Trust and control manifestations in employee-driven innovations

Abstract

Purpose: The goal is to deepen understanding of trust and control in employee-driven innovations (EDI) and is met by empirical research basing on key informants’ narration. Design/methodology/approach: Nineteen interviews with key informants were conducted between March and June 2021 in three companies from different sectors (telecommunication, pharmaceutical and financial). Findings: This publication contributes to the existing literature on EDI and trust-control in multiple ways. First, it reveals lack of direct reference to trust in employees’ discourse on EDI. Second, it highlights manifestations of trust and control along with fit into Das and Teng (2001) framework. Third, it reveals differences among researched companies in terms of breakdown of trust and control types, which poses further questions about factors impacting these differences. Fourth, it shows that social control manifestations are not recognized. Research limitations/implications: Research limitation stems from the method, which does not allow to make generalizations. Manifestations of social control in Das and Teng (2001) model were not recognized in the research, which opens a future research avenue. Future research could investigate impersonal trust in the context of EDI. Practical implications: The research proves important role of general managerial support, identified in the literature on innovations and trust. Originality/value: The article proposes categorization of trust and control manifestations and fit into types of trust and control in Das and Teng (2001) model, which originally presents relations between trust, control and risk types in collaboration between alliance partners. Keywords: trust, control, employee-driven innovation, bottom-up innovation, manifestations. Category of the paper: Research paper.