Jingjing Ge
The emergence of Industry 5.0 marks a new era characterized by rapid technological advancement, increasing uncertainty, and a growing emphasis on balancing economic development with environmental sustainability. Building on Industry 4.0, Industry 5.0 promotes human-centric, resilient, and sustainable innovation. In this context, organizations must continuously adapt to technological change while maintaining competitiveness and sustainability. Management innovation—the development and implementation of new managerial processes, practices, and strategies—has become a key mechanism for improving organizational adaptability and long-term performance. However, sustaining management innovation requires managers to effectively integrate knowledge and make adaptive decisions in uncertain environments. Effectuation, a decision-making logic that emphasizes leveraging available means, experimentation, and flexibility rather than predetermined goals, offers a promising approach for managing uncertainty. Although widely studied in entrepreneurship, its role in management innovation remains underexplored, particularly at the individual manager level. This thesis investigates how dynamic knowledge transfer capacity and effectuation jointly foster sustainability-oriented management innovation in technology-driven contexts. The research is presented in six chapters, combining a systematic literature review, a qualitative case study, and quantitative empirical analyses. Chapter 2 presents a systematic literature review of effectuation research using bibliometric and co-word analyses of publications indexed in Scopus. The review maps the intellectual development of the field, identifies major research themes, and highlights important research gaps. The findings show that the role of individual managers and the application of effectuation to management innovation remain insufficiently explored. Chapter 3 examines the relationship between collaborative knowledge absorption and sustainable innovation through a qualitative case study of hybrid marine engine development. The findings demonstrate that collaborative knowledge absorption enhances sustainable innovation by facilitating learning, knowledge integration, and adaptive decision-making, enabling managers to better respond to technological and market changes. Chapters 4 and 5 present findings from a survey of 591 managers in Chinese firms. Chapter 4 investigates how market and technological knowledge competence influence management innovation through the mediating roles of effectuation and causation. Both knowledge competences positively affect management innovation, with technological knowledge competence showing the stronger effect. The findings further demonstrate that effectuation and causation complement one another in promoting innovation. Chapter 5 explores how three dimensions of individual effectuation—exploratory flexibility, affordable loss, and pre-commitment—affect management innovation through technology-related dynamic capabilities. Exploratory flexibility has the strongest influence, while sensing, seizing, and transforming capabilities partially mediate these relationships, with seizing capability showing the greatest contribution. Finally, Chapter 6 integrates the findings into a dynamic knowledge transfer capacity framework comprising collaborative knowledge absorption, knowledge competence, and technology-related dynamic capabilities. From an effectuation perspective, the framework explains how these dimensions jointly foster sustainability-oriented management innovation in technology-driven contexts. This thesis contributes to the literature by extending effectuation theory to management innovation, demonstrating the complementary roles of effectuation and causation, providing empirical evidence for the importance of collaborative knowledge absorption, and linking effectuation with technology-related dynamic capabilities. The findings also offer practical implications by highlighting the importance of strengthening knowledge competence, promoting knowledge sharing, adopting adaptive decision-making, and developing dynamic capabilities to sustain innovation and competitive advantage in rapidly changing technological environments.