This study delves into the artful equilibrium elite chefs maintain between tradition and innovation in the realm of haute cuisine, ensuring that heritage thrives alongside fresh creativity. Through 18 interviews with Michelin-starred chefs and key figures from two countries, we introduce the concept of "robust tradition." This idea captures how entrenched culinary practices and rituals not only safeguard the legacy of top-tier restaurants but also provide a versatile foundation for innovation and adaptation. Our findings reveal how robust tradition supports both stability and change, offering valuable strategies for leaders to harness long-standing principles to inspire organizational innovation. We discuss the broader implications of these findings for strategic management and organizational theory, especially in settings where maintaining authenticity is as vital as embracing innovation.
This study explores the multifaceted role of tradition in family businesses by addressing the often-overlooked tension between tradition and innovation. While innovation is widely recognized as essential for organizational longevity, tradition plays an equally critical role by providing continuity, identity, and unique resources that shape strategic decision-making processes. Drawing on classical theories in social sciences and case vignettes from the Grand Hotel Cravat - a century-old family-owned hotel in Luxembourg - this chapter develops a nuanced conceptualization of tradition as comprising three forms: received, enacted, and to-be-transmitted traditions. These forms are examined as constraints and resources, highlighting how family businesses leverage tradition to foster stability while enabling adaptability in dynamic environments. Challenging the dichotomous view of tradition as merely a resource or constraint for innovation, this study underscores its deeper historical, cultural, and strategic significance, thus revealing how tradition and innovation coexist and mutually enable each other. By advancing a balanced perspective on this duality, this chapter contributes to the strategic management field by emphasizing how family firms navigate the multiple meanings of tradition in shaping their strategic orientation.
In this study, we investigate the interplay between tradition and innovation. In particular, we explore the adoption of a novel and contested category in a tradition-led setting, under the boundary condition of a challenge to traditional practices and prescriptions, and the role of tradition-led organizations in the adoption of that category. We suggest that these issues represent overlooked theoretical phenomena; accordingly, we examine these phenomena and provide novel conceptual explanations. In contrast with previous research, our findings show that social actors' divergent behaviors can earn them the required credibility to adopt a contested category in a traditional context and that local traditions increase the likelihood of entering into such a category rather than hindering it. Our research setting is the Italian wine industry between 1999 and 2009.
Tradition and innovation are often seen in potential tension. In this chapter, the authors investigate how organizations can manage this tension by adopting hybrid strategies, blending the preservation of tradition and the drive to innovation. As outlined by many researchers for different industries such as opera, food, and film-making, tradition can be a source for innovation and innovation can strengthen the reproduction of tradition. The authors explore these dynamics in the field of Motorsport, looking at the evolution of Formula 1 World Championship from 1950 to 2024. In particular, the authors observe how racetracks, the arena where the history of races took place, have changed to respond to the need of innovation driven by safety and, increasingly, business and marketing goals. Evidence from the evolution of Formula 1 circuits reveal how Federation Internationale de l'Automobile (FIA) and the Formula 1 organizers, lately Formula One Group belonging to Liberty Media, have adopted hybrid strategies that changed, sometimes drastically, the racetracks without canceling the traces of the heroic past, which Formula 1 owes its enduring success to.
