Making sense of disruptive innovation : exploring the innovator's dilemma from a Weickean perspective

[摘要] ENGLISH SUMMARY : The thesis presents a theoretical analysis of the role that organisational sensemaking processes play in shaping how incumbents respond to disruptive innovations. Christensen'stheory of disruptive innovation is described and analysed with a view to extend our understanding of the challenges that disruptive innovations present to incumbents. The contribution of the thesis is to position and analyse these challenges as an organisationalsensemaking problem.Christensen's theory offers convincing arguments regarding the challenges disruptive innovations present to incumbents. However, current understanding of these challenges isbased on a decision-making perspective, which is rooted in a rational model of organisations, and focuses only on the effects of cognition on actions, leaving the effects of action on cognition unaccounted for. By drawing on Weick's organisational sensemaking perspective, the thesis brings more light to the obscured features within the context where incumbentsperceive or interact with disruptive innovations. This affords a broadened focus on and a richer understanding of organisational processes and their outcomes through embracing cognition and action, as well as the interplay between the two, within organisational contexts.Thus, the thesis reveals the limits of the theory of disruptive innovation by presenting additional dimensions to what shapes human conduct in organisations. Considerations of identity, enactment, commitment, plausibility, and the effects of interrupted projects are among the sources of insight from sensemaking that offer additional or alternative ways forunderstanding of and theorising about Christensen's observations about disruptive innovation.The thesis concludes by highlighting the implications of a sensemaking perspective on the study of established organisations and their potential challenges in addressing disruptive innovation driven market changes. Thus, positioning incumbents' challenges as a sensemaking problem also links the fields of innovation and sensemaking.

[发布机构] Stellenbosch University