Workplace Innovation Research Articles

News on Workplace Innovation

News on Workplace Innovation

Collective bargaining and technological innovation in the EU15: An analysis at establishment level

AbstractIn this paper, we study the relationship between unionisation and workplace innovation in a cross‐country and multisectoral approach. This is an important and controversial issue in the industrial relation literature; however, the empirical literature on the links between innovation and unionism is rather scarce and results are mixed and ambiguous, both in theory and in empirical practice. The European Company Survey (Eurofound), with data for establishments in 15 European Union countries, is used employing a probit model. Our results contribute to the debate by showing that the adoption of technology not only increases when the company performs collective bargaining but also when the relationship between wage bargaining and innovation adoption is not linear, being more significant in cases where bargaining occurs at the regional/national level.

일터혁신을 위한 근로자 참여 활성화 방안: SK 이노베이션 사례를 중심으로

As the significance of employee welfare continues to grow in the management field and literature, researchers and practitioners are obliged to pay more attention to hearing and incorporating employee voice. With a focus on SK innovation in South Korea, this study examines the process by which management hears and accepts employee voice. The ‘Workplace Innovation’ project, which has been promoted by the government for more than two decades, aims to improve organizational performance and the quality of work life by fostering the collaboration of labor and management. In practice, however, the project was primarily driven by managerial decisions in the form of system introduction, organizational restructuring, and practice innovation, subsequently losing its original intent and showing limited impact. Regarding employee welfare, the necessity and urgency of each employee vary depending on individual needs and preferences, limiting the effectiveness of collective interests adjustment by a labor union. Therefore, the purpose of this study is to identify the process in which a company collects various demands from the field, individual workers make suggestions for each agenda, and the suggestions and demands of individual workers are converged to establish priorities. This case intends to contribute to establishing a foundation for further enhancing the participation of individual workers and labor unions in the process of achieving and continuing Workplace Innovation. Using the “voice-exit theory” as a framework, the process by which individual employees actively voice their thoughts and opinions are combined is classified into four types in this study. For theoretical and practical validation through a case study, this study provides an example of enhancing employee benefits and welfare at SK Innovation's Ulsan plant and describes in detail how members' opinions are collected and implemented into actual policies, focusing on the Happiness Council operation. Through the implementation of a system that facilitates regular and direct communication between members, labor, and management, the SK Innovation Happiness Council is an example of empowering employees and increasing their awareness of participation in the sense that individual members participate directly in decision-making. The present case has significant implications for Korean enterprises as it facilitates the involvement of employees and labor unions in the workplace innovation processes and enables them to establish a self-enhancing workplace innovation environment through consistent communication between labor and management.

Workplace innovation in ‘low-skilled’ sectors: a German case-study of action research

This article describes the methodological outcomes of an action research project conducted with the ethnically diverse and (purportedly) ‘low-skilled’ workforce of a German medium-sized company in early 2021. Perspectives and challenges for workplace development were investigated by engaging the staff members in a novel process of Critical Utopian Action Research, a Nordic research method based on principles of emancipation and democratic engagement (Egmose et al., 2020). Setting aside the original focus of the study on diversity management and inclusion practises, this paper specifically explores the nuances of implementing such a research method through the lens of ‘workplace innovation’. Theoretically, in dialogue with the specific composition of identities in the case-study and the EU policy context of innovation, the article derives two original concepts of worker collectivism and worker autonomy from the meeting point of social- and workplace-innovation literatures. The closing discussion addresses the need for methodological adaptations for (critical utopian) action research to small-sized research projects, aiming to increase research quality. The study concludes by emphasising the potential of action research to promote a socially-driven and participatory approach to workplace innovation, whilst acknowledging the need for more workplace innovation projects for and with both low-skilled and ethnically diverse workforces.

Digital technology in a crisis: Role of digital and cloud maturity in organisations surviving and thriving through pandemic crisis

The COVID-19 epidemic forced Singapore to implement a smart lockdown in April 2020. As a result, many businesses were forced to rapidly expedite their shift to digital technologies. Despite many businesses' valiant efforts and great accomplishments, the epidemic has revealed the various ways in which these businesses are susceptible to a crisis. Digital technology has proven to be one of the most essential options for many businesses seeking to grow. This entails making the transition from active experimenting to active scaling up. Regardless of the immense obstacles that many businesses are facing today, they have now recognized that this is the moment to focus and act on new principles and strategies in order to adapt to the changing situation.
 This manuscript is summary of the results from the qualitative content analysis conducted during the dissertation, to study in what ways are these financial services institutes created or adjusted strategies based on digital technology to become more robust in contexts marked by high uncertainty levels and disruptions. Workplace innovation can be described as the extent to which businesses seek out new ideas in order to improve the engagement of their employees by improving their working conditions, fostering a culture of competent environmental change response, and increasing productivity. On the other hand, digital technology can be defined as all devices, systems, electronic tools, and other resources that, process, generate, and store data

Sustaining employees’ creativity through the organizational justice: The mediating role of leadership styles

Research on organizational justice and leadership styles has been conducted widely in the workplace for a few decades. But, integration of creativity, innovation and sustainability in the learning workplace is emerging quickly due to the rapid change and digitalization of learning environments. This research aims to investigate the employee creativity (EC) at Dhofar University through organizational justice (OJ) and mediating role of leadership styles (LS). OJ was tested through its four dimensions namely: distributive, procedural, interpersonal and informational justice and LS included transformational, democratic, transactional, laissez faire and strategic styles. Data was collected from 220 academics and administrative staff at Dhofar University and analyzed by SPSS and Amos 23 version. Results reveal that three dimensions of OJ including distributive, interpersonal and informational have positive significant impact on EC but procedural has negative significant impact on EC. Furthermore, four styles of leadership transformational, democratic, transactional and strategic has also positive and significant effect on EC while laissez faire has negative and insignificant impact on EC. Finally, the mediating role of LS enhances the relationship between OJ and EC partially and positively. This research contributes to the literature and practice by using LS as mediators to improve creativity and maintain continuous sustainability.

WORKPLACE INNOVATION: A SEARCH FOR ITS DETERMINANTS THROUGH A SYSTEMATIC LITERATURE REVIEW

Workplace innovation (WPI) plays an important role at the institutional level, enabling firms to improve their competitive advantage. However, it remains an under-researched theme. The purpose of this paper is to extend current knowledge of the mechanisms that facilitate innovations in the workplace, identifying the main determinants that leverage WPI, based on a systematic literature review (SLR). An SLR has been carried out in order to determine the main determinants of WPI. The main topics are analyzed, and then the determinants derived inductively. WPI is depicted as a wide array of topics (38) that may be clustered around five different determinants that are transverse and intertwined. This research contributes by filling the gap regarding WPI. It combines five main determinants and provides important insights into possible avenues for the research of WPI.

Wellbeing in line managers during mandatory working from home: How work and personal factors combine.

The pandemic, particularly the aspect of forced working from home, has had a major impact on the workforce. Previous studies show that line managers have also experienced severe mental strain during this period. Since it is expected that hybrid working will be more the new normal than the exception in future, this study further examined line managers' work-related wellbeing in terms of engagement and exhaustion. Following the job characteristics model (JCM), we explore the mediating role of meaningful work between workplace innovation before the pandemic and line managers' work-related wellbeing during forced working from home. The underlying idea is that organizations that already adopted workplace innovation practices before the pandemic, give teams and employees more control, thus allowing a more meaningful role for line managers, which positively impacts line managers' work-related wellbeing during the pandemic. In addition, building upon Job Demands-Resources (JD-R) Theory and the role of personal resources therein, we explore digital leadership skills and work-life segmentation preference as moderators between meaningful work and work-related wellbeing. Our findings show that workplace innovation is positively associated with engagement via its effect on meaningful work, but not associated with exhaustion. Second, we found that work-life segmentation preference amplifies the relation between meaningful work and engagement (positive link) as well as exhaustion (negative link). This indicates that line managers with a high work-life segmentation preference who have a low score on meaningful work, experience less engagement and more exhaustion than line managers with a high score on meaningful work when working from home. No support was found for the moderation of digital leadership skills in the relationship between meaningful work, engagement, and exhaustion. Based on these results, we discuss implications for research and we provide practice recommendations.

Workplace innovation management of nurse managers in University Hospitals: A phenomenological study

Workplace innovation management of nurse managers in University Hospitals: A phenomenological study

Workplace innovation: Employee characteristics and organizational context

For a long time, innovation studies mainly focused on the macrolevel, i.e. country- or industry-level analysis of the innovation process. Nevertheless, throughout the last decade, there has been a methodological bias towards the study of the innovation process at the micro- or grassroots-level, i.e. at the level of social groups and employees who initiate and implement innovations within their organizations. This study is conducted in the grassroots-level framework. The focus is made both on the individual-level characteristics of employees who suggest innovative ideas, and on the organization-level factors that can affect employees’ involvement in the innovation process. Unlike similar studies, current research is focused not on high-skilled employees who are responsible for the innovation generation and implementation by their job duties, but rather on ordinary employees who voluntarily propose new ideas (“volunteer innovators”). Data from the Monitoring of Innovative Behavior of the Population by the Higher School of Economics for 2018 is used for the analysis. The results confirm low innovative activity of Russian enterprises as only 7% of the 4821 surveyed Russian employees aged from 18 to 65 offered innovative ideas. However, more than half of them (4%) were “volunteer innovators”. By using a binary logistic regression, a set of individual-level characteristics of “volunteer innovators” and organization-level factors that can promote volunteer innovative activity is outlined. The results of the study can be used by organizations to promote changes aimed at increasing innovative activity.

The role of nurses' unions in workplace innovation in Australian and Canadian hospitals: Analysing union strategies

AbstractWe explore the role of nurses and their unions in workplace innovation through case study research on the introduction of Lean production (LP). We find that nurses' unions were not involved in the implementation of LP. We draw conclusions about how union power, identity and narratives help explain union strategic behaviour.

성과배분제와 근로자 제안 : 심리적 오너십의 매개

Does profit sharing really have impact on the employees’ propensity to make suggestions? And does psychological ownership, defined as a state in which individuals feel as though the target of ownership is theirs, mediate the relationship between profit sharing and employees’ propensity to make suggestions? Using ‘Survey on the employees’ attitude towards workplace innovation’ by Korea Labor Institute in 2020, this study investigates the effects of profit sharing on the employees’ propensity to make suggestions, and the mediating role of the psychological ownership in the relationship between profit sharing and employees’ propensity to make suggestions. The estimation results show that profit sharing is positively related with employees’ propensity to make suggestions, and psychological ownership partially mediated the relationship between profit sharing and employees’ propensity to make suggestions. Finally, we suggested the implications of our findings and proposed research questions.

Employees striving for innovation in social enterprises: The roles of social mission and commitment‐based human resource management

AbstractSocial enterprises, promising organizations for solving societal problems with innovative approaches, rely upon their members’ active roles for workplace innovation. However, we still have a limited understanding about how social enterprises can foster employees’ endeavors for innovation. By focusing on employee learning and innovative behavior, we investigate the influences of perceived social mission, value congruence, and human resource management (HRM) practices in social enterprises. We conducted two complementary studies to answer our research questions. In Study 1, with a survey of 369 employees from 68 social enterprises, we examined a multilevel moderated mediation model with firm‐level and individual‐level data. We found that perceived social mission promoted learning and innovative behavior by increasing value congruence, and that commitment‐based HRM practices enhanced the overall process from mission to employee efforts for innovation. In Study 2, with 300 daily surveys from 60 employees participating in an experience sampling study, we found that those with high‐value congruence showed a significantly more stable pattern with less variance in innovative behavior than in learning behavior. Our study adds novel implications to the underdeveloped literature on employee innovation and HRM in social enterprises by uncovering the positive effects of social mission and value facets for boosting learning and innovative behaviors. Our research also suggests that social enterprises should benefit from pursuing and emphasizing the social mission and commitment‐based HRM bundle together, which will promote the prosperity and well‐being of business and society.

RailActivation project: the adoption of Workplace Innovation in the Rail Sector

The rail sector has a significant impact on European industry, hence it is important that it follows current innovative trends if it wants to stay competitive. To this end, the railway sector has to adapt to the new digital revolution that is sweeping the sector, but especially the small and medium-sized companies that are part of it, and Workplace Innovation will play a key role in this process. During the RailActivation project it has been seen that SMEs have difficulties when it comes to developing and applying innovation, but due to their size SMEs can gain the advantage of implementing innovation more quickly.
 The RailActivation project aimed to help SMEs from the railway sector and provide solutions to the problems faced by companies when adapting to this new revolution, by creating an organisational mechanism that would help companies in the process of adopting Workplace Innovation. To address the aforementioned challenges, this paper develops the research model for the railway industry, based on the concept of Workplace Innovation and the needs of SMEs. In addition, a general overview of the Innovation Way methodology applied during the workshops of the RailActivation project is presented, as well as the general and specific results obtained in the companies where the Pilot Scheme was applied.

Promoting Workplace Innovation in an Innovation Policy Context

The wider societal impact of workplace innovation development programmes has typically been limited by their poor ability to scale up project outcomes and disseminate good practice. Researchers have proposed different means to address the challenges of diffusion. One of the suggested means is to strengthen the integration of programmes to industrial or innovation policy frameworks, instead of an industrial relations framework. Using the “Finnish Liideri – Business, Productivity and Joy at Work” (2012–18) programme as an object of analysis, this article examines what added value the programme’s attachment to the innovation policy context brought compared to previous Finnish programmes and to what extent this attachment helped to bring new solutions to the challenges of diffusion. The analysis shows that the Liideri programme included many new features compared to previous Finnish programmes, opening up opportunities for more holistic development work in companies. However, based on the data available, it was not possible to give a clear answer to the question of the real added value of this integration to the development of companies or compared with the results of projects funded by previous Finnish workplace innovation development programmes. Concerning the question on dissemination of good practice, the article concludes that, despite its large-scale and high-quality activation work, the Liideri programme did not include sufficiently efficient and innovative measures that would have enabled it to meet better the challenges of diffusion.

Workplace Innovation: Europe's Competitive Edge

Workplace Innovation: Europe's Competitive Edge

Managers’ support for workplace innovation in the public sector: Wedged between expectations and conditions

Over the past few years, public policy interventions have been initiated to promote public sector innovation. These top-down initiatives have been aimed at generating bottom-up movement, and first-line managers are believed to play an important role in this transformation. However, little is known about the challenges first-line managers face in their role as agents of change. This article therefore explores the expectations and conditions that first-line managers face when innovation support is implemented in municipalities. The article draws on 23 interviews with participants from three Swedish cases where innovation support has been implemented in the municipal context. The findings reveal that a multitude of expectations pointing towards an explorative logic are placed on first-line managers to lead, dare and support in connection with employee-driven innovation, but the conditions under which they operate point towards an exploitative logic. The managers find themselves wedged between high expectations and a lack of mandate, resources and organisational support for workplace innovation in the public sector context.

Linking LMX and schedule flexibility with employee innovative work behaviors: mediating role of employee empowerment and response to change

PurposeThe paper aims to investigate the determinants of workplace innovation behavior of women employees in Pakistan. With a growing share of women's participation in the labor force in developing economies, it is crucial to understand their behavior. The authors looked into various practices that drive women's innovative behavior using social exchange theory (SET) as a theoretical framework.Design/methodology/approachThis study is quantitative-based on the positivistic paradigm. Following the survey method technique, responses are collected from 317 female employees in the service industry. The authors used structural equation modeling for the data analysis.FindingsThe results indicate a significant impact of leader-member exchange (LMX) on employee empowerment; schedule flexibility was also a possible predictor of workplace innovation behavior through mediating roles of employee empowerment and response to change. The study findings are consistent with the prior literature and according to the developed hypothesis. Further, women's response to change partially mediates women employees' empowerment and workplace innovation behaviors. In addition, LMX significantly affects women's response to change through women employees' empowerment, leading to workplace innovation behavior.Practical implicationsThe implication is that supervisors should be adaptable in working relationships with their women employees to bring positive workplace innovative behaviors. They create such exchanges with employees to make them feel that the organizations value them. The paper identifies the need to develop supportive supervisor-employee exchange relationships to encourage positive, innovative behavior in female employees.Originality/valueThis paper examines the workplace innovation behavior of women employees in Pakistani patriarchal society and a male-dominating workplace environment.

Sustaining Innovation Capabilities Beyond COVID

The innovation achievements and momentum of the COVID-19 pandemic present an opportunity for Canadian polytechnics to sustain their unique and distinctive role in the post-secondary landscape. The authors contend that if polytechnics collaborate with workplace partners to research and to advance Employee-led Workplace Innovation capabilities, polytechnics can better equip learners for the future of work, foster innovation in the workplaces of partners, and contribute meaningfully to innovation-based growth in Canada. Drawing on Breznitz’ critique, the authors advance the idea that Canadian innovation will grow if it focuses on ‘agents of innovation’, specifically the individual. Then the paper briefly outlines the traits of individual ‘serial innovators’ before honing in on the research and the work underway globally in the area of Employee-led Workplace Innovation. After establishing its value, the authors contend that if the work of polytechnics is to continue to have relevance for industry and to be differentiated from other types of post-secondary institutions, then the integration of Employee-led Workplace Innovation can play a key role. Its successful integration, however, requires an epistemological shift from the status quo, a shift which is described by way of a historical analogue and an example of curricular implications. The authors then explore the opportunity to build instructional capability for innovation in polytechnics themselves, both as a way to improve learning and as topic in its own right. Finally, the paper concludes with a summary of the opportunity polytechnics now have to sustain and possibly to evolve their unique role in strategic workforce development.

“Goldilocks” gender mix for maximal innovation likelihood at Indian firms

PurposeGender diversity is known to trigger creative and relationship conflicts alike, the former a boon for innovation and the latter a bane. This study aims to explore the possibility of a gender mix that is “just right” for balancing the intensities of varied forms of conflict to boost innovation in firms in India. Specifically, this paper investigated the presence of an optimal level of women as a percentage of the firm’s full-time permanent employees (Percent-Women) that maximized the firm’s likelihood of product innovation (Product–Innovation–Likelihood).Design/methodology/approachLogistic regression analyses of firm-level data of Indian establishments of varied sizes and industries from World Bank Enterprise Surveys 2014 was performed. Instrumental variable addressed the potential endogeneity of Percent-Women.FindingsThe analysis demonstrated an inverted U-shaped relationship between Product–Innovation–Likelihood and Percent-Women. Product–Innovation–Likelihood peaked when Percent-Women lay between 35% and 58%, i.e. when the firm was gender-balanced or close to it.Practical implicationsThe finding of an optimal level of female inclusion presents to firms a defined target of gender mix to be achieved, failing to which they may be limiting their innovation potential. It compels firms to view gender diversity as a business imperative with definite implications for their long-term performance.Social implicationsFor India, the demonstrated relationship between workplace gender diversity and innovation brings additional reason and urgency to public initiatives, such as female literacy, for boosting female economic engagement. Innovation can power the next stage of the Indian growth story by engaging the heretofore insufficiently tapped female worker.Originality/valueBy demonstrating an optimal degree of female inclusion at which innovation potential peaks, the study reconciled opposing theories of diversity-driven conflicts and went beyond the commonly observed simple linear relationship between female inclusion and innovation. Further, the paper focused on India, a major developing economy with a vast female populace and growing innovation ambitions but scarcely researched for gender diversity’s role in innovation.