Administrative Process Innovation as Capability Infrastructure for Dynamic Capabilities: Reframing Internal Digitalisation in Innovation Management

This conceptual theory-development study examines how administrative process innovation (AdPI) may contribute to the development of dynamic capabilities in innovation management. Drawing on process and organisational innovation, digitalisation and dynamic capabilities research, the study develops a framework positioning AdPI as capability infrastructure rather than as a dynamic capability itself. AdPI is defined as the implemented and substantive redesign of internal administrative routines, information flows, coordination mechanisms or decision processes. The framework theorises that such redesign may support sensing through enhanced information visibility and interpretation, seizing through cross-functional coordination and decision-right allocation, and reconfiguring through process modularity, organisational learning and resource recombination. These relationships are subject to organisational, behavioural and environmental boundary conditions and may evolve recursively over time. The study contributes a theoretically specified framework and propositions for future empirical research on internal digital process transformation and innovation management.