Assessing the not‐invented‐here syndrome: Development and validation of implicit and explicit measurements

Published date01 October 2017
AuthorFrank T. Piller,Iring Koch,David Antons,Mathieu Declerck,Kathleen Diener
DOIhttp://doi.org/10.1002/job.2199
Date01 October 2017
RESEARCH ARTICLE
Assessing the notinventedhere syndrome: Development and
validation of implicit and explicit measurements
David Antons
1
|Mathieu Declerck
2
|Kathleen Diener
3
|Iring Koch
4
|Frank T. Piller
3
1
Innovation, Strategy, and Organization
Group, TIME Research Area, School of
Business and Economics, RWTH Aachen
University, Aachen, Germany
2
Laboratoire de Psychologie Cognitive, Aix
Marseille Université and Centre National de la
Recherche Scientifique, Marseille, France
3
Technology and Innovation Management
Group, TIME Research Area, School of
Business and Economics, RWTH Aachen
University, Aachen, Germany
4
Cognitive and Experimental Psychology,
Institute of Psychology, RWTH Aachen
University, Aachen, Germany
Correspondence
David Antons, Innovation, Strategy, and
Organization Group, TIME Research Area,
School of Business and Economics, RWTH
Aachen University, Aachen, Germany.
Email: antons@time.rwthaachen.de
Funding information
DFG (German Research Foundation)
Summary
The notinventedhere (NIH) syndrome has been called one of the largest obstacles in innovation
management, preventing effective knowledge transfer between organizational units and individ-
uals. NIH is defined as a negatively shaped attitude towards knowledge that has to cross a disci-
plinary, spatial, or organizational boundary, resulting in either its suboptimal utilization or its
rejection. Our goal is to equip scholars with appropriate measurement instruments for the phe-
nomenon. On the basis of 4 studies with 1,238 subjects overall, we developed an implicit mea-
sure based on the implicitassociation test as well as an explicit (survey) measure of NIH, taking
into account theoretical insights on attitude structure. We provide evidence for reliability as well
as construct and criterion validity. We want to facilitate further research on NIH and knowledge
transfer (a) by providing a better theoretical framework for NIH on the basis of the tripartite com-
ponential model of attitudes, (b) by demonstrating the application of associationbased implicit
measures for management research, and (c) by providing a validated multidimensional survey
scale to measure NIH explicitly. We also provide recommendations on how managers can utilize
the NIH measurement instruments to investigate NIH and potential countermeasures in detail
and they can test the behavioral outcomes postulated by previous research.
KEYWORDS
attitudes, implicitassociation test (IAT), scale development, knowledge transfer, not
inventedhere
1|INTRODUCTION
In 1986, Northrop Corporation, a U.S. defense company, terminated its
Tigershark program developing the military fighter F20 without hav-
ing sold a single plane. The F20's entire research and development
(R&D) investment of over $1.2 billion was privately funded by Nor-
throp and a few subcontractors, a unique situation compared to the
usual share of R&D expenditures between a contractor and the U.S.
military. As Martin and Schmidt (1987) examine, one of the reasons
for the program's failure was the strong negative attitude of the U.S.
military, who did not consider the program as one of their own, but
instead as the initiative of an outside corporation. For example, the
stars and barsinsignia was removed from an F20 prototype at the
1984 Paris Air Show because the plane was not a part of the U.S.
inventory. Similarly, Northrop was not permitted to land the F20 at
restricted air bases. Northrop management also alleged that the F20
was not given equal briefings to foreign nations interested in purchas-
ing U.S. fighter aircraft (Martin & Schmidt, 1987).
The rejection of the F20 as a technological innovation is an excel-
lent example of a phenomenon called the notinventedhere(NIH)
syndrome, and many managers will recall a similar story from their
own experience. Although literature on innovation frequently high-
lights the importance of incorporating different perspectives, ideas,
and technologies into the R&D process (Bogers, Afuah, & Bastian,
2010; Cassiman & Veugelers, 2006; Laursen & Salter, 2006; Wassmer,
2008), innovation as well as knowledge exchange and transfer is often
impeded at an individual level (MironSpektor, Paletz, & Lin, 2015).
This individual barrier, which is referred to as NIH, has been called
one of the largest obstacles in innovation management. It is accused
of leading to incorrect evaluations and delayed and distorted transfers
of ideas and technologies (Agrawal, Cockburn, & Rosell, 2010;
Barkema & Schijven, 2008; de Burcharth, Knudsen, & Søndergaard,
2014), slowed implementation and expanded development costs
(Lichtenthaler & Ernst, 2006), project failure (Herzog & Leker, 2010;
Kathoefer & Leker, 2012), and diminishing firm performance (Katz &
Allen, 1982; King, Covin, & Hegarty, 2003). NIH describes the
Received: 7 February 2016 Revised: 29 March 2017 Accepted: 31 March 2017
DOI: 10.1002/job.2199
J Organ Behav. 2017;38:12271245. Copyright © 2017 John Wiley & Sons, Ltd.wileyonlinelibrary.com/journal/job 1227
negatively shaped attitude of an individual toward knowledge that has
to cross a contextual (disciplinary), spatial, or organizational (functional)
boundary, resulting in either its suboptimal utilization or its rejection
(Antons & Piller, 2015, p. 197).
The term NIH has been widely used in innovation research (e.g., de
Burcharth et al., 2014), strategy (e.g., Laursen & Salter, 2006), human
resource management (e.g., McKinlay & Starkey, 1992), and marketing
(e.g., Franke, Keinz, & Steger, 2009; Hauser, Tellis, & Griffin, 2006). A
recent review showed that NIH is referred to in approximately 700
scholarly papers published across various management disciplines
(Antons & Piller, 2015). However, this same review also confirmed ear-
lier assessments that literature on NIH has been mainly anecdotal, tak-
ing the phenomenon for granted, and discussing its underlying
mechanisms only superficially (Agrawal et al., 2010; Kathoefer & Leker,
2012). Hence, the relevance of NIH in both managerial practice and
the management literature has not been matched by dedicated
research focused on this individual phenomenon of organizational
behavior in an innovation context.
We argue that this lack of dedicated research corresponds to a
lack of theoretical foundation of NIH. The results are measures and
operationalizations of NIH in the previous literature that are not solidly
grounded and appear to be used due to the specific purposes or data
available. Our argumentation is in line with prior accounts highlighting
that the current approaches towards measuring NIH are only in their
infancy (Agrawal et al., 2010; Laursen & Salter, 2006).
In their review, Antons and Piller (2015) list all studies addressing
NIH as their central construct. They show that prior research has used
various proxies to measure NIH. Strikingly, some of these studies do
not even measure NIH at all, yet focus on potential outcomes such
as performance or communication decline (Allen, Katz, Grady, & Slavin,
1988; Katz & Allen, 1982), patent selfcitations in regions (Agrawal
et al., 2010), and occurrence of internal resistance against innovation
projects (Hussinger & Wastyn, 2011) without establishing the causes
behind these effects. Only a few papers that Antons and Piller (2015)
reviewed have developed scales more appropriate to capture NIH.
For example, Kathoefer and Leker (2012) measure the reluctance to
apply external knowledge. This, however, is a measure of behavior
induced by the attitude but not a scale measuring the attitude under-
lying NIH. Similarly, de Burcharth et al. (2014) surveyed R&D managers
whether their staff members had negative attitudes towards external
knowledge. To the best of our knowledge, only one study tried to
develop a scale directly aiming at measuring the attitude underlying
NIH (Herzog & Leker, 2010). This study, although citing a definition
of NIH as an individuallevel construct, conceptualizes the phenome-
non as a departmentlevel phenomenon and operationalizes it accord-
ingly. Taken together, a clear and compelling theoretical underpinning
is missing that allows developing a measure that follows the definition
and conceptualization of NIH as an individuallevel attitude (Agrawal
et al., 2010; Antons & Piller, 2015; Laursen & Salter, 2006). But with-
out such reliable and valid measures, any future investigations of the
antecedents and consequences of NIH and countermeasures against
this phenomenon are severely handicapped.
We argue that the development of such a measurement instru-
ment should build on theoretical insights from psychology regarding
attitude structure, incorporating the various facets of an attitude
(Eagly & Chaiken, 1993; Rosenberg & Hovland, 1960). Thereby, a
newly developed measure should assess the NIH attitude holistically
incorporating all of these facets. Moreover, psychological attitude
scholars distinguish between consciously (explicit) and more automat-
ically processed (implicit) components of an attitude (Fazio & Olson,
2003; Greenwald & Banaji, 1995; Harms & Luthans, 2012; Leavitt,
Fong, & Greenwald, 2011). Survey scales are better equipped to mea-
sure the conscious components and are, thus, potentially affected by
biases due to social desirability. Research on NIH has not taken
advantage of more recent findings from psychology on measuring
implicit attitude components (Fazio & Olson, 2003; Greenwald,
McGhee, & Schwartz, 1998) to validate attitude scales and to mea-
sure the phenomenon at hand holistically.
The contribution of this article is fourfold. First, we review liter-
ature on NIH in general and the current state of NIH measurement in
particular. We introduce findings from psychological attitude research
on attitude structure as well as the concept of implicit social cogni-
tion and its relevance for attitude measurement. With these under-
standings, we contribute a theorydriven operationalization of the
NIH attitude. Second, with this conceptual understanding of NIH as
having an implicit component, we apply a purposefully developed
measure based on the socalled implicitassociation test (IAT;
Greenwald et al., 1998). By doing so, we extend prior effort in show-
casing the adaption of implicit measures, and the IAT in particular, to
organizational research (Derous, Ryan, & Nguyen, 2012; Harms &
Luthans, 2012; Leavitt et al., 2011). Third, in order to reflect the
explicit component of NIH, we apply standard scale development
procedures (DeVellis, 2011; Hinkin, 1995, 1998) to develop a NIH
scale, taking into account theoretical insights from psychology on
attitude structure. Fourth, we provide evidence for discriminant and
criterion validity of the developed scale and for convergent validity
of both the implicit and explicit measures. Together, this allows future
research to investigate NIH and potential countermeasures in greater
detail, and to test the behavioral outcomes postulated by numerous
studies (e.g., Gesing, Antons, Piening, Rese, & Salge, 2015; Laursen
& Salter, 2006).
2|CONCEPTUAL BACKGROUND
2.1 |The notinventedhere syndrome and its
underlying attitude
As our introductory example highlights, NIH is an attitudeinduced
decisionmaking bias that occurs during the evaluation of knowledge
from origins being external due to contextual (disciplinary), spatial, or
organizational (functional) boundaries (Antons & Piller, 2015; Gesing
et al., 2015; Kathoefer & Leker, 2012). The rejection of external ideas,
technologies, and knowledge is no problem per se; when the external
input is of no value for the absorbing organization and its members,
staff act wisely by selecting input critically. From an organizational
point of view, rejection or underutilization of external input is damag-
ing in cases where input would provide value in comparison to internal
solutions or when knowledge is rejected due to attitudinal biases
rather than actual facts (Kathoefer & Leker, 2012).
1228 ANTONS ET AL.

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