L IMITATIONS

As to any study, there are a number of limitations to my key findings presented above. As Alvesson and Kärremann (2000) argue, “… research texts are not, and cannot be, objective or clinical accounts of the facts” (Alvesson & Kärremann, 2000: 148). Instead, a research text is a persuasive construction of facts through the voice of a clinically objective researcher. Every researcher, however, has a prestructured understanding informed by his or her class, gender, and nationality and political and theoretical preferences and biases (Alvesson & Kärremann, 2000: 148). I do not pretend that my study is not informed by my prestructured understandings: other researchers might very well have come to other conclusions than I did.

As Alvesson and Kärremann, however, argue, language has the capacity to convey insights and factual information and to clarify phenomena. Language can convey something beyond itself, but it is imperative for the researcher to remain reflective and skeptical and carefully think about to what extent a text may be treated as an indication of phenomena (Alvesson &

Kärremann, 2000: 148-149). I feel I have done just that by only analyzing textual material produced and disseminated by the organizations themselves, by not forcing them to elicit answers on possible innovative practices, by being explicit about my choice of organizations and organizational fields, and by concluding on the discursive level: I do not argue that

Danish organizations in general are innovating, but that the organizations in my study discursively have picked up the societal discourse on innovation.

Apart from the general issue of prestructured understandings, there are a number of limitations more specific to my study as well. First of all, I did not study legitimacy as such, and I can therefore not know whether focusing and communicating a focus on innovation in fact provides legitimacy. This relies on an assumption, an assumption derived from the core argument of institutional theory: that there is a widespread belief in Denmark that we must live off our ability to innovate, and that Danish organizations therefore will attain legitimacy by focusing on innovation. It could be, however, that the organizations in my study are solely focusing on innovation for practical reasons. An altogether different account for these organizations‟ focus on innovation could thus be given by a study informed by resource dependence theory. Resource dependence theory emphasizes the task environment rather than the social environment of organizations, and focus is on the active choices that organizations exercise to exert influence over the allocation of critical resources (Oliver, 1991: 147-148;

Greenwood et al. 2008: 3). Organizations will thus seek to acquire control over resources to minimize their dependence on other organizations or to maximize other organizations‟

dependence on them. A resource dependence study on innovation could thus argue that organizations are engaging in innovative practices to obtain valuable and scarce resources and to minimize their dependence on other organizations; not necessarily because innovation is perceived as rational behavior in society. As outlined in the theory section, however, institutional theory is firmly established within organizational theory. It is outside the scope of this thesis to provide empirical support for one theoretical perspective over another, but as Greenwood et al. (2008) argue, much of the institutional argument has been confirmed and institutional theory is perhaps the dominant approach to understanding organizations (Greenwood et al., 2008: 2-22). Secondly, as I argued in the theory section, institutional theory has moved towards including more agency and strategic behavior, in that way to some extent incorporating other perspectives on organizational behavior. I therefore believe that it is fair to assume that Danish organizations is under a societal pressure to focus on innovation, and that such a focus will provide organizations with legitimacy.

A second limitation to my study is that I have not been studying the actual practices of organizations: I cannot prove whether the organizations in my study in fact are being innovative. I have studied how Danish private sector companies discursively make sense and

create meaning regarding a societal discourse on innovation. What my study shows is that Danish organizations have picked up a societal discourse on innovation and how there are variations as to how this is done in different organizational fields. I have, in other words, been studying discursive practices, not actual behavior. There is reason to believe, however, that Danish organizations are in fact focusing on innovation. Or, at least, that the discourse on innovation will have an impact on actual organizational practices. As Sahlin and Wedlin (2008) argue, Meyer and Rowan emphasized the ceremonial adaption of rationalized myths and the decoupling of such myths from ongoing activities, but more recent research has shown that adopted ideas have substantial effects on formal structures, day-to-day organizational practices, organizational identities, field transformations and institutional changes. Even though I am focusing on discursive practices in my study, I therefore find reason to believe that the discursive adoption of the innovation discourse can have significant effects on actual organizational practices.

Another limitation is that my study is limited to Denmark, and I can therefore not say whether there is a specifically Danish discourse or focus on innovation. The belief that we must live off innovation might very well be international and have started somewhere else; in fact, according to the views of international organizations outlined in the introduction it seems as if that is the case. It is therefore logical to assume that organizations in other countries than Denmark have shown the same response to the innovation discourse. I can, in other words, not conclude anything about a specifically Danish focus on innovation. And if all other countries focus just as much on innovation as do Danish organizations, are our organizations then innovative enough? Does Denmark then have any advantages regarding innovation?

Another study could research whether that is the case by comparing organizational fields across countries, regions or continents. Such a study could test whether discourses on innovation varies from country to country, and in which countries organizations focus most on innovation. And if such a study was conducted over time it could also shed light on where and when the discourse started, and if organizations in this, or these, countries have a higher focus on innovation. In addition, it could answer the question whether Danish organizations primarily pick up on the Danish discourse about innovation or whether Danish organizations are influenced by an international discourse.

Another related limitation concerns my choice of organizations. First of all, I limited my study to private sector companies thus excluding the public sector and government owned

companies. There might also be a bias in the organizational fields I have chosen, but since eleven of the fifteen organizations chosen are listed on the OMX Copenhagen 20 stock market index, they can be assumed to be organizations with central positions in their respective fields as well as organizations with high visibility and attention. Central actors in a field might still not be representative for their entire field, but as Hardy and Maguire (2008) argue, empirical studies have found that change can be initiated by powerful actors located in dominant positions in mature fields (Hardy & Maguire, 2008: 201), and DiMaggio and Powell (1983) also recognized the influence of elite interests. In my study, I focused solely on actors assumed to be central in their fields under the assumption that actors more peripheral in these fields will be influenced by these, more powerful, actors.

Related to this are the definitions of organizations and the categorizations of organizations into organizational fields. I have, on a more general level, classified organizations according to the similarity of products or services. As Scott and Meyer (1991) argued, however, classifying organizations has a range of difficulties. I have, just as Scott and Meyer suggested, however, been very explicit about the criteria I have used: how the organizations describe themselves and how the markets have classified them. Regardless of how explicit any researcher is, however, the analysis and conclusions will be influenced by those choices made: As Hernes (2008) argues, an essentially fluid and complex reality is sliced into pieces for analytical convenience (Hernes, 2008: 9). This holds true for any research, but by being explicit about the categorizations I made, I have tried to show exactly how I came to the conclusions I did.