Unobtrusive Maintenance: Temporal Complexity, Latent Category Control and the Stalled Emergence of the Cleantech Sector

• Author: Charlene Zietsma,Trish Ruebottom,Angelique Slade Shantz
• Date: 01 November 2018
• Published date: 01 November 2018
• DOI: http://doi.org/10.1111/joms.12350

© 2018 John Wiley & Sons Ltd and S ociety for the Advancement of Ma nagement Studies

Unobtrusive Maintenance: Temporal Complexity, Latent

Category Control and the Stalled Emergence of the

Cleantech Sector

Charlene Zietsma, Trish Ruebottom and

Angelique Slade Shantz

The Pennsylvania State Univ ersity;Brock University;University of Albe rta

ABSTR ACT: Disrupt ive innovation changes the basis of compet ition within an indust ry

and poses substantia l threats for market incumbents. W hile researchers have focused on

whether incumbents can successf ully adapt, we know litt le about how potentially disruptive

innovation may be avoided. Studyin g clean technology in Canad a, we examine incumbent

resistance when potentia lly disruptive technolog ies are seen as socially b eneficial. We

identify actions t aken by incumbents and other socio-tech nical regime actors to r espond

to the issue while simu ltaneously enacting legit imate stabilizi ng mechanisms with in the

regime’s institutional i nfrastructu re. Specifical ly, temporal and resource-based actions led

to temporal complexity for disr uptive cleantech entrepreneurs, and eva luation structurin g

work led to latent control of the cleantech category, privi leging incumbents and result ing

in unobtrusive ma intenance. Our find ings contribute to the disr uptive innovation and

institutional t heory literatures by showin g how disruption may be stalled by t he enactment

of legitimate elements of the in stitutional infra structure rather tha n direct institut ional

defence.

Keywor ds: categories, di sruptive innovation, institut ional maintenance, temporal complexity

INTRODUCTION

Disruptions are ‘funda mental changes t hat disturb or re-order the ways in which

organizations and ecosystems operate’ (Ansari et al., 2016a, 2016b). Although

disruptive innovations ty pically underperform incumbent technologies ini-

tially, the new innovations may eventually threaten to displace old technologies

and the incumbent firms that support them (Danneels, 2004), as well as the

Journal of Man agement Studi es 55:7 November 2018

doi: 10 .1111/joms .12350

Address for rep rints: Charlene Zi etsma, Smeal C ollege of Busine ss, The Pennsylva nia State

University, Room 416 Business Bui lding, Universit y Park, PA 16802, USA (Charlene.Zietsma@p su.edu).

Unobtrusive Maintenance and Temporal Complexity 1243

© 2018 John Wiley & Sons Ltd and S ociety for the Advancement of Ma nagement Studies

institutional regimes in which they are embedded (Garud et al., 2002; Greve

and Taylor, 2000). Much of the literature reveals the difficulties encountered

by incumbents as they respond to disruptive innovations (e.g., Andersen and

Strandskov, 2008; Christensen, 1997; Danneels, 2004; Macher and Richman,

2004; Tushman and Anderson, 1986), while a few studies show successful in-

cumbent adaptation (Ansari and K rop, 2012; Kapoor and K lueter, 2015; Roy

and Sarkar, 2016).

However, in each of these cases, researchers studied disruptive innovations

that were successful, leaving the avoidance of disruption relatively unexplored.

This success bias means that new entrants’ ability to destroy and disrupt estab-

lished industries may be overstated, and the ability of the existing socio-technical

regime to avoid disruption and maintain the status quo may be underestimated

(Bergek et al., 2013; Geels, 2014). In fact, many potentially disruptive innova-

tions likely do not fulfil their potential because incumbents—often in mutually

dependent relationships with political actors, including politicians and civil ser-

vants such as regulators and funders (Geels, 2014; Unruh, 2000) – are embedded

in systems oriented towards maintaining the status quo. This is particularly likely

in regulated markets (Gurses and Ozcan, 2015), and situations in which dis-

ruptions challenge entire ecosystems of interrelated firms (Ansari et al., 2016b;

Garud et al., 2002).

We study the avoidance of disruption in a particularly challenging situation:

when an innovation addresses emerging societal needs, meaning that overt resis-

tance is not a legitimate response. The preservation of status quo arrangements

(and thus the avoidance of disruption) has been studied in the literatures on in-

stitutional maintenance (e.g., Maguire and Hardy, 2010; Zietsma and Lawrence,

2010) and sustainability transitions (e.g., Geels, 2014; Smink et al., 2015), where

incumbents are viewed as one part of an institutional infrastructure that facilitates

the smooth functioning and maintenance of the system (Fligstein and McAdam,

2012; Greenwood et al., 2011; Hinings et al., 2017). Drawing on these literatures,

we explore the following research question: How is disruptive innovation avoided to

maintain the status quo? We examine this question using an inductive analysis of

interviews, field notes and media data in the rich empirical context of the emer-

gence of the Canadian cleantech sector.

We find that, in a context where overt resistance to disruptive innovation is

not legitimate, incumbents signal their legitimacy by speaking positively about

the innovation, which potential disruptors perceive as opening a window of

opportunity. However, legitimate stabilizing mechanisms associated with a

tightly interlocking institutional infrastructure shape and block actions geared

towards change, reproducing the temporal and evaluative structures under-

pinning the regime. Incumbents’ activation of the institutional infrastructure

creates temporal complexity for entrepreneurs that undermines them and fa-

cilitates latent category control that bolsters incumbents, ultimately resulting

in unobtrusive maintenance. We discuss the implications of our findings for the

1244 C. Zietsma et al.

© 2018 John Wiley & Sons Ltd and S ociety for the Advancement of Ma nagement Studies

literatures on institutional maintenance, sustainability transitions and disrup-

tive innovation.

LITERATURE REVIEW

The Promi se of Cleantech a s a Disrupt ive Innovation

Cleantech refers broadly to technology aimed at reducing or optimizing reliance

on non-renewable resources by facilitating energy eff iciency, clean energy, sus-

tainable tran sportation, smart grids, green building practices, and power storage

(Clean Tech Allia nce, 2018). Cleantech holds significant potential to disrupt ex-

isting energy systems, and consensus is g rowing around the need to shift to more

sustainable technologies (Geels, 2014). While many examples of these technolo-

gies exist and are beginning to be implemented on a smaller scale, they have yet

to threaten the dominance of traditional energy production.

However, clean technologies have been identified as potentially disruptive in-

novations (Bergek et al., 2013), since they change the basis of competition by

emphasizing factors such as greenhouse gas emissions and other sustainabil-

ity criteria, while often underperforming conventional technologies on price.

Disruptive innovations are defined as new technologies, products or business

models that emerge with a ‘different set of features…relative to existing prod-

ucts’ (Govindarajan and Kopalle, 2006, p. 190), thereby altering ‘the bases of

competition by changing the performance metrics along which firms compete’

(Danneels, 2004, p. 249). Disruptors often focus initially on customers who have

lower performance standards than mainstream customers, but want unique

features not available in existing products. Over time, improvements in these

innovations threaten incumbents (Christensen, 1997; Christensen and Raynor,

2003).

Yu and Chang (2010) reviewed the literature on disruptive innovation, which

has been conceptualized in a number of different ways, including innovation at-

tributes such as revolutionary vs. evolutionary (Florida and Kenney, 1990); com-

petency-enhancing vs. competency-destroying (Tushman and Anderson, 1986);

modular vs. architectural (Henderson and Clark, 1990); and sustaining vs. dis-

rupting (Adner, 2002). Of particular note is Govindarajan and Kopalle’s (2006)

innovation measure which accounts for both high-end and low-end disruptions

via a matrix of traditional attribute performance and cost, drawing attention to

the possibility that disruptive innovations initially could have inferior mainstream

attributes and cost more, yet still disrupt by offering other value propositions (Yu

and Chang, 2010). Although most researchers have emphasized cost, some have

considered other attributes of technologies (e.g., wind, electric vehicles) that ini-

tially are more expensive and may even be inferior based on mainstream attri-

butes, but offer some new value or ‘values’ proposition (Kirsch, 2000; Pacheco

et al., 2014; Sine and Lee, 2009; York et al., 2016). With a few noted exceptions,

these types of innovations and the value propositions they provide beyond more