This research deals with a type of innovation largely neglected in the literature: organizational innovation, also called "innovation management" or "managerial innovation." The objective is to explain the adoption of this type of innovation by identifying not only its internal and external antecedents, but also its relationship to technological process innovation, with which it shares common characteristics. The model is based on the integrative view of innovation which presents three main advantages: (1) contrary to the linear view of innovation, it does not consider organizational innovation as a second-order innovation; (2) beyond R&D efforts alone, it allows for the integration of new antecedents and their interaction effects, and (3) it enriches the explanation of organizational innovation adoption assuming that innovation is adopted synchronously or complementarily. We used a multi-methodological approach, a qualitative study based on six case studies of industrial firms and a quantitative study using different econometric methods. Lean Management is the concrete form of organizational innovation we studied in the four empirical articles. The contributions of this research are threefold. Firstly, beyond the traditional internal and external antecedents, we show that human resource management practices, firms’ absorptive capacity and external knowledge sources play a crucial role in organizational innovation adoption. Secondly, this research demonstrates that it is essential to take into account the interactions between internal and external antecedents in order to better understand adoption processes, some of them being complementary or substitutes. Thirdly, the study shows that organizational innovation adoption is consistent with the integrative view of innovation since it is dependent of the adoption of technological process innovation, without being strictly complementary. These two types of process innovations, organizational and technological, are also found to be driven by similar antecedents. These results lead to managerial recommendations for a better management of organizational innovation adoption.
