Scholars have long argued about the importance of a company’s culture for organizational outcomes such as innovation. However, to date, little empirical evidence has been presented to support the assumption that innovation culture positively affects process innovation. What is more, innovative endeavors inside firms are bounded by constraints such as rules, scarce resources, and decision-making power. The effect of such constraints on innovation has attracted substantial interest across research fields but findings on their intervening effects remain inconclusive. Therefore, this study examines how constraints affect the relationship between innovation culture and radical and incremental process innovation. The paper utilizes survey data collected from a major production facility of a worldwide operating automotive company based in Germany to test the hypotheses.

In this study, we focus on a firm’s direct buyers in the supply network as a source of external technological knowledge spillovers. We examine factors that can influence the extent of a supplier’s knowledge accumulation from a buyer. These factors include the amount of technological knowledge available from buyers, the relative technological expertise of the buyer and the supplier, the financial dependence of the supplier and the buyer, and the asymmetry in size between the buyer and the supplier. To test the hypotheses, we use data on buyer-supplier relationships, patenting activities of the firms, and their accounting information.

One form of collaboration between competing firms is that one supplies a crucial component to the other while both also sell end-market products comprising that component. Often the component buyer firm (say A) co-invests in efforts of the component-supplier firm (B) to improve B’s component. How do firms gain strategic benefit in such an arrangement? What factors govern the level of investment? Who benefits and who loses? We address these questions in this paper. We note that B’s own investment is motivated by higher wholesale channel profit rather than higher profit in the end-user market, because competition limits the gains from a better product. Indeed, when A has sufficient end-product superiority, B exits the end-user market and becomes more aggressive in improving component quality.

Process mapping is a common method to create a visual representation of (cross-functional) processes and to improve organizational performance. Process mapping is also considered a prerequisite for process orientation. While literature provides a wide variety of mapping methods and suggested benefits of both mapping and process orientation, few structured reviews seem to exist. The purpose of this paper is therefore to provide an overview of the current status of research about these two related topics. Based on a structured literature review we map the field (no pun intended. In addition to a description of current status and research proposals, we present a framework for process mapping, including mapping method selection. The framework includes three broad categories (before, during and after mapping) divided into nine actions and 21 steps. Finally, we use a single case study to test and evaluate the framework.