TY - JOUR
T1 - Making sense of heterogeneous innovative social action
T2 - co-constructing the past and imagining the future
AU - Ferreira, Ana
AU - Teixeira, Ana Lúcia
AU - Dantas, Ana Roque
N1 - UIDB/04647/2020
UIDP/04647/2020
PY - 2021
Y1 - 2021
N2 - Currently, countries, organizations and individual actors are increasingly pushed towards an ‘innovation imperative’ that presents innovation as an unequivocal promoter of multi-level success. However, it remains to be addressed whether innovation actors have homogenously incorporated this narrative, or rather, attribute divergent meanings to previous innovative social action. Inspired by critical innovation studies and sensemaking research, this paper addresses whether specific contextual aspects translate into heterogeneous sensemaking processes, and shape actors’ expectations for the future. For this purpose, focusing on the Information and Communication Technology sector and having the organizational unit as the level of analysis, it addresses top managers’ discourses through their perceptions on past innovation. Cluster analysis identified two profiles, mostly discriminated by actors’ perceptions of their firms’ role in previous innovation. These profiles were associated with innovation performance with firms with more outputs presenting themselves as the ‘builders of their success’, while the ones with less successful trajectories expressing their powerlessness. Logistic regression analysis revealed that such discourses mediate the impact of firms’ empowerment culture and assets on confidence in the future. This study adds to previous literature a first comparative analysis of heterogeneous sensemaking discourses through which actors contextualize previous innovative social action and co-construct futures’ expectations.
AB - Currently, countries, organizations and individual actors are increasingly pushed towards an ‘innovation imperative’ that presents innovation as an unequivocal promoter of multi-level success. However, it remains to be addressed whether innovation actors have homogenously incorporated this narrative, or rather, attribute divergent meanings to previous innovative social action. Inspired by critical innovation studies and sensemaking research, this paper addresses whether specific contextual aspects translate into heterogeneous sensemaking processes, and shape actors’ expectations for the future. For this purpose, focusing on the Information and Communication Technology sector and having the organizational unit as the level of analysis, it addresses top managers’ discourses through their perceptions on past innovation. Cluster analysis identified two profiles, mostly discriminated by actors’ perceptions of their firms’ role in previous innovation. These profiles were associated with innovation performance with firms with more outputs presenting themselves as the ‘builders of their success’, while the ones with less successful trajectories expressing their powerlessness. Logistic regression analysis revealed that such discourses mediate the impact of firms’ empowerment culture and assets on confidence in the future. This study adds to previous literature a first comparative analysis of heterogeneous sensemaking discourses through which actors contextualize previous innovative social action and co-construct futures’ expectations.
KW - Confidence
KW - Contexts
KW - Expectations
KW - Innovation
KW - Sensemaking
KW - Social action
UR - http://www.scopus.com/inward/record.url?scp=85122235519&partnerID=8YFLogxK
UR - https://www.webofscience.com/wos/woscc/full-record/WOS:000737647700001
U2 - https://doi.org/10.1080/03906701.2021.2015980
DO - https://doi.org/10.1080/03906701.2021.2015980
M3 - Article
AN - SCOPUS:85122235519
SN - 0390-6701
VL - 31
SP - 432
EP - 452
JO - International Review Of Sociology
JF - International Review Of Sociology
IS - 3
ER -