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The purpose of this paper is to gain insight into the contingent use of rational, intuitive and political decision-making in R&D.

This research is based on a study in an R&D department of a multinational high-tech firm in the Netherlands. The study consists of a case study design, focusing on four embedded cases, longitudinally studying each case.

The literature distinguishes three dimensions of innovation decision-making processes: rational, intuitive and political. By studying these interwoven dimensions over time, this study finds that the dominant use of each of these dimensions differs across the innovation process. There is an emphasis on intuitive decision-making in an early phase, followed by more emphasis on political decision-making, and moving to more emphasis on rational decision-making in a later phase of the R&D process. Furthermore, the predominant choice in a specific innovation phase for one of the three decision-making dimensions is influenced by the decision-making dimension that is dominantly employed in the preceding phase.

This study contributes to the innovation decision-making literature by developing and applying a model that distinguishes rational, intuitive and political decision-making dimensions, the interactions among these dimensions in innovation decision-making in R&D, and the contingency of these dimensions upon the innovation phase. It calls for further research into the contingent nature of innovation decision-making processes.

For practitioners this study has two relevant insights. First it highlights the importance and usefulness of intuitive and political decision-making in addition to the prevailing emphasis on rational decision-making. Second, practitioners may be more alert to consciously changing their dominant decision-making approach across the phases of the innovation process. Third, companies may adjust their human resource policies to this study’s findings.

The literature on rational, intuitive and political decision-making is quite extensive. However, research has hardly studied how these decision-making dimensions develop in conjunction, and over time. This paper reports on a first study to do so and finds that the dominant use of these dimensions is contingent upon the phase of the R&D process and on the decision-making dimensions used in earlier phases. The study suggests that using a contingency approach can help to further integrate the debate in research and practice.

The purpose of this paper is to find out how strategic decisions have resulted in innovation in the context of the organizational environment. The author studies connections between strategic decision making and innovation to find out what kinds of factors of the organizational environment influence strategic decisions that lead an organization to innovate.

The theoretical and empirical part proceeds from dividing strategic decisions into proactive and reactive; the environment into internal and external, including primary and secondary environment, and dynamic capabilities; and innovation into product, process, marketing and organizational innovation. The study uses qualitative research and case study methodologies to analyse the case of an Estonian IT company, MicroLink.

The results show that even if innovation is not strategically managed in a company, it can still be innovative. However, the potential for different types of innovation at the organizational and local and global market level is very often determined by the company's general strategic vision and its proactive nature, which should be supported by its dynamic capabilities.

Based on the results, some conclusions are also presented for other Estonian IT companies in terms of what aspects they should keep in mind when making strategic decisions and implementing innovation.

The paper contributes to the understanding of how innovation evolves and it is presumed that innovation is not always a purposeful, but rather an episodic manifestation that could be a result of strategic decisions. Besides, product and process innovation, this study also helps to highlight the role of marketing and organizational innovation, which have gained much less attention in the literature.

The purpose of this paper is to outline the “grand structure” of the phenomenon in order to identify both the underlying processes and core drivers of employee‐driven innovation (EDI).

This is a conceptual paper. It particularly applies the insights of contemporary research on routine and organizational decision making to the specific case of EDI.

The main result of the paper is that, from a theoretical point of view, it makes perfect sense to involve ordinary employees in innovation decisions. However, it is also outlined that naïve or ungoverned participation is counterproductive, and that it is quite difficult to realize the hidden potential in a supportive way.

The main implication is that basic mechanisms for employee participation also apply to innovation decisions, although often in a different way. However, the paper only identifies the grand structure of the phenomenon. The different identified drivers have to be further elaborated and empirically tested.

EDI is a helpful tool to gain competitive advantage by utilizing the knowledge and creative potential of employees.

This is the first paper that gives a systematic overview of the grand structure of EDI and derives the most important moderating factors from that.

Decision‐making in early stages of technology‐based service (TBS) innovation projects proves to be challenging. Current failure rates in service innovation are high, while the investments in innovation projects are substantial. Research suggests that enhancing decision‐making in the screening stage could substantially increase success rates. By investigating the screening decision process from an information processing perspective, this article aims to identify antecedents of effective TBS screening decision‐making, and could thus help companies to enhance their decision‐making and reduce innovation project failure rates.

Reviewing literature regarding service innovation, new product screening and decision‐making under uncertainty, we identify antecedents of decision‐making effectiveness in the TBS screening stage. Hypotheses are developed and tested with data from 251 TBS innovation projects.

The study demonstrates the importance of decision‐making team composition, information use and decision perspective for innovation success. Decision‐maker experience and perspective mediate effects of team composition.

Further research is needed to investigate screening decision‐making. The authors provide a research agenda based on our findings.

The study helps screening committees enhance their decision‐making process, by optimizing committee composition, and making better use of decision maker experience and information.

Little is known about how decision makers exploit information and previous experience in dealing with the high levels of ambiguity, complexity and uncertainty in a TBS proposal screening setting. This is the first study to approach the problem from an information processing perspective.

The purpose of this exploratory study is explaining the effects of control and interdependence on decision making at the level of product innovation projects in dyadic strategic alliances.

Drawing on alliance research, strategic decision‐making research and product innovation literature a conceptual framework is developed using a multiple case research methodology.

The empirical case results indicate that decision‐making effectiveness in product innovation projects is dependent on the nature of the decision‐making process which, in turn, is affected by alliance governance structure characteristics.

The case research results only gives an in‐depth understanding of the nature of the effects. A large‐scale quantitative study is needed to arrive at generalizations taking into account industry‐specific and firm‐specific factors.

Managers may want to take the effects on decision making into account when deciding on the alliance governance structure for a new product innovation project.

This paper contributes to earlier research first, by viewing product innovation as a joint activity for which not only one organization is responsible, and second, by relating alliance governance structure to decision making beyond the strategic management level at the level of product innovation projects.

The purpose of the paper is to analyse children's impact on innovation decision making empirically.

This paper is a diary study with 14 parents depicting their experiences with regard to the topic of interest over a period of two weeks.

Children's influence is stronger in earlier stages of the innovation buying process, based on different communication strategies with differing effects on their parents' purchasing behaviour.

This paper helps marketers tailor appropriate marketing and innovation strategies. Special attention is given to the familial dynamics in the innovation decision‐making process. This is to prevent inter‐family conflicts fuelled by the children's requests.

This is one of the first attempts to test Rogers' innovation‐decision process. Moreover, despite its many bonuses, the diary method has rarely been applied in the context of familial purchase decision making.

The purpose of this paper is to investigate differences in how men and women small- and medium-sized enterprise (SME) entrepreneurs make decisions regarding whether to invest in technologies for their firms. Answering recent calls for a gendered perspective in entrepreneurial decision-making, this study integrates premises from social identity theory and role congruity theory to help explain innovation investment decisions among male and female SME entrepreneurs.

Using data from 121 SME entrepreneurs in the dry cleaning industry, the authors employ a conjoint experimental methodology to capture decisions SME entrepreneurs make to adopt or reject an environment-friendly dry cleaning technology. The authors examine the role gender, firm revenue, technology price, and technology complexity play in entrepreneur investment decisions.

The authors find that gender indirectly impacts innovation purchase decisions through interactions with firm revenue and key innovation characteristics. Women SME entrepreneurs were less likely to purchase the technology than their male counterparts at low (and high) firm revenue, high innovation price, and high innovation complexity—all highly risky, masculine, choice contexts.

These findings suggest that men and women's entrepreneurial investment decisions might be shaped by gender stereotypes. Future research should sample additional industries and determine the norms guiding gendered decision-making.

Beyond the decision to launch a new venture, this multi-level analysis, using the lens of social identity and role congruity theories, helps illuminate how men and women SME entrepreneurs approach innovation investment decision-making in significantly different—and gender role consistent—ways.

The 2008 global financial crisis showed that the ability to innovate is a key management skill and that approaches to assessing the innovation capability of small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) need to be as realistic as possible. This study aims to address the latter practical need through a sociotechnical approach.

Based on a combined use of cognitive mapping and the Decision EXpert (DEX) technique, and grounded on the insights generated by a panel of SME managers and entrepreneurs in two intensive group meetings, a knowledge-based assessment system for evaluating SMEs’ innovation capability was created, tested and validated.

The knowledge-based assessment system identified the most innovative SMEs in a sample of companies. The “plus-minus-1” and dominance analyses carried out provided further support for the results.

The proposed system is extremely versatile but process-oriented and idiosyncratic in nature, meaning that extrapolations to other contexts need to be done with due caution.

The panel of SME decision makers agreed that the system improves the current methods used to evaluate SMEs’ innovation capability, contributing to a more informed perspective on management issues. The panel members also noted that the proposed system functions as a learning mechanism, facilitating the development of well-focused suggestions for improvements SMEs can make.

The integrated use of cognitive maps and rule-base decisions contributes to a better understanding of how to assess SMEs’ innovation capability. No prior work reporting the integrated use of these two techniques in this study context has been found.

In recent years, rapid changes in the economic situation and high levels of competition have increased the need for innovation in order to gain success. In such circumstances, organizational strategists are considered as critical in determining the success or failure of organizations. Using innovation in various aspects of organizational operations is the most important factor to achieve sustainable competitive advantages in industry. As a result, analyzing the effective factors involved in promoting the efficiency of innovative activities in the organization and ways of achieving it are of utmost importance. Thus, this paper examines the relationship between communication and innovation performance with respect to the intermediary role of strategic decision-making process speed.

The present study has used quantitative methodology and questionnaire to collect data from 450 managers and members who are involved in the decision-making process in 150 companies operating in the food-industry sector. Data analysis was done by using structural equation modeling and AMOS software.

The results of the data analysis suggest that communication and strategic decision-making speed possess a significant positive impact on innovation performance. Also, strategic decision-making speed has sufficiently played the intermediary role between communication and innovation performance.

This survey specifies the effects of communication on the success of making fast strategic decision and innovation performance which aid Iranian food companies to tackle one of the managerial challenges: postponing strategic decisions due to lack of efficient communication to get information. In addition, to the best of the authors' knowledge, this essay is a first in Iran.

This paper aims to investigate the motivation for firms to innovate their products to be socially responsible in the presence of the spillover effect. The follower of the innovation in corporate social responsibility (CSR) can benefit from the leader’s innovation by technological spillover. For instance, evidence can be found in the cosmetics industry (e.g. Lush Retail Ltd. and The Body Shop) and the market of hybrid electric vehicles (e.g. Toyota and Honda). Moreover, consumers may have different perceptions on the sequence of CSR innovation by firms, they may prefer more on the CSR product launched by the leader because they usually relate the desired stage to their interests when making a purchase decision. Therefore, the firms’ decision to be a leader of the CSR innovation depends on the trade-off between the loss in the spillover effect and the benefit of the first-mover advantage, which has not been considered by the existing literature. This paper explains the firms’ motivation on CSR innovation in a realistic situation where competing firms’ CSR programs are launched sequentially and sheds light on the private sector’s decision on strategy from the perspective on the social contribution, and provides some managerial implications about the competing firms’ strategies of launching the CSR innovation.

The authors construct a two-period Hotelling model in which consumers are divided into two groups: the altruistic and normal consumers. The altruistic consumers have more willingness to pay for the CSR product while the normal consumers only care about the product performance improved by the firms’ CSR activities. Firms have the option to innovate their basic products to be socially responsible and make their decision on such CSR innovation sequentially. Moreover, the follower of the innovation can receive a spillover effect from the leader, meaning that there may exist a second-mover advantage in terms of innovation (the authors define this as a spillover effect), but in the meanwhile, the altruistic consumers value more on the CSR product sold by the leader than that by the follower (the authors define this as a preference-reduction effect). This implies that the firm can benefit in the production process from being a second-mover of the CSR innovation but may lose its first-mover advantage in terms of the preference-reduction effect. By finding and analyzing the sub-game perfect Nash equilibrium, the authors try to figure out the firms’ decisions on CSR innovation in various situations.

The authors find that the firms’ motivation of CSR innovation crucially depends on the fraction of the altruistic consumers, as well as the spillover effect and the preference-reduction effect. A large (small) fraction of the altruistic consumers attracts (restricts) both the leader and the follower to engage in CSR innovation. More importantly, when such fraction is not too large but stays at a relatively high level, a potential leader of the CSR innovation may not wish to innovate. Hence, the potential follower may be the monopolist in the market of the socially responsible product. In addition, the authors reexamine this result in a variation model where a leader can make its decision on the CSR innovation to be more flexible by allowing it can innovate in either periods 1 or 2. The authors demonstrate that when the fraction of the altruistic consumers falls in an intermediate range, the leader may wish to delay the CSR innovation to period 2. In such a case, the leader of the CSR innovation may tend to trade its first-mover advantage for head-to-head competition with the follower and prevents the follower from benefiting from the spillover effect. Moreover, a flexible choice on the CSR innovation brings greater initiative to a firm to be the leader of the innovation.

Nearly all the studies about firms’ decisions on CSR innovation are conducted in an environment of simultaneous move, which is not appropriate to describe the real business world; many pieces of evidence show that many CSR programs are launched sequentially rather than simultaneously. The theory identifies a couple of important factors of the CSR innovation in a more realistic situation, i.e. sequential more on CSR innovation. Both spillover effect and preference-reduction effect crucially affect the firms’ decision on innovating their products to be socially responsible, which contributes to the existing literature in CSR and strategic decision. This paper also sheds some light on managerial implications with CSR innovation under various situations of competition.