Title: Top management team managerial mechanisms to control local service innovations

Authors: Chen-Ju Lin

Addresses: Department of Marketing and Distribution Management, Tzu Chi University of Science and Technology, 880, Sec.2, Chien-kuo Rd., Hualien City, 970, Taiwan

Abstract: This study observed the subtle mechanisms that top management teams (TMTs) regularly use to encourage or rein in local service innovation activities. A theoretical framework is used to illustrate that market forces and top management regional strategies would enhance or confine local service innovations. The author obtained 505 effective questionnaires from 72 groups nested in eight Taiwan leading insurance companies which provided with grouped samples with a local executive and at least one directly subordinated salesperson. The findings indicated that local insurers might not be encouraged to engage in service innovation activities when TMTs of head offices perceived comparatively high industrial market forces. Head offices tended to adopt a uniform mechanism to control local product provisions and service quality. The findings also suggest that if head offices wish to effectively control their local service innovations, they must grant strategy flexibility to local divisions and avoid excessive stock of organisational slack.

Keywords: insurer; market forces; managerial mechanisms; Taiwan; service innovation.

DOI: 10.1504/IJSTM.2017.088941

International Journal of Services Technology and Management, 2017 Vol.23 No.5/6, pp.494 - 512

Accepted: 31 Dec 2015
Published online: 03 Jan 2018 *

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