ساختار قابلیت نوآوری: نقش نوآوری در مدیریت ارشد و جهت گیری نسبی اکتشافی  Building innovation capability: The role of top management innovativeness and relative-exploration  orientation

1. Introduction Innovation capability, defined as a firm’s ability to generate, accept, and implement new ideas, processes, products, or services, is one of the key resources that drive a firm’s success in the marketplace (Calantone, Cavusgil, & Zhao, 2002; Ngo & O’Cass, 2013). In practice, firms strive to develop or improve their innovation capabilities. For example, according to the PWC Global Innovation 1000 study, worldwide R&D spending has steadily increased over recent years, reaching $680B USD in 2016. On average, the top five most innovative companies (i.e., Apple Inc., Alphabet Inc., 3M Co., Tesla Motors Inc., and Amazon. com Inc.) spend over 12% of their overall sales revenue on R&D activities (PWC 2016). Accordingly, the Marketing Science Institute suggests that understanding the role of innovation on producing superior firm performance should be a top research priority (www.MSI.org). Fortunately, many managers have realized the importance of innovation. Being innovative has therefore become a popular component in many firms’ mission statements. Researchers have found that firms can develop their innovation capabilities in various ways, including investing in research and development (e.g., Laursen & Salter, 2006), obtaining knowledge from multiple stakeholders (e.g., Slotegraaf, 2012), developing a market/learning-oriented culture (e.g., Marinova, 2004), and encouraging knowledge sharing within the organization (e.g., Arnett & Wittmann, 2014). Though this body of literature has significantly enriched our understanding of how resources contribute to a firm’s innovation capability, few studies have considered the manager’s role in building a firm’s innovation capability. In fact, some researchers have argued that managers’ contributions to firms’ innovation are limited because of the demanding nature of managers’ jobs (Hambrick, Finkelstein, & Mooney, 2005). Thus, the underlying mechanism behind how a manager may contribute to a firm’s innovation capability development is still not fully explored. Researchers have investigated this issue from three perspectives. First, it has been suggested that variation in firms’ innovation performance is an outcome of managers’ background characteristics such as managers’ demographic and cultural backgrounds (e.g., Barker & Mueller, 2002). In general, managers who are young (e.g., Barker & Mueller, 2002; Knight et al., 1999), have short tenures (e.g., Kor, 2006), have related industrial/marketing experience (e.g., Barker & Mueller, 2002), and have a social culture (e.g., Hoffman & Hegarty, 1993) are more likely to promote innovation activities. The second stream of research focuses on the composition of top management teams, exploring issues such as the diversity and heterogeneity of top management teams (e.g., Auh & Menguc, 2005; Kor, 2006; Talke, Salomo, & Kock, 2011). This stream of research suggests that diversity and heterogeneity in a firm’s top management team can drive the firm to be more innovative. The third research stream focuses on the involvement of managers in the firm’s innovation processes. Some authors suggest that a firm’s success in innovation needs top managers’ support (e.g., Smith & Tushman, 2005). Though the existing research provides insight into the manager’s influence on a firm’s innovation performance, few studies have investigated managers’ direct roles in promoting firms’ innovation capabilities.