Limitations of the Study and Direction for Further Research

The following chapter is divided into two separate subsections. The first section will outline the limitations of the research involving both the potential lack in scholarly rigor for qualitative research as well as limitations caused by the case study at hand. The second section will then discuss directions and possible implications for further research. The combination of both parts enables researchers to understand the influence of this study and provides the possibility to respond with continuous research on the topic.

Fundamentally, the research was designed to cover a deeper understanding of the relationship between organizational learning and corporate acceleration. The present study is bounded however, by the selected qualitative research design. Inductive qualitative research results are commonly criticized for their low degree of reliability and validity. Anderson argues, that qualitative research is often criticized as “biased, small scale, anecdotal and/or lacking rigor”

(Anderson, 2011, p.2). Wiersma (2000) refers to the complex environment in which qualitative research is conducted and concludes that the results are not reliable and are nearly impossible to duplicate. However, due to the novelty of the research topic, it can be assumed that the phenomenon is still significantly dynamic in nature. Moreover, the research on organizational learning and knowledge transfer in specific is still under process and can be considered a dynamic phenomenon. As a result, further research is necessary to demonstrate that the implications are defensible and generalizable. For the study at hand, this indication simultaneously provides a challenge as well as an opportunity.

Another important boundary to realize, is the focus on the case of Airbus. Although the researchers were provided with sufficient internal data and access to involved organizational members, the study is still limited by the particular case of Airbus. The discussion section already illustrated important differences of Airbus’ corporate accelerator to typical accelerator programs. In addition, as objectives of corporate accelerators are defined by their corporate mother firms, it is likely that conducted initiatives highly differ among each other.

Correspondingly, the aviation industry and consequently airplane manufacturing is dominated by engineers who indicate to struggle and have difficulties with applying novel working

methods. Furthermore, a selection bias emerged because individuals who actively contributed to the accelerator are willing to change and take initiative and may not represent the typical Airbus employee. Additionally, the researchers were only able to interview six corporate representatives and two further participants for triangulation, which represents a rather small sample size. This was caused by the recent establishment of the BizLab and a resulting small population size that already collaborated with the BizLab. Due to the general novelty of corporate accelerators, research on organizational learning within this domain is a rather broad and unknown field of study. Nevertheless, the insights provided by Airbus combined with available literature constitute as justifiable basis for investigation.

During the research, the authors as well as respondents ascertained that it was difficult to capture and measure the influence of the accelerator on the creation and transfer of knowledge. This is rooted in the difficulty to measure organizational learning and knowledge transfer as such. To date there is no tool or approach which can determine the process or value of either of the two. Further, the measuring and determining of the application of knowledge created and transferred through the BizLab could selectively be detected but general assumptions could not be drawn. Ultimately, again due to the BizLab’s recent establishment, the researchers could not make conclusions on sustainable knowledge transfer.

Employees may have increased their knowledge for instance, but the respective integration of gained knowledge might only become essential at a later stage of the development process.

Hence, the researchers were only able to draw inductive implications assuming the knowledge will be applied at a later stage.

Moreover, the analyzed data may also suffer limitations caused by the subjective interpretation of the researchers. As one of the researchers actively worked at Airbus’ BizLab during the research, her observations were also based on subjective impressions and experiences gained during her internship. In order to overcome the challenge of subjective interpretation, a workable compromise between subjective observation and objective interpretation by the second researcher was achieved. The interviewers also relied on the respondent’s memory of past experiences, events and subjective impressions. Hence, it remains uncertain whether the responses of the interviewees are unbiased and without prejudices. Additionally, it has not been clear whether participants exaggerated or embellished events because it could increase their feeling of strongly contributing to the findings.

Ultimately, almost all research study results were primary collected in German. This contains office language, conducted interviews as well as observed collaborations. Temple and Young (2004) outline the typical translation dilemma and emphasize that research that involves translation often tends to make data amenable to traditional forms of qualitative data handling. Additionally, translation often packs the collected data into a form in order to match the researcher’s instruments for handling it (Temple & Young, 2004). As time and limited resources made one-to-one translation of the entire collected data impossible, there may be interpretation differences from original to translated linguistic data.

Future research should be focused especially on the framework which emerged from the interviewees statements. All the aggregate dimensions and 2^nd order themes should be investigated in detail regarding their influence on organizational learning through corporate accelerators. It is to be explored in detail and possibly through additional case studies how the particular themes affect the interrelation and ultimately which human factors, contextual factors or methods support corporate accelerators in the best way.

Another starting point for future research is the conducting of similar studies on different cases. As the findings from this case study cannot be transferred to other accelerators or industries further case studies also with several accelerators from one industry would highlight patterns and make outcomes transferable. In particular, it would be interesting to compare highly innovative industries, like the technology industry with traditionally conservative industries like the financial sector and expose different requirements for organizational learning.

Longitudinal studies of the researched topics could lead to valuable results on the effectiveness of corporate accelerators regarding their contribution to organizational learning.

This study was only able to present a snapshot and therefore relies on the participant’s opinions. Over a longer timeframe, it would be possible to measure the number of projects created through the BizLab and products or savings created. To provide an even clearer picture projects hosted in the BizLab and projects from other departments could be compared.

Finally, the topic of corporate accelerators just emerged recently and literature about it accordingly limited. While there are some academic articles regarding the relevance, objectives and types of corporate accelerators studies how these can be reached and which mechanisms lead to certain outcomes are still to be found. This current gap in literature will

provide important insights for corporations, on their decisions to open corporate accelerators and on the structure within and around them.