IDEAS home Printed from https://ideas.repec.org/a/bec/imsber/v9y2017i1p131-155.html
   My bibliography  Save this article

The Individual's Influence on Low-Technology Innovation: A Critical Realism Based Case Study on North-West Pakistan's Marble Sector

Author

Listed:
  • Muhammad Nouman

    (Institute of Management Sciences, Peshawar)

  • Aamer Taj

    (Institute of Management Sciences, Peshawar)

  • Saleem Gul

    (Institute of Management Sciences, Peshawar)

Abstract

While 49 firm-level determinants of low-technology (LT) innovation have been identified through a systematic review of literature, only 9 amongst these are related to the key individual (owner and top manager). The extant literature does not shed much light on the in-depth dynamics behind presence or lack of LT innovation. Therefore, this study offers a much-needed understanding of the influence of small firm owners and managers on LT innovation in north-west Pakistan’s marble industry. Advocating the need for critical realism that has been an often-ignored paradigm in management research, this paper offers a unique perspective on the paradigm’s fundamental tenets which are “objects” as individuals and their roles, “mechanisms” as ways in which objects influence an event such as occurrence of LT innovation, and “causal powers” as individual-level determinants of LT innovation. A case study approach and mixed methods have been used to investigate two marble sectors. Findings reveal that the more the interests and stakes of owners and managers diverge, the lesser the instance of LT innovation. A role-ordered matrix is presented and explanations of mechanisms and causal powers are offered in terms of individuals’ professional and psychological traits and nature of business stake

Suggested Citation

  • Muhammad Nouman & Aamer Taj & Saleem Gul, 2017. "The Individual's Influence on Low-Technology Innovation: A Critical Realism Based Case Study on North-West Pakistan's Marble Sector," Business & Economic Review, Institute of Management Sciences, Peshawar, Pakistan, vol. 9(1), pages 131-155, March.
    • Handle: RePEc:bec:imsber:v:9:y:2017:i:1:p:131-155
    DOI: dx.doi.org/10.22547/BER/9.1.8
    as

    Download full text from publisher

    File URL: http://imsciences.edu.pk/files/journals/Vol%209%20Issue%201/Paper%208.pdf
    Download Restriction: no
    File URL: https://libkey.io/dx.doi.org/10.22547/BER/9.1.8?utm_source=ideas
    LibKey link: if access is restricted and if your library uses this service, LibKey will redirect you to where you can use your library subscription to access this item
    ---><---

    References listed on IDEAS

    as
    1. Lokshin, Boris & Hagedoorn, John & Letterie, Wilko, 2011. "The bumpy road of technology partnerships: Understanding causes and consequences of partnership mal-functioning," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 40(2), pages 297-308, March.
    2. Dunk, Alan S., 2007. "Innovation budget pressure, quality of IS information, and departmental performance," The British Accounting Review, Elsevier, vol. 39(2), pages 115-124.
    3. Evangelista, Rinaldo & Vezzani, Antonio, 2010. "The economic impact of technological and organizational innovations. A firm-level analysis," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 39(10), pages 1253-1263, December.
    4. Vega-Jurado, Jaider & Gutiérrez-Gracia, Antonio & Fernández-de-Lucio, Ignacio & Manjarrés-Henri­quez, Liney, 2008. "The effect of external and internal factors on firms' product innovation," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 37(4), pages 616-632, May.
    5. Piergiuseppe Morone & Giuseppina Testa, 2008. "Firms Growth, Size And Innovation An Investigation Into The Italian Manufacturing Sector," Economics of Innovation and New Technology, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 17(4), pages 311-329.
    6. Jensen, Michael C. & Meckling, William H., 1976. "Theory of the firm: Managerial behavior, agency costs and ownership structure," Journal of Financial Economics, Elsevier, vol. 3(4), pages 305-360, October.
    7. Choi, Suk Bong & Lee, Soo Hee & Williams, Christopher, 2011. "Ownership and firm innovation in a transition economy: Evidence from China," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 40(3), pages 441-452, April.
    8. Kirner, Eva & Kinkel, Steffen & Jaeger, Angela, 2009. "Innovation paths and the innovation performance of low-technology firms--An empirical analysis of German industry," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 38(3), pages 447-458, April.
    9. Vangelis Souitaris, 1999. "Research On The Determinants Of Technological Innovation: A Contingency Approach," International Journal of Innovation Management (ijim), World Scientific Publishing Co. Pte. Ltd., vol. 3(03), pages 287-305.
    10. de Jong, Jeroen P.J. & Marsili, Orietta, 2006. "The fruit flies of innovations: A taxonomy of innovative small firms," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 35(2), pages 213-229, March.
    11. Liao, Tung-Shan & Rice, John, 2010. "Innovation investments, market engagement and financial performance: A study among Australian manufacturing SMEs," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 39(1), pages 117-125, February.
    12. Thuc Uyen Nguyen-Thi & Caroline Danièle Mothe, 2010. "The Link Between Non Technological Innovations And Technological Innovation," Post-Print hal-00920069, HAL.
    13. Hartmut Hirsch-Kreinsen & David Jacobson (ed.), 2008. "Innovation in Low-Tech Firms and Industries," Books, Edward Elgar Publishing, number 13088, March.
    14. Yam, Richard C.M. & Lo, William & Tang, Esther P.Y. & Lau, Antonio K.W., 2011. "Analysis of sources of innovation, technological innovation capabilities, and performance: An empirical study of Hong Kong manufacturing industries," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 40(3), pages 391-402, April.
    15. Souitaris, Vangelis, 2002. "Technological trajectories as moderators of firm-level determinants of innovation," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 31(6), pages 877-898, August.
    16. Talke, Katrin & Salomo, Sören & Rost, Katja, 2010. "How top management team diversity affects innovativeness and performance via the strategic choice to focus on innovation fields," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 39(7), pages 907-918, September.
    Full references (including those not matched with items on IDEAS)

    Citations

    Citations are extracted by the CitEc Project, subscribe to its RSS feed for this item.
    as


    Cited by:

    1. Muhammad Anwar & Sher Zaman Khan & Najib Ullah Khan, 2018. "Intellectual Capital, Entrepreneurial Strategy and New Ventures Performance: Mediating Role of Competitive Advantage," Business & Economic Review, Institute of Management Sciences, Peshawar, Pakistan, vol. 10(1), pages 63-94, March.

    Most related items

    These are the items that most often cite the same works as this one and are cited by the same works as this one.
    1. Muhammad Nouman & Mohammad Sohail Yunis & Muhammad Atiq & Owais Mufti & Abdul Qadus, 2022. "‘The Forgotten Sector’: An Integrative Framework for Future Research on Low- and Medium-Technology Innovation," Sustainability, MDPI, vol. 14(6), pages 1-19, March.
    2. Chang, Yuan-Chieh & Chen, Min-Nan, 2016. "Service regime and innovation clusters: An empirical study from service firms in Taiwan," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 45(9), pages 1845-1857.
    3. Srinivas Kolluru & Pundarik Mukhopadhaya, 2017. "Empirical Studies on Innovation Performance in the Manufacturing and Service Sectors Since 1995: A Systematic Review," Economic Papers, The Economic Society of Australia, vol. 36(2), pages 223-248, June.
    4. Fernandes, Cristina & Ferreira, João & Raposo, Mario, 2013. "Drivers to firm innovation and their effects on performance: An international comparison," MPRA Paper 46776, University Library of Munich, Germany.
    5. Arranz, N. & Arroyabe, M.F. & Li, Jun & de Arroyabe, J.C. Fernandez, 2019. "An integrated model of organisational innovation and firm performance: Generation, persistence and complementarity," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 105(C), pages 270-282.
    6. Naciba Haned & Caroline Mothe & Thuc Uyen Nguyen-Thi, 2014. "Firm persistence in technological innovation: the relevance of organizational innovation," Post-Print halshs-01496526, HAL.
    7. Alam, Ashraful & Uddin, Moshfique & Yazdifar, Hassan & Shafique, Sujana & Lartey, Theophilus, 2020. "R&D investment, firm performance and moderating role of system and safeguard: Evidence from emerging markets," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 106(C), pages 94-105.
    8. Andrés Barge-Gil & Alberto López, 2015. "R versus D: estimating the differentiated effect of research and development on innovation results," Industrial and Corporate Change, Oxford University Press and the Associazione ICC, vol. 24(1), pages 93-129.
    9. Aguilera, Ruth V. & Crespí-Cladera, Rafel & Infantes, Paula M. & Pascual-Fuster, Bartolomé, 2020. "Business groups and internationalization: Effective identification and future agenda," Journal of World Business, Elsevier, vol. 55(4).
    10. Naciba Haned & Christian Le Bas & Caroline Mothe & Uyen Nguyen, 2012. "Firm technological innovation persistence: Organizational innovation matters," Working Papers halshs-00703289, HAL.
    11. Saleem Gul & Muhammad Nouman, 2009. "Innovation In Pakistan's SMES: Making The Case For Coupling Model And Looking Beyond," Business & Economic Review, Institute of Management Sciences, Peshawar, Pakistan, vol. 1(1), pages 20-25, April.
    12. Ruiqi, Wang & Wang, Fangjun & Xu, Luying & Yuan, Changhong, 2017. "R&D expenditures, ultimate ownership and future performance: Evidence from China," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 71(C), pages 47-54.
    13. Dziallas, Marisa & Blind, Knut, 2019. "Innovation indicators throughout the innovation process: An extensive literature analysis," Technovation, Elsevier, vol. 80, pages 3-29.
    14. Antonio Duréndez & Julio Dieguez-Soto & Antonia Madrid-Guijarro, 2023. "The influence of CEO’s financial literacy on SMEs technological innovation: the mediating effects of MCS and risk-taking," Financial Innovation, Springer;Southwestern University of Finance and Economics, vol. 9(1), pages 1-26, December.
    15. Reichert, Fernanda Maciel & Torugsa, Nuttaneeya (Ann) & Zawislak, Paulo Antonio & Arundel, Anthony, 2016. "Exploring innovation success recipes in low-technology firms using fuzzy-set QCA," Journal of Business Research, Elsevier, vol. 69(11), pages 5437-5441.
    16. Peneder, Michael, 2010. "Technological regimes and the variety of innovation behaviour: Creating integrated taxonomies of firms and sectors," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 39(3), pages 323-334, April.
    17. Robertson, Paul L. & Casali, G.L. & Jacobson, David, 2012. "Managing open incremental process innovation: Absorptive Capacity and distributed learning," Research Policy, Elsevier, vol. 41(5), pages 822-832.
    18. Thi-Thanh Phan & Hai-Chin Yu, 2022. "Innovation, institutional ownerships and board diversity," Review of Quantitative Finance and Accounting, Springer, vol. 59(4), pages 1647-1693, November.
    19. Hervas-Oliver, Jose-Luis & Sempere-Ripoll, Francisca & Boronat-Moll, Carles, 2012. "Process innovation objectives and management complementarities: patterns, drivers, co-adoption and performance effects," MERIT Working Papers 2012-051, United Nations University - Maastricht Economic and Social Research Institute on Innovation and Technology (MERIT).
    20. Naciba Haned & Caroline Mothe & Thuc Uyen Nguyen-Thi, 2014. "Firm persistence in technological innovation: the relevance of organizational innovation," Economics of Innovation and New Technology, Taylor & Francis Journals, vol. 23(5-6), pages 490-516, September.

    Corrections

    All material on this site has been provided by the respective publishers and authors. You can help correct errors and omissions. When requesting a correction, please mention this item's handle: RePEc:bec:imsber:v:9:y:2017:i:1:p:131-155. See general information about how to correct material in RePEc.

    If you have authored this item and are not yet registered with RePEc, we encourage you to do it here. This allows to link your profile to this item. It also allows you to accept potential citations to this item that we are uncertain about.

    If CitEc recognized a bibliographic reference but did not link an item in RePEc to it, you can help with this form .

    If you know of missing items citing this one, you can help us creating those links by adding the relevant references in the same way as above, for each refering item. If you are a registered author of this item, you may also want to check the "citations" tab in your RePEc Author Service profile, as there may be some citations waiting for confirmation.

    For technical questions regarding this item, or to correct its authors, title, abstract, bibliographic or download information, contact: Dr. Attaullah Shah (email available below). General contact details of provider: https://edirc.repec.org/data/imspepk.html .

    Please note that corrections may take a couple of weeks to filter through the various RePEc services.

    IDEAS is a RePEc service. RePEc uses bibliographic data supplied by the respective publishers.