Intra-organizational Innovation Research Articles

The role of Post-New Public Management in shaping innovation: the case of a public hospital

This article examines how the Post-New Public Management administrative model adopted by a teaching hospital in Portugal shapes innovation processes. We find that innovation is a multi-level organizational phenomenon that relies substantially on the interplay of three factors: (1) trust-based professional autonomy at the individual level; (2) an intra-organizational collaborative approach in innovation (re)design at the team level; and (3) staff involvement/commitment towards the hospital’s strategy in the implementation of innovations at the organizational level. Additionally, innovation is facilitated by interconnected formal and informal processes that mutually reinforce each other. The study contributes to the literature on innovation and administrative models by providing a nuanced understanding of how intra-organizational innovation processes take place within a Post-New Public Management model. As such, it is one of the first attempts to empirically analyse and link the administrative model of Post-New Public Management with innovation. Points for practitioners This research provides an account of how a Post-New Public Management administrative model can foster intra-organizational innovation through collaboration across different hierarchies and professions. The article also helps to better understand the role of organizational dynamics at individual, team and organizational levels on innovation, as well as how these can shape and be shaped by formal and informal processes.

Emotional Structuring of Practices and Intraorganizational Innovation Process

We trace a longitudinal process of intraorganizational innovation that comprises the creation, evolution, and shutdown of an innovation unit in a large Western European corporation over three years. We show that while the execution of some innovation activities triggered positive emotions, the execution of others triggered negative ones. Our study reveals how organizational members’ collective effort to regulate the emotions that arise from daily activities influences the co-evolution of formal organizational structures, cognitive frames, and the innovation process. At the micro level, we unpack how and why innovating members alter a particular organizational activity. At the macro, organizational level, we show how over three years, patterns of collective emotion-regulation behavior and cumulative changes to activities shape the innovation process and its outcomes. Our primary contribution is to provide a novel, more holistic understanding of how collective emotions, cognition, and organizational structure co-evolve over time, and how their interplay influences the intraorganizational innovation process and its outcomes.

Different Loci of Digital Innovation in Organizations: A Conceptual Analysis

The rapid advancements in information technology (IT) cause a digitization of innovation processes and outcomes. This trend demands a theoretical reevaluation of the innovation process and its key actors involved. Following a phenomenological approach, we argue that the impetus for digital innovation in large enterprises may reside within different organizational units, namely research and development (R&D), IT units, and the increasingly popular digital innovation units (DIUs) that aim at digitizing organizational innovation. Previous scholars have identified organizational legitimacy as a key concept when it comes to intra-organizational innovation challenges, yet the implications arising from multiple loci of digital innovation are still vague. We thus argue that different forms of legitimacy are needed at certain stages of the (digital) innovation process and seek to unravel the question of how organizational innovation endeavors unfold when R&D, IT, or DIU provide the impetus for digital innovation. In so doing, we first provide a conceptualization of the different forms of legitimacy needed throughout the innovation process. We then distinctively explore the units’ assets and liabilities as well as formulate propositions on their advantages in and challenges of obtaining the legitimacy needed. Our paper thus offers much-needed insights into the organizational underpinnings enabling digital innovation.

The Role of Unabsorbed Slack in Internal and Collaborative Innovation Processes — A Resource-Based Framework

Extant research has highlighted the critical role of unabsorbed slack resources in internal innovation processes. In recent years, many firms have continued to open up their innovation processes to actively collaborate with external partners. In light of a limited understanding of the determinants of collaborative innovation, we provide new theoretical arguments about the relationship of unabsorbed slack resources with internal and collaborative innovation processes. Specifically, we draw on resource-based and competence-based logic and develop a conceptual framework for intraorganizational and interorganizational innovation with propositions for the impact of unabsorbed slack resources on internal and external knowledge acquisition and commercialization processes. The arguments underscore the critical role of excess resources in collaborative innovation, and they highlight the need for a fine-grained examination of the impact of unabsorbed slack resources in innovation processes. The arguments are particularly important in light of a renewed interest in essential enablers and barriers to collaborative innovation processes.

A long way home: How an intra-organizational innovation network overcomes its political boundaries

mrev management revue , Seite 139 - 159

Collaborative Regional Innovation Initiatives: A Booster for Local Company Innovation Processes?

It is widely acknowledged that the rate of innovations can be enhanced through interaction between new constellations of actors, crossing borderlines between different mindsets, knowledge and skill bases (e.g. Brown and Duguid, Org Sci 2(1):40–57, 1991; Cooke and Morgan, The associational economy: firms, regions, and innovation, 1998; Leonard-Barton, Wellsprings of knowledge: building and sustaining the sources of innovation, 1995, p. 64; Stamm, Managing innovation, design and creativity, 2008, p. 335). Studies of economic prosperity have also pointed to cooperation and competition between neighboring actors as a driver for competitiveness and innovativeness, be it for a company, a business area or a region (e.g. Piore and Sabel, The second industrial divide: possibilities for prosperity, 1984; Porter, The competitive advantage of nations, 1990). The hypothesis behind the geographical focus is that geographical proximity between actors promotes interaction and hence innovation. In EU, and also in Norway, this has been used actively as guidance in national and regional policy, where construction of innovation systems such as clusters and interorganizational networks are promoted and funded. To get organizations and institutions in a region to collaborate more is seen as the panacea for innovation, transformation and prosperity. However, companies often treat such constructed initiatives as an add-on to their ordinary, often long-lasting, business relationships between customers and suppliers (Hakansson et al., Business in networks, 2009, p. 13). This could imply that the necessary anchoring of such new innovation system initiatives with the companies’ own innovation processes is weak or missing. The terminology system points to the importance of the different elements (actors) in the system, their interrelatedness and their impact on each other (Meadows, Thinking in systems. A primer, 2009). An innovation system, like a network, cannot deliver innovation if the elements (i.e. the companies) of the systems don’t respond with related actions to the common endeavor. However, the different actors’ intraorganizational innovation processes are hardly mentioned in the innovation systems theories, thus lacking the important system feedback link between the intraorganizational innovation processes within the single company and the interorganizational innovation processes which are taking place in the collaborative initiative. In this article it is argued, supported by a case story, that attention to both of these processes and the nexus between them is needed in order to construct sustainable interorganizational innovation system initiatives. A model for this is proposed, based on a dual organization development process, encouraging system feedback loops and thereby bridging the single participating organization and the interorganizational collaborative initiative.

Knowledge Exchange in Intra-Organizational Innovation Communities: The Role of Cognitive and Affective States

AbstractMany aspects in the area of designing platforms for intra-organizational innovation communities are not well understood. In this article, we examine the impact of technologically induced psychological factors on knowledge exchange in such communities. Using two experimental pretest-posttest experiments, we find that the implementation of (i) technologically induced self-efficacy (expressed by a ‘hurray’ message) and (ii) technologically induced positive affect (expressed by playing some 30 seconds of rock-’n’-roll music) in the design of the platform results in an influential increase of knowledge exchange. Importantly, the studies suggest that the integration of technologically induced self-efficacy leads to a higher extent of knowledge exchange than technologically induced positive affect. The implications of these results for future research and practice as well as for the design of a platform for such communities are discussed.

Intraorganizational Alignment and Innovation Processes: Philips and Transistor Technology

The Dutch company Philips succeeded in producing transistors early on. By the early 1950s, it had acquired a strong position in the European semiconductor market. However, by the end of the 1950s, it was being surpassed by competitors. In response to the developments in solid state electronics, Philips' management adjusted the company's research, development, and production capabilities, enabling the firm to bring point-contact and layer transistors onto the market and to develop its own high-frequency transistor. When demand for industrial transistors increased, Philips was unprepared, leaving it without an entrée to this new market. The company's exclusive contracts with IBM not only failed to produce the expected results; they also limited its ability to establish ties with other computer companies and most important it illustrated Philips' choice not to produce computers. Therefore, Philips did not build knowledge and expertise in the computer field. Philips' organizational structure hampered both its innovative capacity in the field of applications and its ability to adjust transistor requirements to suit customer needs. Thus, by the early 1960s, Philips found itself in a weakened position in the increasingly competitive transistor market.

Communication during intraorganizational innovation adoption: Predicting users' behavioral coping responses to innovations in organizations

Much empirical evidence suggests that explanations for innovation outcomes should be located in an understanding of users' responses to innovations (Ashford, 1988; Fulk, 1993; Lewis & Seibold, 1993; Miller, Johnson, & Grau, 1994; Poole & DeSanctis, 1990). Unfortunately, researchers have neglected to pursue systematic studies of behavioral responses to innovations in accounting for particular innovation outcomes. The investigation reported draws on previous research that isolated three dimensions of interaction‐based coping responses: favorableness, decidedness, and focus (self vs. other). The present study tests the relative effects of several antecedents to users' (N= 216) behavioral coping responses to quality programs in four organizations. Results of hierarchical regression analyses indicated that users' attitudes, concerns for performance, normative influence, and uncertainty, and their perceptions of the context of change affect each of the three dimensions of their behavioral coping responses.