Management Review

›› 2019, Vol. 31 ›› Issue (12): 287-300.

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Across the Organizational Hierarchy: A Study of the Dynamic Construction Mechanism of Enterprise Innovation Capability

Zhang Lu1,2, Zhao Shuang1, Chang Qing1,3, Cui Li4   

  1. 1. School of Economics and Management, Inner Mongolia University of Technology, Hohhot 010051;
    2. Business School, Renmin University of China, Beijing 100872;
    3. School of Accounting, Zhongnan University of Economics and Law, Wuhan 430073;
    4. School of Business, Dalian University of Technology, Panjin 124221
  • Received:2019-01-22 Online:2019-12-28 Published:2019-12-24

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Abstract:

In the fierce market competition, a new company has to consider how to coordinate innovation ability at both individual and organizational level to adopt for the fast-changing environment. Taking Mongolian grass ecology as an example, this paper uses the sense-making and sense-giving theory to explore, from a cross-level perspective, the internal mechanism by which new companies generate their innovation ability, analyzes how managers can realize cognitive change to provide direction for ability development and how the organizations can build heterogeneous innovation capacity through resource-focused action to effectively respond to environmental changes, and emphatically discusses the internal mechanism by which managers guide the organization to form a unified cross-level cognition. The study finds that:(1) The sense-making process triggered by the change of external environment creates the basis of rational cognition for managers, and is the logical starting point of the evolution of enterprise innovation ability. (2) On the basis of cognition, the organization takes the resource actions from "piecing together scattered resources" to "integrating heterogeneous resources" to "coordinating shared resources" to constantly evolve to promote the continuous upgrading of the enterprise's innovation ability, thus breaking through the rigid shackles of organizational ability. (3) Managers realize the leap from managers' cognition to organizational cognition through the process of sense-giving meaning of "restricted unidirectional paradigm", "guiding interactive paradigm" and "platform sharing paradigm".

Key words: innovation ability, sense-making, sense-giving, resource-focused action, case study