This article seeks to open the black box surrounding managerial innovation (MI) adoption processes in organization. Existing understanding of MI has been limited to technology-based innovation models and a rational perspective that neglects social aspects. With both cultural and institutional perspectives, this study explores the role of internal actors and seeks to expand understanding of the transition across different phases in the MI process. In a review of the adoption and adaptation of employee-driven innovation (EDI), as a practical form of MI, over a five-year period by EDF’s Hydraulic Engineering Centre, this article reveals that EDI still has not been successfully routinized at the intra-organizational level. Results show that many discrepancies between rhetoric and reality and embody various types of misfit (political, cultural, technical, and structural) lead to unfavorable conditions for appropriating new managerial and organizational practices. They even can serve as serious impediments to MI adoption. Therefore, MI must be managed in a distributed manner, such that top and middle management, together with employees, serve differentiated and interdependent roles that in combination ensure the success of MI adoption processes.
