephan Eicher
Uncovering
Covert Innovation
Bootlegging, Illegitimacy, and
Management’s Attitude
With a foreword by Prof. Dr. Kathrin M. Möslein and
Prof. Dr. Peter Augsdörfer
Stephan Eicher
Nürnberg, Germany
Dissertation Friedrich-Alexander-Universität Erlangen-Nürnberg, 2019
Markt- und Unternehmensentwicklung Markets and Organisations
ISBN 978-3-658-31619-8 ISBN 978-3-658-31620-4 (eBook)
https://doi.org/10.1007/978-3-658-31620-4
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Foreword
Today many companies are fully aware that their ability to innovate is crucially
important for their future success. To strengthen their innovative potential,
companies have long sought for ways to organise their efforts. This journey has been
accompanied by the research on innovation management for a number of decades
now. This has led to enormous changes in how companies manage innovation.
However, the decades of research also show that companies need to be aware of
some limitations. This is highlighted by the research on bootlegging in R&D. It shows
that managing innovation sometimes also results in inhibiting innovation.
Particularly the early stages of innovation are characterised by high degrees of
uncertainty and at times organisations attempt to block innovation initiatives. Some
of these decisions may later turn out as wrong. This is the setting that prepares the
stage for a special type of employee: bootleggers. Some employees do not always
take a no for a no. Convinced of their ideas, they instead proceed covertly and
eventually overcome resistance from their organisations.
Bootlegging in R&D is quite common in companies and has produced a
number of outstanding and well-known innovations, as many examples and
publications highlight. It is an important source of innovation and a topic that anyone
involved in the management of innovation should pay attention to. The existence of
bootlegging emphasises that innovations should not be judged prematurely and that
researchers frequently require extensive freedom. Companies and their decision
makers need to be aware that great ideas can also come from the side lines of their
processes and organisations.
Stephan Eicher dedicated his research to this subject and answered research
questions that lie at the heart of the phenomenon. Projects that are pursued in a
bootleg fashion are often characterised by being regarded as illegitimate. While
bootleggers advance their covert projects invisible to large parts of the organisation,
an inevitable challenge awaits them whenever they feel ready to share. They need
to convince decision makers, a challenge that is certainly not easy to overcome,
particularly when exactly some of these decision makers were originally against it.
Stephan provides us with a systematic and at the same time vivid understanding of
this process. His findings and conclusions are highly relevant to people from an
industrial and academic background, because they provide a great deal of insight on
the daily reality of exceptionally creative and engaged employees. Furthermore, past
research highlights that management plays a pivotal role in the incidence of
bootlegging. By pursuing a quantitative study in a renowned company, Stephan
extends our knowledge on the relationship between management practices and
bootlegging. Innovation management research and managers have spent
VI Foreword
considerable interest in the question of how management styles foster the overall
creativity of organisations. Stephan’s research shows us just how this relationship
can be extended to deviant creativity. It warns us to be aware that today’s
management approaches not only influence the overall creativity within an
organisation, but also its deviant component.
This book has been accepted as a doctoral dissertation in 2019 by the School
of Business, Economics and Society at the Friedrich-Alexander University Erlangen-
Nuremberg (FAU). As such it is highly relevant to anyone interested and involved in
managing innovation. Stephan Eicher’s work will fascinate innovation management
researchers as well as innovation managers in industrial settings. We wish the book
the broad audience it deserves and Dr. Stephan Eicher all the best in his future career
path.
Prof. Dr. Kathrin M. Möslein & Prof. Dr. Peter Augsdörfer
Preface
Uncovering covert innovation. Even though bootlegging in R&D is the term more
commonly used, I chose this title because the play on words is a good reflection of
what this research project is all about. It is about uncovering knowledge on
innovation that does not originate from the official channels of corporate R&D. This
type of innovation occurs when creative and motivated employees circumvent such
channels and proceed on covert missions, sometimes because it is the only way
towards realisation.
R&D bootlegging is a great research topic for anyone who is curious about what
other – probably more curious people – do. It is research into what really happens in
corporate R&D away from the processes described on official 16:9 slides. As such,
this research project of course meant lots and lots of work for me but at the same
time great fun. It was an outstanding opportunity to collaborate with a large number
of very interesting people, who will remain largely anonymous on the following
pages. I would like to use the opportunity to thank all of them for their contribution.
I highly value the opportunity this research project has given me in gaining
much deeper scientific experience. This is particularly the case at a time when
scientific work overall is sometimes put in question or at the other extreme
considered without much reflection.
This leads me to thanking the people who have made this experience much
deeper than I had originally anticipated. I would like to thank Prof. Dr. Kathrin M.
Moeslein and Prof. Dr. Peter Augsdorfer for giving me the opportunity to research
under their guidance. Without their input, directions and also optimism, this project
would not have been possible. At this point, I would also like to thank Dr. Dr. Albrecht
Fritzsche for the countless hours of discussing various versions of various studies
back and forth. A life without reviewers would certainly be boring. Thanks also to my
colleagues at the chair for their time and advice.
A very special thanks of course to my family and friends. None of this would
have been possible without the infinite patience of my wife and my kids, the
encouragement of my parents and my brothers and sisters, the backing of my
parents in law, and my close friends who did not forget about that guy, who locked
himself up in the office for five years. Thank you, thank you, thank you!
Stephan Eicher
Overview of contents
FOREWORD ................................................................................................................................................. V
PREFACE .................................................................................................................................................. VII
OVERVIEW OF CONTENTS ........................................................................................................................... IX
TABLE OF CONTENTS .................................................................................................................................. XI
LIST OF TABLES .......................................................................................................................................... XV
LIST OF FIGURES ...................................................................................................................................... XVII
LIST OF ABBREVIATIONS ........................................................................................................................... XIX
ABSTRACT ................................................................................................................................................. XXI
PART I INTRODUCTION .............................................................................................................................. 1
1. BOOTLEGGING IN R&D: BASICS AND BACKGROUND.................................................................... 3
2. ESTABLISHING A RESEARCH AGENDA .......................................................................................... 6
3. STRUCTURE OF THE DISSERTATION ............................................................................................ 10
PART II WHAT THE LITERATURE TELLS US ABOUT BOOTLEGGING IN R&D – A SYSTEMATIC LITERATURE
REVIEW....................................................................................................................................... 11
1. STRUCTURE OF PART II ............................................................................................................... 13
2. INTRODUCTION .......................................................................................................................... 14
3. METHODOLOGY.......................................................................................................................... 16
4. RESULTS...................................................................................................................................... 23
5. DISCUSSION AND ROADMAP FOR FUTURE RESEARCH ................................................................ 40
6. LIMITATIONS .............................................................................................................................. 43
PART III OVERCOMING ILLEGITIMACY: HOW BOOTLEG RESEARCHERS UNCOVER THEIR UNDERGROUND
INNOVATION PROJECTS – A QUALITATIVE STUDY ...................................................................... 45
1. STRUCTURE OF PART III .............................................................................................................. 47
2. INTRODUCTION: DISCLOSING BOOTLEG PROJECTS ..................................................................... 49
3. THEORETICAL BACKGROUND ...................................................................................................... 51
4. METHODOLOGY.......................................................................................................................... 58
5. FINDINGS .................................................................................................................................... 67
6. DISCUSSION .............................................................................................................................. 107
7. LIMITATIONS & FUTURE RESEARCH .......................................................................................... 112
PART IV THE RELATIONSHIP BETWEEN BOOTLEGGING AND MANAGEMENT PRACTICES – A
QUANTITATIVE STUDY .............................................................................................................. 113
1. STRUCTURE OF PART IV ............................................................................................................ 115
2. INTRODUCTION ........................................................................................................................ 117
3. THEORETICAL FOUNDATIONS ................................................................................................... 119
4. METHODOLOGY........................................................................................................................ 129
X Overview of contents
4. FINDINGS ................................................................................................................................. 137
5. DISCUSSION ............................................................................................................................. 164
6. LIMITATIONS & FUTURE RESEARCH .......................................................................................... 167
PART V DISCUSSION AND CONCLUSION .................................................................................................. 169
1. STRUCTURE OF PART V ............................................................................................................. 171
2. SUMMARY OF STUDIES ............................................................................................................ 172
3. THEORETICAL IMPLICATIONS ................................................................................................... 177
4. MANAGERIAL IMPLICATIONS ................................................................................................... 183
5. LIMITATIONS & OPPORTUNITIES FOR FUTURE RESEARCH ........................................................ 186
6. CONCLUSION & OUTLOOK ........................................................................................................ 189
REFERENCES ............................................................................................................................................. 191
APPENDIX ................................................................................................................................................. 211
APPENDIX A: RELATED TO THE LITERATURE REVIEW ................................................................................ 212
APPENDIX B: RELATED TO THE QUANTITATIVE STUDY ............................................................................. 225
APPENDIX C: RELATED TO THE TITLE OF THIS DISSERTATION .................................................................... 225