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Study on the social and human capital of supervisory boards and digital innovations

© JPIM & Dall-E
"Inertia or Adaptability? The Effects of Outside Director Incumbency Capital on Incumbent Firms' Adoption of Discontinuous Technologies"

In the study, Simon Hensellek, Andreas König, Lorenz Graf-Vlachy, Justin Szewczyk, and Christopher Kurzhals examine the adoption of e-commerce by US retailers between 1995 and 2019. We find:

  • The social capital of outside board members, their embeddedness in elite networks, accelerates the adoption of disruptive technologies.
  • Their human capital, especially deeply rooted knowledge in the old technological paradigm, slows down fast and decisive change.
  • These two effects interact and can offset or reinforce each other.

The study combines research on how established companies adapt to disruptive technologies with board capital theory, showing how the social and human capital of supervisory boards influence the speed and intensity of introducing such technologies. The study offers counterintuitive insights into the role of supervisory boards in driving disruptive change, combining strategic leadership research with governance and innovation research. 

 

Citation:

Hensellek, S., König, A., Graf‐Vlachy, L., Szewczyk, J., & Kurzhals, C. (2025). Inertia or Adaptability? The Effects of Outside Director Incumbency Capital on Incumbent Firms' Adoption of Discontinuous Technologies. Journal of Product Innovation Management, online first https://doi.org/10.1111/jpim.70006.