Especially in times of digitalization and digital transformation, firms need to generate and commercialize innovations in order to reinvent their business model, to build and expand their competence base, and to secure their long-term survival. Questions of how firms should “organize for innovation” and which organizational factors determine firms’ innovation performance have for long been subject to academic discussion. Most prominently, past research has identified factors such as “top management and leadership”, “strategy”, “structures and processes”, “organizational culture”, “resources, skills, and expertise”, or “networks and external partners” as major determinants of organizational innovation. However, the pervasiveness of digital technologies and innovations entails two major challenges that will most likely dictate the rules of the “innovation game” in years to come: (1) business digitalization entails holistic organizational transformation; (2) distributed and combinatorial innovation are the major modes of digital innovation. In the light of those challenges, especially the factors “top management and leadership” and “networks and external partners” might be crucial differentiators between innovation leaders and laggards. Hence, my cumulative dissertation centers around those two focus areas. In this thesis, I first identify pressing research gaps with regard to the dominant theoretical perspectives on both topics (upper echelon/strategic leadership theory for “top management and leadership”; stra-tegic network perspective for “networks and external partners”). Then, I present five empiri-cal studies that each address a specific set of the identified limitations in theory and research literature. In all, my work advocates the use of either multi-level research models or typological/taxonomic frameworks as core elements for theoretical reasoning in innovation management research. Doing so, I aim to help overcome theoretical fragmentation in both focus areas and support the development of mid-range theories that adequately reflect the complex and interdependent nature of organizations and of the causal mechanisms at play.
Player Types: A Meta-synthesis
