Innovator resilience potential: A process perspective of individual resilience as influenced by innovation project termination

Moenkemeyer, Gisa; Hoegl, Martin and Weiss, Matthias (2012): Innovator resilience potential: A process perspective of individual resilience as influenced by innovation project termination. In: Human Relations, Vol. 65, No. 5: pp. 627-655

Abstract

Innovation projects fail at an astonishing rate. Yet, the negative effects of innovation project failures on the team members of these projects have been largely neglected in research streams that deal with innovation project failures. After such setbacks, it is vital to maintain or even strengthen project members’ innovative capabilities for subsequent innovation projects. For this, the concept of resilience, i.e. project members’ potential to positively adjust (or even grow) after a setback such as an innovation project failure, is fundamental. We develop the second-order construct of innovator resilience potential, which consists of six components – self-efficacy, outcome expectancy, optimism, hope, self-esteem, and risk propensity – that are important for project members’ potential of innovative functioning in innovation projects subsequent to a failure. We illustrate our theoretical findings by means of a qualitative study of a terminated large-scale innovation project, and derive implications for research and management.

• Item Type: Journal article
• Form of publication: Publisher's Version
• Faculties: Munich School of Management > Institute for Leadership and Organization; Social Sciences
• Subjects: 100 Philosophy and Psychology > 150 Psychology; 300 Social sciences > 300 Social sciences, sociology and anthropology
• Alliance/National Licence: This publication is with permission of the rights owner freely accessible due to an Alliance licence and a national licence (funded by the DFG, German Research Foundation) respectively.
• Language: English