On adaptation in the adoption process of management innovations within organisations.

Adopting management innovations is complex. A high percentage of management innovations fail to deliver, but not enough literature explains why this is the case. This dissertation aims to extend the understanding around the adaptation of management innovations within the adoption process. This is a paper-based dissertation, where all papers contribute at some level towards the same underlying purpose, to advance what we know about adaptation of management innovations during the introduction into an organisational context, the challenges this entails, and guidance that can help practitioners when selecting or, implementing such an innovation in their organisation. In a relatively new area, this dissertation first reviews the extant literature on management innovations with a focus on adoption and adaptation. Synthesising from the literature, the dissertation establishes clear classification criteria for management innovations. This is followed by an empirical study, which draws upon template analysis to structure qualitative data gathered with seven groups in total 90 senior industry practitioners, who shared their experience with management innovations, and their views on main challenges and key success factors of the adoption of management innovation in organisations. The analysis and step-wise synthesis of the responses highlighted the enhanced role of being connected with the purpose, managing a synchronised effort towards goals, and careful handling of new localised learning which is generated when a new management innovation is being adopted. The last paper presents a model for adaptation and implementation of new management innovation practice in an organisation. The model utilises the foundations of organisational routines literature to introduce a team-level construct in “team responsiveness” and links it with an organisation’s ability to accept or reject an incoming management innovation. The simulation model leads to multiple propositions on how team responsiveness is linked to a successful adoption of a management innovation. The study contributes by extending theory and preparing it for further empirical testing. Overall this dissertation contributes to the literature by organising extant research and identifying lacunae in what is known about the adaptation of management innovations. This thesis also extends theory by developing a grounded conceptual model to explain main enablers and challenges with adaptation of management innovations. Finally, this thesis contributes to the literature by constructing a simulation model to unveil the important role of team responsiveness and to derive propositions on its impact on adoption.