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The construction industry has shown an inherent inability to adopt advanced technological innovations. The construction innovation literature is highly fragmented and outlines an overwhelming number of factors that arguably influence the transfer of technological innovations in construction. Factor-based research in the construction innovation literature tends to set out technological innovations and their adoption as socially neutral events, overlooking the role of context in the adoption process. Hence, the authors’ understanding of how technological innovations are transferred and implemented in the construction industry remains limited by the constraints of reductionist approaches adopted by factor-based research. This paper aims to advance the authors’ understanding of the actual experiences of technological innovations transfer in construction. Instead of introducing another set of factors, the research, through empirical investigation, develops a comprehensive and holistic framework to re-interpret the existing factor-based literature taking into consideration the role of the construction context and the socially constructed nature of technological innovations.

This research uses a participatory exploratory multiple case study design strategy, which has much in common with action research. The factors that could influence the transfer of technological innovations were investigated in three selected case studies over an extended period of time. During the research, a prototype system application of construction integration was used as a basis to discuss the adoption of technological innovations.

The findings suggest moving from the commonly held beliefs in the rational school of technological innovation and the functionalist paradigm towards constructivist approaches to capture the role of context and the stoically constructed nature of technological innovations. It is suggested that construction companies need to develop management capabilities to manage the changing political environments of the adoption process. The research supports the emerging view of technological innovations in construction as a collaborative-based innovation, which is a function of relationships and context.

The research is limited by the settings of the action research design and the use of an interpretive approach. Because the focus was on investigating the “why” question, little attention was given to the “how” question. Accordingly, the findings provide little insights into the way organizations can manage the changing political and social environment of the adoption process. The authors also acknowledge that in spite of their best efforts to build a theoretically grounded framework of factors, they may have overlooked some relevant studies. However, the objective of this research was not to conduct a systematic literature review or to come up with a framework that quantitatively captures all previous research studies; instead, the objective was to build a holistic framework that can be used as a base to analyze the role of construction context and the socially constructed nature of technological innovations in the adoption process.

The research offers several practical insights. First, it suggests that construction companies need to develop management capabilities to be able to lead the changing political environment of the adoption process successfully. Second, the research supports the emerging view of technological innovations in construction as a collaborative-based innovation that is a function of relationship. From a policy perspective, the research provides the basis to reconsider the effectiveness of federal and provincial policies that promote advanced technological Initiatives. The majority of these policies focus on the technical aspects in assessing the adoption of technological innovation, providing little incentives to companies to manage the changing political and social environment of the adoption process.

This research offers several theoretical and methodological contributions. First, it advances the authors’ understanding of the actual experiences of the transfer of technological innovations in construction organizations. Second, instead of introducing another set of factors, the research develops a framework to re-interpret the existing factor-based literature, considering the role of construction context and the socially constructed nature of technological innovations. The research uses the theoretical lens of the social construction of technology framework to analyze the adoption process. The existing literature suggests that such research is scarce and highly needed. Third, unlike the mainstream reductionist approaches, this research adopts an exploratory action research inquiry design that uses both inductive and deductive inquiry approaches to understand the socially constructed nature of innovation transfer in construction. The adopted research design offers a valuable methodological contribution to the existing body of knowledge.

This paper aims to explore the challenges and opportunities of blockchain technology adoption from the lens of the technological–organisational–environmental (TOE) framework for operational excellence in the UK automotive industry context.

The research methodology of this study follows a systematic review approach, which analyses existing academic published research papers in the top 35 academic journals. There was no specific timeframe established for this study and shortlisting the articles through a set of used keywords. A sample of 71 articles was shortlisted and analysed to provide a discussion on technological and management challenges and opportunities of blockchain adoption from the lens of the TOE framework for operational excellence.

The findings of this study present significant theoretical and managerial implications and deep understanding for firms seeking to understand the challenges and opportunities of blockchain adoption for their operational excellence.

The systematic literature approach was considered for the present study to explore existing academic papers on technological and management challenges and opportunities from the lens of TOE framework for operational excellence, whereas a more specified method meta-analysis can be considered for future research. The study has been explored in the UK automotive industry context, which has been considered as the limitation of generalisation across countries and industries.

This paper represents the most comprehensive literature study related to the technological and management challenges and opportunities of blockchain from the TOE framework angle for operational excellence.

This study aims to explore the role of learning in value co-creation in the context of new technological B2B services. The research objective is approached from the customers' viewpoint, in terms of their motivation to make sacrifices in learning and to embark on value co-creation with a service provider.

This study is based on a qualitative case study. The main source of data is 17 interviews with retailers who tested a new m-advertising service.

The findings show that the customer's motives to make sacrifices, their absorptive capacity and exploitative/explorative learning orientation are important in explaining the role of learning in value co-creation, because perceived value can vary significantly depending on the level of the absorptive capacity of the firm, the orientation towards learning, and the customer's sacrifices in learning.

The study can be of use to providers of new technological business services in showing how to persuade customers to learn to use the service and engage in value co-creation. This is important since the active participation of both actors is required to co-produce the technological B2B service.

The study contributes to the existing value theory by offering new critical insights into the essential role of customer learning in value co-creation. Closely related to this, the study explores customer motivation to make sacrifices in learning and to get involved in value co-creation with service provider, specifically in the context of new technological B2B services. In so doing, this study offers empirically-based insights into value co-creation and thus advances the current understanding of value phenomena.

Briefly reviews previous literature by the author before presenting an original 12 step system integration protocol designed to ensure the success of companies or countries in their efforts to develop and market new products. Looks at the issues from different strategic levels such as corporate, international, military and economic. Presents 31 case studies, including the success of Japan in microchips to the failure of Xerox to sell its invention of the Alto personal computer 3 years before Apple: from the success in DNA and Superconductor research to the success of Sunbeam in inventing and marketing food processors: and from the daring invention and production of atomic energy for survival to the successes of sewing machine inventor Howe in co‐operating on patents to compete in markets. Includes 306 questions and answers in order to qualify concepts introduced.

Information and communications technology (ICT) offers enormous opportunities for individuals, businesses and society. The application of ICT is equally important to economic and non-economic activities. Researchers have increasingly focused on the adoption and use of ICT by small and medium enterprises (SMEs) as the economic development of a country is largely dependent on them. Following the success of ICT utilisation in SMEs in developed countries, many developing countries are looking to utilise the potential of the technology to develop SMEs. Past studies have shown that the contribution of ICT to the performance of SMEs is not clear and certain. Thus, it is crucial to determine the effectiveness of ICT in generating firm performance since this has implications for SMEs’ expenditure on the technology. This research examines the diffusion of ICT among SMEs with respect to the typical stages from innovation adoption to post-adoption, by analysing the actual usage of ICT and value creation. The mediating effects of integration and utilisation on SME performance are also studied. Grounded in the innovation diffusion literature, institutional theory and resource-based theory, this study has developed a comprehensive integrated research model focused on the research objectives. Following a positivist research paradigm, this study employs a mixed-method research approach. A preliminary conceptual framework is developed through an extensive literature review and is refined by results from an in-depth field study. During the field study, a total of 11 SME owners or decision-makers were interviewed. The recorded interviews were transcribed and analysed using NVivo 10 to refine the model to develop the research hypotheses. The final research model is composed of 30 first-order and five higher-order constructs which involve both reflective and formative measures. Partial least squares-based structural equation modelling (PLS-SEM) is employed to test the theoretical model with a cross-sectional data set of 282 SMEs in Bangladesh. Survey data were collected using a structured questionnaire issued to SMEs selected by applying a stratified random sampling technique. The structural equation modelling utilises a two-step procedure of data analysis. Prior to estimating the structural model, the measurement model is examined for construct validity of the study variables (i.e. convergent and discriminant validity).

The estimates show cognitive evaluation as an important antecedent for expectation which is shaped primarily by the entrepreneurs’ beliefs (perception) and also influenced by the owners’ innovativeness and culture. Culture further influences expectation. The study finds that facilitating condition, environmental pressure and country readiness are important antecedents of expectation and ICT use. The results also reveal that integration and the degree of ICT utilisation significantly affect SMEs’ performance. Surprisingly, the findings do not reveal any significant impact of ICT usage on performance which apparently suggests the possibility of the ICT productivity paradox. However, the analysis finally proves the non-existence of the paradox by demonstrating the mediating role of ICT integration and degree of utilisation explain the influence of information technology (IT) usage on firm performance which is consistent with the resource-based theory. The results suggest that the use of ICT can enhance SMEs’ performance if the technology is integrated and properly utilised. SME owners or managers, interested stakeholders and policy makers may follow the study’s outcomes and focus on ICT integration and degree of utilisation with a view to attaining superior organisational performance.

This study urges concerned business enterprises and government to look at the environmental and cultural factors with a view to achieving ICT usage success in terms of enhanced firm performance. In particular, improving organisational practices and procedures by eliminating the traditional power distance inside organisations and implementing necessary rules and regulations are important actions for managing environmental and cultural uncertainties. The application of a Bengali user interface may help to ensure the productivity of ICT use by SMEs in Bangladesh. Establishing a favourable national technology infrastructure and legal environment may contribute positively to improving the overall situation. This study also suggests some changes and modifications in the country’s existing policies and strategies. The government and policy makers should undertake mass promotional programs to disseminate information about the various uses of computers and their contribution in developing better organisational performance. Organising specialised training programs for SME capacity building may succeed in attaining the motivation for SMEs to use ICT. Ensuring easy access to the technology by providing loans, grants and subsidies is important. Various stakeholders, partners and related organisations should come forward to support government policies and priorities in order to ensure the productive use of ICT among SMEs which finally will help to foster Bangladesh’s economic development.

Technology is an important driver of organizational change and often strategically used to facilitate adaptations in organizational processes and cultures. While the link between technological and organizational change is widely recognized, the role of macro‐context for this link remains undervalued. Based on data from technology implementations in European police forces the paper aims to illustrate the importance of integrating analyses of the macro‐context to understand the complexity of technology driven organizational change.

The authors conducted 56 interviews and five focus groups with police officers from 13 countries on two of the major technology trends in European police forces: automatic number plate recognition systems (ANPR) systems and social media. They further conducted site visits to police forces in The Netherlands and the United Kingdom to observe technology usage first hand. Comparing accounts across countries they analyzed how macro‐context impacted adoption decisions and implementation processes. In this analysis they concentrated on the five macro‐contextual factors in the PESTL framework, i.e. political, economic, social, technological and legal factors.

In analyses of ANPR systems and social media the paper details how the macro‐context of police organizations impacted decisions to adopt a technology as well as the intra‐organizational alignments of processes and structures.

Organizational decision makers and implementers need to be aware not only of the strong agency of technology for organizations' structure and processes, but also of the relevance of the organizational macro‐context for the process and impact of technology implementations on the organizational as well as individual level.

The paper illustrates the impact of the macro‐context of organizations in shaping the link between technological change and organizational change.

This study aims to use the knowledge management perspective to examine the mechanism through which entrepreneurship drives firms’ technological innovation in the digital age. The objective is to develop a multi-stage integrated theoretical model to explain how entrepreneurship exerts its influence on firms’ technological innovation with a particular focus on the knowledge management perspective. The findings can be used for the cultivation of entrepreneurship and for the promotion of continuous technological innovation activities.

This study uses a case-based qualitative approach to examine the relationship between entrepreneurship and technological innovation. The authors first analyze the case of SANY and then explore the mechanism of how entrepreneurship can promote a firm’s technological innovation from the perspective of knowledge management based on the technology-organization-environment framework. An integrated theoretical model is then developed in this study.

Based on a case study, the authors propose that there are three main processes of knowledge management in firms’ technological innovation: knowledge acquisition, knowledge integration and knowledge creation. In the process of knowledge acquisition, the joint effects of innovation spirit, learning spirit, cooperation spirit and global vision drive the construction and its healthy development of firms’ innovation ecosystem. In the process of knowledge integration, the joint effects of innovation spirit, cooperation spirit and learning spirit help complete the integration of knowledge and further the accumulation of firms’ core knowledge resources. In the process of knowledge creation, the joint effects of mission spirit, learning spirit and innovation spirit encourage the top management team to establish long-term goals and innovation philosophy. This philosophy can promote the establishment of a people-oriented incentive mechanism that helps achieve the transformation from the accumulation of core knowledge resources to the research and innovation of core technologies. After these three stages, firms are passively engaged in the “reverse transfer of knowledge” step, which contributes to other firms’ knowledge management cycle. With active knowledge acquisition, integration, creation and passive reverse knowledge transfer, firms can achieve continuous technological innovation.

This study has important theoretical implications in entrepreneurship research. This study helps advance the understanding of entrepreneurship and literature on the relationship between entrepreneurship and technological innovation in the digital age, which can broaden the application of knowledge management theories. It can also help better understand how to develop healthy firm-led innovation ecosystems to achieve continuous optimization of knowledge and technological innovation in the digital age.

This study proposes an integrated theoretical model to address the issues of entrepreneurship and firms’ technological innovation in the digital age, and it is also one of few studies that focuses on entrepreneurship and innovation from a knowledge management perspective.

The purpose of this paper is to propose a new approach that enables service innovation models to incorporate a holographic perspective into their innovation-centric business models. The essence of the holographic approach to service innovation might provide us with an innovative organization that is enclosed in its components; a knowledge-centric approach that adapts each person as a vital component of a whole; and the ability of value co-creation by each part of the organization in ways that benefit the organization as a whole.

This paper uses a narrative synthesis framework combining existing literature (by textual narrative technique) with expert opinion, based on search of Science-Direct and ProQuest academic databases.

A total of 114 top-cited and high relevant references were deeply reviewed. Nine principle dimensions were evolved from the final review to construct a comprehensive definition of service innovation. Then, the narrative synthesis helped us to bring forward a new approach to service innovation and applied it in the form of a conceptual model, as the literature was previously established on certain approaches. In the final stage, a comprehensive model of service innovation was designed to introduce the holographic approach to the existing literature.

This paper reviewed top-cited and high relevant references published in English that were indexed in Science-Direct and ProQuest. The authors did not search any grey literature and other language publications, and hand-search any journals.

This research highlights how managers must consider service innovation as a whole.

This is the first critical review published in the peer-reviewed literature that explores the principle dimensions of service innovation and provide a new approach to the literature.

When developing a new product, a buying firm solicits revenue sharing bids from two competing suppliers. Bidding behaviors of suppliers do not always align with predictions from rational agent models due to task uncertainty and bounded rationality, which could result in non-optimal supplier offers and ultimately hurt buying firm interests. This paper aims to discuss the aforementioned issues.

The authors built an analytical model that considers the impact of supplier technological risk, buyer–supplier coordination cost and supplier loss aversion on the optimal bid of the supplier. Next, using limited information processing capacity as a theoretic lens, the authors explore antecedents to the size of a focal supplier's bidding error, the absolute difference between the actual bid and the optimal bid. The authors used quantitative lab experimental data to test the hypotheses.

(1) Bounded rational bidders often fail to differentiate between relevant and irrelevant competitive information when placing bids, (2) loss aversion of a bidder significantly affects not only levels of bids, particularly for bidders with competitive disadvantages, but also sizes of the bidding error and (3) competitive information that has clearer performance implications are more influential in reducing sizes of bidding errors.

The results provide a comprehensive view of the bidding behaviors of a bounded rational supplier in an innovation outsourcing context with competition. With the results, managers now have a better understanding of behavioral influencers behind non-optimal supplier bids in an innovation outsourcing context.

The purpose of this research is to enhance understanding of the sources of relational rents in supply chains and the nature of their relationships with performance. Using the relational view framework and contingency perspective, the study develops a model and hypotheses to understand the nature of the relationships of collaboration and resource specificity with operational performance under technology context contingencies.

Data for testing the hypothesized relationships in the conceptual model were collected through a survey of managers in the Hoover’s database of manufacturing firms. The survey sample included 115 responses from a wide variety of manufacturing forms.

Findings support the conventional wisdom relating collaboration and operational improvements. Notably, technological turbulence has a differential interactive influence on collaboration and resource specificity in predicting operational performance. In the former, the strength of the performance relationship is enhanced, while in the latter, it diminishes. Product complexity enhances the collaboration–operational performance linkage. The results, however, have to be further corroborated by more confirmatory analysis in future research.

The research findings are not conclusive but of an exploratory initial evidence, as stepwise regression analysis has its limitations. Additionally, while the study specifically focused on demand-side collaboration aspects, supply chain management envelops upstream and internal collaboration as well. Investigating the performance implications and the interactive dynamics among all three partnerships in the supply chains provides a richer understanding of supply chain partnerships. Besides, more comprehensive insights could be obtained by modeling the interactive effects of other factors in the operating context.

Firms derive performance benefits from close collaboration with downstream partners because the operational enhancements from such relationships have customer service implications. Besides, the results provide a framework to managers for understanding the technology context conditions that may be best suited for leveraging collaborative initiatives and idiosyncratic investments in pursuit of operational performance improvements.

Much of the evidence on the rent generation capabilities in supply chain partnerships is still anecdotal and extant empirical research lacks adequate explanation. Another critical shortcoming in extant literature is research on the disentangled interactive influence of operating context factors on the supply chain sources of rent (i.e. capabilities)–performance relationships. The study contributes by addressing these issues.