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The purpose of this study is to theorize and test the relationships among lean operations and lean supply chain practices, learning- and innovation-oriented lean cultures and dynamic capabilities (DCs) microfoundations. Further, this study aims to assess the association of DCs microfoundations with process innovation.

The researchers combine primary data collected from 153 manufacturing firms located in five continents using a survey designed for the purpose of this study with archival data downloaded from the Bureau Van Dijk Orbis database and test the hypothesized relationships using structural equation modelling.

Results support the contribution of lean operations and lean supply chain practices to the development of DCs microfoundations, which further lead to greater process innovation. Additionally, while a learning-oriented lean culture positively moderates the relationships between both lean operations and lean supply chain practices and DCs microfoundations, an innovation-oriented lean culture only moderates the relationship between lean operations practices and DCs microfoundations.

This study identifies DCs microfoundations as the key mechanisms for firms implementing lean practices to achieve greater levels of process innovation and the important role played by lean cultures. This study provides direction for managers to put in place DCs through lean implementations, enabling their firms to be ready to respond to challenges and opportunities generated by environmental changes.

While previous research has confirmed the positive effects of lean practices on efficiency, the role of lean practices and cultures in developing capabilities for reacting to environmental dynamism has received little attention. This study offers an empirically supported framework that highlights the potential of lean to adapt processes in response to environmental dynamics, thereby extending the lean paradigm beyond the traditional focus on operational efficiency.

The objective of this research is to analyze the microfoundations of dynamic capabilities used by microbreweries in Porto Alegre (Brazil) in their coopetition strategies.

A case study with a qualitative approach was developed. Data were collected during interviews with owners of 11 microbreweries, via analysis of documents and nonparticipatory observation. The authors used the content analysis technique to infer knowledge.

The authors identified the microfoundations of dynamic coopetition capabilities including collective purchases, shared distribution expenses, shared production, education of consumers and other beer producers, group interaction and a business roundtable with entrepreneurs from the food and drink sector in the hospitality industry.

The authors developed a framework that considers the relationship between the microfoundations of dynamic capabilities and coopetition regarding the paradox between competition and cooperation. It is relevant to identify different actors’ movements and the potential outcomes of coopetitive strategies, which yield a competitive advantage for the cluster.

Together, the microfoundations of dynamic capabilities contribute to the competitive advantage of the cluster.

The study highlights how small companies can jointly develop competitive advantage in a market dominated by a large company.

Organisations within healthcare increasingly operate in rapidly changing environments and present wide variation in performance. It can be argued that this variation is influenced by the capability of an organisation to improve: its improvement capability. However, there is little theoretical research on improvement capability. The purpose of this paper is to set out the current diverse body of research on improvement capability and develop a theoretically informed conceptual framework.

This paper conceptualises improvement capability as a dynamic capability. This suggests that improvement capability is comprised of organisational routines that are bundled together, and adapt and react to organisational circumstances. Existing research conceptualises these bundles as three elements (microfoundations): sensing, seizing and reconfiguring. This conceptualisation is used to explore how improvement capability can be understood, by inductively categorising eight dimensions of improvement capability to develop a theoretically informed conceptual framework.

This paper shows that the three microfoundations which make up a dynamic capability are present in the identified improvement capability dimensions. This theoretically based conceptual framework provides a rich explanation of how improvement capability can be configured.

Identifying the component parts of improvement capability helps to explain why some organisations are less successful in improvement than others. This theoretically informed framework can support managers and policy makers to identify improvement capability dimensions in need of development. Further empirical research, particularly in non-market settings, such as publicly funded healthcare is required to enhance understanding of improvement capability and its configuration.

This article analyzes the cognitive microfoundations, conflicting institutional logics and professional hybridization in a case characterized by conflict.

In contrast to the majority of earlier studies focusing on special health care, the study was conducted in a Finnish basic health care organization. The empirical data include 36 interviews, accounting reports, budgets, newspaper articles and meeting notes collected 2013–2018.

The use of accounting techniques in this case did not offer professionals sufficient support under conditions of conflict. The authors suggest that this perceived lack of support intensified the negative emotions toward accounting techniques. These negative emotions aggregated into incompatible professional-level institutional logics, which contributed to the lack of hybridization between such logics. The authors highlight the importance of the cognitive microfoundations, that is, the individual-level interpretations and emotional responses, in the analysis of conflicting institutional logics.

Managerial attention needs to be directed to accounting practices perceived as frustrating or threatening, a perception that can prevent the use of accounting techniques in the creation of professional hybrids. The Finnish basic health care context involves inconsistent political decision-making, multiple tasks, three institutional logics and individual interpretations and emotions in various decision-making situations.

This study develops microfoundational accounting research by illustrating how individual-level cognitive microfoundations such as dissatisfaction with budgeting, aggregate into professional-level institutional logics, and in our case, prevent professional hybridization in a basic health care setting characterized by conflict and three separate institutional logics.

Non-profit organizations (NPOs) are exposed to a highly competitive environment in which they are forced to grow their commercial activity to acquire additional financial resources. This study aims to create an understanding of how NPOs involved in textile reuse as a revenue-generating programme manage their reverse supply chains (RSC).

The research involves an embedded single-case study of NPOs in Finland involved in post-use textile collection. The main data sources are semi-structured interviews and participant observations.

This study is inspired by the microfoundations movement and identifies the underlying microfoundations of the NPOs’ capabilities for managing RSC for textile reuse. The study contributes to the literature by demonstrating NPOs’ lower-level, granular practices and their adaptations for achieving quality outcomes in textile reuse.

The findings have context sensitivity and apply to the NPOs which operate in a context similar to Finland, such as in other Nordic countries.

This study continues the discussion on the adoption of “business-like” practices in the NPOs’ pursuit of additional revenue streams to finance humanitarian work. The findings of this study can also be transferred to the growing area of domestic textile circularity.

Using the case of NPOs in textile reuse, the study illustrates how RSC management can serve a social, non-profit cause and transform unwanted textile products into a source of fundraising for humanitarian work.

This enriches the understanding of NPOs’ practices within the scope of revenue-generating programmes by examining one of them – textile reuse through charity shops from an RSC perspective.

Omnichannel (OC) logistics is undergoing a significant transformation in grocery retail. To shed light on this important but underresearched phenomenon, this study aims to investigate how grocery retailers transform and why some are more successful in transforming OC logistics.

Applying dynamic capabilities as a theoretical lens, a multiple case study was conducted with three grocery retailers at different stages of their transformation.

Six microfoundations of dynamic capabilities were identified as critical for enabling OC transformation. The study highlights important differences in dynamic capabilities, which can be attributed to investment decision-making, governance and creating co-specialization. Finally, the authors propose seven propositions for contextualization of dynamic capabilities for OC transformation in grocery retail.

This study is original by contextualizing microfoundations in grocery OC retailing. The study contributes to theory and practice by showing the value of dynamic capabilities, stressing the important interrelation among a retailer's governance structure, leadership and capability to make investment decisions, increase logistics coordination and co-specialize.

The purpose of this paper is to achieve a collective understanding of the capabilities required for digital procurement transformation (DPT).

The authors contextualize theory about dynamic capabilities (DCs) to integrate the fragmented body of literature on procurement digitalization by means of a systematic literature review (SLR). By extracting and clustering capabilities, as well as proven performance outcomes from existing literature in the field, the authors develop a conceptual model of the DCs required for DPT.

The authors first introduce and define DPT and the corresponding motivations that trigger firms to invest in advanced digital technologies. Second, by adopting the DC lens, the authors provide an overview of nine microfoundations required for DPT and highlight the strategic options procurement leaders can use when strategizing about adopting combinations of digital technologies. Third, the authors present a future research agenda on DCs for DPT.

The developed conceptual model must be verified and enhanced through further empirical research.

The conceptual model can be used by procurement leaders as a starting point and framework when strategizing about digitally transforming the procurement organization.

The study is the first to synthesize previous research findings on procurement digitalization through an SLR in order to develop a fine-grained conceptual model that supports practitioners and researchers alike in better understanding the capabilities required for and potential performance outcomes of DPT.

Mastering innovation in highly regulated markets might require companies to overcome significant barriers. Rules, laws and limitations on social, economic and institutional dimensions can hinder the ability of a company to transfer knowledge within and across organizational boundaries. However, as recent research in innovation management increasingly advocates user involvement and early understanding of user needs as best practices, the inability to freely interact with customers due to highly regulated market restrictions can hinder the company’s capability to innovate. Hence, this paper aims to shed light on how an emerging managerial approach, such as Design Sprint, can support companies operating in highly regulated markets to overcome user involvement limitations and boost human-centered innovation.

This paper sheds light on how to boost innovation in a highly regulated market by leveraging an in-depth case study. The study investigates the use of the Design Sprint approach adopted by the pharmaceutical multinational Johnson & Johnson to revise the way its R&D department orchestrates the new product development process, overcoming the user involvement challenges of highly regulated markets.

In analyzing six different projects undertaken in the past two years, the findings illustrate three microfoundational dimensions of the Design Sprint approach in highly regulated markets, the so-called 3T model: team, time and tools. Indeed, deploying the Design Sprint in a highly regulated market has proven that being able to experiment in the early stages, building rough prototypes in real-time and openly collaborating with partners is crucial to boost innovation and anticipate constraints.

The paper sheds light on the Design Sprint approach by initially grounding an emerging managerial approach on organizational and management theory, leveraging the lens of microfoundations. In doing so, this study suggests how Design Sprint is based on the pillars of experimentation, knowledge transfer and co-creation usually neglected in highly regulated markets where user involvement is challenging. Finally, this study discloses the importance of using a design-based methodology in fostering innovation in highly regulated markets.

This study aims to analyze what promotes the adoption of open innovation (OI) in the foodservice sector. Specifically, it seeks to shed light on the bottom-up mechanisms (the microfoundations) that allow a foodservice firm to organize for OI.

The research design is an in-depth exploratory case study with 18 semi-structured interviews. The findings have been triangulated with documentation available on the corporate website, the project reports and direct observation. Data were analyzed using an inductive approach, coding individual interview transcripts.

This study identifies three categories of capabilities that have to be spread to different organizational levels: the capability to sense organizational triggers to change, to develop external collaborations and knowledge exchanges with different parties and the management's ability to be aware of organizational imperatives and the need to proceed with process adjustment. Results highlight the importance of sensing organizational triggers, allowing a quick switch between new strategies in implementing an OI approach. It was crucial for the company to co-develop new products and services with a large audience of stakeholders, not only limited to customers. The case remarks on the required ability of the organization and management team to activate mechanisms aimed at reconfiguring the competencies within each business unit, keeping an alignment with the needs of the stakeholders.

The study emphasizes the multi-level characteristics of OI and provides a framework for microfoundations on how to organize for OI. Results contribute to the recent debate on the skills and routines an organization should design and promote within their employees.

The purpose of this research is to better understand the human aspects of open innovation in small- and medium-sized enterprises (SMEs) by exploring how intrinsic and extrinsic motivation influence enjoyment in helping others, knowledge sharing and knowledge hiding and consequently firms' open innovation.

We collected data with a survey among CEOs in 140 SMEs and performed confirmatory factor analysis applying structural equation modeling in IBM SPSS AMOS (v. 26).

Results reveal that intrinsic motivation is positively associated with helping behavior and knowledge sharing and negatively associated with knowledge hiding. We also confirm the positive relationship between extrinsic motivation and knowledge sharing. Moreover, we find that knowledge sharing increases and knowledge hiding decreases the firm-level open innovation. Especially in high-tech industry, knowledge sharing is a vital determinant of open innovation.

Responding to the calls for a deeper understanding of the individual-level factors that determine organization-level open innovation, in this research we focus on the human aspect of open innovation in SMEs. Open innovation is a widely recognized and implemented concept among large corporations and facilitates better understanding of new technological and market developments both within and outside of organizations. However, understanding of the microfoundations of open innovation in smaller firms is still limited, but this steam of research is growing rapidly.