Download a critical review of research articles

GENDERING OF INNOVATION - A CRITICAL REVIEW OF RESEARCH ARTICLES
Päivi Eriksson and Eeva Aromaa
University of Eastern Finland
Business School,
Po Box 1627, 70211Kuopio, Finland
tel. +358-500-379717
[email protected]
There is a widely shared consensus about the importance of innovation for the competitiveness
and well-being of economies, regions and organizations. The concept of innovation in this
discourse mostly refers to radical technology-driven inventions with commercial value, aiming
at economically successful and fast growing businesses. These types of innovations are typically
produced by male scientists at the R&D departments of large global organizations, and they are
aimed at international markets. The same understanding of innovation has dominated academic
innovation research (Nieto 2004). Therefore, researchers have devoted less attention to smallscale, service-intensive, incremental innovation, which is more typical to small organizations
operating with limited resources (SMEs, for instance).
In their article focusing on the social and geographical context of innovation, Blake and Hanson
(2005) suggest that the gendering of innovation is one reason for the prevailing imbalance of
innovation research. They suggest that both researchers and policy makers value innovation
according to a dualistic construction of gender, discerning 'men' and 'women' as innovators, and
'feminine' and 'masculine' areas of innovation. The most valued is innovation, which is
symbolically masculine (e.g. technology-intensive, large-scale, product or process-related,
universal, enables fast business growth) and produced by men. The least valued is innovation,
which is symbolically feminine (e.g. soft, social, simple, small-scale, service-intensive, regional,
related to no-growth business) and produced by women. The result is that a great number of
innovative activities with economic, social and regional value are excluded from both research
and policy making processes. A new global trend, however, has been to broaden the conception
of innovation to include change and renewal related to a good number of other issues besides
technology (e.g. organizations, management, design, services etc.). Whether this trend has
travelled to the published innovation research is an interesting question.
The purpose of our paper is to perform a critical review of innovation research articles published
in leading management journals (with the best impact factors) during the past 10 years (20012011). In our paper, we have analyzed the contents of the articles through the frame provided
by Blake and Hanson (2005).
The main finding of the study is that the whereas innovation and gender is co-constructed
through ‘gender blindness’ and ‘masculine and male’, as reported in prior research, these are
also co-constructed through the discursive strategies of multiple masculinities and crossing over
the traditional sex-gender division which links femininities to women and masculinities to men.
These have not been explicated in prior research on innovation and gender.
By reflecting on how gender is involved in innovation research and practice, more attention
could be given to change the prevailing imbalances in how innovation is understood: what
counts as innovation and who are defined as innovators.