The pursuit of disruptive innovations by middle managers: effects of the firm’s customer orientation and mastery achievement goals

Disruptive innovation (DI) poses a significant challenge for firms due to their uncertain nature and unique diffusion patterns before entering the market. A proactive strategy to address the issue of DI can turn a potential disruption into a business opportunity. To implement such an aggressive approach, firms should enhance their intrapreneurship capabilities through middle managers’ disruptive innovation activities (DIA). However, research on managing and promoting DI by middle managers is still at a nascent stage. Therefore, this study aims to fill this gap in the literature by examining the influence of a firm’s customer orientation (i.e., mainstream and emerging) and middle managers’ mastery achievement goals on their DIA. It analyses the direct and interaction effects of firms’ customer orientation and middle managers’ achievement goals on their DIA. The data from 337 middle managers are analyzed in structural equation modelling. The results indicate that managers’ perception regarding their firm as ‘emerging customer orientated’ positively influences their DIA. Perception regarding the firm as ‘mainstream customer orientated’ negatively influences. Mastery achievement goals of middle managers positively impact their DIA. The interaction of emerging customer orientation and mastery achievement goals significantly influence middle managers’ DIA. Later, interviews were conducted to elaborate on the survey data results, which complemented the findings and provided further insight into the identified effects. These results provide a comprehensive understanding of middle managers' strategic role in nurturing DI in an organizational setting and contributing to the theory and practice.