The exploration of responsible innovation in the business environment is in its infancy, and studies have been conducted to investigate successful practices related to responsible innovation in firms and to develop elements of evaluation indicators.

Findings regarding responsible industry projects suggest that firms lack an understanding of the concept of responsible innovation. However, this does not necessarily mean that they innovate in an irresponsible way (Gurzawska et al., 2015). For example, Stahl et al. (2019) through a qualitative survey of a number of companies in the ICT industry conducting 'responsible' activities, suggest that although they do not fully understand the meaning of responsible innovation, they are aware of some ethical and social issues related to their activities and have adopted some of the ideas of responsible innovation (Stahl et al., 2019). The results indicated that these companies, although not fully understanding the meaning of responsible innovation, were aware of some ethical and social issues related to their activities and had adopted some of the ideas of responsible innovation. However, in practice, the implementation methods to promote responsible innovation are often fragmented and not systematically integrated and effectively explored (van de Poel, 2020). Through business network resilience, Xie et al. (2022) found that responsible innovation has a positive impact on the sustainable performance of enterprises, and the resilience of business networks plays a mediating role in this relationship.

Further, Stahl et al. (2017) constructed a maturity model for responsible research and innovation. Firms can assess their maturity level of responsible research and innovation in terms of purpose, process and product, and locate the stage of maturity they are at. Jin et al. (2016) constructed an index system for evaluating responsible innovation based on the need to evaluate responsible innovation in three aspects: the enterprise product design concept, the product production process and the evaluation and supervision mechanism in Dalian High-tech Zone, China. Coffay et al. (2022) put forward the comprehensive concept of responsible innovation laboratory, developed responsible innovation tools and impact tools, and developed environment-specific methods to predict and evaluate the potential of new enterprises to improve sustainability.

At present, an academic exploration of responsible innovation concept in business focuses on managers' willingness to act and stakeholders' influence in the business environment. Ramadhan (2017) studied the individual behavior of responsible innovation in the business environment and argued that responsible innovation behavior refers to embedding the concept of responsibility into the beliefs, attitudes and intentions of individual innovators, i.e. adding responsibility to the whole process of innovation thinking, and eight questions were designed to measure four aspects of responsible idea generation, responsible fluency, responsible flexibility and responsible innovation realization (Ramadhan, 2017). Čeičytė (2019) identifies the main characteristics and concepts of responsible innovation in business contexts based on literature analysis, arguing that responsible innovation is a democratic, inclusive and transparent innovation process that is used by organizations in solving major challenges related to related problems, seeking innovations with stakeholders that have positive added value for society and the environment, and using 11 items to measure responsible innovation behavior in companies (Čeičytė, 2019). Adomako and Tran (2022) studied environmental cooperation, responsible innovation and enterprise performance, and found that stakeholder pressure positively regulates the impact of environmental cooperation on responsible innovation, and responsible innovation further regulates the relationship between environmental cooperation and enterprise performance (Adomako and Tran, 2022).

However, the current definition of corporate responsible innovation is not tailored to enterprises. For business-oriented enterprises, their responsible innovation should be rooted in the ecological environment they rely on (Long et al., 2020; Wiarda et al., 2021) and based on what enterprises are already doing (Katharina et al., 2020). Therefore, we believe that corporate responsible innovation is inevitably embedded in the network of social development. Through openness, transparency and interaction, entrepreneurs or managers and other stakeholders urge enterprises to determine the current innovation behavior in order to prevent possible adverse results in the future, so as to take responsibility for innovation, that is, corporate responsible innovation is the responsible innovation behavior of enterprises facing social expectations, Such behavior should fully consider the external environment represented by ethics, public values, technical characteristics, industrial chain, industrial culture, etc. And the internal elements represented by entrepreneurs.

Firstly, from an organizational change perspective, the fact that organizations face major challenges is an important driver for firms to implement responsible innovation. The level of environmental cooperation of enterprises will affect corporate responsible innovation (Adomako and Tran, 2022). The networked nature of the environment in which firms operate facilitates the implementation of their responsible innovation, i.e., the integration of internal and external stakeholders in the firm contributes to the emergence of responsible innovation ideas and their implementation in the firm to address and solve major societal challenges (Chatfield et al., 2017a; Schönherr et al., 2020). In turn, major social challenges (e.g., poverty, health and safety) are important drivers of technological innovation (Pandza and Ellwood, 2013).

Second, from an institutional theory perspective, gaining legitimacy is an important factor that drives firms to implement responsible innovation. Trittin-Ulbrich and Böckel (2022) took corporate digital responsibility as an example to study how entrepreneurs in different fields construct corporate digital responsibility, so as to legalize the commitment of enterprises to responsible digital innovation. Responsible behavior is seen as necessary for organizational success and survival, and firms implementing responsible innovation can both improve their corporate image and potentially enhance their competitive advantage and thus increase profits (Stahl et al., 2019). Furthermore, corporate responsible innovation behavior is a strategic response to external institutional pressures (both formal and informal) and reflects an organization’s ability to adapt and choose its external environment (Mei and Chen, 2015). And soft law mechanisms can help overcome the limitations of hard law in the global governance of responsible innovation in multinational organizations (Voegtlin and Scherer, 2017). Third, the demands of stakeholders such as consumers and public forces (Auer and Jarmai, 2018) also drive the implementation of responsible innovation in firms, with customer satisfaction being a strong and attractive incentive for firms. Mainstreaming responsible innovation into existing funding schemes is therefore an important incentive for firms (Zwart et al., 2014), as is the perceived legitimacy of responsible innovation to attract investment.

Fourth, in terms of organizational development, the pursuit of profit and risk reduction are the primary factors for firms to engage in responsible innovation. The potential for greater economic benefits from effective stakeholder involvement in innovation is widely accepted and, as a result, some firms may engage in activities related to responsible innovation for purely pragmatic reasons to reduce economic risk and improve the acceptability of their products and services (Zwart et al., 2014).

Fifth, in terms of corporate culture, cultural values and institutional structures have a profound impact on the development of responsible innovation. Corporate culture, awareness of responsible innovation, and ethical codes of conduct are important influences on the development of responsible innovation in firms (Chatfield et al., 2017b), such as implicit and explicit ethical commitments (Stahl et al., 2019), the intrinsic motivations of key individuals in the firm such as founders and executives, their attitudes towards responsible performance and their past experiences. In addition, the management and organizational structure of a company can promote responsible innovation by explicitly considering ethical, social or other responsibilities for action, and by supporting employees' commitment to implementing responsible innovation, which in turn facilitates its implementation.

In addition, some scholars have researched and proposed a more comprehensive set of drivers for responsible corporate innovation. On the one hand, instrumental motives (e.g., profit-seeking), relational motives (e.g., voluntary compliance with laws and regulations under regulatory pressure, legitimacy craving) and moral motives (originating from companies and employee groups with high demands for moral and ethical norms) (Yaghmaei and Poel, 2021), or economic/competitive, institutional/relational and ethical motives (Chatfield et al., 2017b) are three important motivators that lead organizations to implement responsible innovation. On the other hand, the six factors, including regulatory framework, availability of financial resources, market orientation, customer knowledge, organizational structure and knowledge among innovation partners, will affect the degree of responsible innovation (Auer and Jarmai, 2018).

To sum up, the existing research about the motivations for implementing corporate responsible innovation are summarized in Figure 1.

Firstly, profitability is the primary consideration in business decisions, and this conflicts with the notion that responsible innovation goes beyond a financial profit-only orientation (Brand and Blok, 2019). Secondly, the prevailing notion of innovation, that it stems from information asymmetries in the marketplace and that firms have a clear incentive not to engage with stakeholders, is inconsistent with the openness and inclusiveness required by responsible innovation and may also lead to resistance from firms (Garst et al., 2017). In addition, insufficient resources can limit the implementation of responsible innovation in firms, such as internal factors like budgetary constraints and funding issues, lack of human resources, and external factors like lack of financial support and investor understanding for responsible innovation in the market. Further, insufficient ethical considerations in organizations and systems are also important reasons why some people and institutions engage in irresponsible innovation behavior (Liu et al., 2016). Figure 2 presents the study of barriers factors for implementing corporate responsible innovation.

Corporate responsible innovation may be associated with specific industries (Stahl et al., 2017), and therefore the industry in which a firm operates may be an important moderating variable. For example, in the context of ICTs for health, population change and wellbeing, many innovation processes are highly regulated and require close alignment with the values of responsible innovation (Chatfield et al., 2017a). Furthermore, Auer and Jarmai (2018) note that all factors can be drivers or barriers for firms to undertake responsible innovation, in the process of driving or hindering enterprises to carry out responsible innovation, many environmental or situational factors from inside (e.g., corporate culture) or outside (e.g., public policy) will have different degrees of influence in this process.

Corporate responsibility innovation is oriented towards inclusion, it is to induce more stakeholders to participate in innovation activities, which can be done through various ways such as dialogue and debate for collective deliberation of innovation activities and listening to the demands of different subjects on innovation activities. All respondents, without exception, agreed on the need and benefits of stakeholder involvement in innovation activities, which is typical of the responses:

Integrating the interests of stakeholders in the innovation process is ultimately a win-win situation in order to achieve economic and social benefits, as the interviewees talked about in their interviews:

In addition to considering the interests of stakeholders and achieving a win-win situation with them, two other dimensions of inclusions were included in the interview themes: observing social and business ethics in the innovation process and considering the responsibility of innovation for ethical, ecological, economic and social development. As the interviewee said in the interview:

Adverse impacts of new technologies are often not foreseen and risk-based hazard estimates often do not provide early warning of future impacts (Hoffmann-Riem and Wynne, 2002). Anticipation is to anticipate the potential impacts and risks directly related to the science and technology innovation activities themselves and to effectively deal with the unintended consequences that may arise from research and innovation through technology assessment, scenario planning, and other methods (Bozeman et al., 2015; Kuzma and Cummings, 2021), taking into account social, environmental, and ethical influences, so as to “prospectively govern” the innovation activities and realize the controllable risks of innovation activities. The majority of interviewees indicated that they anticipate the ethical, ecological, economic, and social risks that innovation may pose:

Forecasting is forward-looking systems thinking that situates innovation within the study of socially robust crisis management, thus placing the possibility of negative externalities, innovation uncertainty and other factors arising from scientific liberalism in the context of manageable social crisis management and social development orientation. For example, some interviewees mentioned that they consider the possible outcomes of innovation from a long-term perspective of social and environmental benefits:

Responsibility requires reflection by actors on the known or unknown purposes, motivations and potential impacts of innovation (Stilgoe et al., 2013), which implies self-reflection on the assumed premises, requirements, goals, processes of implementation, and outcomes of innovative activities, and the realization that a particular framework for an issue may not be universally held. Social theorists consider reflection as a condition of contemporary modernity (Beck et al., 1994).

Depending on the level of knowledge of CRI, respondents generally agreed that there is a need for reflection in the innovation process, particularly on the legality of innovation activities, i.e. thinking about whether innovation activities comply with laws and regulations. Respondents also talked about reflecting on other aspects, such as the importance of involving stakeholders in the evaluation of innovation activities and whether potential threats to innovation are regularly and openly discussed within the organization.

Responsiveness is about responding to new knowledge, perspectives, views, and normative norms. Specifically, responsiveness involves the establishment of an interactive, continuous, and flexible adaptive learning process through institutionalized interrogation mechanisms when knowledge and control over innovation are felt to be insufficient, the framework and direction of innovation activities are moderately adjusted, the human value system is incorporated into the research framework of responsible innovation in the technological design process, and the institutional coupling of the innovation evolution process responsive to social values is realized. Responsible innovation requires the ability to change form or direction in order to respond to stakeholders and public values as well as to changing circumstances. During the interviews, we learned that it is important to integrate key stakeholders into the innovation process:

In addition, maintaining close communication with stakeholders, such as the public and the organization’s employees, regarding the content of the innovation and adapting it to the important information provided by stakeholders are also important behavioral manifestations of responsible innovation:

We argue that the role of enterprises in responsible innovation research and practice gradually changes from combining corporate social responsibility with technological innovation to combining corporate open innovation with responsible ethics to combining corporate innovation governance with specific industries, and that corporate responsible innovation is embedded in a certain industrial environment and ethical social environment. Furthermore, the overall situation of the industry has a significant impact on corporate responsible innovation. By combining the specific characteristics of the industry in which the company is located, such as industrial technology and industrial chain, and by studying and judging the trends of technology risk, intellectual property rights, industrial layout, industrial agglomeration, industrial transformation and upgrading, corporate responsible innovation can be better implemented in the industrial innovation ecosystem in which the company is located (Stahl, 2022). As an important part of the national innovation system, enterprises need to comply with the requirements of morality, ethics, public values and social culture of the country they are located in to carry out innovation activities, and to build up responsible thinking, awareness and responsibility for innovation development from the bottom. On this basis, the connotation of corporate responsibility innovation can be elaborated through “one subject, one factor and four goals”. In summary, the core connotations and structural dimensions of CRI are distilled through content analysis, and the preliminary connotation analysis is shown in Figure 3, and the complete 20 items and 4 dimensions are shown in Table 4.

1) Enterprise subject: the enterprise is the subject of implementing responsible innovation. Guided by inclusion, by involving stakeholders in innovation collaborative governance, conducting anticipation, reflexivity and responsiveness in the process of idea formation, idea screening and idea verification implementation, and jointly seek innovation with stakeholders that have positive added value for society and the environment (Čeičytė, 2019).

Responsible corporate innovation behavior is a strategic response to external market pressures and reflects a firm’s ability to adapt to the external environment, with firms engaging in responsible innovation-driven to some extent by the market. Respondents indicated that they engage in responsible innovation to a large extent from consumers, most of whom evaluate a company’s reputation based on whether it is responsible in its innovation process, as they believe that responsible innovation by firms can benefit society.

In addition to consumers evaluating the reputation of companies, some professional third-party organizations also monitor companies as they implement responsible innovation, for example by issuing appropriate reports to evaluate the responsibility of companies' innovation, as interviewees said.

Pressure from suppliers is also an important driver of responsible innovation in companies. In their business dealings, suppliers make judgements about whether the innovation process is responsible for the enterprise and thus derive an assessment of the enterprise, particularly those suppliers who have launched socially and environmentally friendly products.

In addition, in a highly competitive market environment, modern firms operate with a strong focus on the ethics and morality of innovation, particularly as the high level of interest from peer competitors in undertaking responsible innovation can drive firms to implement responsible innovation.

With the continuous improvement of various national laws, regulations and policy systems related to entrepreneurship, higher requirements are placed on the innovative activities of enterprises. In this context, the mandatory policy is reflected in the fact that if a company harms the interests of society and violates morality and ethics in its innovation activities, then it will be severely punished. As interviewees talk about:

In fact, the implementation of responsible innovation by enterprises is not only due to the pressure of laws and regulations, but also due to the local government’s efforts to improve the relevant laws and regulations, the formulation of tax incentives, the provision of special financial subsidies and preferential loans.

Corporate responsible innovation can be influenced by the overall national and sociocultural environment. As interviewees talked about:

If the state promotes the idea of socially responsible innovation, strongly encourages responsible stakeholder behavior when innovating, and the company’s leaders and employees are happy to be educated about the responsibility of innovation, then the company will to a large extent implement the behavior of responsible innovation. This is influenced by normative pressures, i.e. shared concepts and norms of meaning developed in national and regional cultures, values, normative beliefs and behavioral assumptions, which are agreed, assessable as well as obligatory dimensions of social life.

Innovative activities by companies help to continuously expand profitability channels and business scale and enhance the profitability of existing businesses. Clear economic benefits are therefore the main driver for corporate responsible innovation.

In considering economic efficiency, companies also focus on and maintain relationships with core stakeholders, such as customers, peers and suppliers, and establish or maintain win-win relationships with them through innovation.

Interaction with society and the public will also drive enterprises to carry out responsible innovation. Corporate responsible innovation itself is guided by inclusion, as the interviewer said:

A company undertaking responsible innovation will have its own innovation strategy, such as a dedicated person responsible for the socially responsible management of the innovation project, training to carry out the innovation project, or a clear reward or evaluation system for the company to carry out the innovation project responsibly, as in this typical interview dialogue.

These innovation systems underpin corporate responsible innovation and are an important driver of responsible corporate innovation.

Another driver frequently mentioned in the interviews was the conditions for innovation in the firm. Among these, innovation resources are important for corporate responsible innovation, with higher investment in research and a high level of technological equipment compared to other companies in the same sector being important drivers of responsible innovation.

In addition, companies with human resources of a high scientific quality are usually able to complete innovative projects with high quality, as this interviewer said.

In addition to innovation resources, a firm’s own ability to innovate is an important driver. For example, the originality of a product, the number of patents filed, and the speed and success of new product development can have an impact on whether a firm engages in responsible innovation.

Motivation is the cause and motivation that triggers behavior, and the transformation of organizational motivation into organizational behavior requires a weighted consideration of situational factors (Grewal et al., 2001; Liu et al., 2016). Therefore, based on the model of “moral factors affecting behavior" (Weber, 1990; Trevino et al., 2006), we propose a framework of drivers of corporate responsible innovation with the responsible innovation motivations as the core trigger variables, responsible innovation elements and responsible innovation system as the internal organizational factors, and market pressure, policy pressure and normative pressure as the external organizational factors in Figure 4.