Ashwin Joshi

For suppliers to secure a positive return on their investment in the creation of component innovations, they must ensure that original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) implement these component innovations. The objectives of this study are to (1) identify the activities that suppliers undertake to foster innovation implementation, (2) articulate the theoretical mechanisms that mediate the impact of these activities on innovation implementation, and (3) establish the inter-related effects of these mediating theoretical mechanisms on innovation implementation. The results from a survey of 173 supplier–OEM dyads reveal that functional advantage is the theoretical mechanism that mediates the impact of two supplier actions—knowledge acquisition and installation support—on innovation implementation. The results also show that reputational advantage mediates the effect of innovative OEM endorsement and that relational advantage mediates the effects of supplier asset specificity and supplier innovativeness on innovation implementation. In terms of the inter-related effects of the mediating mechanisms on innovation implementation, the results indicate that relational advantage complements the positive impact of functional advantage on innovation implementation. In addition, the results reveal that innovation implementation has a positive impact on the financial performance of component innovations.

Prior marketing literature offers a compelling theoretical rationale in support of two contradictory propositions, namely, that customer orientation is negatively related to (i.e., hinders) radical product innovation and that customer orientation is positively related to (i.e., helps) radical product innovation. In this research, the contextual conditions that determine the validity of these contradictory propositions are identified. Drawing from the literature on organizational rewards, two types of organizational rewards—outcome based and strategy based—are identified as being the key contextual conditions. It is hypothesized that when outcome‐based rewards are in effect, customer orientation is negatively related to radical positive innovation and, that when strategy‐based rewards are in effect, customer orientation is positively related to radical product innovation. Results from a survey of 156 manufacturing firms, and from a survey of 97 of their customers, provide support for these hypotheses. While prior research has attempted to explain the contradictory nature of the relationship between customer orientation and radical product innovation using typology‐based and mediator‐based approaches, the contextual condition‐based approach has not been well developed. This gap is addressed by the present research. From a practitioner perspective, the research is important because it identifies a concrete mechanism that new product development managers can deploy, in tandem with customer orientation, if they intend to generate radical product innovations. Given the potential gains that flow from radical product innovation, the research findings are expected to be of considerable interest to managers of new product development projects.

Institutional theory argues that conformity to institutional pressure enhances the survival probability of organizations. Two key limitations of institutional theory have been proposed in recent literature: one, that it ignores the role of top management, and two, that it focuses only on survival as a benefit to the exclusion of more strategic benefits such as growth and profitability. In this research, we build a conceptual model that addresses both of these limitations in the context of institutional pressure on organizations to behave more responsibly vis‐à‐vis the natural environment. Results from a survey of 199 manufacturing firms show that the relationship between institutional pressure and corporate responsiveness to the pressure (i.e. corporate environmental responsiveness) is enhanced when top management commitment to the environment is high. Moreover, results show that organizational conformity to institutional pressure enhances the strategic benefits that organizations receive.