Organizational orientations, industrial category, and responsible innovation

Abstract

This paper explores the foundations of firms' involvement in responsible innovation. A number of hypotheses appearing in the literature, regarding the direct effect of strategic orientations and the moderating effect of industrial category on responsible innovation engagement, were tested by using text analytics and statistical methods. The data comprise 475 documents of firms' annual reports with a total word count of 192,179,794 and a mean of 404,589, supplemented with corresponding financial data, yielding 372 firm-year observations. The results show that long-term orientation and organizational virtue orientation are positively associated with responsible innovation, while profitability orientation is negatively correlated. The results also show that industrial category moderates the relationship between strategic orientations and responsible innovation engagement, such that the positive relationship between both long-term and organizational virtue orientation and responsible innovation is weaker in the industrial products category than in the consumer products category. The theoretical and practical implications are discussed.