Abstract
Previous Responsible Innovation (RI) research has provided valuable insights on the value conflicts inherent to societally desirable innovation. By observing the responses of firms to these conflicts, Value-sensitive Absorptive Capacity (VAC) captures the organizational capabilities to become sensitive to these value conflicts and thus, innovate more responsibly. In this article, we construct a survey instrument to assess VAC, based on previous work by CSR and RI scholars. The construct and concurrent validity of the instrument were tested in an empirical study, including 109 employees of 30 food manufacturing firms. The results from the survey were then compared with the conceptual VAC dimensions. With this comparison, we do not only contribute to the substantiation of the VAC construct, but we also show how inductive and deductive approaches can be combined to build theory regarding RI in a transdisciplinary manner.
Original language | English |
---|---|
Pages (from-to) | 196-223 |
Number of pages | 28 |
Journal | Journal of Responsible Innovation |
Volume | 9 |
Issue number | 2 |
Early online date | 24 May 2022 |
DOIs | |
Publication status | Published - 2022 |
Bibliographical note
Funding Information:The study in this paper was funded by the NWO (Nederlandse organisatie voor Wetenschappelijk Onderzoek), under grant programme Responsible Innovation (MVI) [grant number 313-99-302-0]. The project was conducted in collaboration with the Dutch Choices Foundation. Léon Jansen's contribution has been supported by this foundation (which was abolished in 2018). We would like to thank the editor and anonymous reviewers, the colleagues at the Wageningen University Business Management and Organization group as well as the participants to the Business & Society Research Seminar 2019 in Amsterdam for their feedback on this work.
Publisher Copyright:
© 2022 The Author(s). Published by Informa UK Limited, trading as Taylor & Francis Group.