Resumo

Broadly, environmental uncertainties and disruptive recombinations of knowledge encourage interactions with external stakeholders within open systems. This shift, toward multiple iterative interactions giving rise to innovation, has created an open innovation paradigm. As a result, managing socially complex interactions, often found in open innovation, involves various stakeholders and requires effective management of stakeholders’ relationships.

Researches studies about open innovation present a focus on its content, context and process. Although, little is known about motives, incentives and the interface between individuals and open innovation activities, turning the research category “open innovation stakeholders” a relevant object of study. In this sense, stakeholder relationships must be considered an important resource. Focusing on this, the present study examines stakeholders’ relationships as a microfoundation for open innovation, illustrating the importance of stakeholder interactions and resource integration with the firm.

Defined as “the use of purposive inflows and outflows of knowledge to accelerate internal innovation, and expand the markets for external use of innovation” (Chesbrough, 2006, p.1), open innovation extends the boundaries of the organization, incentivizing greater collaboration, involvement, and multiple participants with varied motivations. Organizations aiming to develop open innovation processes will seek to establish cooperative relationships with stakeholders. Cooperation is central for open processes and can take the form of reciprocity (Levine & Prietula, 2014).

We propose firms with reciprocal relationships are more likely to engage in open innovation. Next, we posit justice-based considerations are important for both cooperative relationships and open innovation. Cooperative relationships, often governed by incomplete contracts, are based on mutual trust with enforcement and sanctions while simultaneously allowing for uncertainties and disruptions to guide next steps. Finally, we posit that perception of a firm’s treatment of stakeholders also impacts its open innovation processes.

Examining microfoundations of stakeholder relationships contributing to open innovation processes; we proposed that sustained open innovation is based upon reciprocity and justice-based relationships. Our propositions integrating microfoundations of stakeholder theory and open innovation processes suggest additional theorizing is needed regarding which stakeholder(s) to involved in open innovation process might be based in part on who can be trusted (Long & Sitkin, 2018).

Chesbrough, H. (2006). Open innovation: A new paradigm for understanding industrial innovation. In Open Innovation: Researching a New Paradigm, ed. H. Chesbrough, W. Vanhaverbeke, and J. West, 1 – 12. New York, NY: Oxford University Press. Levine, S. S., & Prietula, M. J. (2014). Open Collaboration for Innovation: Principles and Performance. Organization Science, 25(5),1-20. Long, C. P., & Sitkin, S. M. (2018). Control-trust dynamics in organizations: identifying shared perspectives and charting conceptual fault lines. Academy of Management Annals, 12(2), 725-751.