Difusão de inovações entre organizações: um estudo em uma cadeia de suprimentos

Abstract

Innovation is regarded as one of the key strategic priorities of contemporary organizations, extensively proven to be related to above-average returns. In addition to increasing the individual firm innovation capabilities, there should also be a concern in spreading the innovations across organizational networks, in order to enhance their impact on the systems performance as a whole. This study aims to analyze the diffusion of innovations among members of a supply chain of the automotive industry, a historically significant segment for the Brazilian economy. Given the challenges that involve the management of innovation in organizations embedded in supply chains, this study soughs, by conducting a case study in eight companies of the automotive sector, to understand and describe how the phenomenon of the diffusion of innovations occurs among members of the supply chain actors and which relational and structural aspects have influence over the process. Building effective channels for the occurrence of the diffusion depends on the articulation between intra and interorganizational factors, which will determine the degree of participation of each member in the practices established by the assembler for that purpose, which concentrates the diffusion flows identified, given its central position in the system. These channels, however, remain restricted to the group formed by the first-tier suppliers, which demonstrate higher levels of capabilities and greater integration with the assembler, which puts them in a privileged position as the main agents of the process of introduction and diffusion of new technologies in the system. It concludes that the participation of suppliers at lower levels is only possible through their repositioning within the system, from the structuring of an innovation driven organizational context, and the recognition by the automaker, of their potential as contributors on the development of new products.