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Game changers: developing high-technology industry innovative cultures during times of disruptive change
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Game changers: developing high-technology industry innovative cultures during times of disruptive change
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Content
Game Changers: Developing High-Technology Industry Innovative Cultures
During Times of Disruptive Change
by
Randall Glenn Lopez
Rossier School of Education
University of Southern California
A dissertation submitted to the faculty
in partial fulfillment of the requirements for the degree of
Doctor of Education
December 2021
© Copyright by Randall Glenn Lopez 2021
All Rights Reserved
The Committee for Randall Glenn Lopez certifies the approval of this Dissertation
Kimberly E. Hirabayashi
Wayne A. Combs
Jennifer L. Phillips, Committee Chair
Rossier School of Education
University of Southern California
2021
iv
Abstract
Innovation is paramount to an organization’s success, and organizational survival can be
challenging when adapting to disruptive change and uncertainty. This study focused on
developing innovative cultures to endure and evolve during disruptive change due to unforeseen
extreme events that can alter business practices models and the competitive landscape. This
inductive study’s stakeholder focus group members are frontline managers in the most
innovative established high-technology firms (EHTFs) with 10 years of experience in their field.
Frontline managers consist of customer-facing application and solution engineers, technical
account managers, and technical marketing engineers. The purpose of this promising practice
study was to understand the influences that enable frontline managers to develop and sustain
innovative cultures during times of disruptive change. The semi-structured qualitative approach
of the study was designed to expose the organizational enablement of the frontline manager, the
motivation of the frontline manager, and the ability of the frontline manager. Informed by the
Clark and Estes (2008) gap analysis framework, this study introduced four recommendations for
established high-technology firms to channel efforts to develop innovative cultures in times of
disruptive change based on themes developed from interview data. The following
recommendations are included: (a) Empower Frontline Managers by Providing Autonomy and
Risk-Tolerance to Achieve Innovative Idea Creation; (b) Prepare for Disruptive Change with
Flexible Operations, Rapid Recovery Planning, and Consideration for Hybrid Environments; (c)
Provide Frontline Managers with New Resources During Times of Disruptive Change; (d)
Support Frontline Managers to Cultivate Corporate Entrepreneurship.
Keywords: innovation, culture, high-technology, first-to-market, inductive, pandemic,
autonomy, risk-tolerance
v
Dedication
To my wonderful and caring mother, Nancy Margarita Lopez, born in Enid, Oklahoma, who
serves others as a lifelong educator and mother, raising four generations of children. My family
always says that my mom works like a Trojan.
To my father, Paul Lopez, born in Austin, Texas, who sets the perfect example for me with his
guidance, diligence, intelligence, and humor. I have had the privilege to be blessed with the best
father in the world. I can only give thanks to God for being blessed with such wonderful parents.
vi
Acknowledgements
At the University of Southern California, I was blessed with the best possible dissertation
committee. I want to give a special thank you to my chair, Dr. Jennifer L. Phillips, who provided
the guidance, leadership, and creativity for my dissertation and research to guide my academic
development through my years at USC. I want to thank Dr. Kimberly E. Hirabayashi, who
provided insightful guidance and expanded my thinking to consider the scope of my research
beyond innovation. I also want to thank Dr. Wayne A. Combs, who provided inspiration and
creativity from the first course at USC to my final dissertation defense.
I have been privileged to have incredibly gifted mentors in my lifetime, and I would like
to acknowledge a few individuals. I want to thank Professor Kenneth C. Pohlmann, the director
of music engineering at the University of Miami and prolific author, for believing in me and
teaching me to cherish each word. Dr. Michael J. Mannor at the University of Notre Dame taught
me that striving for excellence is a lifelong calling. Dr. Kristen Collett-Schmitt at the University
of Notre Dame for teaching me that innovation in education marks the future of the academic
world.
I want to thank my loving wife, Zhanna Viktorovna Lopez, for her inspiration and belief
in me. I want to thank my family and friends for their unconditional love, patience, support. I
especially want to thank my parents, Paul and Nancy Lopez, along with my siblings, Paul Joseph
Lopez, Pamela Sue Lopez, and Phillip Andrew Lopez, for all the amazing years of my life.
I want to thank all Rossier Organizational Change and Leadership (OCL) program faculty
members, the designers of the OCL program, and the OCL program staff who elevated the USC
academics with an innovative doctorate program. I also want to thank my OCL Cohort Fourteen
colleagues, who made this journey incredible. I had the time of my life.
vii
Table of Contents
Abstract ........................................................................................................................................... iv
Dedication ........................................................................................................................................ v
Acknowledgements ........................................................................................................................ vi
List of Tables .................................................................................................................................. ix
List of Figures .................................................................................................................................. x
Chapter One: Introduction ............................................................................................................... 1
Background of the Problem ................................................................................................. 2
Importance of Addressing the Problem and the Promising Practice Approach .................. 4
Field Context and Mission ................................................................................................... 6
Description of Stakeholder Groups ..................................................................................... 7
Stakeholder Group for the Study ......................................................................................... 8
Purpose of the Study and Research Questions .................................................................... 8
Overview of the Conceptual and Methodological Framework ........................................... 9
Definitions ......................................................................................................................... 10
Organization of the Project ................................................................................................ 11
Chapter Two: Review of the Literature ......................................................................................... 12
Characterizing Innovative Culture: Culture and Creativity ............................................... 12
Historical Events Shape the Innovative Culture ................................................................ 17
Disruptive Change ............................................................................................................. 18
First-to-Market Development Process ............................................................................... 19
Factors Shaping Organizational Culture ........................................................................... 20
The Clark and Estes Gap Analysis Framework ................................................................. 29
The Role of Knowledge in the Frontline Managers’ Innovation ...................................... 31
The Role of Motivation in the Frontline Managers’ Innovation ....................................... 33
viii
The Role of the Organization in the Frontline Managers’ Innovation .............................. 34
Conceptual Framework of the Study ................................................................................. 35
Chapter Three: Methodology ........................................................................................................ 39
Study Questions ................................................................................................................. 39
Overview of Methodology ................................................................................................ 40
Data Collection, Instrumentation, and Analysis Plan ........................................................ 41
Method: Interviews ............................................................................................................ 42
Ethics and Role of the Researcher ..................................................................................... 46
Chapter Four: Findings .................................................................................................................. 48
Participants ........................................................................................................................ 48
Research Question 1: What Do Frontline Managers Need to Sustain an Innovative
Culture During Times of Disruptive Change? ................................................................... 53
Research Question 2: How Do EHTFs Develop and Sustain Innovative Cultures
During Times of Disruptive Change? ................................................................................ 67
Research Question 3: How Do Times of Disruptive Change Affect Frontline
Managers’ Motivation to Sustain an Innovative Culture? ................................................. 72
Conclusions and Summary of Findings ............................................................................. 78
Discussion of Findings ...................................................................................................... 81
Recommendations for Practice .......................................................................................... 86
Limitations and Delimitations ........................................................................................... 96
Recommendations for Future Research ............................................................................. 97
Conclusion ......................................................................................................................... 99
References ................................................................................................................................... 101
Appendix A: Interview Protocol ................................................................................................. 115
Introduction to the Interview ........................................................................................... 116
Conclusion to the Interview ............................................................................................. 118
Appendix B: Information Sheet for Exempt Research ................................................................ 119
ix
List of Tables
Table 1: Data Sources 41
Table 2: Boston Consulting Group’s 20 Most Innovative Companies—2020 Ranking 43
Table 3: Boston Consulting Group’s 20 Most Innovative Companies With the Associated
Ranking and Interview Participant Region Represented in This Study 50
Table 4: Interview Participant (IP) Demographics 52
Table 5: Characterization of Empowerment of Participants With Respect to Resources
and Autonomy 56
Table 6: Frontline Managers Adapt to Compensate for Pandemic Restrictions 64
Table 7: Characterization of Participant Motivation in Response to the COVID-19
Pandemic 74
Table 8: Themes and Associated Sub-Themes 79
Table A1: Interview Protocol 117
x
List of Figures
Figure 1: Gap Analytic Framework Model 31
Figure 2: Conceptual Framework 37
1
Chapter One: Introduction
Innovation can be challenging when adapting to change and uncertainty. Researchers,
scholars, and corporate leaders agree that innovation is paramount to an organization’s success
and survival (Schroeder, 2013; Suprapto et al., 2018; Zahay et al., 2018). Scholars agree that
developing an innovative culture for an organization is a substantial challenge (Cucculelli &
Ermini, 2013; Price, 2006). As highlighted by Bennett and Parks (2015), “The true barriers to a
positive return on efforts to innovate are company structure, systems, and culture” (p. 564).
Disruptive change exacerbates uncertainty and amplifies the necessity to enable
innovative solutions (Laurell & Sandström, 2018; Smith, 2014). Disruptive change can be
induced by numerous factors including pandemics, natural disasters, and human conflict. In
addition to major events, disruptive change can include adverse legal issues involving
intellectual property or revisions in government policies, legislation, and regulations such as
Brexit (Svendsen, 2017). Moreover, disruptive change can include market conditions such as the
availability of affordable products and convenient services, widespread customer dissatisfaction,
change in accessibility of customers, vendor consolidation within a given industry, specialties
becoming commodities, customers being over-sold, and changes in the public sentiments (Smith,
2014). Finally, technological disruptions challenge individual competencies and organizational
structures to respond with new competing technologies (Hang et al., 2015; Laurell & Sandström,
2018). This study focused on developing innovative cultures to endure and evolve during times
of disruptive change due to unforeseen extreme events such as pandemics, force majeure, natural
disasters, and acts of God.
Innovation requires deliberate strategic action and risk-taking by senior leadership along
with a cohesive and creative development team that can anticipate customer needs, recognize and
transform marketplace signals and trends, and create first-to-market products (Cucculelli &
2
Ermini, 2013; Hang et al., 2015; Markham & Lee, 2013; Mumford & Licuanan, 2004; Zahay et
al., 2018). According to Markham and Lee’s (2013) 453-company comparative performance
assessment study, the most profitable 24.6% of established high-technology firms (EHTF)
develop innovative new first-to-market products 82.2% of the time, which yields a 78.2%
profitability. The remaining 75.4% of EHTF’s innovation efforts are profitable only 52.9% of the
time yielding 25.0% profitability (Markham & Lee, 2013). Evidence highlights that profitable
firms’ senior, technical, marketing, and manufacturing managers value and support innovative
projects 20% more than firms lacking innovative cultures (Markham & Lee, 2013; Zahay et al.,
2018). The leadership teams of the most profitable 24.6% EHTFs consistently invest time and
resources in higher risk, higher return innovative projects (Markham & Lee, 2013). A focus on
innovation can lead to increasing successful new product developments, reducing development
cycle times, innovating new business models, and developing new approaches to solve problems
(Markham & Lee, 2013). The purpose of this promising practice study was to understand the
influences that enable frontline managers to develop and sustain innovative cultures during times
of disruptive change.
Background of the Problem
Established high-technology firms, such as Apple, Google, Amazon, Microsoft, Intel,
IBM, Tesla, Cisco Systems, and Samsung, need and want to develop innovative cultures that can
sustain business through times of disruptive change. However, the themes that surfaced as
critical challenges to develop innovative cultures in times of disruptive change through a review
of existing literature include a lack of a corporate commitment to innovation (Cucculelli &
Ermini, 2013; Hang et al., 2015; Markham & Lee, 2013; Zahay et al., 2018), ineffective
leadership (Eva et al., 2017; Peng et al., 2018; Rousseau & Aubé, 2016), a lack of team
motivation and communication (Kim & Huarng, 2011; Schroeder, 2013), a lack of innovative
3
first-to-market product development processes including the use of customer data (Antonelli &
Fassio, 2016; Bennett & Parks, 2015), and organizational structural limitations (Bennett & Parks,
2015). These challenges represent opportunities to elevate the performance of EHTFs.
Incumbent EHTFs are vulnerable to be displaced by competitors under conditions of
disruptive and technological change (Laurell & Sandström, 2018). Innovation research highlights
that a recognition of customer needs is a critical EHTF capability necessary for pioneering new
product innovations (Laurell & Sandström, 2018; Roy et al., 2018). This study emphasizes the
EHTFs efforts to recuperate and evolve during times of disruptive change due to unforeseen
extreme circumstances, such as pandemics, force majeure, natural disasters, and acts of God.
A lack of a corporate commitment to developing a culture that facilitates innovation
headlines the problem as corporations are faced with pressures every quarter to allocate
resources to focus on short term initiatives. ETHFs require strategies, resources, and opportunity
costs are necessary for the innovation process (Hang et al., 2015; Markham & Lee, 2013; Zahay
et al., 2018). Markham and Lee (2013) discovered that 270 EHTFs undervalue innovation by
allocating 22.9% less time to first-to-market strategies, which results in 21.2% fewer innovative
products and yielding 23.5% fewer profits in comparison with the 88 uppermost successful
innovative EHTFs.
Ineffective leadership disrupts organizations from developing innovative cultures and
first-to-market products. According to the empirical study by Cucculelli and Ermini (2013),
76.4% of CEOs are considered to be more risk-averse and rigid when contemplating the
introduction of new ideas. Firms with risk-averse and inflexible leadership struggle to realize
vital product and service innovations, which limits the creation of competitive advantages
(Kumar & Raghavendran, 2015; Eva et al., 2017; Matzler et al., 2013; Rousseau & Aubé, 2016).
4
A lack of employee motivation and communication can adversely affect new and
innovative product developments (Koeslag-Kreunen et al., 2018; Lawson et al., 2009; Yeh‐Yun
Lin & Liu, 2012). Sharing innovative ideas and discoveries embody an innovative culture
(Koeslag-Kreunen et al., 2018; Lawson et al., 2009). Without proper motivation, teams can
become dysfunctional and lack the resilience to persevere with first-to-market product
innovations (Kim & Huarng, 2011; Yeh‐Yun Lin & Liu, 2012).
A lack of innovation product development processes including the use of customer data
restricts the EHTF from acting on valuable information in a timely manner. Frontline managers
have direct access to valuable customer data, trends, tendencies, needs, wants, issues, and value
propositions that can be channeled to first-to-market products. Developing an innovative culture
enables the technological breakthroughs that can occur when combining external and internal
knowledge with systematic processes and organizational structures conducive to first-to-market
product development (Antonelli & Fassio, 2016; Bennett & Parks, 2015).
Organizational structural limitations have a direct bearing on the problem of developing
an innovative culture as EHTFs attempt to effectively allocate employee skill sets that facilitate
collaborative efforts. Structural support of opportunity identification, opportunity refinement,
and value to the market support innovation efforts (Bennett & Parks, 2015). The organizational
structures should be designed to enable collaborative processes and solving the problem of
developing an innovative culture (Bennett & Parks, 2015; Olszak & Kisielnicki, 2018).
Importance of Addressing the Problem and the Promising Practice Approach
The challenge of developing innovative cultures in the high-technology industry in times
of disruptive change is essential to solve for several reasons. The loss of market share and
attrition result from organizations that stifle innovation (Hang et al., 2015). Cultures can stifle
progress to the point that the organization may lose a competitive advantage, may lose an
5
opportunity for growth, and may not survive (Braganza et al., 2009; Schroeder, 2013; Zheng et
al., 2009). As a measure of survivability for EHTFs, only 56 of the inaugural 1956 Fortune 500
companies remained in business in 2019 (Parker, 2019).
Effective strategies for conceptualizing and developing ideas present opportunities worth
further exploration as a contributor to develop innovative cultures (Sadeghi & Pihie, 2012;
Sarros et al., 2008). Leading EHTFs, such as Apple and Google, have built outstanding
businesses predominantly based on successful innovations (Schroeder, 2013). Creating
innovations that are valuable, difficult to imitate, and supportable is a challenge with resource
limitations for EHTFs (Zheng et al., 2009). This problem is critical to solve because innovations
and the introduction of new products and services allow firms to survive and grow in complex
marketplaces and raise worldwide living standards (Schroeder, 2013; Zahay et al., 2018).
Focusing on the practices of the most innovative firms provides insight into the deliberate
activities present in innovative cultures that can endure through unexpected changes. The most
profitable firms deliberately attempt to focus on innovation and developing innovative cultures
(Markham & Lee, 2013). The top 25% uppermost profitable EHTFs value innovation by
allocating 22.9% more time to first-to-market strategies resulting in 21.2% more innovative
products and yielding 23.5% more profits in comparison with the remaining 25% EHTFs
(Markham & Lee, 2013).
This promising practice inductive approach extends the research focus on disruptive
change beyond the scope of disruptive technological advancements (Braganza et al., 2009; Hang
et al., 2015). Disruptive change forces EHTFs to adapt. Studying promising practices can
uncover the strategies that lead to both developing innovative cultures to enable successful new
product development cycles and solve unique problems during unprecedented times of disruptive
change. The promising practice approach facilitates the examination of frontline managers’
6
capacity to strategically develop innovative cultures to increase successful new product
development cycles, innovate new business models, and develop new approaches to solve
problems during times of disruptive change.
Field Context and Mission
The context of the global high-technology industry for this study is with a focus on
EHTFs. The typical EHTF for this study is a multinational high-technology firm supplying
computer chips, external general-purpose semiconductor chips, or non-volatile solid-state storage
chips using advanced process technologies. This field study primarily comprises Fortune 500
companies such as Apple, Google, Amazon, Microsoft, Intel, IBM, Tesla, Cisco Systems,
Samsung, and other EHTFs. These EHTFs value innovative idea generation, champion
dependable design cycles, align roadmaps with suppliers and customers, and consistently deliver
commercially profitable products and services (Markham & Lee, 2013; Schroeder, 2013). High-
technology startup companies have the advantage of focusing resource allocation exclusively on
developing potentially innovative products without the burden to support historical products that
need refinement. Consequently, high-technology startup companies were excluded from
inclusion in the study scope.
Historically, the market share for an EHTF is the deterministic driver to reduce the costs
of goods by garnering lower pricing for supplies and improving allocation positions for
technologies in short supply (Azad et al., 2013). The typical mission for these EHTF firms is to
increase market share by providing the primary microprocessor and solid-state storage
technology for desktops, laptops, tablets, and smartphones for the mobile, network,
communications, big data center, industrial, automotive, and medical markets. Not maintaining
market share will likely result in a decline in business activity, significantly risk incumbent
positions with technology leading customers, and result in a perpetual graceful or abrupt decline
7
in market share (Braganza et al., 2009; Schroeder, 2013; Zheng et al., 2009). EHTFs for this
study are large companies that influence and shape the high-technology industry and are
recognized as the world’s most innovative companies, as identified by the Boston Consulting
Group (Columbus, 2020). These EHTFs deliberately focus on developing innovative cultures
designed to endure and evolve during times of disruptive change due to unforeseen extreme
circumstances, such as pandemics, force majeure, natural disasters, and acts of God.
Description of Stakeholder Groups
Multiple stakeholder groups contribute to and benefit from increasing successful new
product development cycles during times of disruptive change. These include frontline
managers, chief technology officers (CTOs), and internal research and development and
fabrication process engineers. Each stakeholder group provides a unique and valuable vantage
point to contribute to increasing successful new product development cycles and provide
stabilization during times of disruptive change.
The first stakeholder group, frontline managers, are defined as directors, senior managers,
or managers. Frontline managers consist of customer-facing application and solution engineers,
technical account managers, and technical marketing engineers. Typically, two or five directors,
senior managers, or managers would exist in an EHTF. Approximately five to 25 members
would exist in organizations led by a director, senior manager, or manager, depending on the
corporation’s size. Frontline managers include application and solution engineers that work
directly with customers, experience customer issues, and understand customer applications that
can provide highly valuable artifacts to develop innovative cultures. Technical account managers
have the ownership of the customer relationship as well as potential roadmap alignment with
customers. Technical marketing engineers provide product allocation, pricing, and delivery.
The second stakeholder is the EHTF’s CTO. The firm’s CTO is considered an executive
8
leader, educator, and innovator. The CTO defines the technological vision, develops and
implements technology strategies, monitors the information technology (IT) budget to
performance, and ensures new technologies will yield a competitive and profitable advantage.
The third stakeholder group is the research and development and fabrication process
engineers in non-customer facing roles. Research and development and fabrication process
engineers are part of the business unit and are responsible for developing products, including
first-to-market-products. These engineering divisions research and develop process technologies
and viable design solutions, based on the capability of the geometric process node. Note that
additional engineering and shared services exist that typically do not address the problem of
developing an innovative culture and consequently were not the focus of this study.
Stakeholder Group for the Study
Identifying the ideal stakeholder group is essential to solve the problem of a lack of
developing innovative cultures designed to create first-to-market products in the high-technology
industry. Assimilating critical knowledge accumulated from culturally diverse frontline
managers with the first-to-market product development experience is ideal. Narratives, facts, and
interpretations are essential data types for completing this study about innovating first-to-market
products and cultivating innovative cultures in the high-technology industry. Ineffective frontline
management will undermine the overall efforts of the EHTF to increase market share and will
likely result in the firm’s degradation and livelihood (Schroeder, 2013). Frontline managers are
in the ideal position to solve the problem of a lack of developing innovative cultures designed to
create first-to-market products in the high-technology industry.
Purpose of the Study and Research Questions
The purpose of this promising practice study was to understand the influences that enable
frontline managers to develop and sustain innovative cultures during times of disruptive change.
9
The study explored and uncovered frontline manager organizational and motivational influences
related to sustaining innovative cultures that produce successful new product development cycles
during times of disruptive change. The frontline managers knowledge influences were not the
primary focus of this study. The following questions guided this promising practice study that
seeks to identify or uncover the organizational and motivation influences on frontline managers:
1. What do frontline managers need to sustain an innovative culture during times of
disruptive change?
2. How do EHTFs develop and sustain an innovative culture during times of disruptive
change?
3. How do times of disruptive change affect frontline managers’ motivation to sustain an
innovative culture?
Overview of the Conceptual and Methodological Framework
The Clark and Estes (2008) gap analysis framework utilizes a systematic problem-solving
approach in a real-world context designed to elevate performance that leads to effective
outcomes. The Clark and Estes (2008) gap analytic framework model, which focuses on the
knowledge, motivation, and organization influences needed to achieve performance goals, was
adapted to provide a detailed solution set to address the cultural influences that prevent stifling
strategic initiatives within organizations during times of disruptive change. Specifically, this
study utilized the modified framework to uncover the motivational and organizational
characteristics that induce positive cultural outcomes for innovative EHTFs for this inductive
promising practice study. The knowledge characteristics of frontline managers were not the
central focus of this study and only considered as they emerged in the analysis of interview data.
This inductive study focused on developing innovative cultures that can transform
through times of disruptive change. The study examined how frontline managers and their
10
respective ETHFs respond to challenging and unexpected conditions during times of disruptive
changes. The data collection focused on discovering the promising practices to create innovative
cultures that can face disruptive change, recuperate, and transform to new profitable paradigms.
Definitions
This section includes the fundamental alignment vocabulary and specific high-technology
industry terminology utilized in this study.
• Application and Solution Engineers are customer-facing engineers who facilitate the
promotion, solution recommendation, customer-specific technical marketing, and
customer system integration efforts (Panetta & Whitmore, 2014).
• Disruptive Change is a non-localized future irreversible change that affects a portion of
an industry that can be induced by changes in market trends causing a shift in the mode
of production to fit the customer demands (Smith, 2014).
• Disruptive Technology is an innovation that significantly alters the way that consumers,
industries, or businesses operate (Hang et al., 2015).
• Established High-Technology Firms (EHTF) are High-technology firms that have the
wherewithal to consistently pioneer and develop first-to-market products (Markham &
Lee, 2013).
• Innovation is the successful implementation and creation of new ideas for new product
developments and first-to-market products (Markham & Lee, 2013).
• Force Majeure are events and circumstances that include plagues, epidemics, natural
disasters; nuclear, biological, chemical, and radioactive contamination; war, armed
conflicts, embargos, hostilities, act of terrorism, sabotage, revolution, and insurrection
(Casady & Baxter, 2020).
11
• Technology is considered the application of scientific knowledge for practical purposes.
Within the high-technology industry, technology describes the geometric longest length
of the three-dimensional semiconductor chip, measured in units of micrometers. For
example, a semiconductor may be designed to 0.12 micron or 0.12𝜇 technology node
(Shulaker et al., 2017).
Organization of the Project
This study is comprised of five chapters. Chapter 1 introduced the organization’s mission,
stakeholders, and provide the critical high-technology industry concepts and terminology.
Chapter 2 offers a review of the current literature surrounding the focus of the study and
addresses the need for innovation and first-to-market product developments, along with
leadership, communication, motivation, and culture. Chapter 2 also illustrates the EHTF’s
knowledge, motivation, and organizational influences that were explored via the study. Chapter 3
details the study design, methodology, participant selection, data collection, and data analysis. In
Chapter 4, the data are explored and analyzed. Chapter 5 provides recommendations for practice
and for future research on developing innovative high-technology cultures.
12
Chapter Two: Review of the Literature
The purpose of the related literature is to illustrate the salient issues for developing high-
technology industry innovative cultures in times of disruptive change. The literature review
begins with historical events that shape the American innovative business culture and continues
with the organizational creativity and the first-to-market development process and the factors
that shape the organizational culture. The following areas of literature are important to consider
in this problem of practice including the culture and creativity and the first-to-market
development process. Although selected organizational and motivational influences that prior
research has demonstrated could support managers’ capacities to produce innovative cultures are
presented in Chapter 2, this study assumes an inductive approach to this complex problem and
does not presume to test the presence or measure the degree of particular factors presented in the
literature review are present among the stakeholder group of focus. Chapter 2 concludes with the
theoretical framework and the conceptual framework for this promising practice study.
Characterizing Innovative Culture: Culture and Creativity
Developing an innovative culture is paramount for each EHTF (Braganza et al., 2009;
Schroeder, 2013; Zheng et al., 2009). The evolution and growth of technology has propelled the
high-technology industry to a global scale, expanding the expectations for realizable innovations
(Suprapto et al., 2018). Cultures that foster creativity build the future with creative organizations
and innovative individual contributors that can enable first-to-market products (Bennett & Parks,
2015; Kumar & Raghavendran, 2015; Matzler et al., 2013; Zheng et al., 2009).
Characterizing the innovative culture is challenging, however, research provides insight
into the themes and dimensions to describe an innovative culture. Markham and Lee (2013)
indicate that eight cultural dimensions comprise the innovation culture: value innovation and
risk-taking; managers set objectives; performance reviews include objectives; effective external
13
communication; effective internal communication; seek parameters for potential innovation;
accept failure; and accept constructive conflict. The top 24.6% EHTFs exceed each cultural
dimension by more than 55%, while the remaining 75.4% EHTFs average less than 50% in seven
of the eight cultural dimensions (Markham & Lee, 2013).
An innovative culture supports autonomy, creativity, experimentation, unorthodox
problem solving, and resourcefulness (Burcharth et al., 2017; Markham & Lee, 2013; Zahay et
al., 2018). An innovative culture is characterized by a supportive environment that faces
manageable obstacles with benign competition between team members (Horng et al., 2011). An
innovative culture effectively observers and utilizes new technologies (Markham & Lee, 2013;
Zahay et al., 2018). Organizations that value innovative cultures enjoy developing new markets,
the positive effects of patents, first-to-market strategies, and economic growth (Lambert, 2018;
O’Reilly & Tushman, 2013).
Organizational Culture
The organizational culture is a critical climate determinant for innovation, measured by
resource adequacy and the degree of individual creativity (Kumar & Raghavendran, 2015; Eva et
al., 2017; Matzler et al., 2013; Rousseau & Aubé, 2016; Sarros et al., 2008). EHTF
organizational cultures are established through the policies, behaviors, structures, and decision
from corporate leaders at all levels (Bennett & Parks, 2015). Themes that surfaced from the
EHTF organizational cultural perspective include the innovative individual contributors to the
organization (Kim & Huarng, 2011; Sandberg et al., 2013) and the team structures including
cross-functional matrix teams within the organization (Suprapto et al., 2018; Van Der Vegt &
Bunderson, 2005).
Conservative EHTF organization cultures intentionally dissuade out-of-the-box and
creative thinking from innovative individual contributors, even though these establishments have
14
the wherewithal to withstand intelligent risk-taking (Kumar & Raghavendran, 2015; Matzler et
al., 2013). Kumar and Raghavendran (2015) contend that these organizational cultures produce
leaders that propagate risk-averse mediocrity, perpetuate insecurity at each supervisory level,
impose conformity, and penalize unsuccessful attempts at creativity and innovation from
innovative individual contributors. These cultures are often organized with a customer facing
technical teams, an internal marketing teams, and a first-to-market and new product development
teams with limited cross collaboration and cross-functional teams consisting of subject matter
experts (Suprapto et al., 2018; Van Der Vegt & Bunderson, 2005). The current conservative
EHTF structures encumber innovative individuals’ efforts within organizations.
Innovative Individual Contributors
Successful EHTFs foster innovative cultures and pursue the development and promotion
of corporate innovative individual leaders and contributors (Sandberg et al., 2013). Researchers
have determined that successful organizations implement research-recommended strategies to
value innovative employees that develop leading-edge first-to-market products (Kim & Huarng,
2011; Kuznetsov & Kuznetsova, 2011; Matzler et al., 2013). Innovators share traits that can be
misaligned and undesired within a climate that is not conducive to innovation (Braganza et al.,
2009; Zheng et al., 2009). Innovators possess a desire for achievement (Kim & Huarng, 2011),
have a propensity for risk-taking (Kim & Huarng, 2011; Sandberg et al., 2013), accept ambiguity
(Sandberg et al., 2013), pursue solutions (Sandberg et al., 2013), facilitate change (Clark, 2005;
Matzler et al., 2013; Sandberg et al., 2013), and contain self-efficacy with a locus of control
(Sandberg et al., 2013).
Cross-Functional Matrix Teams
Global marketplace pressures are increasing the development team capabilities, the
management effort, technology processes, and the complexity of products while reducing the
15
time to market and product life cycles (Lawson et al., 2009; Suprapto et al., 2018). EHTFs with
internal networking cultures have increased in response to the new product development
challenges, organizational uncertainty and instability, dynamic environmental changes, and
globalization (Lawson et al., 2009; Suprapto et al., 2018). Cross-functional teams consisting of
experts and representatives of all the relevant disciplines and skillsets offer an opportunistic
approach to solving complex problems, working through unknowns, and converting unique ideas
into viable and manufacturable first-to-market product developments (Suprapto et al., 2018; Van
Der Vegt & Bunderson, 2005). EHTFs desire to deliberately form multidisciplinary management
teams with experts with various specializations to leverage knowledge and solve complex
problems (Suprapto et al., 2018; Van Der Vegt & Bunderson, 2005).
Organizational Creativity
Organizational creativity is the cornerstone of developing first-to-market products. As a
practiced collaborative process, organizational structures can enable and restrict the pursuit of
the phenomenon of collective creativity (Fortwengel et al., 2017; Olszak & Kisielnicki, 2018).
Organizational creativity should be encouraged, organized, and managed (Fortwengel et al.,
2017; Olszak & Kisielnicki, 2018). Modern management cultures view organizational creativity
as a paramount culmination of creative problem solving, creative processes, innovation,
effectiveness, efficiency, and survival (Fortwengel et al., 2017; Olszak & Kisielnicki, 2018;
Shneiderman, 2007).
Innovation
Innovation can be considered the capacity of an organization to successfully implement
creative ideas to make meaningful commercially successful first-to-market products, services,
processes, or activities for the benefit of the organization or society (Horng et al., 2011;
Rodríguez-Pinto et al., 2011; Sandberg et al., 2013). Researchers found that 70% of CEOs
16
consider innovation paramount to developing competitive high-technology products and services
for the global economy (Matzler et al., 2013). Developing high-quality products, even disruptive
and innovative products, reduces customers’ apprehension to change from older generation
products to new topologies and configurations (Hang et al., 2015; Matzler et al., 2013). Firms
drive to successful outcomes by focusing on desired markets and identifying customers that
appreciate and pay a premium for innovation (Kim & Huarng, 2011; Kuznetsov & Kuznetsova,
2011; Matzler et al., 2013; Patzelt & Shepherd, 2011).
EHTFs that have invested heavily in specific products and services “are almost
exclusively focused on maximizing profits and increasing efficiencies within these same product
lines rather than exploring new possibilities” (Schroeder, 2013, p. 11). The resulting problem is
that this practice becomes ingrained in the organizational culture and hinders innovation and
flexibility, even when market conditions challenge the status quo (Azad et al., 2013; Baker &
Sinkula, 2005; Schroeder, 2013). Cultures with climates that promote risk-averse approaches
hamper creativity and undermine desired strategic organizational initiatives designed to enable
first-to-market product development efforts.
Out-of-the-Box Thinking
Out-of-the-box thinking illustrates the unpredictable instants of creative thought patterns
that can develop new ideas or solve problems in new ways (Fortwengel et al., 2017; Rodríguez-
Pinto et al., 2011). As valuable problem-solvers, out-of-the-box thinkers will more likely
consider alternative perspectives, discard conventional techniques, and utilize trial-and-error
experimentation (University of Michigan, 2018). Creative thinkers also have self-efficacy,
possess a broad range of interests, and maintain a future awareness (Rodríguez-Pinto et al., 2011;
Fortwengel et al., 2017; University of Michigan, 2018). Out-of-the-box thinking can lead to
17
providing first-to-market products, introducing new processes or methodologies, pioneering new
markets, and improving organizational structures (Dyer et al., 1999; Hindle & Shanfari, 2011).
Knowledge Sourcing for Innovation
Knowledge sourcing is an effort to seek external knowledge to induce innovation
(Antonelli & Fassio, 2016; Markham & Lee, 2013; Zahay et al., 2018). Antonelli & Fassio
(2016) delineate between horizontal knowledge discovered from the same industry competitors
and vertical knowledge realized through technology acquisitions and transactions, supplier
collaborations, and customers. Antonelli and Fassio (2016) illustrate that for EHTFs, competitor
and customer data have a more significant effect on product innovation whereas acquisitions and
supplier interactions focus more on process innovation. Technological change can occur when
the EHTF’s structure allows access to external knowledge, enabling firms’ inventive response
that leads to innovations (Antonelli & Fassio, 2016; Bennett & Parks, 2015). For example,
artificial intelligence tools, including expert systems, multi-agent systems, neural networks, and
genetic algorithms, have been utilized to assimilate experts’ data, optimize various undertakings,
and improve decision-making (Olszak & Kisielnicki, 2018).
Historical Events Shape the Innovative Culture
Innovative cultures in the high-technology industry were enabled by technological
achievements and the commercialization of scientific inventions. Noteworthy technological
achievements culminated to launch the high-technology industry, including Michael Faraday’s
electrical conduction in 1833; Shockley, Bardeen, and Brattain’s transistor invention at Bell Labs
in 1947; and Robert Noyce’s 1959 monolithic integrated circuit invention that eventually led to
Robert Noyce’s foundation of Intel in 1968 (Orton, 2009). Hård and Jamison (2005) present the
resulting cultural history of technology and science and the transformation from government lead
research to university lead research and the EHTF commercialization of technology. The growth
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of technology and innovation, heavily influenced by United States government policies and
numerous technical achievements, escalated as a result of the influence of the Soviet Union’s
Sputnik satellite in 1957 (Hård & Jamison, 2005).
The results of two U.S. government commissioned studies that investigated the scientific
development of innovations discovered that science needs to be directed to market demand-
oriented technological innovations for commercialization (Hård & Jamison, 2005). Meaningful
relationships and collaborations developed between university academic cultures and EHTFs
economic cultures devoted to specific commercial applications (Hård & Jamison, 2005). As a
result of these cultural changes, the EHTFs proceeded to attempt to develop disruptive and
progressive technologies, advanced technology processes, and innovated organizational cultures
(Parker, 2019). Indeed, over 70 years after the invention of the transistor, EHTFs still struggle
with the problem of a lack of developing innovative cultures designed to create first-to-market
products in the high-technology industry.
Disruptive Change
In the high-technology industry, disruptive change is ordinarily characterized as a
technological introduction that changes the competitive landscape (Hang et al., 2015). For
example, the innovative ride sharing services that utilize mobile internet technology to connect
passengers and drivers have disrupted the traditional localized transportation industry (Cramer &
Krueger, 2016). Meanwhile, dominant industry approaches and strategists evolve over time,
effecting the EHTF business models and business model portfolios (Sabatier et al., 2012).
EHTFs experience business lifecycles from emergence to maturity, which are sometimes
disrupted by technological changes that inevitably lead to decline, or to a new emergent
technological approach (Sabatier et al., 2012).
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However, a mass scale disruptive change can permanently alter business practices,
business models, and the competitive landscape. The 2019 coronavirus pandemic (COVID-19)
introduced an invisible enemy for EHTFs, causing confinement measures and isolation of team
members, reinforcing the need for innovation during times of an existential crises and
uncontrollable forces (Zoumpourlis et al., 2020). For example, robots, instead of police officers,
were deployed in Tunis to patrol and verify civilian compliance with the COVID-19 restrictive
measures (Zoumpourlis et al., 2020). Developing innovative cultures that sustain and adapt to
worldwide changes are paramount to deliver new business models and services. The coronavirus
pandemic serves as a global-scale example of the changes in social consciousness that effects all
industries, including the high-technology industry, even in the post-epidemic era (Zoumpourlis et
al., 2020). The effects of widespread industry perpetual changes are amplified during times of
disruptive change due to unforeseen extreme circumstances such as pandemics, force majeure,
natural disasters, and acts of God.
First-to-Market Development Process
Successful first-to-market and new product development is a complex and challenging
process with increasing pressure to reduce the time to market, given the decreasing product life
cycles and increasing competitive product alternatives (Datar et al., 1997; Rodríguez-Pinto et al.,
2011). Dedicated first-to-market and new product development teams typically yield the highest
success (Datar et al., 1997; Dyer et al., 1999). Challenges that persist in first-to-market and new
product developments include a lack of strategy, lack of idea generation, complications in
product or market definitions, volatile product specifications, unknowns in technical
developments, and finalizing and closing designs (Dyer et al., 1999; Lawson et al., 2009;
Markham & Lee, 2013). Exacerbating the complex first-to-market development challenges also
include limited interdepartmental relationships and communication, inefficient transitions from
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research to development to manufacturing, the lack of resources, and lack of effective teamwork
(Dyer et al., 1999; Markham & Lee, 2013; Rodríguez-Pinto et al., 2011).
An EHTF’s ability to overcome innovation challenges is becoming increasingly
important (Rodríguez-Pinto et al., 2011; Zahay et al., 2018). Organization frontline managers
implement adequately staffed strategic teams to create and transform ideas (Markham & Lee,
2013; Mumford & Licuanan, 2004; Rodríguez-Pinto et al., 2011; Zahay et al., 2018). Fueled by
the proper business case, first-to-market managers can introduce processes to include customer
influences, communicate and share knowledge, and channel supported efforts to repeatable
processes to iteratively develop first-to-market product specifications, prototypes, and testing
(Dyer et al., 1999; Lawson et al., 2009; Markham & Lee, 2013).
EHTFs that successfully reduce first-to-market product development cycles involve
customers and suppliers in product research, encourage cost-reduced product developments,
consider manufacturability and field testing during the design stage, and incorporate successive
project knowledge transfer procedures (Datar et al., 1997; Gupta & Souder, 1998). Seventy-five
percent of EHTFs with short cycle times, such as Apple and Google, align business plans with
suppliers and demonstrate higher than industry average commercial success (Lawson et al.,
2009; Gupta & Souder, 1998; Markham & Lee, 2013; Schroeder, 2013).
Factors Shaping Organizational Culture
The organizational culture is established and modified several complex factors. The
EHTF leadership can promote or stifle the organizational culture (Mumford & Licuanan, 2004;
Van Der Hoven et al., 2012). The global EHTF organization can benefit from a diverse staff with
the assurance of promotion, opportunities, and inclusion for the superior performers (Cech &
Blair-Loy, 2010; Orser et al., 2012; Shinnar et al., 2012). As leaders require followers, the team
motivation drives the innovation to fruition (Kim & Huarng, 2011; Yeh‐Yun Lin & Liu, 2012).
21
The multinational organizational culture is also shaped by the processes and communication to
preserve organizational knowledge in the and the newly acquired knowledge for developing new
products. The influences that shape the organizational culture can predetermine the
organizational potential for developing first-to-market products (Bennett & Parks, 2015; Kim &
Huarng, 2011). The factors that shape the organizational culture include the organizational
commitment to innovative market creation and leadership in addition to team motivation with an
emphasis on knowledge conception and communications.
Commitment to Innovative Market Creation
Developing an innovative culture requires a firm organizational commitment and senior
leadership strategic risk-taking to enable first-to-market products with the intent to provide
customer benefits (Cucculelli & Ermini, 2013; Hang et al., 2015; Markham & Lee, 2013;
Mumford & Licuanan, 2004; Zahay et al., 2018). Leaders can potentially balance current product
capitalization and future innovation investigation with flexible project-based funding (Kim &
Huarng, 2011; O’Reilly & Tushman, 2004, 2013). Resources and time allocation are required to
develop internal capabilities, conceptualize and experiment with innovative ideas, and realize
superior first-to-market products for customer applications (Hang et al., 2015; Markham & Lee,
2013; Mumford & Licuanan, 2004; Zahay et al., 2018). Discovering new knowledge requires
supervision, evaluation, and acceptance of success and failure as possible outcomes of
innovation (Rodríguez-Pinto et al., 2011; Shankar & Clausen, 2020).
Leadership
The impact of leadership is significant to navigate the EHTF through times of disruptive
change (Schroeder, 2013). Leadership that supports innovation develops favorable climates for
change and creative cultures (Hang, Garnsey, & Ruan, 2015). Research shows that
transformational, authentic, and adaptive leadership styles foster the development of innovative
22
and creative cultures (Kan & Parry, 2004; Gatling et al., 2013; Sarros et al., 2008; Van Der
Hoven et al., 2012). Research also depicts leadership that undermines innovation as risk-averse,
rigid, and micro-management (Mumford & Licuanan, 2004; Rousseau & Aubé, 2016).
Leadership That Supports Innovation
Leadership that supports innovation is at the forefront of EHTFs success for developing
innovative cultures (Cramer et al., 2002; Cucculelli & Ermini, 2013; Hang et al., 2015; Mumford
& Licuanan, 2004). Transformational and authentic leadership surfaced as primary topic areas in
researching the development of innovative cultures (Caldwell, 2009; Kan & Parry, 2004; Sarros
et al., 2008). Creating a vision, developing trust, and achieving objectives are central to the
problem of developing an innovative culture that empowers developing first-to-market products.
Transformational Leadership. Transformational leaders channel followers’ motives to
reach individual and organizational initiatives and typically create positive psychological
benefits for both the leader and follower (Northouse, 2016; Sadeghi & Pihie, 2012).
Transformational leadership behaviors are considered effective organizational change leadership
forms for developing innovative cultures by articulating a vision instead of establishing rigid
employee performance expectations (Kan & Parry, 2004; Gatling et al., 2013; Sarros et al.,
2008). Contemporary transformational leadership emphasizes relational caring, creativity,
developing trustworthy relationships, reflection, innovation, charisma, and a perspective to
enable followers’ attributes (Ehrlich et al., 1990; Turkel, 2014).
Change agent leaders influence innovative cultures by valuing and inspiring frontline
managers. Transformational leaders inspire followers to reach individual and organizational
achievements (Northouse, 2016; Sadeghi & Pihie, 2012). Leadership principles include
encouraging team leaders to respond to employee emails, providing positive and negative
23
feedback, praising unique contributions, celebrating victories, avoiding favoritism, and caring
about employee well-being (Comaford, 2013).
Authentic Leadership. Authentic leaders are originals and develop a mutually
influencing relationship between leaders and followers (Northouse, 2016). Self-awareness is an
essential part of authentic leadership in which individuals gain personal understandings,
including their strengths, weaknesses, and influence on others (Northouse, 2016). Self-awareness
is significantly related to educator effectiveness, as confirmed by the results of an authentic
leadership case study by Gatling et al. (2013). Developing genuine relationships with a
trustworthy reputation and accommodating weaknesses are fundamental self-awareness attributes
(Caldwell, 2009).
Adaptive Leadership. Adaptive leadership is beneficial during times of disruptive
changes and to acclimate to changing environments (Northouse, 2016). Adaptive leaders can
create or respond to transition points that could significantly alter strategic and operational
expectations (Van Der Hoven et al., 2012). Recognizing that adaptive changes require long-term,
systematic changes (Woolard, 2018), leadership is adaptive with a necessity to anticipate
alternative future scenarios and be sensitive to customer directions and tendencies.
Leadership That Undermines Innovation
Ineffective leadership can trigger unwanted outcomes and encumber organizations to
develop innovative cultures. Three primary topic areas emerged as central themes in researching
the development of innovative cultures in the high-technology industry: risk-averse leadership,
rigid and micro-management leadership (Cramer et al., 2002; Hang et al., 2015; Kan & Parry,
2004; Markham & Lee, 2013; Mumford & Licuanan, 2004; Rousseau & Aubé, 2016; Sarros et
al., 2008; Zahay et al., 2018).
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Risk-Averse Leadership. Scholars and researchers assert that risk-averse leadership
stifles innovative climates (Cramer et al., 2002; Mumford & Licuanan, 2004; Peng et al., 2018).
Scholars verify that organizational transformation projects often fail while innovation efforts are
frequently hindered by narrow-sighted and risk-averse approaches (Azad et al., 2013; Baker &
Sinkula, 2005; Schroeder, 2013). Even though executive leaders believe that innovation is
paramount to the business of the firm (Cramer et al., 2002; Hang et al., 2015; Mumford &
Licuanan, 2004), a paradox exists in this contradiction in mindset as the enthusiasm for
innovation appears to be lip service (Braganza et al., 2009; Schroeder, 2013). The CEO risk
attitudes collected in an empirical study that included a 178-company survey found that 76.4% of
interviewed decision-makers are risk-averse, 17% are risk-neutral, and only 7% are risk-
enthusiasts that significantly impact the firm’s growth (Cucculelli & Ermini, 2013). These
numbers correlate with an earlier study that concluded 80.32% of leaders are risk-averse, 17.10%
are risk-neutral, and 2.58% are risk-enthusiasts along with the assertions that risk-averse leaders
are more likely to discourage innovation and opt for wage employment as opposed to
entrepreneurship (Cramer et al., 2002; Hang et al., 2015; Mumford & Licuanan, 2004).
According to the research, most corporate leaders are intimidated by innovation and
dread potentially high cost and high-risk speculations mired with uncertainty (Cramer et al.,
2002; Kuczmarski, 2003). In a research effort to examine 30 organizations, senior leaders
become confined by their job security and learn to appear to speak supportively of change and
disruption opportunities but lack the resolve to innovate (Braganza et al., 2009).
Rigid and Micro-Management Leadership. Empirical studies confirm that rigid
supervisors stifle innovation by establishing strict routines that interfere with experimentation
and creative problem-solving (Eva et al., 2017; Rousseau & Aubé, 2016). Rigid micro-
management and self-serving leadership stifle the organizational creativity culture and
25
undermine their team’s ability to innovate by restricting teamwork and knowledge creation of
corporate teams designated for new product and service advancements (Decoster et al., 2019;
Eva et al., 2017; Rousseau & Aubé, 2016). The Rousseau and Aubé (2016) empirical study
illustrated that negative supervisors hamper work environments, demotivate teams, curb
creativity efforts, and decrease team creative idea generation and implementation. The
implications of rigid leadership that stymie innovative cultures are severe and negatively affect
the firm’s overall growth, sustainability, and livelihood.
Team Motivation
Researchers have determined that successful organizations implement research-
recommended strategies that value innovative employees and leading-edge first-to-market
products (Kim & Huarng, 2011; Matzler et al., 2013; Schroeder, 2013). Strategic plans have a
positive and motivating influence on employee and team performance for innovation (Kim &
Huarng, 2011; Schroeder, 2013). Organizational cultural, organizational conservatism,
detrimental internal organizational conflicts, and employee workload pressure as well as
employee freedom, autonomy, and team learning behavior can impact team motivation for new
and innovative product developments (Koeslag-Kreunen et al., 2018; Lawson et al., 2009; Yeh‐
Yun Lin & Liu, 2012). Also, Clark’s (2005) motivational team directives include having mutual
respect for team members, increase the self-efficacy of weaker members, cooperative team
belief, holding individuals accountable, and providing a vision beyond specific team
achievements. Developing an innovative culture benefits from an energized leadership with a
motivated and valued staff of employees; employee motivation makes a significant difference in
developing first-to-market products (Koeslag-Kreunen et al., 2018; Lawson et al., 2009; Yeh‐
Yun Lin & Liu, 2012).
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Psychological Safety to Fail
Psychological safety can have a positive, motivating influence on teams and
organizations when employees have reciprocal interpersonal trust and respect with leaders of
EHTFs with innovative cultures (Edmondson, 1999). Psychological safety is particularly critical
with first-to-market product innovations given that exploration undertakings are fundamental
(Ashauer & Macan, 2013; Koeslag-Kreunen et al., 2018; Kostopoulos & Bozionelos, 2011;
Olszak & Kisielnicki, 2018). Trial and error attempts, mistakes, and failures are necessary and
allowable aspects of iterative, creative knowledge discovery processes (Kostopoulos &
Bozionelos, 2011; Olszak & Kisielnicki, 2018).
Elevated Performance Benefits
While recognizing value and motivation, successful organizations value employees that
innovate leading-edge first-to-market products (Kim & Huarng, 2011; Matzler et al., 2013;
Schroeder, 2013). Firms also value knowledgeable, inventive, and motivated employees that
uniquely recognize opportunities and meaningful patterns that others miss (Kim & Huarng,
2011; Patzelt & Shepherd, 2011). Motivated employees provide interpersonal communication
and can elevate the organization’s performance and provide creativity in business processes
(Fortwengel et al., 2017; Olszak & Kisielnicki, 2018). Concentrating on the team’s performance
can motivate members to demonstrate competency, elevate their task performance, and
encourage team members to absorb learning opportunities (Ashauer & Macan, 2013; Koeslag-
Kreunen et al., 2018).
Autonomy
EHTFs have the challenge of allocating human and financial resources to simultaneously
improve existing products and take risks to create disruptive breakthroughs in technology for
innovative products (Hang et al., 2015; O’Reilly & Tushman, 2004). Markham and Lee (2013)
27
illustrate that first-to-market strategic values increase by developing more flexible and
specialized organizational structures to offer autonomy for innovative departments. Creating new
autonomous teams with empowered frontline managers, separate R&D, finance, and marketing
functions could simplify allocation decisions and conflict mitigation (O’Reilly & Tushman,
2004; Yeh‐Yun Lin & Liu, 2012). Meanwhile, innovative employees create original ideas when
not burdened with strict product incremental improvement or cost reduction development
schedules (Burcharth et al., 2017; Kuczmarski, 2003; O’Reilly & Tushman, 2004).
Knowledge and Communications
Cultures with ineffective internal communication among employees adversely affect
innovative cultures and new product developments in the high-technology industry. Markham
and Lee (2013) found that the new product development failure rate of 47.1% occurs when the
organization’s internal communication is ineffective 51% of the time. The most innovative
companies enjoy 82.2% of new product development success rates with effective internal
communication 70% of the time (Markham & Lee, 2013). A culture with effective internal
communication is critical during the product innovation and development processes for new
premium products designed to exceed marketplace expectations (Hang et al., 2015; Lambert,
2018). As teamwork suffers, knowledge hiding ensues with communication interruptions and
idea generation falters. Organizations strategically depend on teams to perform, adjust to
changing conditions, and acquire the knowledge to capture new opportunities as innovation
becomes critical for growth (Bresman, 2010; Hang et al., 2015; Lambert, 2018). Researchers
emphasize that innovative cultures are suppressed when unmotivated organizational teams hide
knowledge, restrict communication, produce unoriginal ideas, and stifle creativity (Peng et al.,
2018; Son et al., 2017; Rousseau & Aubé, 2016).
28
Idea Generation
Cultural transformations require generating, developing, and realizing new ideas into
first-to-market products (Denham & Kaberon, 2012; Hang et al., 2015; Markham & Lee, 2013).
Innovative cultures stimulate the creation and implementation of new ideas and inspire learning
(Denham & Kaberon, 2012; Markham & Lee, 2013). Effective idea generation also arises from
recognizing unmet customer needs and detecting early market signals, even faint or weak signals
(Antonelli & Fassio, 2016; Cucculelli & Ermini, 2013; Hang et al., 2015). Moreover, the lack of
generating strategic, original ideas is a critical inhibitor for igniting first-to-market and new
product developments and creating effective, innovative cultures (Dyer et al., 1999; Markham &
Lee, 2013). Managers consistently report that the factors that most often compromise and delay
first-to-market product developments are strategic and occur in the idea generation and
development stage (Antonelli & Fassio, 2016; Cucculelli & Ermini, 2013; Dyer et al., 1999;
Hang et al., 2015; Markham & Lee, 2013).
Knowledge Sharing and Communication
Effective internal communication directly leads to new product development success
rates 70% of the time (Markham & Lee, 2013) and strengthens an innovative culture.
Communicating strategically and sharing discoveries advances first-to-market and new product
developments in the high-technology industry (Markham & Lee, 2013; Gupta & Souder, 1998;
Schroeder, 2013; Van Der Vegt & Bunderson, 2005). New product development is
predominantly a knowledge-based effort, sharing knowledge across organizational boundaries
(Lawson et al., 2009; Suprapto et al., 2018; Van Der Vegt & Bunderson, 2005). Empirical
studies examining supervisors’ close monitoring of employees’ creativity and knowledge sharing
illustrated that creativity and knowledge sharing decreases whereas knowledge hiding and
pursuing psychological safety increases (Edmondson, 1999; Peng et al., 2018; Son et al., 2017).
29
Innovative cultures are repressed when individuals hide corporate discoveries and valuable
knowledge that could be channeled to pioneer new technologies and innovations (Peng, Wang, &
Chen, 2018; Son et al., 2017; Rousseau & Aubé, 2016).
Cross-Functional Matrix Teamwork
Research shows that an innovative culture with superior management that empowers
innovation can benefit by having talented cross-functional matrix teams fortified with diverse
technical and creative disciplines that can drive successful first-to-market product developments
(Denham & Kaberon, 2012; Hang et al., 2015; Lawson et al., 2009; Sandberg et al., 2013). These
cross-functional development teams with customer involvement potentially provide
multidimensional improvements, including increased product quality, cost-effective use of
resources, and reductions in product development cycle time (Antonelli & Fassio, 2016; Lawson
et al., 2009). Effective cross-functional matrix teams leverage broad spectrums of task-relevant
knowledge, strategic experience, and unique perspectives to generate valuable cognitive effects
(Fortwengel et al., 2017; Garcia Martinez et al., 2017; Olszak & Kisielnicki, 2018).
The Clark and Estes Gap Analysis Framework
The Clark and Estes (2008) gap analytic framework model identifies and addresses
specific employee knowledge, motivation, and the organization (KMO) performance
shortcomings within a problem of practice. The gap analysis framework utilizes a systematic
problem-solving approach in a real-world context designed to elevate performance and achieve
defined organizational objectives (Clark & Estes, 2008). The gap analysis framework may also
be applied to multiple organizations to draw relevant comparisons of the knowledge, motivation,
and organizational gaps (Clark & Estes, 2008).
Researchers can inductively apply the gap analytic framework to uncover individual
achievements, expose performance gaps, and provide insight to the specific causes of the
30
associated problems with the systematic process model framework shown in Figure 1 (Clark &
Estes, 2008, p. 22). The gap analysis framework has been established as a comprehensive model
to inductively study this challenging problem of practice. Following the theoretical model shown
in Figure 1, the below sections discuss literature related to the roles of knowledge, motivation,
and the organization in the frontline managers’ innovation for this inductive study.
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Figure 1
Gap Analytic Framework Model
Note. Adapted from Turning Research Into Results: A Guide to Selecting the Right Performance
Solutions, by R. E. Clark and F. Estes, 2008, CEP Press. Copyright 2008 by CEP Press.
The Role of Knowledge in the Frontline Managers’ Innovation
Strategically developing innovative cultures includes a wide range of knowledge
influences. Rueda (2011) asserts that knowledge development is a critical learning process
element that transforms the learner and creates a foundation for the learner to process and
classify new experiences. Anderson et al. (2001) classified the knowledge development
32
components into four types: declarative knowledge, procedural or functional knowledge, and
metacognitive knowledge or individual awareness about how knowledge develops. The focus of
the role of knowledge includes the frontline manager abilities to align with corporate directives,
encourage internal communication, conceptualize ideas, pioneer strategies, and capture customer
and market knowledge to facilitate first-to-market and new product developments in the high-
technology industry.
Research suggests managers in the high-technology industry have the capacity to align
corporate directives and strategies with customer needs and to advance an innovative culture
(Sandberg et al., 2013). Managers understand effective strategies to create innovative cultures in
the high-technology industry (Sandberg et al., 2013). Managers recognize the faint signals to
take advantage of potential disruptive opportunities to develop innovative cultures (Hang et al.,
2015). The frontline manager should mold the EHTF multinational culture to be alert,
communicative, understanding, enabling, tolerant, and be forward thinking with a future product
focus (Fortwengel et al., 2017; Olszak & Kisielnicki, 2018; Rodríguez-Pinto et al., 2011).
Research also suggests that the ability to craft procedures that support communication
and internal networking are important fostering innovation. Studies have found that having
clarity of thought and knowing how to create procedures for knowledge sharing through internal
network communication or cross-functional matrix teams are important skills to develop learning
organizations that foster innovative cultures (Antonelli & Fassio, 2016; Fortwengel et al., 2017;
Garcia Martinez et al., 2017; Olszak & Kisielnicki, 2018). With direct access to customer needs,
wants, and dislikes, coupled with external access to competitor information and market signals,
frontline managers acquire, develop, evaluate, and build the collective intelligence that can be
assimilated and communicated to drive new first-to-market product developments (Lawson et al.,
2009; Suprapto et al., 2018; Van Der Vegt & Bunderson, 2005).
33
Research suggests that frontline managers conceptualize and pioneer ideas that will
translate to first-to-market and new product developments. Creativity also includes combining
elements to formulate a purposeful whole idea. New concepts and ideas may be created and
developed with customer, competitor, and market influences that leverage a EHTF’s product
development capability (Denham & Kaberon, 2012; Hang et al., 2015). Each EHTF internal
technical process ability is ideally strategically channeled to design and produce effective first-
to-market and new product developments (Denham & Kaberon, 2012; Hang et al., 2015).
The frontline manager is positioned to provide critical input through the early stages of
first-to-market development processes. Research suggests that frontline managers engage with
customers, adapt strategies, anticipate customer needs, and generate ideas (Antonelli & Fassio,
2016; Bennett & Parks, 2015). The frontline manager can provide insight around creating
innovative cultural settings. Critically, the frontline manager is in the ideal position to recognize
faint customer signals about needs, wants, and dislikes. The frontline manager is in an influential
role to recognize opportunities to make strategic moves to position the EHTF to be innovative, to
set the expectation of innovation, and to mold the innovative originality of the organization
(Gatling et al., 2013; Sarros et al., 2008; Turkel, 2014).
The Role of Motivation in the Frontline Managers’ Innovation
Individual frontline managers are motivated to develop innovative cultures and the effect
on first-to-market product innovations and developments during times of disruptive change.
Employee work engagement promotes valuable motivational personal attributes such as
individual self-efficacy, positivity, and expectations for organizational achievements (Saks &
Gruman, 2014). Yeh‐Yun Lin and Liu (2012) found that the organizational influences that affect
motivational innovation efforts are organizational supervisory reassurance, workgroup team
support, adequate resources, and stimulating work. Researchers confirm that strategically
34
motivated frontline managers with supportive leaders encourage teams to value original and
innovative ideas to enable first-to-market strategies and cultivate innovative cultures.
Research suggests that creative individuals with self-efficacy have more confidence about
their ability to implement tasks (Runco & Chand, 1995; Saks & Gruman, 2014), which provides
a promising future success for the EHTF. Employees engage in reciprocal collaborations in a
social setting with dynamic responses to motivations for achievement and cultural development
(Bandura, 2005; Eva, 2017). The self-efficacy principle can be utilized to examine an
employee’s confidence to develop employees and pioneer new learning and innovative
behavioral models (Inda-Caro et al., 2016).
The Role of the Organization in the Frontline Managers’ Innovation
The organizational culture comprises the contextualized and dynamic practices that
induce a conceptual scheme for regular organizational operation (Rueda, 2011). The alignment
of resources with the frontline manager stakeholder’s influences organizational performance and
the development of innovative cultures. Organizational commitments to innovation and
providing resources in the form of allocating frontline manger time and innovative funding.
With organizational commitment to innovation, EHTF organizations can invest resources
for purposeful first-to-market development efforts (Cucculelli & Ermini, 2013; Hang et al., 2015;
Markham & Lee, 2013; Mumford & Licuanan, 2004). Frontline managers can achieve and
exceed expectations with properly designed compensation schemes to incentivize and promote
innovative frontline managers (Cucculelli & Ermini, 2013; Hang et al., 2015; Markham & Lee,
2013). Creating innovative processes requires extensive efforts that recognize the unique and
invaluable contributions to creating innovative cultures in the high-technology industry
(Cucculelli & Ermini, 2013; Hang et al., 2015; Markham & Lee, 2013; Mumford & Licuanan,
2004; Zahay et al., 2018).
35
The executive level commitment to developing an innovative culture is underscored by
providing adequate and necessary recourses for the first-to-market development process (Hang et
al., 2015; O’Reilly & Tushman, 2004; Yeh‐Yun Lin & Liu, 2012). Research suggests that in
addition to capital investments, EHTF organizations ideally allocate time for innovation with less
restrictive schedules (Markham & Lee, 2013; Rodríguez-Pinto et al., 2011). Adequate time and
resource allocation with associated risks are critical investment factors to enable the frontline
managers to focus on creating innovative cultures (Hang et al., 2015; O’Reilly & Tushman,
2004; Yeh‐Yun Lin & Liu, 2012).
Conceptual Framework of the Study
The conceptual framework of this study, informed by the theoretical frameworks,
comprises the innovative processes necessary to develop an innovative culture in the high-
technology industry. This study’s conceptual framework is generalized for any EHTF in the
global marketplace, as shown in Figure 2. Within the representative EHTF, the study’s key
participants are the frontline manager stakeholders with reciprocal relationships. The conceptual
framework highlights the first-to-market product development process in red, which includes the
inputs, outputs, and decision points in the process that the frontline manager influences. The
voice of the customer and market data are shown in purple and are external to the organization
but are included in the scope of the frontline manager’s direct influence. The internal EHTF first-
to-market product development is shown in green and directly influenced by the frontline
manager. Note that the EHTF process technology or technical capability is independent and not
directly influenced by the frontline manager.
The critical organizational and motivation factors for the frontline manager are included
with particular attention to motivation in yellow. The frontline manager knowledge factors are
included, but the organizational and frontline manager motivational factors are the focal point of
36
this inductive promising practice study. The research focused on employee outcomes and
achievement expectancies for developing innovative cultures during challenging times.
Qualitative data was used to devise a set of recommendations that enable frontline managers to
develop and sustain innovative cultures during times of disruptive change. This inductive
promising practice study’s conceptual framework is presented in Figure 2.
37
Figure 2
Conceptual Framework
38
Conclusion
Motivated and successful EHTFs value the stakeholder’s innovation efforts, enable first-
to-market products, and cultivate innovative cultures in the high-technology industry. Global
organizational leadership values innovation by supporting autonomy, experimentation, and
resourcefulness (Burcharth et al., 2017; Markham & Lee, 2013; Zahay et al., 2018). Leading
global corporations deliberately develop motivated teams with innovative cultures (Kim &
Huarng, 2011; Kuznetsov & Kuznetsova, 2011; Matzler et al., 2013; Schroeder, 2013). Also, the
aggregate effects of corporate innovations are realized with first-to-market product introductions,
new market creation, and economic growth (Lambert, 2018; O’Reilly & Tushman, 2013). As
research suggests, motivational leadership strategies include assembling project-focused cross-
functional innovation teams (O’Reilly & Tushman, 2004, 2013). In conclusion, investigating this
promising practice study is essential to discover the best practices for EHTFs to purposefully and
strategically develop innovative cultures, especially during times of disruptive change due to
unforeseen and challenging circumstances.
39
Chapter Three: Methodology
The purpose of this promising practice study was to understand the influences that enable
frontline managers to develop and sustain innovative cultures during times of disruptive change.
The inductive approach was designed to discover the influences that support the frontline
managers to develop innovative cultures within EHTFs during times of disruptive change to
increase successful new product development cycles, innovate new business models, and
develop new approaches to solve problems. The study focused on frontline manager influences
related to creating innovative cultures during times of disruptive change.
This chapter begins with a presentation of the study questions, an overview of the
methodology, and data collection, instrumentation, and analysis plan. Each method includes the
participating stakeholders, instrumentation, data collection procedures, data analysis, and
credibility and trustworthiness of the study.
Study Questions
The following questions guided the promising practice inductive study to address the
organizational and motivational influences for the frontline manager stakeholders to sustain an
innovative culture during times of disruptive change:
1. What do frontline managers need to sustain an innovative culture during times of
disruptive change?
2. How do EHTFs develop and sustain innovative cultures during times of disruptive
change?
3. How do times of disruptive change affect frontline managers’ motivation to sustain an
innovative culture?
40
Overview of Methodology
For an EHTF to engender a culture driven by innovation, fostering creative processes
collectively and individually, change is necessary. This was an inductive promising practice
study. A qualitative analysis was undertaken to examine where both the capacity for and the
potential need for change exists to achieve such a culture. Relevant stakeholders, such as
frontline managers, have access to customer influences for innovative and disruptive products,
signals from the marketplace, and the team leader and member skill sets. Specific types of
frontline managers’ motivational influences, organizational influences, and knowledge
influences to a lesser extent may be isolated that cause the organization to suppress or foster
innovative new product developments. These influences were explored via a qualitative
methodological framework consisting of interviews and document analysis.
The interview population was identified through a non-probability, purposeful selection
of frontline managers (directors, senior managers, or managers) that currently work in an EHTF.
Frontline managers were subject matter experts for EHTF cultures and innovative processes that
could provide in-depth experiential data. The data sources are shown in Table 1.
41
Table 1
Data Sources
Study questions Method:
Interviews
What do frontline managers need to sustain an
innovative culture during times of disruptive
change?
X
How do EHTFs develop and sustain innovative
cultures during times of disruptive change?
X
How do times of disruptive change affect frontline
managers’ motivation to sustain an innovative
culture?
X
Data Collection, Instrumentation, and Analysis Plan
Given that this inductive study’s purpose was to discover the influences that enable
frontline managers to sustain innovative cultures during times of disruptive change, a qualitative
approach for data collection and analysis was used. Interviews of study participants and the
collection of detailed descriptions through rich narratives are found in qualitative research
(Merriam & Tisdell, 2016). Frontline manager interviews provided first-hand information
pertinent to the research questions.
Frontline managers have access to customer requests and early conceptual designs. I
expected that frontline managers would be able to provide access to specific documents that
illustrate the innovative process and provide insight to the innovative culture. During the
interview process, participants were asked if they can provide relevant internal company
documents that can provide information about new design information collection or documents
that pertain to resource allocation. Applicable publicly available organizational innovation
42
documents were also retrieved from the virtual 2021 Consumer Electronics Show (CES); CES is
recognized as the most comprehensive high-technology industry event in the world for
breakthrough technologies (Consumer Electronics Show, 2021).
Method: Interviews
The intent of this inductive study was to interview 17 participants. Previously known
industry contacts supplemented by new contacts from LinkedIn from EHTFs who meet the
defined criteria were included. Interview participants may also provide snowball referrals
(Merriam & Tisdell, 2016) or references and contact information for additional qualified
individuals for this study.
Participating Stakeholders
One of Maxwell’s (2013) goals for research suggested to specifically select participants
who can test theories or have specific knowledge in a particular field. This study included
interviews with 17 EHTF frontline managers who met the following criteria: employed in a
customer facing positions at a EHTF recognized as “Most Innovative” by the Boston Consulting
Group (Columbus, 2020) and have at least 10 years of experience in the field. Participants were
recruited from a pool of Fortune 500 EHTFs that consistently develop first-to-market products
(Markham & Lee, 2013), as identified by the Boston Consulting Group (Columbus, 2020), which
recognizes the top 20 world’s most innovative companies with the associated ranking (Table 2).
Customer facing positions within this field include applications engineers, technical account
managers, and technical marketing managers.
43
Table 2
Boston Consulting Group’s 20 Most Innovative Companies—2020 Ranking
1. Apple
2. Google
3. Amazon
4. Microsoft
5. Samsung
6. Huawei
7. Alibaba
8. IBM
9. Sony
10. Facebook
11. Tesla
12. Cisco Systems
13. Walmart
14. Tencent
15. HP Inc.
16. Nike
17. Netflix
18. LG Electronics
19. Intel
20. Dell
Note. Adapted from “The Most Innovative Companies of 2020 According to BCG,” by L.
Columbus, 2020, Forbes. https://www.forbes.com/sites/louiscolumbus/2020/06/28/the-most-
innovative-companies-of-2020-according-to-bcg/?sh=5f05424a2af3. Copyright 2020 by Forbes.
Instrumentation
A semi-structured interviewing protocol was used with appropriate probes designed to be
responsive to the participants’ answers. This interview protocol was designed to induce open-
ended responses (Merriam & Tisdell, 2016). The interview protocol utilized Patton’s (2002) six
kinds of topic independent questions include (a) experiences and behaviors, (b) opinions and
values, (c) knowledge (factual), (d) feeling (emotion), (e) sensory (sights and sounds), and (f)
demographic. The interview questions were designed to connect to the conceptual framework by
capturing critical information about the knowledge and skills, motivation, and organizational
factors that strategically develop innovative cultures that facilitate the development of first-to-
market products and services in the high-technology industry.
This semi-structured approach was designed to gather detailed data and gain access to
frontline manager insight, perspectives, and knowledge (Merriam & Tisdell, 2016). According to
44
Maxwell (2013), the research questions drive what needs to be understood, while the interview
questions are designed to provide insight to develop the understanding. Clark and Estes (2008)
note that an effective approach to assess someone’s knowledge was through procedural
descriptions and examples. The interview questions from this study were derived from each of
the research questions for this promising practice study.
Questions were designed to expose the organizational enablement of the frontline
manager, the motivation of the frontline manger, and the ability of the frontline manager. The
questions pertain to the attributes and processes that the frontline manager can presumably
control. Questions were eliminated that are beyond the scope of the frontline manager, such as
the process technology capability of the EHTF. Although the questions were designed to provide
insight centered on the frontline manager’s responsibility, certain questions may have reflected
capabilities or duties that the frontline manager may or may not directly control such as resource
allocation.
Data Collection Procedures
Participants were first identified based on my existing LinkedIn contacts employed by the
18 high-technology firms identified by the Boston Consulting Group (Columbus, 2020).
Participants were also asked to refer other individuals who meet the criteria for participation.
Invitations were emailed to EHTF frontline managers via LinkedIn mail who met the study
criteria following institutional review board (IRB) approval.
I scheduled one-time 60-minute formal interviews with each EHTF participant. I ensured
each participant that our interviews were private and confidential. Most frontline managers were
required to operate in isolation as the high-technology industry has realigned with limited travel
and in-person meetings based on the state regulations during the COVID pandemic. Regarding
45
confidentiality, the frontline managers established isolated workspaces that worked well with
virtual interviews.
Interviews were conducted via telephone to simplify the data collection procedure during
the critical interviews of frontline managers. The phone interviews were only recorded with the
explicit permission of the interviewee. I reminded the participants that their participation was
completely voluntary and that we could bypass any question and stop the interview at any time. I
also explained that identifiable information remained confidential, and responses were coded
with a pseudonym and stored separately from participant answers. All audio recordings, along
with the association to the interviewee, were destroyed after the interview process. All 17
interviewees provide the approval to record the session. Merriam and Tisdell (2016) indicated
that verbatim recordings provide the ideal database for analysis. The Interview Protocol is
provided in Appendix A.
Data Analysis
The qualitative data for this portion of the study involved interview response analysis.
Analyzing qualitative data in this study consisted of categorizing the data to themes to help
answer the research questions (Merriam & Tisdell, 2016). A matrix of data of participants versus
participant transcriptions was created as a comprehensive framework for the interview data
analysis.
The qualitative themes were discovered, compared, and contrasted to attempt to
triangulate the data (Creswell & Creswell, 2018; Hartley & Sturm, 1997). Themes were
composed by identifying the similarities and the contrasting differences in interview responses.
Each theme is comprised of the participants’ ideas to provide rich insight about each of the
research questions. The critical mass of ideas expressed by the 17 participants provided the
central ideas of each theme. Interview responses were analyzed to provide insight to develop
46
innovative cultures during times of disruptive changes. The participants provided emphatic data
points for analysis. The qualitative data collected for this study produced distributions of distinct,
common concepts.
Credibility and Trustworthiness
The credibility of qualitative research depends upon the credibility of the researcher and
the research (Merriam & Tisdell, 2016). The credibility of this study was driven by the collection
methods and the data attempt to triangulate. For the field study’s credibility, the quality of being
trusted and believed, I needed to implement a consistent data gathering and analysis
methodology with rigor (Maxwell, 2013). Interviewing frontline managers employed by multiple
EHTFs provided a variety of credible solutions that each EHTF can utilize to develop and sustain
innovative cultures during times of disruptive change.
Credibility and trustworthiness were strengthened through the incorporation of
purposeful selection, triangulation, and peer review into the qualitative study (Merriam &
Tisdell, 2016) as well as following the process with strict data confidentiality. Despite the
complexity of the topic, the study was designed to focus on EHTF frontline mangers with 10
years of relevant experience; this purposeful selection was an attempt to reach a point of
saturation of the qualitative data as referred to by Maxwell (2013). The data was triangulated
(Creswell & Creswell, 2018; Hartley & Sturm, 1997) from information gathered via interviews
from a wide range of frontline manager experiences with different disciplines and areas of
expertise. The peer review via my dissertation committee strengthened the alignment between
the raw data gathered and my subsequent interpretations.
Ethics and Role of the Researcher
Conducting human subjects social behavioral research introduces an information
exchange between researcher and participant, thus operating with ethics and providing
47
protections for participant safety is critical (Maxwell, 2012; Merriam & Tisdell, 2016). Ethical
research must be explicit and understandable to the participant (Glesne, 2015). Before contacting
frontline managers, this study was submitted for review and approval by the Intuitional Review
Board (IRB) at the University of Southern California. The IRB oversees the research protocols
and protects the rights and welfare of human subjects participating in research. Prior to
scheduling the interviews, participants were provided the IRB Information Sheet for Exempt
Studies so that participants had the opportunity to voluntarily make an informed decision
regarding study participation. Participants had the opportunity to leave the interview at any point,
or refrain from answering any interview question, with knowledge that the interview transcripts
are kept confidential and securely maintained. The Information Sheet for Exempt Studies is
provided in Appendix B.
Participants were informed about my role and the treatment of confidential information,
which is important for large EHTFs. Participants were provided the assurance that confidentiality
was maintained throughout the study including how information was stored, secured, and
ultimately destroyed. Participants had the right to review and edit the audio recordings or
transcripts. The audio recordings were destroyed once they had been transcribed. The transcripts
were temporarily stored on a password-protected computer in a secure facility. Participants were
informed that I was never an employee of the organization, was not paid to perform this research,
and was an organization change and leadership researcher, and graduate student from the
University of Southern California.
48
Chapter Four: Findings
Qualitative data were collected in this promising practice study. Specifically, interviews
and document data were collected to discover the promising practices to explore factors that
support innovative cultures within technology firms during times of disruptive change to increase
successful new product development cycles, innovate new business models, and develop new
approaches to solve problems. This inductive study primarily focused on frontline managers’
motivation and EHTF organizational characteristics to develop innovative cultures in the high-
technology industry during times of disruptive change. Inductive findings were identified and
explored in the interviews.
The threshold for determining a theme was for eight out of 17 participants to identify a
particular category or area of influence that impacts innovative culture in the high-technology
industry. Certain themes that emerged were specific to times of disruptive change, but other
themes pertain to developing innovative culture at any point in time. Despite the wide variety of
EHTFs represented in this study, data saturation emerged at approximately interview 12. The
theme threshold of eight interviews would have also been appropriate if I stopped collecting data
at only 12 interviews, representing two-thirds of the participants.
Participants
The 17 participants in this study distinguished themselves as leaders in one of the top 18
most innovative companies with customer-facing technical and business positions, such as
technical marketing, technical management, and customer application and solution engineering.
Each participant shared specific examples of their influence on the innovations pioneered by
their respective EHTFs. Each participant represents a successful career in an industry with the
third-highest separation rate and the third-highest churn rate compared to other industries (U.S.
Bureau of Labor Statistics, 2016). Each participant has been employed for over 10 years by one
49
of the 18 most innovative high-technology firms identified by the Boston Consulting Group
(Columbus, 2020). Three of the more experienced participants met the experience criteria from
two of the Boston Consulting Group’s 20 Most Innovative Companies (Columbus, 2020).
Microsoft, HP, and Intel were represented by a participant employed at the United States office
as well as an overseas office participant. The remaining 11 of the 17 participants represented a
single EHTF. In addition, a different set of 11 of the 17 participants represented the United
States, and the remaining six represented regions in Asia and Europe. The Boston Consulting
Group’s 20 Most Innovative Companies (Columbus, 2020) with the associated ranking and
interview participant’s home region that were represented in this study is presented in Table 3.
50
Table 3
Boston Consulting Group’s 20 Most Innovative Companies With the Associated Company
Ranking and Interview Participant Region Represented in This Study
1. Apple (1 United States)
2. Google (1 United States)
3. Amazon (1 United States)
4. Microsoft (1 United States; 1 Europe)
5. Samsung (1 United States)
6. Huawei (1 Asia)
8. IBM (1 United States)
9. Sony (1 United States)
10. Facebook (1 United States)
11. Tesla (1 United States)
12. Cisco Systems (1 Europe)
15. HP Inc. (1 United States; 1 Europe)
18. LG Electronics (1 Europe)
19. Intel (1 United States; 1 Asia)
Note. Adapted from “The Most Innovative Companies of 2020 According to BCG,” by L.
Columbus, 2020, Forbes. https://www.forbes.com/sites/louiscolumbus/2020/06/28/the-most-
innovative-companies-of-2020-according-to-bcg/?sh=5f05424a2af3. Copyright 2020 by Forbes.
The interview participants provided insight into the global nature of developing
sustainable high-technology cultures. However, only one participant is a woman. Women
representing Apple, IBM, and Google showed initial interest in the study, but ultimately, they did
not elect to interview. The lack of representation among women is a limitation of this study that
will be discussed in Chapter 5.
The interviewee designator is IP (interview participant) for each of the 17 participants.
Table 4 depicts the designator used for each participant, the participant’s team size, and the
organization size for each participant. The average years of experience for the participants was
22.9, with a median of 27. The average team size for the participants was 5.2, with a median of
51
4. The average immediate organization size that each of the participants belonged to was 17.1,
with a median of 15.
52
Table 4
Interview Participant (IP) Demographics
Designator Experience in
years
Participant’s team size
(direct reports)
Participant’s
organization size
(people)
IP1 32 4 7
IP2 27 5 18
IP3 11 4 24
IP4 29 6 28
IP5
27 0 10
IP6
11
4
18
IP7
10
2
9
IP8
32
10
23
IP9
15
3
11
IP10
17
2
8
IP11
33
7
24
IP12
27
5
12
IP13
24
18
34
IP14
26
3
14
IP15
30
7
28
IP16 27 7 7
IP17 12 2 15
53
Research Question 1: What Do Frontline Managers Need to Sustain an Innovative Culture
During Times of Disruptive Change?
Sustaining an innovative culture is crucial during times of disruptive change (Bennett &
Parks, 2015; Laurell & Sandström, 2018; Smith, 2014). Data analyzed in this promising practice
study found EHTFs deliberately drive efforts to maintain innovative cultures and raise the level
of expectation from the frontline managers during times of disruptive change. The worldwide
pandemic imposed a new set of challenges, without the luxury of a pre-defined playbook to
manage the long-term change. The frontline managers interviewed discussed ways they adapted
and changed their communication approaches. Prior to the pandemic, the participants reported
that information sharing communication forms were informal, dynamic, unstructured, and
impromptu. Following the pandemic, according to the participants, the formality of
communication shifted to a need to create structure and formal cadence into the innovation
process. The new approach is counterintuitive to the random nature of capturing, expressing,
conceptualizing, and developing ideas the frontline managers used prior to the pandemic.
According to the participants, EHTFs empowered frontline managers with resources to create
knowledge, utilize disciplined methods to communicate ideas, to be resilient when ideas fail, and
to learn to compensate for pandemic restrictions. These four themes are discussed in the sub-
sections below.
Theme 1: Frontline Managers Are Empowered with Resources and Autonomy
The EHTFs in this promising practice study empower frontline managers with the
necessary resources and autonomy as a general practice. According to the participants, EHTFs
have high regards and expectations from the frontline managers, including building essential
relationships and trust with managers and team members. Eight of the more experienced 17
frontline managers indicated that they are empowered to oversee their destiny and career path.
54
IP1 explained, “Letting individuals control their destiny, career path, and even … projects, is one
way that you get the most out of each employee because they are motivated in what interests
them most.” IP11 further provided insight from a foundational perspective, “It goes back to roots
of the founders, is this concept of really empowering the employee at the grassroots level.”
This study also found that frontline managers working across different geographies, time
zones, and cultures were empowered to drive the business and handle complex problems.
Computers, cell phones, headsets, video conferencing, virtual private networks, secure networks,
cloud networks, storage networks, ergonomic office furniture, and EHTF proprietary technology
are provided to frontline managers for independent operation. Regarding allocating additional
resources, including adding specific personnel expertise to their teams, 11 participants agreed
that resources were available but required a formal process for making requests. IP7 provided
insight regarding his latitude for resource allocation, “I’m empowered to allocate resources. It’s a
vetting process because of the cost-conscious piece to this. You have to tailor that and be
strategic or surgical with that, and so I do have an appreciation for it.”
From the perspective of autonomy, two contradictory sub-themes emerged among the 17
participants regarding balancing time between executing specific assigned tasks with regimented
schedules and unscheduled time allocated to conceptualizing, developing proof of concepts, and
pioneering innovations. Nine of the 17 participants from the United States expressed the notion
of having ample time and authority to operate with autonomy; however, six other participants
expressed the notion of not having enough time and authority to operate with independence. IP13
represented the first category by stating, “We give the team the opportunity to have some time to
think big, to think strategically, and trying to foster innovation. And that’s a huge challenge
today where I’m in the semiconductor space, so very high technology.” IP1 discussed the
advantage of increasing the time allocation for innovation and product development, “I feel like I
55
should be doing more in less time, but management tends to allow the appropriate amount of
time.” IP10 provided insight about the effort to use time efficiently for the purpose of innovation,
“We are trying to automate the tedious tasks, so you can be freed for some times, to focus on the
innovation or more valuable things.” However, the contrary perspective still seems to be a source
of esteem in an innovative culture as reported by six of the participants. Illustrating this contrary
perspective, IP7 stated, “We’re building a plane in flight. It’s never on the ground, never in the
hangar; it’s literally always in flight, and you’re fixing it at 500 miles an hour at 40,000 feet. It’s
lighthearted and almost endearing.”
As a senior frontline manager with a track record of innovation, IP11 provided insight to
the empowerment of people to face the challenge and reap the reward of developing an
innovative culture:
Sometimes takes a long time to get the dinosaur to change internally. But if you develop
the right culture, you empower the people, and you’re willing to listen to a good business
case, you make the changes you need to make, and you innovate and you drive and not
just survive, but you thrive.
The characterization of participant empowerment with respect to resources and autonomy is
shown in Table 5. Although there is a contrary perspective regarding the allotted time for
innovation, the EHTFs in this promising practice study empower individual contributor frontline
managers to be successful and in turn develop innovative cultures.
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Table 5
Characterization of Empowerment of Participants With Respect to Resources and Autonomy
Participant Reasoning Key participant comments
IP4
IP7
Empowerment for resources
Aggregating feedback for
resource allocation
“I’m empowered to basically decide my own staff
and also any kind of resources that I require.
So, definitely empowerment is the key, and the
company has empowered me.”
We’re asking for lots of feedback and it hits every
population within the company, and there’s
people very intentionally aggregating that
feedback to take action which then leads to
allocation of resources.
IP1
IP9
Advantage of autonomy for
innovation
Autonomy and an
innovation focus
“It takes time to innovate and get it [the end
product] right, and so spending extra time is
always wise.”
“I think what good organizations do is they
decouple innovation from a project schedule.
Survey the customer needs, propose an answer
that brings them more of what they’re looking
for, and do a proof of concept. Those are the
kind of things that I think innovative
organizations are able to do.”
From the Clark and Estes (2008) gap analysis framework lens perspective, the
organizational empowerment is a critical strategic maneuver to elevate the organizational
performance. The participants’ EHTFs supported the frontline managers with necessary
resources and, in most cases, time to innovate. The participants did agree with the notion that
time allocation for the purpose of innovation is valuable and limited as EHTFs balance time
allocation for scheduled endeavors as well as time for innovation. The organizational
empowerment and latitude to support frontline managers with autonomy, research, and
57
inventiveness aligns with the organizational effectiveness research from Burcharth et al. (2017),
Markham and Lee, (2013), and Zahay et al. (2018).
Theme 2: Frontline Managers Value, Create, and Measure New Ideas
Nine of the 17 decidedly experienced frontline managers explained that frontline
managers are expected to think creatively and attempt to monetize the value of each innovation
or idea for the EHTF. Six of the remaining eight of the 17 participants implied the “value add”
concept, but they did not specify a measurable value. Two of the lesser experienced 17
participants did not address the concept of monetizing the value of ideas. During the discussion
of how ideas are valued and monetized, IP16 explained, “The environment tends to create
incentivized risk.” IP13 provided a broad perspective on creating new ideas for the organization,
“We’re looking across the portfolio for business. We’ve got some things sunsetting, but what’s
the next big thing? What seemed to be impossible from a technical specification point of view
must become not only possible, but a given.” IP14 also provided a longer-range viewpoint on
anticipating value in technological ideas, “We have a lot of encouragement and expectation for
frontline engineers to think beyond the next couple of years. I think in 3, 5 years down the line in
figuring out what kind of technologies are going to have to be created.”
Twelve of the 17 frontline managers indicated that frontline managers have the latitude to
introduce new ideas to develop new products; the remaining five participants address the concept
of developing ideas as a team exercise rather than a function of being a frontline manager.
However, sixteen of the 17 participants indicated the importance of listening to customers as a
fundamental part of idea generation. IP15 discussed new idea acquisition, “We get all these ideas
together from these various things and form it as a complete knowledge set.” IP15 focused on the
critical nature of listening to acquire new ideas, “So, I think a lot of innovation comes from just
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simply listening. What’s the problem? And understanding what the problem is. If you don’t
understand the problem, you’re not going to solve the solution.”
Ten of the 17 more experienced participants indicated that frontline managers might
derive new product ideas from customers’ requirements or discussions within a meeting that
drive value to the customer via a new roadmap. One of the eight most experienced frontline
managers delegates the collection of customer requirements to more technical team members.
Eight of the more experienced 17 frontline managers deliberately collaborate with customers,
leading to an increased customer knowledge base for the EHTF. Following customer meetings,
eight of the frontline managers discussed dynamically pivoting or extrapolating customer
information to introduce new ideas. IP5 provided the customer meeting insight, “In customer
meetings, we pitch the product very technically, mildly technically, and could dynamically pivot
off the customers’ requirements or statements within a meeting, to drive value to the customer
via new roadmap or a new product idea.”
Frontline managers believe they have the freedom to innovate. However, they also
expressed an expectation that their effort should be focused on increasing value for the EHTF.
IP13, with more than two decades of experience, discussed the critical components of trust and
the associated freedom to execute, “We are … flexible with the workforce and trusting them to
get the job done. And at the end of the day, we’re here to solve problems. And their problem
solving is the next product for the future, innovation.” IP13 continued to explain, “By giving the
technology teams the time to think big, to be collaborative, to take some risks, and they’re not
always going to be right. And not punish people for taking risks. Reward risk, regardless of the
result.”
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However, IP16 indicated, “We have created a structure to direct that innovation, because
undirected, you could wind up making a lot of great things, but only some of them monetizable
by the company.”
Ten of the 17 participants indicated that ideas are measured in terms of efficiency. IP7
provided representative insight, “We have mechanisms in place to measure what the outcomes
are based on the input, and then we’re able to do that and test things continually. It moves the
needle, and that’s how we discover new concepts.” Most of the participants did not describe the
specific measurement instruments that their EHTF utilized, but six out of the 17 referred to
efficiency as a key idea, such as in IP7’s reference.
Eleven of the 17 participants agreed that creativity is a critical element to moving the
EHTF forward one idea at a time; each idea is carefully considered as part of the new EHTF
knowledge base. IP7 represented eleven of the 17 participants with these comments, “… a lot of
touchpoints where we bring a lot of people to that table, figurative table, to adopt new ideas,
share new ideas, discuss new ideas, scrutinize new ideas with a very critical eye to arrive at
better solutions.” The innovative culture produced the incentive to share ideas and recognize the
originator throughout the process. The collective reasoning is that the corporation will benefit,
which will benefit everyone, including the entire society as a whole.
From the KMO (Clark & Estes, 2008) perspective, the participants placed a focus on
generating ideas and accumulating knowledge. The highly experienced 17 participants exhibited
knowledge skills to achieve goals. The participants placed a premium on seeking opportunities,
assimilating information in new ways, and utilizing knowledge to generate original ideas to
produce innovations for their respective organizations. These reported frontline managers
perceptions are consistent with Gatling et al. (2013), Sarros et al. (2008), and Turkel (2014).
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Theme 3: Frontline Managers Adapt to Compensate for Pandemic Restrictions
As a time of disruptive change, the coronavirus pandemic imposed a new reality on the
global high-technology industry and the world. According to the participants, the pandemic
challenged the traditional high-technology business concepts and induced innovative approaches
to compensate for the pandemic restrictions. Amidst the chaos, the frontline managers in this
promising practice study developed new communication styles, recreated corporate labs at home,
and developed new remote processes to interact with customers.
According to nine of the 17 participants with a wide variation in experience, the
pandemic challenged individual frontline managers to compensate for the impending restrictions
imposed by the pandemic. IP13 provided this insight on thinking differently during the chaotic
times of the pandemic, “Well, especially in today’s environment, things are very chaotic, so we
have to think differently. … the way we’ve done things in the past may or may not be the way
we need to do things going forward.”
Restrictions imposed for safety and to curtail the spread of the COVID-19 virus prompted
the frontline managers to employ new processes and approaches to develop and maintain
creative cultures. The 17 participants shared similar experiences as examples of promising
practice to break through the rigid barriers, such as taking home millions of dollars of systems
out of the sanctity of multilevel key-locked buildings to compensate for the pandemic
restrictions. IP6 explained that some of the innovations were directed to improve employee and
customer safety, “I think the biggest thing is you have to adjust to the current limits and
expectations…that means adjusting to going virtual instead of having people handling paper. We
now have it all virtual, limiting touching, limiting face-to-face interaction.”
Eight of the 17 participants with a varied level of experience provided communication
and meeting practices prior to the pandemic to compare to the shift in communication following
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the pandemic. Eight of the most experienced of the 17 participants indicated that ideas were
informally discussed and vetted before the disruptive change. Once a frontline manager would
capture an idea, the side discussions would initiate. Prior to the pandemic, participants shared the
notion that colleagues would hold impromptu meetings in rooms with blackboards with multiple
people at the blackboard at a time. The blackboard with multiple authors was central to
communicating ideas prior to the pandemic. By contrast, 10 of the 17 participants concluded that
following the initial shock of the pandemic, the communication methodology, style, and
approach changed. IP4 provided a representative statement, “We now hold idea brainstorming,
idea vetting, idea refining, and innovation meetings with a regular weekly cadence. Individuals
can present new ideas... Ideas further down the stream have resources assigned and are vetted in
weekly video conference calls.” Frontline managers also continued to convert ideas to high
quality future product developments despite the disruption of the pandemic. IP10 said, “… it’s
still quite important as you can compromise future products and developments because of this
crisis. I think when the team is in a juggling mode to keep all the things afloat as new crises have
been developing.” IP10 further explained, “… you need to find the resources, moving things
little by little, and keep things moving. I think it’s important, especially on the new product
development. It’s our future.”
To compensate for the restrictions of the pandemic, frontline managers discussed
utilizing new technologies and approaches to communicate with team members. Frontline
managers noted that communicating with individually produced videos provides a unique
experience for worldwide team members to quickly grasp the fundamental idea or the salient
points of complex ideas. Four of the 17 participants described how ideas are now communicated
by creating videos to explain the unique idiosyncrasies of the concept. Idea videos are a new
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approach to compensate for not being in the same room at the same time as an innovative
response to the pandemic.
Interview participants disagreed on the approaches to document ideas ranging from six of
the 17 participants believing in unstructured and intuitive to four of the 17 participants entailing
highly structured specific requirements documents. In addition to providing a viewpoint
regarding documentation, IP1 disparages the waterfall approach, which involves management
dictating the procedural business practices and how the implementations will occur, “I think that
a lot of these things aren’t formalized in much the same way that I said that innovation can
happen faster by being intuitive and not having a waterfall approach to the problem.” IP1
emphasizes the intuitive nature of innovation and downplays the need for formalized
documentation, “I think the same thing goes for this innovation in the pandemic. It’s not really
codified in documents. It is intuitive.” In agreement with IP1, IP11 stated, “A sketch on a napkin
could eventually be transformed, such as the first printer to use a camera.” However, IP5
representing four of the 17 participants stressed the need and reasoning to document and capture
customer requirements, “More structured documentation would cover design details and the
business conditions that we need to calculate a return on investment.”
In addition to the changes in the approaches to communication, the frontline managers
broke through long-standing restrictions with the permission of the EHTF. Frontline managers
were enabled to set up and establish remote labs at home, which represented a departure from the
lab being located within a highly secure campus. The trust exemplified by all 17 management
teams facilitated continued work that would have otherwise been impossible. For 12 of the 17
participants, labs were secured at home. For another three of the 17 participants, virtual private
networks were set up to facilitate software development with strict software code version control
at home that would have otherwise been conducted in the office. The final two participants
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developed mechanisms and protocols to remotely enable third-party technology on internal
systems with very limited access to the internal lab. IP12 provided an example of this new
practice, “I actually had to bring a bunch of equipment home to work. So, I’ve got prototypes …
in several rooms, that I’ve been working on all this, and shifting hardware and working on the
software too.” In response to how this is possible, IP12 continued in reference to the
management teams of innovative cultures, “It just takes time, the relationships. They trust you.
They give you a sign that you have it with them.”
A final example of adapting to the pandemic was to change the model of customer
interaction to products and services. Before the pandemic, IP1 characterized the most common
forms of capturing customer experience feedback, “We brought people in and recorded them
using the product and ... watch them get hung up at different points. You see the pinpoints, and
that is direct feedback on features before they’re available to the public.” Following the
pandemic, the frontline managers adapted and developed new models to observe customers with
new products. This new approach was used to replace traditional on EHTF campus focus groups
and observing customers using new products in person. IP14 explained the modified focus group
approach implemented during the pandemic, “We did a focus group with specific questions, and
that was very valuable. We first create a proof of concept, mock-ups of that product.” After
finding someone not familiar with the product, IP14 further explained the process to evaluate the
process from the beginning, “We set up a data conference, and we ship the proof-of-concept
product. We give them specific instructions and ask them not to open it until we sit in front of the
camera … to evaluate the experience … from the beginning.” The pre-pandemic versus post-
pandemic practices to value, create, and measure new ideas, as described by the 17 participants
in this study, are shown in Table 6.
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Table 6
Frontline Managers Adapt to Compensate for Pandemic Restrictions
Pre-pandemic Post-pandemic
Communication approach In-person, daily, unscheduled,
informal, sporadic, impromptu
Structured cadence,
scheduled weekly,
videoconference calls
Documentation Formal customer requirement
templates, design document
templates, ROI calculation
spreadsheets, emails
Blackboard photos, sketches on a
napkin
Formal customer requirement
templates, design
document templates, ROI
calculation spreadsheets,
emails
Computer screen shots,
explanatory remote videos
Lab setups
Secured labs on EHTF campus,
secure campus code development
Established labs at home,
secure VPN for code
development
Customer interaction In-person customer meetings, EHTF
campus observations, formal
customer focus groups
Remote videoconferencing of
customer observations,
remote videoconference
meetings
Utilizing the Clark and Estes (2008) gap analysis framework lens, the participants’
organizations enabled frontline managers to develop and modify traditional processes. The
modified structures as a result of the pandemic aligns with the research from Bennett and Parks
(2015), which concluded that successful innovations result from adaptable company structures
and processes. The organizational communication improved with a regular cadence to
compensate for the potential performance gaps and challenges imposed by the pandemic. The
mutual trust between leaders and frontline managers increased, further solidifying an innovative
culture for the participants’ respective organizations.
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Theme 4: Frontline Managers Believe They Are More Resilient When Ideas Fail
Eight of the 17 more experienced participants, when asked about the innovative culture
during times of disruptive change, indicated that they believed they had become more resilient
when ideas fail and plans go awry than they were prior to the pandemic. Eight of the participants
indicated that failing is part of the innovative process; nine participants did not discuss failure.
However, the discrepancy may be a limitation of the study since I did not directly ask about
failure or failure being part of the innovative process. Participant insights into this idea of failure
arose in the section when I asked about having an innovative environment.
Regarding failure, IP1 promptly stated, “And you find out where along the way they
failed, and then you knock down that barrier, and that same process is now accepted as standards
across the industry.” IP7 described the culture of allowing failure as a part of pursuing solutions,
“We have this built-in DNA of accepting that we got that one wrong, but that’s okay because we
removed it in the process of elimination as a potential solution…” The same eight participants
that discussed failing added that failing quickly reduces costs. IP7 continued with the concept of
failing quicky, “…and we did it [failed] very quickly, and now we are one step closer to
whatever the solution is for that particular problem set.” IP11 agreed, but they also provided
input on a longer-term response to develop a major product breakthrough, “It just took us a long
time. We just kept failing, then we’d try something else. After six or seven other concepts failed,
this crazy example of innovation finally worked, and we had a first of its kind product.”
Eleven of the 17 participants discussed taking risks and making mistakes, even though
only eight of the 17 participants discussed failure as part of the risks. IP16 discussed an
environment with tolerance for risk-taking and making mistakes, “I think one way of fostering
innovation is to reduce the penalty for taking risks as much as possible. People tend to be very
concerned about making mistakes. But, let’s make this culture what we want it to be.” IP16 also
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addressed the concept of psychological safety for making mistakes, “We have to give the team a
sense of safety around making mistakes. Make sure that the safeguards are in place going
forward to prevent something like that from happening again, right?” Constructing a culture of
innovation is an important take away as explained by IP16, “Constructing the culture for
innovation requires lowering the penalty for risk-taking as a broad-brush stroke.” IP16 concludes
the discussion by directing attention to the metrics that are used to measure the value of the
potential innovation, “They capture a set of metrics, which is the thing they want to move, the
thing they want to improve. …all of the engineers are basically incentivized because they know
they’ll get great reviews if they move that metric.” IP9 added a perspective regarding not
focusing on blame and having a tolerant attitude, “You want to have a retrospective without
blame attitude. Just figure out what went wrong, so we don’t do it again.” IP1 agreed and
provided insight about presenting an idea that did not work, “And that’s part of the reason that I
gave the presentation because I wanted everybody else in the company to know that failure on
any level leads to knowledge.” According to the participants, failing is a part of innovation and
an innovative culture begins to develop once failing becomes a vehicle to learn and not a target
for blame or punishment. Participants agreed that failing quickly is cost effective and learning
from previous failures and success provided valuable insight for future process and product
developments.
Utilizing the Clark and Estes (2008) gap analysis framework lens, the participants’
organizations appear to promote an innovative culture by tolerating failure and developing a
learning organization. The participants’ EHTFs align with the research suggesting that leadership
efforts should support developing learning organizations to promote innovative cultures
(Antonelli & Fassio, 2016; Fortwengel et al., 2017). The participants’ EHTFs support
organizational creativity, which agrees with the Olszak and Kisielnicki (2018) research of
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enabling trial and error attempts, mistakes, and failures to foster creative knowledge discovery.
Armed with effective learning organization processes, the participants’ organizations capitalized
on the resilient efforts of the frontline managers.
Research Question 2: How Do EHTFs Develop and Sustain Innovative Cultures During
Times of Disruptive Change?
Transformational and authentic leadership are considered critical for developing
innovative cultures (Caldwell, 2009; Kan & Parry, 2004; Sarros et al., 2008). The full impact of
the pandemic and the ramifications of the pandemic were hard for the participants to
characterize, but the 17 frontline managers interviewed in this study did identify that the
pandemic provided an opportunity to enhance trust with remote employees and further
contributed to developing an innovative culture. The themes that surfaced pertaining to how
EHTFs sustain innovative cultures during times of disruptive change include the need to
prioritize people first, have flexibility, and adapt quickly to changes. According to the
participants, the EHTFs in this promising practice study accepted the new norms created by the
pandemic as a long-term problem and quickly enabled frontline managers to provide developed
remote solutions.
Theme 5: Frontline Managers Perceive EHTFs Are Flexible and Adapt Quickly to Changes
As a prime example of disruptive change, the pandemic introduced chaos into the world
and forced a new reality on society with an “unprecedented scale and intensity” (Casady &
Baxter, 2020, p. 1077). Interview participants focused on their perceptions of EHTF flexibility to
allow the workforce to regroup; they believe their organizations accepted the challenge to adapt
and change processes quickly. Specifically, nine of the 17 participants indicated that the
pandemic forced EHTFs to establish and deploy remote processes and technology, such as
illustrated in Theme 1, by empowering the employees to carry on with a more isolated and
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distributed workforce. The pandemic also forced EHTFs to help employees to be part of the
solution, as noted with the innovative examples in Theme 3. Finally, the pandemic induced
EHTFs to provide a higher level of trust towards employees to work hard and produce, despite
the chaos.
Twelve of the 17 participants with a wide variety in experience perceived that their
respective EHTFs quickly regrouped from the initial shock, adapted to the new reality, embraced
new challenges, and changed quickly. IP13 affirmed, “Well, to be all honest, in the pandemic,
we did excellent. We had rapid recovery.” IP13 continued the thought from the management
perspective, “And we’ve got to shorten the dance. Putting your best foot forward out of the gate,
let’s move with speed.” IP8 added to the reasoning of how his specific EHTF adapted so quickly,
“A high frequency of communication exists among the leadership.”
According to the participants, the EHTF demonstrated the concept of “flexibility” by
enabling frontline managers to be successful. Specifically, eight of the 17 participants used the
word flexibility when referring to the EHTF management style towards employees. IP13
provided specific insight towards employee flexibility, “Give them the flexibility during the
workweek. People have loved ones that are getting sick and elderly people that are going through
hospice. When they come back to work, they can give it their all, they can be creative.” IP4
provided insight on both flexibility and empowering the team, “We empower them to make sure
that they do the right thing. And my staff grew because of the responsibility. We give them
freedom, but there is a cost... You don’t want to lose the trust.” IP11 provided insight into the
thinking behind this approach, “So I think that one key thing is employees have the freedom to
figure out how to make it work.”
The pandemic accelerated the need to align the short-term survival and the long-term
relevancy of the EHTFs represented in this promising practice study. IP13 explained the need to
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be relevant and to move faster, “If we consider changes in the marketplace and pandemic, we
must move faster. The executive management team challenged us … how are we going to be
relevant in five years, in 10 years? And lots of implications on relevancy.”
The pandemic also accelerated the transition to digital data for capturing customer
information. Six of the 17 participants described the transition to data mining and collecting data
remotely and via the internet. IP1 explained, “There’s been tremendous innovation on mobile
specifically, but also on the web. Gathering analytics remotely.” IP13 provided a perspective of
the payoff for EHTFs to be persistent in working through the pandemic, “But what came after
COVID was just an incredible upside in the whole industry, the whole market just took off like a
rocket.”
The pandemic delivered a severe adverse impact to worldwide economic and health
conditions (Casady & Baxter, 2020; Zoumpourlis et al., 2020). The pandemic also imposed
severe changes in the high-technology industry and forced businesses to change to attempt to
recover and survive (Casady & Baxter, 2020). According to the participants, their EHTFs
accepted the difficult situation and took decisive steps to be flexible with the frontline
management workforce and quickly rebound. The pandemic served as the catalyst to induce
EHTFs to develop new and innovative approaches. The participants believed that their EHTFs
derived unexpected benefits amidst the chaos of the pandemic.
With the Clark and Estes (2008) gap analysis framework lens, the participants’
organizations are adaptable and able to compensate for problems triggered by change. Operating
with flexibility and teamwork, the participants’ organizations accelerated the processes to enable
short-term survival and the long-term sustainability. The participants’ organizations compensated
for the severe adverse impact of worldwide economic and health conditions.
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Theme 6: EHTFs Put the Needs of Their People First
Eight of the more experienced participants representing EHTFs in this promising practice
study discussed the concept of focusing on employee welfare immediately following the
worldwide pandemic. IP13 substantiated the big picture with this statement, “We have a very
strong value, people first, what’s best for our customers, what’s best for our suppliers, what’s
best for our partners, what’s best for our employees.” IP4 offered what he believed to be the
“most effective style” and equated it with the working environment of compassion and loyalty,
“I will show a lot of compassion to my team. And obviously, they will feel … pressure in certain
situations, but when they deliver, there’s going to be a lot of compassion to the people who’ve
been loyal.” IP5 indicated that the EHTF realigned the workload to reduce stress, “Before the
pandemic, we would work on all the opportunities.” IP5 continued to contrast the post-pandemic
management approach, “When the pandemic started, our management tracked our workload
bandwidth to see how stressed it is… then prioritized to reduce it [the stress].” IP2 also provided
a perspective of psychological support introduced by the pandemic, “The corporation set up a
special psychologist counselling service, anonymous service. We could share our concerns about
COVID-19.” IP2 also provided a relevant EHTF policy change following the pandemic, “We
also now have additional time off for wellness.”
From the perspective of six of the 17 participants, EHTFs improved exercising equality
and inclusion and enabled each employee with a voice, given that each voice was isolated due to
the pandemic. IP4 firmly stated, “I think the most important thing is listening and equality. I
think the most important thing here is that everyone gets an equal voice, and basically be able to
make sure that they can feel comfortable.” IP4 further illustrated the concept of everyone’s
contribution, “Level playing field to contribute and make sure that the management actually
respects everyone’s opinions. … I think the more opinions we have… broaden everyone’s
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perspective to make sure that we get to the final goal.” The remaining 11 participants did not
discuss inclusion.
Eight participants with varied experience indicated that the EHTF focused on keeping
their teams happy and together during the disruption and chaos of the pandemic. IP4 provided
additional insight to the point that frontline managers did not want to lose the talent on their
teams, “The fact that I have a really talented team, I think my worst enemy would be basically
the flight risk of some of my good staff.” IP4 expanded on this idea with this statement, “We
show them the love, and not just by the words, but I think by actions to make sure that they
continue their career path and make them happy to work for my current employer and myself.”
Nine participants indicated that EHTF management teams provided practical solutions for
employees to adapt to the isolation due to the pandemic, such as providing frontline managers
with updated computers with videoconferencing capability, which had been previously restricted
in the traditional high-technology lab environment for security purposes. Three participants
indicated that cameras of any kind were not allowed in their corporate labs prior to the pandemic.
In addition to technological enablement, EHTFs applied a specific focus to support
employee wellness and ergonomics for isolated individual contributors working from home. IP12
specifically provided the focus of the EHTF leadership, “Leadership paid special attention to
ergonomic wellness.” IP2 specifically offered, “We were given two additional days per year off
for wellness. We also get 14 hours off the day you get vaccinated.” Two of the 17 participants
indicated that the EHTF management provided new furniture for their home office.
EHTF leadership teams attempted to strengthen team chemistry with isolated team
members and help frontline managers navigate through times of disruptive change. Three of the
17 participants used the term having “standup meetings,” which would be used to provide levity
and an informal compensatory way of getting to know people no longer in the same room. IP15
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offered an interesting insight into this concept, “And in my own internal group, we have a
“standup meeting,” to talk about anything outside of work or we would ask icebreaker questions
such as: “Would you rather be the lead actor in a movie or the director?” IP15 explained the
standup meeting rationale, “It’s just trying to build that comradery with our group that is spread
across three time zones. I think it’s actually brought our team closer together because we can
joke about things that we would not joke about if we were just always having normal business
meetings.” The participants collectively explained that EHTFs in this promising practice study
placed a premium on the employees first with the expectation that the employees would help the
business recover, independent of the market conditions imposed by the pandemic. These
participants validated the trust granted by the EHTFs in this study, by responding with creativity
and innovation during difficult times.
Applying the Clark and Estes (2008) gap analysis framework lens, the participants’
organizations prioritized the needs of their people. The organizations adapted to the challenges of
the pandemic by applying practical solutions that enabled the organizations to continue to
flourish. Enabling each worldwide employee with a voice promoted loyalty and reduced the risk
of seeking other employment for the more experienced frontline managers. The significant result
of focusing on employee wellbeing was the further development of organizational loyalty and
trust, which lead to innovative cultures.
Research Question 3: How Do Times of Disruptive Change Affect Frontline Managers’
Motivation to Sustain an Innovative Culture?
Following the pandemic, frontline managers reported that they became more motivated to
innovate and solve problems. The concept of thinking “outside-the-box” is considered an
important part of innovation and developing new ideas and new ways to solve problems
(Fortwengel et al., 2017; Rodríguez-Pinto et al., 2011). The pandemic seemed to be a sudden
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change catalyst that ignited new “outside-the-box” thinking and new ways of performing from
the perspective of the participants. Participants also reported that the newfound freedom from the
pandemic provided unexpected advantages that allowed them to find new product ideas and
solutions to problems associated with the pandemic.
Theme 7: Frontline Managers Feel More Motivated Under Pressure
All 17 participants provided insight on their resilience in the face of disruptive change as
a result of the COVID-19 pandemic. A consensus of all 17 participants agreed that they were
more motivated after the initial shock of the pandemic. However, the participant motivation and
responses to the COVID-19 pandemic was characterized in different motivational constructs as
shown in Table 7.
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Table 7
Characterization of Participant Motivation in Response to the COVID-19 Pandemic
Participant Motivation construct Key participant comments
IP1 Self-efficacy “Look how successful I have been in configuring
[task of organizing] the company, I’m working
remotely.”
IP7 Self-efficacy “I think I am a great decision maker when it comes
to directing the allocation of resources.”
IP6 Self-efficacy “I’m very confident in my ability to kind of
innovate, to not hold back, not let fear kind of
keep you from doing good things.”
IP16 Self-efficacy and
attainment value
“I’m going to go that way, but it’s an interesting
road, right? I think there’s a lot of respect that
comes with that…provide for a group of people
that have respect for you.”
IP1 Attainment value “That concept of a virtual company fascinated me,
and I actually searched out at being very
effective, and I wanted to learn more.”
IP7
Attainment value
“And then whatever their request is or need, and you
closed the loop on whatever the customer need
was and then you deliver it to them, and you feel
like you’ve accomplished.”
IP9
Attainment value
“I have a slew of patents. I really value myself in
terms of the great innovations, the things that
really moved the industry a different direction.”
IP4 Outcome expectancy “We can’t make that [the pandemic] an excuse
because there’s been obstacles everywhere doing
normal business. We have to make sure that we
compartmentalize what’s going on, and not lose
focus of the goal, which is to innovate.”
IP13 Outcome expectancy “And we use the term all hands-on deck or pulling in
everyone. Unacceptable to be less than number
one.”
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Frontline manager dedication was challenged during the COVID-19 pandemic, but all 17
participants described becoming more action-oriented to be a contributor within their
organization and aligning their motivation to problem solving. Frontline managers reaffirmed
their dedication to their work through the difficulties of the pandemic. IP15 characterized a
common thread running through the interviews with all 17 participants regarding the outcome
expectancy, “There’s no coasting. I mean, there will be a time in my life when I will be done.
But in the meantime, I’m going to do it to the best of my ability and enjoy the ride.” The
participants in this promising practice study were motivated to put in the effort, survived, and
thrived throughout these times of disruptive change.
Utilizing the Clark and Estes (2008) gap analysis framework lens, the participants
proclaimed that their motivation increased as a direct result of the pandemic. The participants
experienced multiple motivational constructs. The participants reported the confidence in
completing tasks that were necessary due to the pandemic; this reported individuals confidence
level of excelling in the desired behavior was an example of self-efficacy, which is included in
Bandura’s (2005) social cognitive theory. In the expectancy value theory originally pioneered by
Atkinson (1964), and expanded by Wigfield and Eccles (2000), an individual’s expectancy for
achievement and value of the endeavor motivate the individual to pursue a meaningful goal.
Through the lens of expectancy value theory (Atkinson, 1964; Wigfield & Eccles, 2000), the
interview participants expected to persevere and applied intellectual exertion to the new
challenges imposed by the pandemic. The participants conveyed their attainment value to
overcome the pandemic challenges and champion initiatives to help their EHTFs to sustain
business during an unprecedented difficult time, which aligns with the expectancy value theory
(Atkinson, 1964; Wigfield & Eccles, 2000). Through the expectancy value theory lens, the
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participants’ intrinsic and attainment value provided the driving force for the participants to seek
solutions to the pandemic’s challenges.
Theme 8: “Out-of-the-Cube” Fosters “Out-of-the-Box” Thinking
All 17 of the participants indicated a willingness to put in extra effort to generate new
ideas, solve new problems related to the new norm, and think outside-the-box, which was ignited
by the disruption of the pandemic. Twelve of the 17 participants utilized the term “think outside-
the-box” during the interview discussion without prompting. From the perspective of the
participants, the pandemic created a sudden change that ignited a choice to initiate an unexpected
innovative mindset. IP6 presented the notion of thinking outside-the-box, “We are always
encouraged to think outside-the-box, think big, think about how this will impact the whole
network, the whole body of whatever’s worked or not, and not just you yourself.” IP6 discussed
the thinking habits to consider how to accomplish new endeavors, “So really think like don’t just
limit yourself to what we can do. If it’s something we can’t do, how can we do it? Really look,
learn, research, ask people and see if that’s something possibly can be done.”
Participants reflected on why they were motivated to put in the extra effort and chose to
be a change agent to help the EHTF recover from the adverse effects of the pandemic. In
reflecting after the initial shock of the pandemic, IP4 provided insight into why the frontline
manager motivation persisted in the new pandemic reality, “I think once we figured it out, it was
actually interesting because we actually found advantages to the way we’re doing things, because
it gives people some freedom.” IP9 agreed and provided additional insight, “It gives me just
much more being out-of-the-box, sitting in a cubicle is very restricting thinking because you’re
just staring at some walls around you in a tight environment.” IP3 placed an exclamation point
on the topic, “Even just sitting in the cubicle, it’s like a tranquilizer. It’s like you get slower and
slower. But if your kids make you jump up and down and stuff, getting into that deep hole of
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thinking and start a new hole, then that gets already innovation.” IP8 added the perspective of
free-thinking, “You’ve got to spend as much time in that free-thinking space in your day, not just
staring at the cubical walls.” IP16 discussed removing the distractions in the traditional office,
“The office was filled with distractions like the coffee shop at work. Everything gets in the way
of actually getting things done. The pandemic unplugged the distraction, but that’s actually been
great.” IP17 circled back to professionalism in the remote environment, “You maintain the same
kind of decorum, professionalism, your punctuality with your meetings, and making sure you’re
dedicated. But you spend more time thinking “outside-the-box.” It’s still your culture.”
Applying the Clark and Estes (2008) gap analysis framework lens, the participants’
motivation increased as a result of changing the working environment. Following the pandemic,
an unexpected set of working conditions ensued and required a redesign to the working
processes. However, the participants quickly adapted to the environment, free from the
traditional distractions, and accelerated their ability beliefs to generate ideas and innovate.
Through the lens of expectancy value theory (Atkinson, 1964; Wigfield & Eccles, 2000), the
interview participants acknowledged and appreciated the individual achievement gratification for
overcoming the challenges in their new working environments and enhanced their ability beliefs
to innovate. The participants revealed task values, such as the intrinsic value and the utility value
or the degree of task alignment with goals (Elliot et al., 2018; Wigfield & Eccles, 2000). The
participants described a revelation that was unexpected that stemmed from the circumstances of
the pandemic. According to the participants, the disruption caused the frontline managers to
expand their vision, altered their traditional processes of focusing a team on a single, focused
incremental innovation to a new approach of assimilating unique individual innovations, and
ultimately achieve corporate goals. The outcome expectancy (Wigfield & Eccles, 2000) was
enhanced with the participants’ viewpoints about a forthcoming expectancy of success. Frontline
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managers were inspired to convert disadvantages into advantages and by, in their words, thinking
“outside-the-box.”
Conclusions and Summary of Findings
In this promising practice study, all 17 participants provided insight into developing
cultures that adapt and persist through times of disruptive change. The interview participants
were enabled by the EHTF management and channeled their creativity to develop new solutions.
According to participants, EHTFs focused on their people, and flexibility was the top priority to
develop an innovative culture. Following the onset of the pandemic, frontline managers reported
becoming more motivated to innovate, solve problems, and become part of the solution. A
complete summary of each theme and the associated sub-themes are shown in Table 8.
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Table 8
Themes and Associated Sub-Themes
Themes Sub-themes
Theme 1: Frontline managers
are empowered with
resources and autonomy.
Theme 2: Frontline managers
value, create, and measure
new ideas
Frontline managers are empowered to oversee their career
path.
Frontline managers are provided hardware, software,
networks, ergonomic office furniture.
Frontline managers recognize the importance of time
allocation for innovation.
Nine participants were enabled to operate with autonomy.
Frontline managers focus on increasing measurable value of
new ideas.
Frontline managers think creatively and solve problems.
Frontline managers derive new product ideas from the
customers’ requirements.
Theme 3: Frontline
managers adapt to
compensate for
pandemic
restrictions
Pandemic restrictions prompted new processes and
approaches to develop and maintain creative cultures
Frontline managers compensated by utilizing new
technologies and approaches for team communication.
Following the pandemic, frontline manager communication
shifted from informal and impromptu to structured and
standing weekly meeting schedules.
Following the pandemic, frontline managers were enabled to
establish remote labs at home.
Frontline managers developed remote processes to observe
customer interaction and capture customer feedback.
Frontline Managers should demonstrate proactive resilience
and increase purposeful teamwork to overcome the
unusual challenges in times of disruptive change.
Theme 4: Frontline
managers are
resilient when
ideas fail
Frontline managers become more resilient when ideas fail.
Frontline managers have environment with tolerance for
risk-taking and making mistakes.
Constructing the culture for innovation requires lowering the
penalty for risk-taking.
Frontline managers indicate that failure on any level leads to
knowledge and learning from mistakes.
Theme 5: EHTFs are
flexible and adapt
quickly to changes
EHTFs should have early warning hazard detection systems.
EHTFs should prepare for emergency risk financing.
Following the initial shock of the pandemic, EHTFs quickly
accepted the new reality as a long-term recovery problem.
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Themes Sub-themes
EHTFs applied flexibility to frontline managers to quickly
adapted and embraced the new challenges.
EHTFs enabled frontline managers to implement new
processes for remote operation.
EHTFs should develop a post-disaster restoration plan.
Theme 6: EHTFs
Focus on people
first – employees,
customers, partners
During difficult times, EHTFs prioritize people first to
develop and stabilize an innovative culture.
EHTFs improved equality and inclusion and enabled each
employee with a voice and opportunity to contribute.
EHTF focused on keeping their teams engaged and together.
EHTF management teams paid special attention to employee
wellness.
EHTFs incorporated informal team building to compensate
for the new reality of isolated employees.
Theme 7: Frontline
managers are more
motivated under
pressure
Following the pandemic, frontline managers became more
motivated to innovate and solve problems.
Following the pandemic, frontline managers became action-
oriented and aligned their motivation to problem solving.
Theme 8: “Out-of-
the-cube” fosters
“out-of-the-box”
thinking
The pandemic created a sudden change, which ignited new
ways of performing for frontline managers.
The newfound freedom provided unexpected advantages
that allowed frontline managers to find new solutions.
The eight Chapter 4 themes illustrate the crucial need to develop innovative cultures
during times of disruptive change. These findings frame the evidence-based recommendations
presented in Chapter 5.
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Chapter Five: Discussion and Recommendations
Chapter 5 presents a discussion of this promising practice study’s findings and compares
the findings to preceding evidence-based research discussed within the literature review. Chapter
5 also presents four recommendations, informed by Clark and Estes’s (2008) gap analysis
framework and this study’s findings, for established high technology firms (EHTFs) that aspire
to develop innovative cultures in times of disruptive change. The recommendations include
preparing for disruptive changes, providing new resources during disruptive changes,
empowering frontline managers, and allowing frontline managers to pursue creative challenges
that spark innovations and cultivate corporate entrepreneurship. Considerations for
implementation follow the recommendations. Chapter 5 concludes with a discussion on the
limitations, delimitations, recommendations for future research, and conclusion.
Discussion of Findings
This qualitative study explored factors that support innovative cultures within technology
firms during times of disruptive change. Specifically, the study focused on understanding the
influences that enable frontline managers to sustain innovative cultures during times of
disruptive change. Comparing and contrasting the previous research with the findings in this
study provides insights into how EHTFs strategically develop cultures that continue to innovate
during times of disruptive change. The findings in this study were informed through interviews
with frontline managers. The concept mutual trust is threaded throughout the findings between
EHTF leadership and frontline managers, EHTF frontline managers and customers, and the
benign competition between colleagues. The findings are presented according to the knowledge,
motivation, and organizational influences used in Clark and Estes’s (2008) gap analysis
framework.
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Frontline Managers’ Knowledge Connections to Prior Research
The first finding is related to declarative knowledge, which according to Anderson et al.
(2001), includes factual and conceptual knowledge. Forty-seven percent of the participants
expressed examples of the cognitive process dimension, such as recognizing and interpreting the
critical details that potentially lead to opportunities and having the ability to generate and
assimilate information to conceptualize new ideas. Prior research focusing on the need to
innovative and produce ideas with originality for one’s organization (Gatling et al., 2013; Sarros
et al., 2008; Turkel, 2014), is consistent with the frontline managers’ abilities to recognize
opportunities, create original knowledge, and pioneer strategic innovations for the EHTF.
The second finding is related to procedural knowledge that is needed to foster innovative
cultures. Seventy-one percent of the participants indicated that they know how to introduce new
processes to convert ideas to new products. The remaining 29% addressed developing ideas as a
team effort. Three frontline managers explained a systematic process they used for proposing a
solution, acquiring customer feedback for the solution, capturing alternative approaches,
evaluating the solution with merit to viability, and building the collective intelligence aided by
the voice of the customer. One hundred percent of the participants identified capturing the
customer’s voice as a critical input for idea generation. The interview participants, serving as
customer-facing frontline managers, believe they know how to adapt and align corporate
directives and strategies with customer needs and to advance an innovative culture. The
participants’ perceptions support the prior research by Sandberg et al. (2013), which suggested
developing an innovative culture is particularly effective when managers align corporate
directives and strategies with customer needs. The perceptions among frontline managers in this
study of the essential procedural knowledge needed to foster an innovative culture aligns with
the previous research, which emphasized the necessity to engage with customers, adapt
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strategies, anticipate customer needs, and generate ideas to conceptualize new products and
initiate the specification requirements (Antonelli & Fassio, 2016; Bennett & Parks, 2015; Chang
& Taylor, 2016; Van Der Vegt & Bunderson, 2005).
Frontline Managers’ Motivational Connections to Prior Research
One hundred percent of the participants expressed ideas that indicate they possess high
intrinsic and attainment value for developing innovative solutions. The participants indicated that
they liked what they were doing and were energized by working through the newfound problems
associated with working in isolation. In addition, the interview participants discussed their sense
of individual achievement and contributing to their organizational pandemic recovery efforts.
Specifically, the participants expressed their desire to find solutions to the problems induced by
the pandemic provided a sense of personal gratification. The intrinsic value, or task enjoyment,
and attainment value, or the individual achievement gratification for the task, are two of the
factors that reveal an individual’s task values (Elliot et al., 2018; Wigfield & Eccles, 2000). As
convincing performance predictors through the lens of expectancy value theory, value tends to
forecast an individual’s desire to accomplish a task while expectancy leads to the perseverance
and the intellectual exertion applied to the task (Wigfield & Eccles, 2000). Through the
expectancy value theory lens, the participants’ intrinsic and attainment value propelled the
participants to diligently approach the pandemic’s challenge of finding solutions to problems.
The participant’s desire marked the beginning of the recovery from the pandemic and their
personal gratification continued to fuel their efforts through the long-term challenges posed by
the pandemic.
Employee work engagement promotes attributes that drive individual performance, such
as individual self-efficacy, positivity, and expectations for organizational achievements (Saks &
Gruman, 2014). These attributes induce employee engagement to focus on high-quality
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performance with expectancy of organizational reclamation and maintaining market positions.
The participants of this study explained that the pandemic served as the catalyst that sparked the
motivation for them to operate proactively during difficult times.
EHTF Organizational Connections to Prior Research
The fourth finding is a commitment among the EHTFs, according to the participants, to
support an innovative culture by operating with flexibility and empowering frontline managers.
Seventy-one percent of the participants recognized the efforts of their respective EHTFs to adapt
to the COVID-19 pandemic’s challenges. Fifty-three percent of the participants discussed the
trust and empowerment that they received from their leadership. The EHTFs’ actions to quickly
modify and establish new operations considering the pandemic reality, as reported by the
participants, aligns with previous research indicating that EHTFs provide adequate and necessary
resources for developing innovative cultures during steady-state or normal operations (Hang et
al., 2015; O’Reilly & Tushman, 2004; Yeh‐Yun Lin & Liu, 2012). During the pandemic, the
participants’ leadership teams offered frontline managers increased leniency in scheduling with
extended deadlines, accepted new processes and procedures originated by frontline managers,
and allowed untested approaches introduced by frontline managers for pandemic problem-
solving. According to the participants, leadership teams also moved away from providing
compensation for preset accomplishments or goals, which had been a strategy used to incentivize
performance prior to the COVID-19 pandemic. Per Northouse (2016), transactional leadership is
only based on the reward and consequence exchanges between leaders and followers. Instead,
participants discussed how their leadership teams emphasized transformational leadership to
accelerate the recovery from the pandemic. Transformational leadership uses vision,
empowerment, trust, and personal developments to increase motivation of team members and
focus on long-term goals to strengthen relationships (Northouse, 2016). Leadership teams
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gradually allowed more empowerment of frontline managers than they had previously thought
possible, such as allowing multimillion dollar technology platforms to be taken home and home
videos made to explain first-to-market-development product operations and product
improvements. According to the participants when discussing empowerment, organizations that
apply flexibility to normal operations and empower the frontline managers to modify these
operations in real-time appeared to be an effective approach to recover from the pandemic.
The fifth finding from the participant interviews pertains to EHTFs’ approaches to
allocating time for frontline managers to innovate, independent of the time allocated for task-
oriented assignments. Fifty-three percent of the interview participants indicated they were given
the latitude to allocate time to innovate; an additional 35% expressed the desire to have more
time than they were given for innovation. The perceptions of the participants align with prior
research that EHTF organizations need to allocate time for innovation (Markham & Lee, 2013;
Rodríguez-Pinto et al., 2011). Adequate time and resource allocation, which can potentially
detract from established projects, are critical investment factors to enable managers to focus on
creating innovative cultures (Hang et al., 2015; O’Reilly & Tushman, 2004; Yeh‐Yun Lin & Liu,
2012).
The sixth finding is that EHTFs prioritized frontline manager wellbeing, required
individual team member inclusion, and proactively preserved team engagement, according to the
interview data. Twenty-four percent of the participants indicated that employee wellness became
a primary focus for their respective EHTFs during the pandemic. Thirty-five percent of the
participants acknowledged that the organizational leadership encouraged each isolated individual
contributor from the extended global teams to provide feedback, express their opinions, and
share ideas during the pandemic. The participants expressed that each employee had a voice to
communicate opinions and collaboratively modify the processes with the organizational
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leadership during the challenging times of the pandemic. Eighteen percent of the participants
indicated that their organizations introduced team building exercises to improve team chemistry
and reduce flight risks during the pandemic. These participant perspectives align with Bandura
(2005) and Eva (2017) regarding the reciprocal collaborative engagements between employees
and management, which benefited organizational team building and employee retention. As each
isolated frontline manager was given a voice at the onset of the pandemic, employee engagement
soared and compensated for the strain of working for the first time ever in isolated environments.
Reciprocal collaboration between frontline managers and the leadership teams was evident from
the interview data as each frontline manager discussed their ability to express an opinion or
provide feedback; the leadership teams adapted to remote operations through teamwork led by
isolated frontline managers. The interpersonal process that outlines authentic leadership as
relational, created by leaders and followers together, was evident in the description of the
relationship between the frontline managers and leadership teams as stated by the participants.
This interpersonal process, as described, is perfectly aligned with adaptive leadership
(Northouse, 2016). Specifically, the interview participants’ descriptions of the reciprocal
collaborative engagement supported by their leaders aligned with Northouse’s (2016)
descriptions of adaptive leadership illustrating that the reciprocal process develops as leaders
affect followers and followers affect leaders.
Recommendations for Practice
The interview findings establish a set of potential promising practices from EHTF
frontline managers’ perspectives to develop innovative cultures during times of disruptive
change. Information derived from the interview findings, informed by Clark and Estes’s (2008)
framework, provide the foundation for the promising practice recommendations. Four
recommendations are identified in the below sub-sections for other EHTF leadership teams to
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follow based on what the interview data indicated was working among the most profitable
EHTFs. Recognizing that not all EHTFs have the wherewithal that the most profitable EHTFs
possess, the recommendations may be implemented with flexibility to accommodate the
objectives of each EHTF. The following recommendations are suggested for executive
organizational leaders and frontline managers.
Recommendation One: Empower Frontline Managers by Providing Autonomy and Risk-
Tolerance to Achieve Innovative Idea Creation
The results of this study indicated that EHTFs should enable frontline managers with
autonomy and risk-tolerance to achieve innovative idea creation. According to participants,
innovations occurred when their management teams allowed frontline managers to operate with
autonomy and eliminated penalties when ideas failed. According to the participants, the concept
of risk-tolerance is to fail quickly to reduce the associated cost of the insufficient idea. Moreover,
frontline managers indicated that learning from mistakes leads to knowledge. Applying negative
consequences to failing tends to drive unwanted behaviors, such as concealing valuable and
timely corporate information and seeking psychological safety (Peng et al., 2018; Son et al.,
2017). In addition, the interview participants’ insights also align with the previous research from
Kim and Huarng (2011) and Sandberg et al. (2013) regarding the impact of innovative individual
contributors to organizations; innovators strive for achievement and have a propensity for risk-
taking. Specifically, Sandberg et al. (2013) found that creative individuals also tolerate
ambiguity, pursue solutions, and contain self-efficacy with a locus of control. Therefore, the
findings of this study suggest EHTFs should empower frontline managers by providing
autonomy and risk-tolerance to achieve innovative idea creation.
One hundred percent of the participants indicated that they perceived their organizations
to be trustworthy and frontline managers felt that their organizations entrusted them to make
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decisions related to managing their teams in transitioning to a remote operating model.
According to participants, the pandemic provided an opportunity to enhance trust with remote
employees and further affirmed the frontline managers’ faith in their respective leaders. During
the pandemic, 71% of the participants were entrusted to transform their organizations that rely on
teamwork collaboration to autonomously operate with complex and expensive corporate systems
in remote locations. The interview data aligned with prior research by Edmondson (1999) and
Korsgaard et al. (2002) that found a positive, motivating influence on teams when employees
have reciprocal interpersonal trust and respect with leaders. In addition, the participants
explained that due to the remote operations, EHTFs authorized additional need-based
investments to deploy multiple redundant systems for individual frontline managers in isolation.
The 17 participants in this study discussed the energizing effect of this trust and their
efforts to validate the trust placed in them by their leadership teams by producing positive
outcomes and realigning the communication and business processes to compensate for being
isolated. This reciprocal relationship built on trust aligns well with the transformational
leadership research that emphasizes relational caring, creativity, and a perspective to enable
followers’ attributes (Ehrlich et al., 1990; Turkel, 2014). The participants’ insights on their
respective leaders’ behaviors indicates their leaders’ actions aligned with the transformational
leadership concept that transformational leaders focus followers’ motives to reach individual and
organizational initiatives, which produces psychological benefits for both the leader and the
follower (Northouse, 2016; Sadeghi & Pihie, 2012).
Eighty-eight percent of the participants indicated that saving space on the schedule that is
set aside and not already accounted for other purposes are necessary to produce innovative
solutions through idea generation, conceptualizing, developing prototypes for proof of concepts,
and pioneering innovations. Unscheduled segments of time should be allocated for free thinking,
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experimentation, conceptualizing, and developing ideas rather than focused on milestone
deliverables and schedule commitments. According to participants, creativity is ignited by
frontline managers being enabled to work on ideas and solutions with autonomy independently.
Participants specifically explained the value of having independence in the approach and
methodology they chose to take in solving a problem, free from the strict expectations of the
traditional milestone-based reporting schedule. Risk-tolerance behavioral operations fostered
penalty-free creative thinking that drove the necessary frontline managers activities. Frontline
managers were able to capture critical customer and market information, formulate and
conceptualize ideas, vet ideas, develop business opportunities, and allocate resources for new
product developments and enabling an innovative culture. Specifically, Soluk et al. (2021)
discovered the cognitive abilities of the human resources, building knowledge, and sharing
information inside the firm to be requirements for reacting flexibly to exogenous shocks. Key
individual contributors create a knowledge chain that foster synergistic collaborative
partnerships, build human skills and expertise, and ensure high-quality innovation (Manero et al.,
2020). The essence of an innovative culture inspires frontline managers to think creatively with
risk-tolerance autonomy and produce never-before-seen products and services.
Recommendation Two: Prepare for Disruptive Change With Flexible Operations, Rapid
Recovery Planning, and Consideration for Hybrid Environments
The results of this study illustrated the future need for EHTFs to prepare corporate
operational plans to address times of disruptive changes, such as pandemics, force majeure,
natural disasters, and new technologies, that alter the status quo of the market. According to
participants, these disruptive changes can adversely affect business operations, assurance
continuity, viability, and employee safety. In addition, the participants identified that corporate
flexibility and the ability to deploy rapid recovery plans are also critical moving forward. Since
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the exogenous shock of a pandemic can induce a blatant discontinuity in economic activity and
an unexpected disparaging effect on companies (Kuckertz et al., 2020; Soluk et al., 2021),
planning for recovery and business continuity is a prudent measure for EHTFs. Since the
participant’s perspectives align with past research that suggests disruptive change is mired with
uncertainty and accelerates the necessity to enable innovative and competitive solutions (Laurell
& Sandström, 2018; Smith, 2014), EHTFs need to be able to respond quickly to adverse
conditions with contingency plans, funding, and the reallocation of resources. Therefore, the
findings of this study suggest EHTFs should establish proactive plans to prepare for disruptive
changes with increased flexibility, develop a rapid recovery plan, and consider developing hybrid
work environment arrangements to reduce structural limitations and induce an innovative
culture.
One hundred percent of the interview participants focused on the concept of flexibility as
the critical component for EHTFs in addressing the mass scale uncertainty and overcoming the
tribulations of the pandemic. According to Clark and Estes (2008), organizational performance is
critical for real-world problem-solving designed to elevate performance and achieve defined
corporate goals. Furthermore, organizational structures should be designed to enable collaboration
and problem solving for developing an innovative culture (Bennett & Parks, 2015; Olszak &
Kisielnicki, 2018). As the interview participants consistently expressed, the necessity of ETHF
leadership to address the challenges of the new reality with flexibility and a willingness to modify
operations previously considered rigid was the key to navigating through the times of disruptive
change. During the discussion of planning for unforeseen circumstances, IP13 expressed, “If we’d
look at the change in the marketplace, pandemic, and even pre-pandemic, we have to move faster.
… things are very chaotic, so we have to think differently.” Part of thinking differently is to
prepare for these unforeseen circumstances and forecasted events that can disrupt the marketplace
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or business operations. The CES document analysis provided additional insight to guide planning
for unforeseen disruptive events: EHTFs should focus on risk information and analytics, have early
warning hazard detection systems, develop post-disaster restoration plans, and prepare for
emergency risk financing (CES Tech Articles, 2020).
Seventy-one percent of the interview participants perceived that their respective EHTFs
quickly regrouped, adapted, and changed quickly. Deliberate rapid recovery planning for shock
and disruptive changes provides a prudent strategy for EHTFs with the wherewithal to make the
necessary investments to predetermine survival during times of disruptive changes. A mass-scale
disruptive change, such as COVID-19, can permanently alter business practice models,
emphasizing the need for innovation during times of disruption from uncontrollable forces
(Zoumpourlis et al., 2020). Interview participants identified specific ETHF leadership efforts that
enabled their rapid recovery following the initial disturbance of the pandemic:
• Introduced new safety protocols;
• Established remote operations;
• Distributed new equipment and technology to enable remote working in isolated
environments;
• Authorized laboratories at home for senior frontline managers;
• Modified team communication practices to emphasize collaborative video calls;
• Created new collaborative methods to include producing remote informational videos;
and
• Implemented regular cadences for systematic idea vetting and other functional processes.
Finally, deliberate planning needs to incorporate architecture to support a seamless
transition between working in the office environment and working from home. Seventy-one
percent of the interview participants indicated that innovative ideas thrived working in the at-
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home environment despite the disruption of the pandemic. This final component of the
recommendation introduces the possibility of a hybrid concept of “campus plus home” to induce
dynamic environments and purposefully create an innovative culture. In an effort to evaluate
organizational structures, EHTFs should capitalize on lessons learned from the pandemic and
introduce a hybrid environment for frontline managers to alternate working in the office and
working at home. The alternating periods may be different for each organization; however, the
participants shared numerous examples of how working at home sparked creativity that is vital
for EHTFs to develop first-to-market products. Working in the office is ideal for collaboration
meetings and vetting ideas. Working at home or outside of the office appears to be ideal to
eliminate unnecessary stress, delays, and driving time to develop innovative ideas. Working
outside of the office may also include business travel and customer meetings. Developing an
innovative culture requires addressing organizational structural limitations (Bennett & Parks,
2015). Therefore, capitalizing on the interview participants’ perspectives and previous research
provides an opportunity for an organization to improve organizational structures to elevate
performance and develop an innovative culture in times of disruptive change.
Recommendation Three: Provide Frontline Managers With New Resources During Times
of Disruptive Change
The results of this study indicated that leadership teams that desire positive cultural
outcomes and innovative EHTFs should provide new resources during times of disruptive
change. According to participants, the worldwide pandemic instantly forced new realities upon
EHTFs, which required new isolated working environments with associated new resources to
make working from home effective for the organizations and their employees. The interview
participants exemplified qualitative findings also uncovered in research by Soluk et al. (2021).
The pre-pandemic organizational inertia tendency of firms with solid marketplace positions was
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replaced by post-pandemic movement to modify practices to transfer work-related technologies
to home office environments (Soluk et al., 2021). Specifically, this study illustrates that
innovative EHTFs quickly enabled remote frontline managers with digital infrastructures such as
video conferencing, virtual private network servers, and other work-related systems. The
resourcing of home-based digital infrastructures was given a high priority whereas other
operational requirements, such as business trips, in person customer meetings, educational
training, and exhibitions, were canceled (Soluk et al., 2021). Therefore, the findings of this study
coupled with those of Soluk et al. (2021) suggest EHTFs should prioritize and allocate frontline
managers with new and appropriate resources to avoid stagnation and to actively pursue the
firm’s objectives during times of disruptive changes.
Sixty-five percent of the interview participants indicated that the EHTFs were willing to
break long-standing traditional practices and allow new exploratory approaches to conduct
business remotely. Frontline managers, working across different geographies, time zones, and
cultures, were faced with disruptive changes, which required creativity to develop new working
models to solve problems. EHTFs provided new computers, communications equipment, secure
network virtualization, ergonomic furniture, and EHTF proprietary technology. These
approaches align with previous research that suggests that adaptive leaders can respond to
business climate transitions that could significantly alter operational strategies (Northouse, 2016;
Van Der Hoven et al., 2012). The research also aligns with the prior research that indicates that
developing a new set of operational procedures requires a long-term, systematic effort (Woolard,
2018), particularly disruptive changes such as a pandemic. Adaptive leadership principles, such
as responding to transitions that could change business strategy and operational efforts (Van Der
Hoven et al., 2012), are critical to reallocate the limited economic resources to enable frontline
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managers to continue with a productive work environment and navigate through the challenges
of disruptive changes.
Recommendation Four: Support Frontline Managers to Cultivate Corporate
Entrepreneurship
One hundred percent of the interview participants indicated their creativity was sparked
by the new challenges resulting from the pandemic. The findings of this study further indicated
that frontline managers were able to develop corporate entrepreneurship by pursuing innovative
challenges with associated goals conceived by credible organizational leaders, including the
frontline managers themselves. EHTFs were (and are) facing multiple competitive pressures on a
global scale that require innovation and risk-taking. EHTFs should support strategic initiatives to
support frontline managers to cultivate corporate entrepreneurship create innovations. A
corporate entrepreneurial strategy contends that a firm’s strategic intent is to deliberately seek
entrepreneurial opportunities (Kreiser et al., 2021; Kuratko et al., 2015; Tseng & Tseng, 2019).
Therefore, if the frontline manager has been empowered with risk-tolerance autonomy as in
Recommendation 3, the findings of this study suggest that frontline managers should develop
corporate entrepreneurship by initiating innovative challenges within their respective teams to
overcome barriers and achieve desired organizational outcomes, analogous to the challenges that
sparked creativity and produced results during the COVID-19 pandemic.
According to this study’s participants, the pandemic created challenges that inspired
frontline managers to think creatively and innovate. The lesson to be captured is that the
interview participants expressed examples of innovating because of, rather than in spite of, the
new and unique challenges presented by the pandemic. Examples provided by participants
included responding to adversity by developing new communication methods and discovering
new approaches to capitalize on being isolated from their normal office environment. One of the
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motivating factors that influences persistence and mental effort is overcoming internal or
external obstacles to achieve goals (Clark & Estes, 2008). Proficient mangers and team members
should engage in strategic actions, purposeful opportunity-seeking, and experimentation in new
product and process developments to achieve a corporate entrepreneurship strategy (Kreiser et
al., 2021). The interview data in this study support this perspective. These findings can be
extended to times of prosperity, when organizational inertia trends towards maintaining the
status quo (Schroeder, 2013), in suggesting that motivation may be harnessed by crafting unique
challenge initiatives for the frontline managers to solve complex or long-standing problems to
develop innovations that become industry disruptors.
Technological disruptions challenge individual capabilities to produce new technologies
(Hang et al., 2015; Laurell & Sandström, 2018). Innovative organizations are characterized by
developing new markets and economic growth (Lambert, 2018; Markham & Lee, 2013; O’Reilly
& Tushman, 2013). During times of stability, EHTFs should capitalize on their frontline
managers’ creativity and attainment value to pursue entrepreneurial challenge initiatives and
objectives in line with the research by Kreiser et al., (2021), Kuratko et al. (2015), Tseng and
Tseng (2019), and the findings of this study. By developing a culture of corporate
entrepreneurship, the frontline managers can initiate new ventures to achieve innovative idea
creation that leads to first-to-market products.
Considerations for the Recommendations
The recommendations made in this study are designed to promote an innovative mindset
among both organizational leaders and frontline managers, who in turn are expected to influence
employees within the organization and the organizational culture as a whole. Bankins (2015) and
Chaudhry et al. (2009) discussed the psychological contracts between employees and employers
and indicate that these contracts are both shaped by events and focus on employee beliefs and
96
perceptions about mutual responsibilities between the employee and the organization. The
recommendations in this promising practice study exemplify the positive psychological contracts
between interview participants and their respective leadership teams.
Recommendation 1 is an organizational recommendation to empower frontline managers
by providing increased risk-tolerance autonomy. Recommendation 1 is a necessary condition for
Recommendation 4, which is focused on harnessing the creativity of the frontline manager to
foster an entrepreneurial environment within their EHTF. Not specific to times of disruptive
change, Recommendations 1 and 4 may be implemented to drive innovative initiatives during
normal steady-state operations. Recommendation 2 is an organizational recommendation that
should be considered prior to disruptive times and designed to mitigate the risks of times of
disruptive changes. Recommendation 3 is an organizational recommendation that pertains
specifically to times of disruptive change. Organizational change capability depends on the
ability for a firm to dynamically adjust to its circumstances (Judge et al., 2015). Organizational
leaders should review and consider the findings and recommendations to determine the
appropriate actions given their unique contexts and their respective capacity for change.
Limitations and Delimitations
Limitations are influences beyond the researcher’s control that confine the study’s
methods and conclusions (Creswell & Creswell, 2018). Noted limitations on this research
included confidentiality concerns, corporate secrecy, EHTF resource limitations, ETHF
technological capability limitations, and a lack of representation of women in the participant
group. Confidentiality fortifies the boundaries that restrict high-technology industry information
exchange, which serves as an industry-specific limitation. Many EHTFs operate with corporate
secrecy and do not want to share their reasons for success and their internal problems (Parello,
2015). The frontline managers may have also been constrained beyond their control with limited
97
EHTF internal resources and organization technological capabilities. It was not known to me if
this was the case for any particular interview participant. Finally, this research is limited in
perspective with a lack of women participants. Five invitations were extended for women
frontline managers to provide their input for this study, three women were initially interested, but
only one pursued the interview.
Intentional framing defined by the researcher to set expectations and boundaries are the
delimitations of a research study (Creswell & Creswell, 2018). This field study attempts to
generalize to the high-technology industry without interviewing all of the frontline managers
within the entire field of the most innovative EHTFs. By interviewing only 17 participants,
important concepts may have been excluded. In addition, focusing exclusively on the frontline
manager was a delimitation of the study. The executive leadership perspective within these
organizations is not included in this study. However, given that the frontline manager is at the
forefront of idea generation and customer service for EHTFs (Chang & Taylor, 2016), this study
was intentionally focused on the frontline managers. Finally, the framework used in the design of
this study delimits the set of issues for consideration, which may inadvertently exclude an
important item or attribute. To mitigate the risk of excluding a key component, the framework
was adapted from the process development components identified by Markham and Lee (2013),
the customer inclusion perspective of Chang and Taylor (2016), and the adaptation of Clark and
Estes’s analytic framework (2008).
Recommendations for Future Research
This promising practice study was focused on the perspectives of frontline managers that
work directly with customers and partners in EHTFs. Further quantitative or mixed-method
research may also explore the effectiveness of the hybrid environment concept of “campus plus
home” to induce dynamic environments and purposefully create an innovative culture. One
98
interview participant, IP1, was interested in researching the virtual office years before the
pandemic. Moreover, participants provided insight that working at both the office and lab offers
collaborative advantages, but they also described how working away from the office produced
unique innovation and potential cost saving advantages for the EHTF. The historical working
environment has been disrupted by the COVID-19 pandemic and needs further research. A
quantitative study that seeks to examine relationships between developing an innovative culture
and producing first-to-market products could be valuable for EHTFs.
A similar promising practice study that includes all or predominately women would also
add value and contribute to the field. The KMO model (Clark & Estes, 2008) and the
Bronfenbrenner theoretical model (Gardiner et al., 1998) be utilized to research the specific
components and gaps of the lack of gender diversity and women in frontline manager positions
in the high-technology industry. The Bronfenbrenner theoretical model (Gardiner et al., 1998)
could be applied to expose and research the interconnections, relationships, and influences
asserted from the environment, and each component women face in this problem of practice. For
the mutual benefit of all people involved in EHTFs, further research can help improve
organizational training on the values of gender diversity and the recognition of female leadership
success in the high-technology industry.
In addition, a similar study may be fashioned to examine the perspective from the
executive level of management at EHTFs. Specifically, the executive level perspective may be
useful to explore the fiscal limitations of innovation and the decision process to allocate
resources. Given that EHTFs have the challenge of allocating limited resources to improve
existing products and create disruptive breakthroughs (Hang et al., 2015; O’Reilly & Tushman,
2004) as well as the economic impact on firms during disruptive changes (Kuckertz et al., 2020;
Soluk et al., 2021), a research study to provide guidelines and specific fiscal strategies to allocate
99
emergency funds, develop pandemic-based operating budgets, reallocate resources, and
understand the financial tradeoffs would be beneficial. The fiscal-focused research work would
be opportune considering the wide range of potential disruptions to regular business operations
experienced as a result of disruptive change created by force majeure events in particular.
Conclusion
This promising practice study explored the influences that enable frontline managers to
develop and sustain innovative cultures during times of disruptive change. Past research has
found that organizational leadership demonstrates value for innovation by supporting flexibility,
autonomy, experimentation, and resourcefulness (Markham & Lee, 2013; Zahay et al., 2018).
Organizations that value innovative cultures enjoy developing new markets, the positive effects
of innovative solutions, and economic growth (Lambert, 2018; O’Reilly & Tushman, 2013).
Informed by the Clark and Estes (2008) gap analysis framework, this study introduced four
recommendations for EHTFs to channel efforts to develop innovative cultures in times of
disruptive change based upon data collected through interviews with 17 frontline managers
working in the most successful innovative EHTFs in the United States.
The four recommendations introduced are for other EHTF leadership teams to follow
based on what the interview data indicated was working among the most profitable EHTFs:
prepare for disruptive change with flexible operations, rapid recovery planning, and
consideration for hybrid environments; provide frontline managers with new resources during
times of disruptive change; empower frontline managers by providing autonomy and risk-
tolerance to achieve innovative idea creation; and frontline managers empowered with risk-
tolerance autonomy should channel creativity to cultivate a corporate entrepreneurial effort. This
promising practice study provides insight for EHTFs to develop innovative cultures proactively
and strategically. In conclusion, aspiring innovative EHTFs can apply successful strategies to
100
build innovative cultures, values, and enable creative frontline managers to thrive in times of
stability and recover quickly during and following disruptive change. Armed with the research
and recommendations in this study, aspiring innovative EHTFs can ultimately elevate corporate
performance.
101
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Appendix A: Interview Protocol
A brief introduction explains why this study was conducted and to emphasize that the
participant can end the interview at any time.
The interview commenced with a question to develop a comfortable rapport with the
participant. These questions were important for the participants to provide insight into their
positions and roles in developing innovative cultures and first-to-market products. (Question 1)
The interview shifted to examining the participant’s organization, including developing
an innovative culture that facilitates developing first-to-market products. These questions were
important to satisfy the first research question (RQ1) and focus primarily on the organizational
influences. (Questions 2-8)
The interview transitioned to first-to-market products development processes. These
questions were important to satisfy the second research question (RQ2) and focus primarily on
the knowledge influences and motivational influences. These questions were intended to
determine if the frontline manager has metacognition and motivational incentives to develop
innovative cultures and develop the necessary innovative processes (including customer
involvement). The frontline managers were asked to highlight the most significant innovation
challenges. (Questions 9-17)
The interview concluded by recognizing the effort of the participant and providing the
participant assurance of confidentiality. The Data Collection Procedures for the Interview are
provided in Appendix B.
116
Introduction to the Interview
Thank you for meeting with me today. I am Randall Lopez. I am conducting this
interview as part of my dissertation research with my doctoral program at USC. The purpose of
this study is to understand how established high-technology firms’ frontline managers develop
innovative cultures in times of disruptive change.
I would like to provide you this Information Sheet for Exempt Studies. Your participation
is completely voluntary. We can skip any question you want at any time, and you may stop the
interview at any time. Any identifiable information obtained in connection with this study will
remain confidential. Your responses will be coded with a false name (pseudonym) and
maintained separately from your answers.
If you are comfortable with it, I would like to record our conversation and the recording
will be destroyed after it is transcribed. Are you comfortable if I record the conversation?
Do you have any questions before we proceed?
117
Table A1
Interview Protocol
Interview questions Potential probes RQ addressed
1. Please describe your role and
responsibilities in your
organization.
In what ways, if any, have your
responsibilities changed since the
beginning of the coronavirus
pandemic?
N/A
2. In what ways, if at all, does your
organization foster an
innovative environment?
2
3. Tell me about your
organizational procedures to
capture customer knowledge
that leads to first-to-market
product developments?
1
4. Tell me about how you have
adapted in the last year to be
able to continue to drive new
product development.
How have prior experiences informed
your current approach to
innovation given processes at your
organization?
2, 3
5. In what ways does the
organization support you, if at
all, to focus on creating an
innovative environment?
Are you empowered to allocate
resources you think are needed?
Do you feel that you have the
necessary resources?
Do you feel that you have the
necessary time allocated to
develop a creative environment?
1
6. How confident, if at all, are you
in your ability to pioneer future
innovations?
How, if at all, has your confidence
changed in the past year?
3
7. How important, if at all, is
pioneering future innovations
to you at this time?
How, if at all, has your perception of
this value changed in the past
year?
If it has changed, what do you see as
more important now [or why has
pioneering future innovations
become more important]?
3
8. Can you tell me about a time you
were able to create and pioneer
a strategic concept or idea in
your organization before the
coronavirus pandemic?
What are the obstacles you faced?
How does that experience inform
your future approach to innovation
given processes at your
organization?
2
9. What challenges, if any, are you
currently facing to develop an
innovative culture within your
team?
2
118
Interview questions Potential probes RQ addressed
10. How, if at all, has your
leadership supported you to
navigate these challenges?
1, 2
11. Tell me about how your
approach or processes to share
discoveries and knowledge
within your organization that
leads to first-to-market product
developments has changed, if
at all, due to the pandemic?
2
12. Is there anything I should have
asked you that I did not about
how the pandemic has
impacted the culture of
innovation at your
organization?
2
13. Are there documents that you
can provide that illustrate how
your organization innovates,
especially in this time of global
crisis?
Conclusion to the Interview
I want to thank you for being a participant in this study. As a reminder, your name,
organization, and company name are confidential, and the recording of today’s interview will be
destroyed after it is transcribed. Thank you again for your outstanding participation.
119
Appendix B: Information Sheet for Exempt Research
University of Southern California
Rossier School of Education
3470 Trousdale Parkway
Los Angeles, CA 90089
INFORMATION SHEET FOR EXEMPT RESEARCH
STUDY TITLE: Game Changers: Developing Innovative Cultures in the High-Technology
Industry During Times of Disruptive Change: A Promising Practice Study
PRINCIPAL INVESTIGATOR: Randall Glenn Lopez
FACULTY ADVISOR: Dr. Jennifer L. Phillips
You are invited to participate in a research study. Your participation is voluntary. This document
explains information about this study. You should ask questions about anything that is unclear to
you.
PURPOSE
The purpose of the study is to explore and understand factors that support innovative cultures
within technology firms during times of disruptive change to increase successful new product
development cycles. You are invited as a possible participant because you are a frontline
manager in an innovative established high technology firm. No proprietary information will be
asked.
PARTICIPANT INVOLVEMENT
If you agree to participate in the study, I will ask you to participate in an interview lasting
approximately 1 hour. I will ask guided questions, but the interview will be conversational. I may
also ask follow-up questions. The interview will be audio recorded with your permission. You
may refrain from answering any questions.
PAYMENT/COMPENSATION FOR PARTICIPATION
You will receive $10 Amazon gift card for your time. You do not have to answer all of the
questions in order to receive the card.
CONFIDENTIALITY
The members of the research team and the University of Southern California Institutional
Review Board (IRB) may access the data. The IRB reviews and monitors research studies to
protect the rights and welfare of research subjects.
I will facilitate the interview. You have the right to review and edit the audio recordings or
transcripts. Only I will have access to the audio recordings. I will destroy the audio recording
120
once they have been transcribed. The transcripts will be stored on a password-protected
computer in a secure location by the lead researcher.
When the results of the research are published or discussed in conferences, no identifiable
information will be used.
INVESTIGATOR CONTACT INFORMATION
Principal Investigator
Randall G. Lopez
Tel: (415) 766-1889
Email: rglopez@usc.edu
IRB CONTACT INFORMATION
If you have any questions about your rights as a research participant, please contact the
University of Southern California Institutional Review Board at (323) 442-0114 or email
irb@usc.edu.
Abstract (if available)
Abstract
Innovation is paramount to an organization’s success, and organizational survival can be challenging when adapting to disruptive change and uncertainty. This study focused on developing innovative cultures to endure and evolve during disruptive change due to unforeseen extreme events that can alter business practices models and the competitive landscape. This inductive study’s stakeholder focus group members are frontline managers in the most innovative established high-technology firms (EHTFs) with 10 years of experience in their field. Frontline managers consist of customer-facing application and solution engineers, technical account managers, and technical marketing engineers. The purpose of this promising practice study was to understand the influences that enable frontline managers to develop and sustain innovative cultures during times of disruptive change. The semi-structured qualitative approach of the study was designed to expose the organizational enablement of the frontline manager, the motivation of the frontline manager, and the ability of the frontline manager. Informed by the Clark and Estes (2008) gap analysis framework, this study introduced four recommendations for established high-technology firms to channel efforts to develop innovative cultures in times of disruptive change based on themes developed from interview data. The following recommendations are included: (a) Empower Frontline Managers by Providing Autonomy and Risk-Tolerance to Achieve Innovative Idea Creation; (b) Prepare for Disruptive Change with Flexible Operations, Rapid Recovery Planning, and Consideration for Hybrid Environments; (c) Provide Frontline Managers with New Resources During Times of Disruptive Change; (d) Support Frontline Managers to Cultivate Corporate Entrepreneurship.
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Asset Metadata
Creator
Lopez, Randall Glenn
(author)
Core Title
Game changers: developing high-technology industry innovative cultures during times of disruptive change
School
Rossier School of Education
Degree
Doctor of Education
Degree Program
Organizational Change and Leadership (On Line)
Degree Conferral Date
2021-12
Publication Date
10/06/2021
Defense Date
09/10/2021
Publisher
University of Southern California
(original),
University of Southern California. Libraries
(digital)
Tag
Autonomy,culture,first-to-market,high-technology,inductive,innovation,OAI-PMH Harvest,pandemic,risk-tolerance
Format
application/pdf
(imt)
Language
English
Contributor
Electronically uploaded by the author
(provenance)
Advisor
Phillips, Jennifer L. (
committee chair
), Combs, Wayne A. (
committee member
), Hirabayashi, Kimberly E. (
committee member
)
Creator Email
ghostly.maestro@icloud.com,randallglopez@gmail.com
Permanent Link (DOI)
https://doi.org/10.25549/usctheses-oUC16022038
Unique identifier
UC16022038
Legacy Identifier
etd-LopezRanda-10135
Document Type
Dissertation
Format
application/pdf (imt)
Rights
Lopez, Randall Glenn
Type
texts
Source
University of Southern California
(contributing entity),
University of Southern California Dissertations and Theses
(collection)
Access Conditions
The author retains rights to his/her dissertation, thesis or other graduate work according to U.S. copyright law. Electronic access is being provided by the USC Libraries in agreement with the author, as the original true and official version of the work, but does not grant the reader permission to use the work if the desired use is covered by copyright. It is the author, as rights holder, who must provide use permission if such use is covered by copyright. The original signature page accompanying the original submission of the work to the USC Libraries is retained by the USC Libraries and a copy of it may be obtained by authorized requesters contacting the repository e-mail address given.
Repository Name
University of Southern California Digital Library
Repository Location
USC Digital Library, University of Southern California, University Park Campus MC 2810, 3434 South Grand Avenue, 2nd Floor, Los Angeles, California 90089-2810, USA
Repository Email
cisadmin@lib.usc.edu
Tags
first-to-market
high-technology
inductive
innovation
pandemic
risk-tolerance