Responsible innovation: The role of organizational practices and structures

This chapter provides an overview of how corporations and other market organizations integrate responsible innovation (RI) into their organizing models, employing a perspective that focuses on governance structures and organizational practices as manifestations of RI on the organizational level. Organization scholars have begun to consider how organizations and corporations in particular – as sites where many innovations are developed and scaled – can facilitate responsible innovation. Moving beyond a focus on external governance structures, organizational research on RI can help further the conversation about the role of market organizations in embedding the principles of RI in innovation processes. The chapter considers two illustrative governance structures – legal forms and participatory structures – and discusses how they can enable responsible innovation in organizations. It also discusses two such sets of practices – social accounting and procedures to conceptualize problems.