RESPONSIBLE ENTREPRENEURSHIP VISION DEVELOPMENT AND ETHICS

352 RESPONSIBLE ENTREPRENEURSHIP
Interviews
The main source of data came from semi-structured interviews. Semi-structured interviews
give interviewees the opportunity to freely associate, increasing the likelihood of receiving
unexpected answers or data. The two main topics in the interview were the strengths and weaknesses
of Ampelmann’s innovation process and the conflicting demands between Ampelmann’s
exploitation and exploration activities. Two other questions dealt with the various forms of
ambidexterity and the questionnaire results. Alongside these four questions, a list of control
questions was used to ensure that all relevant subjects were discussed. The interview protocol
was developed with the help of interview guidelines as formulated by Jacob & Furgerson
(2012) and by conducting a test interview. Eight interviewees were selected from different
positions in the company directly involved in either innovation or in the line business, including
the innovation project manager, the innovation manager (MT member), the engineering
manager (MT member), innovation technical advisor and the operations manager (MT member).
All interviews were recorded and transcribed to ensure reliability.
To obtain a more representative view at the employee level, a panel discussion was organized
with a small group of employees. A panel discussion was selected since individual interviews
would be too time consuming within the scope of the research. For the panel interviews,
employees were selected based on their position and their involvement with either innovation
or line business. Also, questionnaire responses that showed more involvement (extra comments
and questions) were taken into account in selecting committed or involved employees.
Data measurement
To gather information about the most relevant constructs of this research (see figure 1),
specific measures were used, mostly based on a sample of both medium-sized and large enterprises
(Li, 2012). Other measures came from a sample of large enterprises, although most
measures appear not to be related to firm size. Only the measure on knowledge flows was
related to firm size and indeed did not provide valid results.
Organization ambidexterity was measured on two 6-item scales, measuring firm level
exploratory and exploitative innovation. This scale is based on the findings by (Jansen et al.,
2006) and also used by (Li, 2012). Organizational ambidexterity was then measured by adding
the scores of firm-level exploratory and exploitative innovations.
Managers exploration and exploitation activities were measured on two 7-item scales
developed by Mom et al. (2007), indicating that firm-level or unit-level exploitation and exploration
may to a large extent originate from their individual managers’ exploitation and exploration
activities. Therefore, it seemed a relevant scale to use to find proxies on Ampelmann’s
ambidexterity level. “The exploration scale determines the extent to which a manager engaged
in exploration activities last year while the exploitation scale determines the extent to which
the manager engaged in exploitation activities last year” (Mom et al., 2007).
Strategy Since no scale was available to measure this construct, four questions were formulated
as a proxy, based on literature about strategy.
Performance management and social support was used by Birkinshaw & Gibson (2004)
to diagnose the organizational context. For both measures, they used a 7-item scale. For each
scale, the mean value was calculated and the results plotted in a graph, which described five
types of organizational context.